And as he listened to her story, Lee was jarred by a fact that had escaped him since the time he’d become a civilian again. That fact being that the truth was often something that socked you in the gut and ran off like a bitch to let you stew in your wounds. And he should have known the truth was worse than even he could have imagined.
Truth and consequences
She was back there, in the thirty hours that had changed so much. Rena had just been shot and her blood was pooling around her prone form. Kit herself was completely naked but for her underwear, and the world was a sharp scope of the nightmare that had plagued her for ten years…
“Summer,” Hammond rasped as he crawled toward her, completely ignoring Rena’s immobile form. Rena had been shot in the spine, her eyes had gone cold and dead. She wasn’t coming back.
Casper heaved himself to his feet to do a visual check of their surroundings, but otherwise he was quiet and focused.
The door creaked open and Hashmat stepped forward, motioning for his merry band of inbreds. There were five men now, and all had rifles trained on the group, but at his motion, two of the men broke off and grabbed Casper, taking a knife to his throat, and Summer had to concentrate on holding back from clawing Hashmat’s smug face.
A gleam of hate entered his eyes causing a sliver of fear to cascade down Summer’s spine and she moved in closer to Hammond. Hashmat nodded and pointed at Casper, whose muscles strained as the knife nicked him just a bit. “If you do anything stupid he dies.” Quick as a whip, Hashmat was on her. He pulled her by her hair and threw her in the middle of the dusty room as the last two men held Hammond back.
“Your undergarments,” Hashmat ordered, pointing to her underwear with his pistol. When the knife tightened on Hammond’s throat, she stood immediately. She didn’t feel courageous, but fuck it all if she would cower now.
Summer hesitated as Hashmat stepped forward into her space. They wouldn’t. They’d said they wouldn’t. They’d said they didn’t touch—
Hashmat’s gun came forward and he smacked her with the small pistol.
“Do as I say!” he spat out and again, his spittle touched her. And she’d never felt so dirty as she did with this man’s saliva on her while she prepared to strip further. The hit itself took a moment to register, so shocked was she by the metal hitting her face. Then, she felt her face swelling, the keen moment of pain as the blood on her face spilled down her cheeks, the way she’d promised herself her tears would never do again.
She almost lost it.
Hammond and Casper definitely did, but she held out her hands for them to remain calm, even as the militants tightened their grips on the knives at the men’s throats. She didn’t need them hurt, and she found this new detached sense of peace settle inside of her.
She turned her head to the side and took a deep breath before peeling her underwear down, exposing herself further, hating that her underwear were a frilly pink. She’d always loved the colors of summer sunsets—oranges, pinks, yellows, reds, blues. And in shedding that last garment, she thought, there goes the rest of my innocence.
But as with anything else in life, there was always a bottom to hit below rock bottom.
“You,” the leader said, pointing his pistol at Hammond. “Fuck her!”
Hammond’s shock couldn’t have been greater than her own even as the guards smiled and laughed at the next piece of torment to be laid on them.
No…no he couldn’t.
She had only one thing left of herself, of the Summer she’d been—Lee. But she’d never have Lee again if they—
“I can’t.” Hammond’s voice rang clearly through the room. “She’s engaged to my brother,” Hammond lied. Summer knew it was a lie, but their captors didn’t. She’d always hoped her and Lee would get that far, but now she knew… That would never happen. Hammond continued, “And I’m married to her sister.” That much was truth. “Don’t you have a law against a man lying with his brother’s wife?”
The rabid light she’d seen in Hashmat’s eyes earlier seemed to brighten even further and a predatory smile spread across his face. “If you were of our law, yes, but you are heathens and infidels.” Hashmat tilted his head to one side then the other in a quick motion, as though he were trying to dispel something, to rid himself of unwanted thoughts. Summer shuddered then, because she knew there was no information they could give, no plea they could make, no religious doctrine they might convert to that would save them. She’d thought this earlier, but the hysterical notes in his voice on occasion, the disorganized way he’d captured them, the language that focused on torture rather than overtly on conversion or intel—even though he’d tried to mention it briefly—said it all. Hashmat was insane.
Summer met Hammond’s gaze, but quickly looked away, unable to focus on his face if she was going to go through with this.
If she’d had information to give, she wouldn’t have betrayed her country in such a way, but this was worse. There was nothing to give. There was only taking on the part of Hashmat—revenge for some wrong he needed them to play a role in.
And the only thing to do now was to survive by doing what they’d been told.
She let her nails dig into her hands and knew she’d nicked a part of her palm when a tiny bit of cold dripped down further into her fists. Blood. She wanted to bleed him. Instead, she lifted her head higher.
Naked, battered, bruised, and blood dripping from her body, she said, firmly, “Okay.”
The guards brought Hammond forward and stripped him. There was no more demand for information, just quiet. The only one who spoke was Hashmat and his voice filled with a rage she was starting to feel, but for reasons other than insanity. “Do what we say or this one will die,” he repeated, his gun pointed toward Casper.
She thought she was done with tears, but when Hammond lay over her and whispered, “You’re Autumn and I’m Lee,” as Hashmat demanded he fuck her, those salty bits of emotion betrayed her.
