by Cara Carnes
“Right.”
Dallas’s gaze narrowed. “They’ve dragged people out of impossible situations. Hell, Edge blew up a building with an entire team inside. They weren’t even injured by the blast even though they were hunkered down in the middle of it. They have a one hundred percent success rate. They are not about to foul that up tonight. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hook two leads up to the harness. One lead with each drone.”
“She gets two? You made my brother drop off a building in San Antonio using just one,” Dallas said.
What the hell? They were all loons.
“Do it.” The gruff response was masculine and not pleased. “My woman’s bladder is about to explode, and her feet are the size of footballs.”
“They did not need to know any of that, Dylan. Get out of my control room.”
Dallas smirked as the two voices on the other end halted their argument when Vi tossed out a terse order to focus. He reached down and hooked one line to each of the drones.
“Seriously?” Kamren asked.
“These little beasts are way more than obnoxious lights.” The smile he offered exuded confidence and determination. “Take your time. If you change your mind, say the word and we’ll get you up.”
“I’m good.” And she was. She wasn’t leaving anyone in a hole. No way in hell.
She shouldered on her backpack and nodded that she was ready. She was about to get into position to be lowered into the hole when she was suddenly in the air. The drones were lifting her up, then lowering her into the hole. What the hell?
Shock kept her still and mute as she descended into the narrow entry. The third drone was already there projecting enough light for her to see as she was slowly lowered. She peered downward and past her feet. A small, still form was to the side about fifteen feet.
“We’ll need a backboard,” she stated. “We’ll likely need an ambulance from Nomad.”
Nomad was twenty miles away and had the nearest hospital. She hated the idea of waiting that long, though. And they’d still have to call a crew in to get a wide enough opening for the backboard. Before she could work through possible solutions, the form moved. The boy peered up and reached for her.
Movement.
Blood oozed from a wound on his head. Both his legs were pointed the wrong direction, but he was alert. And crying.
The drones lowered her gently to the ground near the boy. She sat and took his hand as she wiped the tears from his little face. “Hi, there. I’m Kamren. What’s your name?”
“Sam. Where’s Shane?”
“Nolan has him,” Vi said in the com. “He’s injured, but okay.”
“He’s okay. We’re going to get you out and back home. Your Grandpa Bubba is mighty worried.”
“He’s gonna whip our butts good for this.”
Likely so. Most parents would. Kamren smiled at the boy. “I’m thinking he’ll likely feed you and love on you first.”
“It hurts,” Sam said with another cry.
“It’s okay,” she soothed as she ran her hand across his damp forehead. “We’re getting a crew here to help you. Just remain as still as possible, and we’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
Kamren waited until the boy calmed a bit. “Is emergency en route?”
“Yes, but his doctor is almost there.” Dread settled in a dull throb in her temples. Almost there implied close, which meant a Burton, Brant more than likely, since he’d essentially taken over his aging uncle’s practice. “There are no allergies to worry about. I understand you raided the supply cabinet. Did you take any painkillers?”
“Yes.”
“Good, go ahead and administer them. We have Brant’s permission, not that I’d wait even if we didn’t,” Vi commented.
Kamren’s hands trembled slightly as she removed the backpack and listened to the two women as they took turns running her through what needed to be done. Most of it was stuff she already knew, but she appreciated the calm, confident, step-by-step instructions in firm, short sentences. They kept her focused.
These were Addy’s girls. The brilliant brainiacs Dallas talked about. She admired their tenacity and professionalism. If anyone could help her sort out the mess that was her supposed investigation into her father’s death, it was them. She’d already decided to take a chance and try and explain things to Dallas and his brothers.
Maybe Addy was right. Maybe the women could help her make sense of stuff.
Decision made, Kamren focused on handling the situation at hand. Everything else could wait. Once the pain medicine had been administered she focused on the first task—a backboard for the boy. The ones in ambulances were too big for the small hole, and she didn’t want to wait for a crew to make it bigger. She rooted through the backpack of supplies she’d taken and growled her frustration.
