The little girl was silent most of the rest of the way to the house. As he pulled in beside Karla’s Hummer, Marisol turned to him. “Do you think Maman is going to be okay?” Her little chin quivered as she tightened her lips and tried to maintain a strong front. Most kids would have been bawling by this point but not Damián’s little warrior.
He cupped her chin. “She has the Marines on her side. No one is going to let anything bad happen to her. You just hang in there, and we’ll have you back with your maman as soon as we can. Stay strong for her.”
Marisol nodded and unbuckled her belt. “I will. You better hurry. Daddy needs to go.”
Karla rushed down the steps to the passenger door and opened it before Marc could get out. She bent to look inside at Marc over Marisol’s head, the fear in her eyes evident.
“Don’t worry, cara. We’ll get her back. And I’ll make sure Adam’s back here again, too, as soon as he can be.”
She nodded, but he didn’t miss the tears filling her eyes before she turned away. “Thanks, Marc.” Her voice had grown husky, forcing her to clear her throat before continuing. “Come on, munchkin. Let’s go make some chocolate cupcakes. Auntie Angie is coming over.”
Angelina? He needed to talk with her, work things out. Dio, he’d give anything to see her, hold her. But that would have to wait now.
Marc waited until they were safely inside, watching Karla waddle a bit more than she had the last time he’d seen her. Dio, that had been nearly a month ago. He couldn’t believe she had until July to deliver that baby. Nearly four months to go, unless she went past her due date.
Marc shifted into gear—mentally and physically—and exited Adam’s driveway. Before he’d taken his gaze off them, Karla had placed a protective hand on Marisol’s shoulder. Marc hoped nothing went wrong on this rescue mission. If Adam didn’t arrive home safely, or if anything happened to Savi or Damián…
Now that he didn’t have Marisol in the car, he gunned the engine as he sped across town to Mac’s clinic. He’d need medical supplies in case Savi or anyone else was injured.
Pulling into the parking lot, he saw his friend’s beat-up station wagon. This was the clinic’s half-day, but Mac worked late, as usual. The man seriously could use more staff but refused to spend his limited funds on anything other than medical equipment and supplies. Marc and several other board members donated what they could, but healthcare didn’t come cheap, especially when Mac gave most of it away free or at cost.
Knowing Mac would be in his office filling out patient charts and calling in today’s prescriptions, Marc went to the back door and knocked. He stared up at the security camera. Mac kept his narcotics under lock and key, only dispensing them on rare occasions, and posted signs saying there were no narcotics on the premises to prevent would-be thieves from targeting the clinic. Hence the security. But Marc knew there were some here—and that he’d need them.
The heavy steel door swung open. Mac waved him inside. “What brings you out tonight, man?”
“The woman I brought to see you just before Christmas has been kidnapped. We’re going after her, but I don’t want to go in unprepared. Can you get me some gear?”
“Hell, yeah. Follow me.”
The sandy-haired doctor led him down the hallway to the dispensary. Inside, he grabbed a black satchel and filled it with bottles of sterile saline, four-by-fours, and a few more items. Moving a stack of gauze-filled boxes out of the way, he revealed a safe and turned the knob back and forth until it opened.
“I’m going to give you two narcotics and half a dozen syringes. As I recall, she’s not one to admit she needs painkillers, but before you administer anything, make sure she was lying about allergies. I doubt she’s allergic to everything like she tried to convince us, but I don’t want you exacerbating her problems if she does have a known allergy.”
Marc nodded. Like Mac, he was certain Savi had claimed allergies because she hadn’t wanted to be under the influence of anything that might cause her to lose control that night. But she might not be able to take whatever the perps dished out this time, though. Merda, the last time she’d encountered these shitheads they’d broken her rib, and she’d managed to drive for two days before seeking treatment.
After checking Savi’s chart, Mac jotted down some notes and handed a sheet from his prescription pad to Marc. “Call or text me if you need help calculating the dosage. My patient chart only shows her weight as of three months ago, so this is a rough estimate of what she might weigh now, give or take.”