Hashmat’s maniacal tones hit her and she instead focused on that little place inside of herself that was just hers and she imagined herself on the back of Lee’s bike, riding the wind, the breeze blowing through her long blonde hair even as their captors hurled insults and made her and Hammond into the animals and sinners they already believed them to be.
A hazy film covered her eyes, and the scene before her was like any other scene that had happened in their captivity…
So, she was fine...just fine. Wasn’t she?
It hurt, yes, but after a time, she was numb and she touched Hammond’s face to let him know it was okay, that he needed to do what they asked. “We’ll be okay, Lee and me. And you and Autumn will be okay too,” she whispered.
Hammond seemed so much to want to believe they’d not only get out of this, but that he’d see a forgiving Autumn soon.
He followed every order. So did she.
Hours. Days. Years later…after what seemed like forever, Summer lay on the ground, Hammond at her side, Casper looking on them with such horror that she had to turn her head away.
It was quiet.
Deathly so.
Too quiet, even outside.
That was when Summer heard the pop, pop, pop of automatic weapons. It could have been from either side, but Summer smiled cruelly up at Hashmat—because she knew. She knew whose guns those were.
And she became something other than Summer Markham.
She’d heard of it, bloodlust, but she’d never felt it until that time in captivity. She wanted Hashmat’s blood. Just hours earlier, she’d thought that life would never again be flowers and sunsets. Because in each person she’d meet, she knew she’d now see an enemy or someone she needed to protect. Life would forever be war. Their most recent torture had only solidified this thought, and she felt the injustice of it all as that thing called bloodlust took over, shredding her humanity.
Hashmat fell backwards in shock at her explosive movement. She came over him, but the other men did not rush to save him. They’d al
ready fled.
She didn’t give her lack of humanity even a second’s thought. And there was great satisfaction for Summer when she felt the crunch of bones as she stomped and stepped heavily on his wrists and hands on either side of his fallen body.
Both wrists and hands crunched and bled beneath her bare feet, and she was glad she was naked now. She reveled in his pain, in the screams of the coward at her feet, and although she ignored his animalistic cries, a part of her shivered in joy at her power.
And still it wasn’t enough.
She fell on him, letting her own inner beast unleash itself on the monster who’d taken so much. Her blunt nails clawed at his eyes and she knew her smile was the definition of insanity when she felt the squishing as she tore through those organs...
…and still she dug.
But as she reached behind for the pistol Hashmat had dropped in his fall, she was pulled back. She let loose a rage-filled scream when Hammond pushed her gently to the side, but it was he who ultimately pulled the trigger.
They were silent as fire reigned just outside their location.
And that was when it happened.
That was when it hit her.
What she’d just done.
What had happened to her, to Hammond, to Casper, to Rena…
To Lee and to Autumn and to everyone they cared about.
But she didn’t crumble.
She didn’t weaken.
She walked to the area behind her, ignoring all the blood that covered the home’s dirty, defiled floor, and she grabbed her tattered fatigues. She considered putting on the pink underwear, but that wasn’t who she was now.
She didn’t know who she was anymore.
But she wasn’t Summer Sunset Markham.
God, what a fucking stupid name, for a fucking stupid girl.
When she stepped outside, she didn’t let anyone coddle her.
Her vision was clear.
She wasn’t hazy.
Her heart rate was steady.
She spoke to the uniforms outside the house, debriefing them and the commander quickly.
“The militants grabbed us at the edge of camp as the shift change was happening. They held us for at least twenty-four hours as evidenced by the change of the sun. Rena Granger, Callum Gordon or Casper as most know him, and Hammond Devereux, one of the camp medics, and myself were taken in.” Then, she pointed behind her but didn’t look back. She knew too much of the inside of where she’d been kept, she didn’t need to know the outside as well. The inside was always what mattered in terms of details anyway. “Officer Granger is still inside, shot once to the spine and dead on the scene.”
She spoke as though the story was someone else’s and then stepped away, making a beeline for the medic station where Hammond and Casper waited.
“Summer,” Hammond prompted quietly, as though her name was a question. It was. Her name was a question.
There was a stillness in her mind, a quiet detachment she’d never felt as she stared blankly forward and her injuries were sewn up and remedied. He’d of course meant her name as a question to see how she was feeling. But she’d felt so much more from that one calling of her name.
“I’m not Summer,” she said, almost absentmindedly.
At Hammond’s worried expression, she touched his face gently, seeing in Hammond the face of the one man she’d ever loved.
Lee—
No, she wouldn’t think of Lee right then.
She gave Hammond and Casper both a reassuring smile, which was probably marred by her banged up face and the blood she was still covered in, although she had been given some fatigues in place of the torn up and bloodied fatigues from before. “I don’t know who I am right now, but Summer isn’t the name of the woman I’ve become in the past thirty hours.” Thirty hours. They’d told Casper, Hammond, and her that they’d been held for thirty hours. She looked at Hammond then, feeling a strange sense of change come over her, and said, “Summer was naïve. She was stupid. She thought life was easily fixed and rarely marred.” She looked at her newly bandaged wounds and stood to make her way to the Humvee that would take them back to base. “I don’t know who I am anymore, but I am not that girl.”