“It’s too dark down here.” One of the drone lights flashed on. “Thanks.”
“Mind telling us what you’re doing?” Vi asked.
“Backboard, small enough to get through the hole. I’m not waiting for Burton and whoever else is coming to figure out how to get one down here. He sees me here, he’ll likely leave anyway.” She muttered the last bit to herself as she pulled out the roll of duct tape. Fortunately the boy was small, so she could use some of the boards in the bottom of the makeshift pit as a board. Not exactly sanitary, but it’d do in a pinch. She kicked and punched at them until they were boy-sized bits of wood. She rolled tape around them, then yanked off her top and taped it to the board to keep the boy’s skin from touching the dirty wood. It was the best she could do.
She worked the board beneath Sam, going slow enough to not jostle him too much. Whatever was in the injection had knocked him out. She hoped to hell that was the right decision. What if he had a concussion or something? No matter, Burton might hate her ass, but he was an excellent doctor. He’d sort the kid out when he arrived.
She took one of the knives and cut the boys pants where his legs were turned at awkward angles.
“Jesus,” Dallas muttered into the com.
“We need to reset them while he’s out,” Mary said softly through the com, but Kamren was already applying traction to the worst of the injuries. The bone in his left leg had pushed out of the skin slightly, but not as bad as Cliff’s back when he was twelve, but it was a nasty wound.
Kamren took two of the stakes she’d packed and positioned them around Sam’s small leg. She rolled tape into position at the base of the leg, well away from the open wound. A few moments later, she had the second injury as immobilized as possible.
She glanced up at the three drones, then back at the boy on the makeshift backboard. She added a wrapping of tape around his little neck, using the last bit of her shirt to protect his skin. She was a bit surprised there wasn’t yelling or talk from atop the hole drifting downward, but she was thankful for the silence.
It kept her focused on the task at hand.
“Anything else I should do?” Kamren asked the question as she wiped the sweat from her brow. “I should’ve grabbed one of the blankets.”
“You did great,” Mary said. “Let’s attach the drones to the backboard, and we’ll get him out,” Vi said.
“Let me check it; the wood was old. It might give,” Kamren worried aloud.
“It’ll hold. We’ll pull you up behind him so you can help support the backboard, if that makes you feel better,” Mary offered.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and willed her pulse to slow. She could do this.
7
Brant had thankfully kept his mouth shut when he arrived just as Sam and Kamren were hauled out of the hole. The doctor was in full medical mode, giving the little boy the full, careful treatment he’d given to Mary months ago when he’d helped her.
The full, careful treatment he’d refused Kamren.
Dallas bit back his rage as the woman watched from a few feet away. She’d maneuvered as far away as she could, but he’d seen enough to rouse h
is suspicion and apparently the women had to since Kamren’s actions had somehow activated the woman’s protectiveness.
“Dallas,” Vi whispered. “Her back.”
“Think we all saw it,” Jesse clipped into the com.
Yeah, they’d all seen her back because she’d shucked off her shirt and used it to help Sam. She’d been laser focused on treating his injuries, getting him safe. He’d been so wrong about her he hadn’t been in the same stratosphere.
He closed the distance between them and palmed her chin. “Look at me, sweetheart.”
Unfocused eyes drifted up to latch onto his. Addy ran over with a blanket in hand. The redhead halted a couple feet away and gave Dallas the covering. He wrapped it around Kamren’s exposed shoulders and ignored the rage rolling through him as he forced his gaze on her face and not the scars covering her arms, her exposed back, and stomach.
What the fuck had happened to her?
Jesse had walked away, rage evident in his gaze and stance. Dallas was beyond rage, locked within the numb zone he’d honed for years as a Collective operative.
Now wasn’t the time to lose his shit. It was obvious Kamren didn’t want others seeing her scars. She hunched her shoulders in and wrapped her arms around her exposed stomach while she angled her back so that no one could see it.
