He had her.
Now he had to tow her to the other bank.
Matt didn’t wait a second. He was still okay — tired but functional. He could keep swimming for hours. SEALs functioned well even past exhaustion. But she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t going to survive for very long. There’d be some water in her lungs and she was deathly pale, a terrifying gray-white color.
His right arm hooked under her chin, he placed his hips under hers and set off, legs scissoring powerfully. The current was strong, as strong as the tides at Coronado beach. During Hell Week he swam five and a half miles a day in the freezing Pacific, with sharks, and he’d managed it. He was going to manage this as well. No question he was going to make it — but was she?
The rushing water was loud but his ear was next to her mouth and he heard nothing. He couldn’t feel her rib cage rising and falling. He was losing her. At the calmer water of mid-stream he added yet more power, speeded up and rejoiced when his boots scrabbled on rocks. He rose up with the woman in his arms to slip-stagger up the mossy river bank to where there was a flat surface of muddy grass. They were both soaking wet but he couldn’t do anything about that. He had nothing warm and dry to cover her with.
She lay lifeless, head turned to one side, chest still.
Matt put two fingers to her carotid, despairing as he felt nothing. Then … there! A light flutter, faint, barely perceptible. For now she was alive, and she’d stay that way if he had anything to do with it.
But she wasn’t breathing.
Placing his left hand on her sternum, he covered it with his right hand and began strong compressions, two inches deep. A hundred twenty compressions, then he pinched her nose, tilted her head back and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, watching to make sure her chest rose. Thirty more fast compressions, mouth-to-mouth, two big breaths. Compressions, two breaths, compressions, two breaths.
She was still, inert, like a doll.
He didn’t let up. He’d seen men come back to life on the field. He wasn’t giving up until he got tired and he didn’t tire easily. Compressions, two breaths …
She convulsed, chest heaving without pulling in air. Matt pushed her over to her side as she vomited river water, gasped, wheezed, vomited again. When she’d emptied herself, she lay curled on her side, eyes closed. She was clearly exhausted but her body was coming back from death.
She needed to be warm and dry now. Not about to save her from drowning only to watch her die of exposure.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. He was wet all over and chilled, but his hand must have felt warm, even through the cold, wet material of her sweater. Her shoulder was delicate, fragile and he could feel the chill of her skin.
Her eyes were closed and she was breathing so lightly her chest was barely rising and falling. Head still to one side.
“Hey.” Matt tapped her cheek. Not hard, but sharply. Trying to keep her conscious. “Hey, stay with me, ma’am. I need for you to stay with me.” He tapped her cheek again, and again. He took her chin and gently turned her face back up. “I’ll get you to where you’ll be warm and dry, but I’m going to have to carry you. Do you understand me?”
A long exhalation of breath, her eyes still closed. She wasn’t responding.
Matt tapped her cheek again, hoping it would annoy her, hoping she’d react.
“Ma’am?” He tried another tack. Have her give basic info. “Ma’am, what’s your name? My name is Matt Walker, what’s yours?”
Oddly, her eyelids flickered when he mentioned his name, almost as if she recognized it. He tapped her cheek again. “Ma’am?”
She moaned, an animal sound from deep in her chest and then her eyes opened wide and Matt nearly gasped. They were a light gray so luminous they seemed to shine, rimmed by dark blue. Amazing eyes, eyes to get lost in. And it was then he noticed she was … extraordinarily beautiful. And with those eyes … he had to shake himself.
Shame washed through him. She’d nearly died and she might still die if he didn’t get her back to the Grange fast. This was no time to be mooning over a beautiful woman.
Her hand shot out and grabbed his arm. Her grip had no strength to it but she held him still. He couldn’t have moved if someone had put a gun to his head.
Her lips moved and he frowned. She coughed, tried to speak again, but nothing came out.
Matt moved his head down close to hers. She was shivering, they had to get going, but that icy cold hand and the desperation in those beautiful eyes held him still.