Marc folded the paper and tucked it inside the front pocket of his jeans. “I appreciate this.”
“Just return whatever you don’t need and make a note of what you do use and on whom. I need to account for it.”
“No problem.”
Marc sprinted down the hallway with the full bag in hand and exited the building. After texting Damián he was on his way back, he drove back to the apartment building and saw Grant and Adam stowing their gear in the back of an unfamiliar SUV. He pulled alongside it and transferred the medical kit.
“Whoa!” Grant took a step away from him.
“Sorry.” He wished he’d been able to stop by the house to take a shower and change clothes, but time had been of the essence. Brian’s cabin was primitive to begin with and then the hot-water heater had gone out, so he’d skipped showering the last week.
But they’d already fallen at least three hours behind the men who had abducted Savi. No time for showers.
Damián came down the stairs, holding onto the handrail. The strap of Damián’s seabag dug into his shoulder. The strain in the man’s eyes was evident, but he didn’t hesitate. “Let’s roll.”
Marc thought back to those terrifying hours when Angelina had been taken by Allen Martin. He’d imagined all kinds of things that bastardo could have been doing to her. Thank God none of that had happened, and she’d managed to overpower and hogtie the asshole. He hoped Savi would be as lucky or that they’d get to her in time.
The four of them piled into the SUV with Grant behind the wheel. In the front passenger seat, Adam opened his laptop and checked the coordinates. “They’re on 70 heading west. Not too far ahead of us actually. They must have stopped somewhere.”
After Grant asked how they were able to track her, Marc looked over at Damián, whose expression was devoid of emotion except for the clenching of his jaw. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. Silent and pissed. Marc explained to Grant that he’d put a GPS chip in a necklace Damián had given Savi for Christmas. The chip he’d put in Angelina’s bag had helped them zero in on her whereabouts, so when he’d learned Savi and Marisol had been in danger of being taken, he’d suggested the same to Damián. Clearly Damián had expected this kind of trouble all along. What had happened to the surveillance Adam and Damián had worked out for the apartment, he wondered?
Marc hoped they wouldn’t trash Savi’s necklace like Allen Martin had the GPS chip in Angelina’s backpack.
Still, the news they hadn’t gotten too far didn’t sound good either. They would have had more opportunity to hurt Savi if they stopped than if they continued driving.
Taking turns at the wheel, shifting drivers every three hours, they made good time and closed the gap to barely ninety minutes. Still not good enough. Apparently, there was more than one person sharing the driving in the vehicle with Savi, too.
Marc’s turn came as they refueled and stocked up on food just over the Nevada border in Mesquite. They lost fewer than ten minutes before getting back on the road. Savi—or her GPS necklace at least—was headed toward Las Vegas. More than likely to Southern California from there, where her attacker had first caught up with her before she’d fled to Damián’s apartment in December.
Before they entered California, Damián filled them in on what he knew about Savi’s father. The story of her ordeal made Marc sick. How could any father do such despicable things to anyone, much less his own daughter? And the man’s business partner didn’t sound like a
ny prize to humanity either. The woman had been through hell and still managed to keep her sanity and raise such a well-adjusted daughter. Damián was a lucky man.
Marc should count his blessings that he’d grown up in a happy home. Hell, he hadn’t been abused. Mama had always treated him and Gino like her own. If Melissa hadn’t said anything about the adoption, Marc never would have suspected a thing. Nor cared.
Still, he couldn’t lose that niggling feeling someone was withholding something from him, based on the revelations he’d gotten from Solari on his trip to Italy last month. That’s probably what bothered him more than the fact that he’d been adopted. When he returned to Colorado, he needed to seek out Mama and the answers she was withholding about his past.