“Here you go, sweetheart,” he whispered as he covered her fully.
“Thank you.” She swallowed and looked past him, as if unable to handle whatever emotions may have leaked out within his gaze. “Is he okay? The backboard held, right?”
“Yeah, it held. Let’s walk over to the ambulance. They can take a look at you before they take him in.”
“I’m good.”
“I know, but you’ll be better once they make sure none of that shit down there got into your head wound.”
She reached up and patted the gauze-covered area. “It’s fine. Jesse did a good job.”
Yeah, his brother had done a rudimentary field patching on her freaking head because the son of a bitch doctor they’d called had refused to help. He glared over at Brant as the doctor crawled into the back of the ambulance with Sam. He hadn’t even glanced her direction to see if she was okay.
Not once had he asked if she needed emergency personnel.
Bubba and the entirety of Resino had descended on the area. By the time the ambulance had arrived, the situation had downgraded from critical to a celebration that both boys were found. Sam had a long road of recovery coming, but they’d be okay.
Thanks to Kamren.
“Come on, let’s get back. You can clean up and change. We’ll eat, and you can crash.” When she nodded, he motioned to Addy. “Take her to the truck; I’ll be there in a minute.”
Jesse hadn’t gone far. Dallas stopped a few feet from his big brother. The man had been through a hell he’d never fully shared, though Dallas had likely heard more than the other brothers and operatives around. Dallas stood there, patient and quiet. Waiting.
Jesse raked a hand across the back of his cropped hair and expended a deep breath. “Fuck.”
Pretty much Dallas’s sentiment to a tee.
“We’ve pussy-footed around, ignored Marville, all because we didn’t take Rachelle seriously. She’s been out here doing whatever the fuck that girl does to grate our last nerve, keeping Riley in the dark the whole time.”
Tension coiled within Dallas. He’d taken this road quite a few times since the explosion outside The Arsenal.
“Not once.” Jesse turned, rage evident on his face. “Not once has that girl said a damn thing about having a sister, one so deep in something it sends her to our doorstep, bullets flying. Trucks exploding. Freaking bleeding head wound, brother.”
“And a doctor who wouldn’t do shit about it,” Dallas added into the thickening tension.
“Now this,” Jesse spat.
This being the scars, the injuries. None recent from what he’d seen.
“Rachelle’s been flitting about here in less clothes day after day, showing more skin than common sense. Not once,” Jesse said, his voice louder.
Not once had they seen scars or wounds on Rachelle. Dallas could read his brother’s half-speak. Jesse had a way of carving thoughts out of few words when anger struck. He didn’t voice his thoughts often when he was pissed, but when he did they were often chopped into barely uttered words. You either got him, or you didn’t. Big brother was the type to not give a shit one way or the other.
“She’s here. We’ll help her sort whatever’s going on,” Dallas said.
“Fuck yeah, we will.”
Dallas wasn’t stupid enough to believe the emotional war Jesse waged was about Kamren and her troubles, her wounds. It cut far deeper, closer to the bone. “The hole?”
Jesse tossed him a look. Though no verbal affirmation hit, the look spoke plenty. Ravaged, haunted, tormented grief he’d yet to fully air with anybody. Dallas approached, slapped a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed. Touching Jesse when he was waging hell with his demons was a bit like petting a rattler on a sunny day.
“I thought Doc Sinclair was helping you work through things,” Dallas said. “You wanna talk, I’m here. Whenever, wherever, whatever.”
Jesse chuckled, low and quiet. “She’d likely be thrilled I’m out here losing my shit, making all this about me. I’m in touch with my emotions, or some other crazy psycho-babble.”
“Whenever, wherever, whatever,” Dallas repeated as he squeezed his brother’s shoulder.
“And you? When are you going to start processing?”
Damn. He should’ve expected the offer to get lobbed back like a live grenade. “I’ve talked to Sinclair.”
“Right, about what to do when we find him, not about how he came to be.”