Her weak grip tightened a little and she drew in a deep breath, her first since being resuscitated. She was trembling, her hand shook on his arm. Only moans were coming out of her mouth, but she was trying to tell him something, trying desperately.
“Don’t —” she gasped.
“Don’t what, ma’am?” he asked, head nearly touching hers.
“Don’t let them —” she paused, struggling for breath, for strength.
“Don’t let them …?”
“Don’t let them catch me.” She stopped, breathed heavily. “They’ll kill me if … if they catch me.”
There were people after this beautiful woman? Wanting to kill her? Cold shot through his veins, an icy rage. No. Way. She was under his protection now.
Then he saw something that turned his icy rage into red hot rage. In grasping his hand, the sleeve of her sweater fell back to her elbow. The skin around her wrist was abraded over a large band with scabs halfway up her forearm and around her wrists. An unusual mark but one he was familiar with. He’d seen that mark on kids, a mark he’d never forget.
This woman had been shackled.
Not handcuffed.
Shackled.
To confirm it, he checked her other wrist, which carried the same mark.
She was running from people who’d kept her shackled.
Well, her running was over.
She was watching his face carefully, light gray eyes shifting over his features. He knew what she was thinking. She’d barely escaped with her life from bad guys who’d kept her prisoner. Had she fallen into another bad guy’s hands? Because for an instant there, he’d let his rage show and the animal instinct in her — which would be heightened by the danger she’d been in — sounded alarms.
He was dangerous, yes. Not to her, but definitely to fuckheads who would keep a woman shackled. Yeah. Those were exactly the kind of people he was primed to fight.
But right now, reassuring this woman was more important that letting his rage show. He relaxed his features, put on a bland façade.
He held her hand in his. It was slender, strong, icy cold. He made his voice low and soft, as if speaking to a wounded animal.
“Ma’am, we need to get you warm and dry, you are perilously close to —”
“Hypothermia,” she whispered.
“Yes, exactly. My company has a lodge not too far from here.”
She nodded, light eyes fixed on his. She blinked, blinked again. Her eyes closed, stayed close. She was fading fast.
“You’ll be safe there. I can call a doctor —”
“No!” Her eyes flew open. She tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength. Matt caught her as she fell back. “No doctor, no hospital. They will look for me there. Please.” She coughed, her voice becoming weaker and weaker. “Promise. Please.”
He could call Metal, his pal. Metal had been a medic and a damned good one. Lots of soldiers wounded in battle were alive thanks to Metal. He wasn’t official and he sure as hell knew how to keep his mouth shut. The Grange had an infirmary that was well stocked.
“Okay, no doctors,” he said. He wasn’t lying. Metal wasn’t a doctor.
“Thank you.” Her words were slurring, she was slipping into hypothermia, her core temperature dropping. He had to get her warm and dry as fast as he could.
“I’m going to pick you up now.” But she was gone, those remarkable eyes closed, unmoving behind the lids. Unconscious.
Matt had to move fast. He picked her
up and moved as quickly as he could to his vehicle upstream, parked on a logger’s trail half a mile back, and uphill. She weighed not much more than the packs they carried into battle and he climbed with ease.
Ignoring the slashing icy rain, he watched his step on the treacherous, rocky terrain, slicked with wet pine needles. The last thing he needed was to fall with her in his arms. Maybe bang her head on a rock. She’d been through enough. So he kept his eyes on the ground, switching frequently to watch her face.
To make sure she wouldn’t slip into hypothermia and death, but also because watching her wasn’t a hardship. Bruised and battered as she was, she was still extraordinarily beautiful.
Get your head on straight, he ordered himself, as if he were his own Senior Chief. He should reinforce that thought with a hearty slap to the back of his head. Just like Master Chief Higgins used to do, bless his rhinoceros hide.