And although she’d been so sure just a moment before, right then, there was a slight pleading in her voice.
It was Casper who stopped in front of her on their way to the vehicle.
“No, you aren’t Summer, Kitten,” he answered her plea with the validation she needed. “You’ve got claws. You’re a warrior. Be proud. You tore him to shreds. Learn to control that anger and become the best warrior you can become.” Casper’s head fell for a second and when his eyes met hers again, they held the sheen of tears. “You and Rena were rushed. And that girl paid the ultimate price for such a small, normally inconsequential mistake.” She felt guilt stab at her gut, but Casper had never been one to sugarcoat reality, at least in the short time she’d known him and from what Hammond had told her. “She never got to take the lesson learned forward, but I know you will. You won’t make the same mistakes. You’ll be smarter. You’ll play each situation from a million angles now, because you don’t want to lose another comrade.” He squeezed her shoulder. “So, no. You aren’t Summer any longer.” He looked to Hammond before his eyes met hers, once again cold and detached. “You’re Kitten.”
She tilted her head back and looked at Casper and then to Hammond. “Kit,” she said with quiet, controlled surety, and the she felt the rightness of her claim. “The name’s Kit.”
There was a commotion as they made it to the Humvee and Kit stepped inside, but when she saw it was Rena being wheeled out, she noticed Hammond and Casper’s eager faces. They needed to finalize shit, give their own recounting. So, she nodded at them to head out and she jumped into the Humvee.
It was quiet in there. Silent. And Kit was alone with her thoughts for the first time in days.
All four of them had experienced a nightmare.
Rena had gotten the worst of the deal, but as Kit heard the calls outside the vehicle, she still couldn’t respond to anything else but her own feelings of relief and also the new sense of power that erupted from deep within her.
“Kit,” she repeated, and it fell from her tongue like the monstrous being she was deep down, but also the soft woman she knew she still had inside. People would just never see the softness because it would now be a fuel. The softness would be the emotion behind the anger fueling any future mission. And she’d be the hardened hellcat she needed to be.
Hammond’s voice broke through the rest of her retelling. “Kit went home for two weeks leave—”
“You knew?” Kit asked, swiping at the wet gathering near her eyes. She didn’t look at Lee’s face. She couldn’t.
Hammond nodded at her and then continued. “A month later, Kit came to me pregnant, and one of the other medics had snuck in some truly controversial meds. She took it. It was the hardest decision either of us has ever made,” Hammond added, meeting her gaze but too far away to offer any comfort.
Instead, she felt Lee’s strong grip as he reached for her hand.
Everything in her went still.
Everything.
She’d never been so still, so completely at the whim of everything Fate might throw at her.
Love could do that to a person, couldn’t it?
Tear you down to an empty, sobbing mess, until you were a slate wiped clean, exposed and open and raw and…
“Kit.”
She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes, but his voice echoing in her mind was like the fall of summer rain—so different than a spring rain. It was refreshing, healing, a christening of the spirit after the unforgiving and blistering heat of a humid Northeastern summer day...
Or a summer rain after once again reliving the sweltering hot summer in a desert of nightmares.
She exhaled the breath she’d been holding in during her moment of stillness, and suddenly it was all clear.
She lifted her h
ead slowly.
She was alive and well, and in many respects, she was lucky. Lucky to have the Fallen Eagles MC. Lucky to have her family. Lucky to have found a place back home when so many didn’t ever find a way to fit in after war. And with Lee holding her hand, she knew she was lucky enough to be sitting next to the man she loved. And even luckier still that he wasn’t looking at her with anger or in disgust.
No, he looked like a man with a new understanding, a new handle on life. Hell, he looked lighter than he had in years, and she realized suddenly what the burden of their secret had done. Lee and Autumn had probably already imagined every scenario. They’d in fact hurt the two of them worse by holding the truth back.
“Kit, none of what happened was your fault, babe,” Lee began and then looked over to Hammond. “Yours either, Hammond.” His bright blue eyes held Kit’s once more and she was pulled in as she always was by the connection between the two of them.
It had always been Kit and Lee, and she’d felt broken and disconnected for so long without him. His thumb reached for the silent tears she shed and he wiped a few away before tucking a few hairs, which had fallen loose, behind her ear. His hands were holding hers gently, but his voice was strong when he repeated, “None of what happened was your fault. You aren’t to blame. You did what you had to survive, and even afterwards, when you were faced with some tough decisions, you did the best you could, Kit.” His words were a balm, a refuge in the same way riding or baking or getting tattoos were, and she breathed in the air between them, letting the truth of what he’d said seep in and heal just a bit.
She looked to Hammond and saw the realization there as well.
They’d been victims.
God, that word made her shudder, made bile rise just a bit.
But just as with anything else, ugly words didn’t mean they weren’t true.
Hammond jumped to his feet. “I’ve got to go—”
“Talk to Autumn?” Kit nodded in agreement, but Hammond shook his head. “You have to tell her,” she added, standing up and walking toward him.
A Terrible Beauty Page 5