It was a guess, but dead on. Jesse knew him. They all knew him, which was why he couldn’t ever share what’d happened back then; the things he’d done weren’t things the little brother they knew and loved could do. Deep inside he carried a monster, a beast born, birthed and nurtured by The Collective.
“Whenever, wherever, whatever,” Jesse repeated. “I give you a piece now, you reciprocate. Quid pro quo.”
Fuck. Dallas ran his hand down his face, but grunted his assent. Big brother stared, waiting for the verbal affirmation. “Quid pro quo.”
“Hole I was thrown into when they were done playing with me was a lot like that; ropes around my waist hauled me up and down. Entry was small— my shoulders and sides scraped the dirt going up I rarely remembered the down.” Jesse’s voice barely covered the short distance between them, but neither man moved closer. Some demons needed space to breathe when they were unleashed. The raw emotion reached into Dallas’s chest, and squeezed his heart and choked the air from his lungs. “Every time I felt the tug of those ropes yanking me up, a part of me wished it’d be the last time, that they’d let me eat a bullet. But carving me away, piece by piece was more fun. Fuckers even sterilized my wounds when they hauled me out, said I’d last longer that way.”
Fuck.
He’d wanted an in with his brother about what had gone down. He and his brothers had all bided their time, but he hadn’t expected to be the one entrusted with that in, not really. Nolan or Marshall were far more likely. Big brothers made monsters go away.
But they didn’t carry the demons Dallas did, and Jesse needed to know his weren’t the ugliest and nastiest in the playpen. Truth told, Dallas wasn’t sure if they were or not.
Jesse looked away and added, “I died back in that hole, over and over, knowing that even if I survived, I wouldn’t ever be whole again, the kind of man a good woman could accept a life with. I came back half the man I was, and I’m not sure how to fill in the holes they carved in my soul. Some days I’m not even sure if I want to bother trying.”
Dallas had words lodged in his throat but swallowed them back when he saw the lost expression within his brother’s gaze. Jesse had always been the one who chased the invisible monsters from underneath his bed
when they were kids. He’d been the one to keep Dallas safe when storms hit and he’d gotten scared when thunder and lightning lit up the night sky.
But Dallas couldn’t let a man as good as Jesse think whatever went down in that hellhole made him less than what he was before. “The measure of a man isn’t what he looks like or what he can do. It’s about the courage within him to pick himself up, dust the shit off, and move on. Life knocks us down, but not out.”
“We’re never out,” Jesse finished. Their father had said the words thousands of times.
“No woman who’d put what you can or can’t do with her or for her above who you are is worth having you in the first place.” He slapped his brother’s face and smirked. “Gotta admit we’re fucked though, brother.”
“Why’s that?”
“Dylan raised the bar pretty fucking high hooking up with Mary. It’s hard to imagine anyone out there better than her,” he admitted.
Fuck. The coms were still on. The twitch in Jesse’s jaw as he muttered a curse clued him in that he hadn’t realized it either.
A barely audible breath on the other end was the only sound the two women running operations emitted. Dallas wasn’t sure which one it was, not that it mattered. When they were running an op, they were two halves of a flawlessly cohesive unit. With a weary breath, he severed physical contact and shared the first thought that came to his mind. Quid pro quo.
But if big brother could give voice to his bad, then so could Dallas. It was time to share more about the past he’d walked away from.
“First assignment was overseas, some asshole dignitary visiting the sandbox, making nice with the bastard good men and women had died trying to find. I was fucking thrilled, thought I’d been sent to take the shot an entire country wanted.” Dallas fisted his hands, bit through the worst of the emotion filling his voice, and swallowed it back.
“You weren’t.”
“Confirmation of my target came through. First assignment and I knew I’d made a mistake entering The Collective.” He leveled a look to his big brother, and gave him a truth he’d shared with no one. “The dignitary’s kid, a boy. Six, maybe seven, not much older than my kid probably is. Big brown eyes and a laugh I heard all the way from my perch. His dad had just picked him up and kissed his cheek when I took the shot.”