Matt was in a race against time to save this woman’s life. He shouldn’t be ogling her. Shame on him. He wasn’t starved for the sight of attractive women. God no. The place where he would go to work was lousy with beautiful women. It was like they came by the dozen and he saw them every day. His bosses and many of his teammates were married to gorgeous women. Hell, even Metal’s fiancée, the company’s resident IT genius, was very pretty. Metal thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world and said so often. Loudly.
This woman had the ASI women beat, hands down.
He finally reached his vehicle, putting her on her feet for a moment while he fished for the keyfob. It opened with a chirp and he thanked the automotive gods that the keyfob hadn’t been destroyed by a dousing in the river.
She couldn’t stand on her feet, but that was okay. He held her easily, opened the rear passenger door and carefully, gently, placed her lying down. She didn’t move, her eyes were motionless behind the lids. No movement at all.
Not good.
Matt rushed to the back where he held supplies. All ASI vehicles came equipped with weaponry and emergency gear. You could survive a week of the zombie apocalypse with what ASI put in their vehicles as standard gear. There was a thin foil blanket and heat packs. He cracked two heat packs and put them on her stomach and chest, then covered her carefully with the foil blanket.
The engine started right up and he sent rocks and dirt flying as he gunned it. Speed was essential now.
Driving as fast as he could toward the Grange, he connected with his phone via the speaker system, tapping the first number on speed dial on the big screen of the dashboard. Metal picked up on the first ring.
“’Sup, man?” Matt relaxed just a fraction at hearing Metal’s deep, reassuring tone. Matt could do emergency medicine but Metal had deep medical knowledge. He’d often flirted with the idea of going back to school to become a doctor but he liked being an operator more.
“Got an emergency. Fished a woman out of the river, literally. My hook is still in her arm.” Her arm was so chilled she wouldn’t be feeling any pain. Matt wanted to get back to the Grange and remove it from her arm with disinfectant. “She was in the river, caught in the rapids.”
“Weather’s bad,” Metal answered. “So hypothermia’s a real danger.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, voice clipped. He was driving as fast as he could on the unpaved road. “She’s in the vehicle right now, stretched out on the back seat. I put the foil blanket on her, cracked some heat packs and I’ve turned the heat up to maximum. As soon as we’re at the Grange I’ll try to get some hot liquid in her if she regains consciousness. Can you come up? She took a pounding on the rocks.”
A pause. “Sure. But wouldn’t it be better to get her to a hospital?”
Matt’s jaw clenched. “I suspect she took a pounding from more than the rocks. I think she was held a prisoner. She gained consciousness for a few moments and begged me to keep her safe. Said that they would kill her if they found her. Begged me not to take her to a hospital. She was half dead and still scared out of her mind.”
Silence. “Okay. We’re pretty well equipped up at the Grange. Unless she has a compound fracture or internal bleeding, I guess we can deal with it ourselves. She was scared, you say?”
“Terrified. And Metal?” Matt felt his chest tightening at the thought.
“Yeah?”
“She’d been shackled. Shackled. You know I recognize the signs.”
Metal felt about the mistreatment of women and children the way he did. It was an abomination.
Matt heard a sharp intake of breath. “Be there as fast as I can.”
The Grange
She came to slowly, drifting up to the surface from the depths of an ocean. Drifting slowly, slowly toward a distant light. Light and heat and safety, above her. Way way above her. She tried to reach up for the light.
“Whoa. Wake up, ma’am. Breathe.”
Someone was tapping her cheek and it was maddening. She couldn’t breathe, why was someone tormenting her?
The last air in her lungs left her. Soon she would be forced to draw in a deep breath, the breath that would fill her lungs with water and send her down to her death.
Kicking at the man, trying to hit him. He still dragged her down, he was killing her.
She moaned, a desperate keening sound, fighting the downward pull through the watery depths.
His hands held hers, touched her shoulders and she fought him off, finally drawing a breath and finding air and not water.
She opened her eyes and met the dark eyes of a man she somehow knew, but not the man of her nightmare. Not the man at the bottom of the ocean, with the cruel eyes and the hard hands.