A day and a half after the abduction, in the wee hours of morning, they arrived in Rancho Santa Fe, the exclusive community on a hill outside Damián’s hometown of Solana Beach. The GPS coordinates had stalled here an hour ago. One fucking hour. A long time for Savi to be alone with her abductors. If he hadn’t lost valuable time because he’d had to go to Mac for supplies…
They’d blasted through the gate with minimal delay. Good thing some Cobra helicopters on maneuvers from a SoCal base had ventured over the area to provide a counterbalance to the noise of the blast at just the right time.
Grant set up her communications equipment inside the once-again closed gate as Adam and Damián donned ski masks and headed for the house. They didn’t trust Marc’s rusty shooting skills, so he was ordered to wait with Grant until they neutralized any combatants. They’d need him later to assess and treat Savi. He hadn’t been in corpsman mode for almost eight years, but it felt good.
Still, he hoped he wouldn’t be in over his head medically. His weaponry skills weren’t the only ones he’d let go by the wayside after he was discharged. He hoped he’d at least be able to provide the triage and initial treatment necessary to stabilize her enough for the trip to the medical facility.
“You’ve been awfully quiet, Doc.”
Marc glanced over at Grant. Her leg shook with nervous energy. She probably wished she could have gone in with Adam and Damián, but they made it clear her expertise on this mission was communications. No engagement with the enemy, just as her activities in the recon unit in Fallujah had been restricted—well, until the SNAFU situation on that rooftop.
Marc cleared his throat. “Just thinking. Hope they get to her before any real harm is done.”
“You and me both. Sounds like she’s seen her share and then some.”
“Yeah. I had no idea. She’s a helluva strong woman.”
Grant averted her gaze and fiddled with a setting on her gear. “Most people have no clue what someone else has been through as long as they put up a solid front.”
Marc realized how very little he knew about Grant. She’d been assigned to the same Marine ground unit he had been because of her communications expertise. He knew nothing about her life before that and not much after, to be honest. She’d shown up at the club a little over a year ago but hadn’t talked much about the years in between Fallujah and the club.
No time like the present to catch up, until they were needed for this current mission.
“What did you do after your enlistment ended?”
“Contracting.”
“Government?”
She grinned. “Not quite.”
Hell, she’d been in Black Ops?
“Communications work, of course. I was stationed in Iraq—Ramadi and Fallujah mostly.”
“I was glad to be out of there, although I didn’t like leaving my unit behind. How could you stand going back?”
“Had a score to settle.”
“Did you?”
She grinned at him. “Fuck, yeah.”
When it became obvious she wasn’t going to elaborate, he decided to prod. “What type of score?”
She seemed to weigh his words a moment too long, making him think she wouldn’t go on, then she surprised him. “Took care of the bastards who attacked our unit on that rooftop.”
Merda. “Seriously? Do Adam and Damián know?”
“Top suspected as much and got it out of me during a weak moment. I haven’t told Damián.” She held her hand over her headpiece, placing it closer against her ear, then shook off whatever she’d heard. She grew serious. “Things went south not long after that. I’d rather forget about it.”
Marc knew forgetting wasn’t an option for most of them but didn’t push her for details. He’d never had a strong desire for revenge. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Still, knowing that the insurgents who had killed Sergeant Miller and maimed Damián were no longer breathing the same air on the planet, much less enjoying their lives and families in that shithole or anywhere else in the world made Marc feel a little better.
“Thanks.” The word sounded lame but came from his heart.
“Don’t mention it. After you guys kept me wrapped in so many protective layers on my tour, it felt good to be able to put my Marine training to use. Black Ops gave me that opportunity—well, up to a point.”
He heard the bitterness in her tone but approaching footsteps dragged their attention to Damián and Adam running down the driveway, returning their focus to the mission at hand. No sign of Savi. Marc’s gaze zeroed in on the flecks of blood on Damián’s armor-plated vest.
“Do I need to administer aid to anyone?”
“Not yet, Doc.”
Thank God she hadn’t been hurt, but then where the fuck was she and what was happening to her? Soon they had hiked back to the SUV. With a white-knuckled Damián driving, Marc watched Adam program coordinates from a smartphone before tossing it out the window. “They’re in Yucca Valley. We’ll stop outside Rimrock and change into our desert digitals.”