Yet, she knew this man. No, not knew, but he was somehow familiar. Flashes of images — the rushing river, a strong arm holding her up as he swam her across it, being wrapped in a foil blanket, feeling warmth for the first time in forever.
He was holding her hands in a gentle yet unbreakable warm grasp. “You’re awake,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Good. I couldn’t drag you out of the nightmare.”
She moved her eyes and saw another man. Tall and strong like this one, but she didn’t know him. Oh God, they’d found her!
The nightmare wasn’t over! It was even more horrible that she couldn’t remember the details of the nightmare, just hard hands and hard eyes. Cruelty and terror and desperation.
She’d escaped and there was no way she’d go back into captivity.
She’d rather die.
She tried to wrench her hands from the dark-haired man but she couldn’t. She leaned forward, her voice a harsh whisper. “He found me, he’ll kill me! Let me go!” Tugging was useless against his strength but desperation made her try again and again. “Let. Me. Go!” It was like trying to move steel. The last of her reserves left her and she stilled.
The other man, bulging with muscle like the man holding her hands, stepped forward. She couldn’t fight him, she had nothing left. All she could do was scrabble with her feet to try to get away but she went nowhere. Desperation seized her. That must have shown in her face because he held up his hands, palms out.
“Stop, please.” His voice was low and calm, too. “I’m not going to hurt you, ma’am. My name is Sean O’Brien. My friends call me Metal. I was a medic in the military. My friend Matt here fished you out of the river and he said you didn’t want a doctor, didn’t want to go to the hospital. But you need medical attention, ma’am, which I’m ready to give you. I repeat, I won’t hurt you.”
She barely heard the words, but she did hear the tone. Low and calm. The other man — men — their tones had been vicious. Menacing. And their faces, cold and cruel. The man holding her hands — Matt? — and the man speaking — Metal? — had tough faces atop very tough bodies but they weren’t threatening her. Either one could crush her and toss her away, but … they were offering help.
Weren’t they?
Where was she? She looked around, trying to decipher the environment. An image flashed in her mind. A cold featureless room, a hard cot with a thin foam r
ubber mattress. Shackled to a wall.
Nothing in the room that could help or give comfort.
Completely unlike the room she was in now. She was lying on a comfortable bed in a room with stylish modern furniture. Muted earth tones, a sculpture of a bird with outstretched wings on a sideboard, framed landscape photographs on the wall, a large night table. A doctor’s bag open on the table.
A whimper escaped her lips and she bit them. Never give anything away. Never show weakness.
She couldn’t remember anything except for the defiance she’d felt down to her bones. Why couldn’t she remember any details? All she knew was that she’d been held a prisoner by dangerous men and she’d die rather than go back.
The man holding her hands — Matt — leaned forward, looking her straight in the eyes.
“It looks like you were held a prisoner and you escaped. Good for you. You’re not a prisoner here. All we want to do is help you. You nearly drowned in freezing cold water. You need heat and medical attention. May we provide that?”
She gave a jerky nod and he nodded back. He let her hands go, walked away and came back with something stacked in his hands.
“You’re chilled. I tried to keep you warm but you are still in wet clothes and that’s not good for you. You’re risking pneumonia, if not hypothermia. That’s —”
“I know what hypothermia is,” she croaked. And she did. The knowledge blossomed in her head, as if she had an encyclopedia in her mind that just opened to the correct page.
Hypothermia — dangerous condition when the core temperature of the body falls below 95°. When the body loses heat faster than it can produce heat, leading to complete failure of the heart and respiratory systems.
The knowledge was right there in her head.
Those dark eyes were watching her carefully. He held up his hands. “I have dry clean clothes here. The wives of my teammates come up often and they keep a basic wardrobe here. They wouldn’t mind. Can you change by yourself? After that, I have a thermos of hot tea and then Metal will check you over. We’re just going to have to hope you don’t have any internal injuries.”
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 2