Marc remembered receiving some of his combat training at Twentynine Palms. The area was desolate. Isolated. He hoped the coordinates would take them right to her. If not, they might never find her in that godforsaken place.
Adam reached out, squeezed Damián’s shoulder to gain his attention, and repeated the plan. Damián acknowledged him this time. He might be too distracted to be driving, but Adam would make sure he stayed focused.
Marc decided to get some shuteye before taking his turn behind the wheel again. He needed to be as sharp as possible when they arrived on scene, because there was no telling what kind of trouble they were walking into. At the very least, he’d have Savi to patch up, but all of them would be targets when they went in to rescue her. He couldn’t let his buddies down again. Why hadn’t he kept up his rifleman skills or at least trained with a sidearm? Not to mention his medical training. His medical knowledge was basic, just what he needed to meet federal and state standards for SAR professionals.
Within minutes of arriving at their staging site on the backside of Bear Mountain, the four reconnoitered the perimeter and had subdued the only visible guards. His recon training with the Corps came back in an instant. Thirty minutes later, Marc and Grant listened as Damián spelled out the next phase of the mission. Marc would cover the front entrance, Grant the road away from the isolated cabin. Adam and Damián would enter the cabin first to locate Savi.
Dio, don’t let them be too late.
When the four of them split up, Marc followed instructions and waited for the agreed-upon signal before he moved closer to the cabin.
The signal came soon after, indicating Damián and Adam had gotten inside. Marc low-crawled to within a hundred feet of the front of the cabin to await further instructions. The perimeter security at this place had been surprisingly light. Marc prayed they didn’t walk into a can of worms inside the cabin.
A woman’s high-pitched scream rent the desert air. Merda. Savi was being hurt. Marc’s heart drummed loudly, and he itched to move closer to the front door but had his orders not to enter until he received the signal. It wouldn’t help if he was shot or wounded himself. Still, he struggled with his impatience to get to her and begin assessing her conditio
n so he could provide her with some much-needed relief from the pain. If only—
The report of a sidearm popped. Dio, don’t let it be his friends. The long seconds of waiting for the go-ahead to enter stretched out like an eternity, but he was ready to charge in when Adam finally sent him the all-clear signal.
Marc kicked the flimsy door in and made his way to the voices and moans he heard at the back of the rustic structure. He followed the sound of voices and entered an open doorway to find Adam and Damián removing the restraints from Savi, who lay bloodied and draped over an ottoman. Her back, ass, and legs had been torn to shreds with a whip. His gaze strayed to the floor where a riveted flogger lay, blood dripping from the points. Gesù. Marc’s anger boiled to the surface when a movement out of the corner of his eye diverted his attention to where an old man raised a small weapon in the direction of his friends. Marc drew his own sidearm and took aim at the man’s chest.
The sound of the shot split the air, and the small pistol flew from the man’s hand. Shit. He’d missed the bastard by a long shot, but at least the man didn’t have a weapon any longer. Marc hurried across the room to retrieve the weapon and placed it in his medical gear. Might need it as evidence later on.
Damián complimented him on his marksmanship, but Marc hated that he hadn’t taken the bastardo down when he’d had the chance.
“Out of practice. I was aiming for his chest.”
Moments later, Marc tuned out the old man whining about his superficial injury as Adam hauled the bastard’s sorry ass out of the room. Returning his focus to Savi’s wounds, he tried to distance his emotions from the scene the way he’d been able to in Fallujah.
Epic fail.
His chest tightened, and he felt as if his own skin had been laid bare by the riveted flogger. In Fallujah, he’d been able to shut down his emotions without a problem. Just do his job. Even when he’d failed to save Sergeant Miller, he had never let emotions get in the way of focusing on helping someone else who needed his skills.
Somebody's Angel (#5 in a Military Romance / BDSM Romance series) (Rescue Me) Page 25