Trey shrugged, though Miguel couldn’t see it. “Nothing for it now. The boat is still our best chance of getting her back to the States. Just keep your eyes and ears peeled.”
Setting aside his rifle, he slid his pack off his back and unfolded the front to reveal a panel of medical supplies.
“Let me see your hand,” he said to Tara.
“I can wait till we’re over the border.” She didn’t uncurl, didn’t raise her head, and Jake’s stomach churned. He laid a hand gently on her back and felt her bones and muscles, all shifting, twitching beneath the filthy, sweat-soaked cotton. They hadn’t even had a chance to let her change; she’d run with them in a T-shirt sliced from neck to navel.
“You need to let him treat you, sweetheart. If anything happens, we could be delayed getting to a hospital.”
She shook her head.
“Baby, please. For me. Let Trey help you.”
She began to rock, her whole body tilting back and forth, back and forth on the seat, ripping his heart out. He rubbed her back, then slid his hand down and took her right hand in his.
“Can’t you give her something?”
“You want a painkiller?” Trey asked her.
Tara’s head shot up. Fuck. Jake hadn’t even considered her addiction, but desire for the drug shot tension into her muscles and flowed through her skin, entering his own where he touched her as despair. Five breaths. Each one dragged in and pushed out, never taking her eyes from Trey’s.
“No.”
“Good. Now, give me your hand.”
She shifted her gaze to Jake.
“I’m right here, sweetheart. You need him to stop, you just say so and he will. I swear it. Right, Trey?”
The man’s nod was infinitesimal, but Tara must have seen it. She pressed her eyes shut and her lips together and eased her hand out of the protection of her body. Throughout Trey’s exam, cleaning, and bandaging, her face lost more and more color until it seemed a vampire had snuck into the chopper and drained her. The hollows beneath her eyes lay like smudged charcoal on parchment.
When he finished with her hand, Trey soaked a cloth in water and pressed it against one of the spots where her T-shirt crusted to her skin, then began to peel the shirt from her skin. She flinched, and a small cry slipped from her throat.
“Enough,” Jake said.
“We don’t have any idea how bad those wounds are.”
“We’re almost to the boat,” Jake countered. And then, to be sure Trey wouldn’t force the issue, he gathered Tara into his lap, wrapping her tight in his arms.
• • •
Trey’s poking had started the fiery streaks back up her arm, and her skin had shrunk to a thin, tight, itchy veneer atop a boiling mess of pain and fear. Still, she’d managed—though Jake’s hand was probably broken from her clutching at it—right up until Trey had reached for her shirt. Her chest didn’t even hurt as much as her fingers. Or she didn’t think it did. She’d lost track of which injury caused what pain.
And then Jake pulled her into him, and she could smell his sweat, feel his strength, and it was oh so much better than the pink cloud. Not that the hunger was gone. It skulked in the shadowy corners of her mind and under her breastbone, but the vivid, aggressive tension that made it impossible to stay still seeped away.
Trey handed her a pill. “Broad spectrum antibiotic. Won’t do much, to be honest, because infection has already set in, but it’s better than nothing. You’ll do much better in a hospital. This is just in case.”
She swallowed the pill with a long swig of water from the tube Trey offered that led to a pouch built into the side of his backpack. When she tried to hand it back, he shook his head. “You’re dehydrated. I can tell just looking at you. Even if you can’t manage food, you should drink. Slowly, but drink.”
“Did they feed you at all?” Jake asked.
“No.” God, her voice sounded so strange. All scratchy and harsh. She took another slug, letting the water soothe her throat on the way down. “But I don’t think I can eat anything.” The adrenaline hit from the fight had driven away the constantly lurking nausea, but in the relative safety of the chopper it returned. Puking in front of the men who’d come in to rescue her would cap her day off just perfectly.
“Coming in for landing,” said her other rescuer. He and Trey pulled down the NVGs they’d shoved up on their heads and began to scan the surrounding area.
They put down softly, and Trey told her and Jake to stay while he and the other man—Marco—scouted. Moments later they returned with the all clear. Jake helped her to the ground while Trey conferred with the pilot. Then the chopper lifted off.
“Can you walk?” Trey asked.
“I—yes. Not fast.” In fact, air felt like molasses, thick and heavy, and lifting her feet seemed to take forever. Even breathing was an effort. But she’d be damned if she admitted it.
“If you can walk,” Trey said, “you can walk fast. Luckily, right now you don’t have to. If the need arises, your adrenaline will do the rest.”
“If the need arises, I’ll help her,” said Jake.
Marco chuckled. “He’s being an asshole. He enjoys it. Push comes to shove, he’d be the first one to pick her up and toss her over his shoulder.”
Trey shrugged. “In K and R, the asset always comes first. We come back without you, the client’s not happy. And since, in this case, the client’s our boss, I have a distinct desire to keep him happy.”
“See?” said Marco. “Asshole.”
Trey turned on his heel and led them through the trees that grew thicker, greener, and stronger than any she’d seen around her prison. Even the air smelled different. Moister, earthier, less dusty.
“Where are we?”
“Close to the Rio Grande. We’re going to take a boat across. The place they held you was much further inland, in the desert.”
She started to ask where they planned to land, but she tripped over a root. Jake hooked her around the waist before she could fall and drew her close to him. “I’ve got you.” He helped her over the rough ground, never letting go.
“I hate this.”
“Not top of my list, either.”
And, hell, how could she have forgotten his sister? Seeing Tara in this condition must be doing a number on him. “I’m sorry.”
“Now you’re just pissing me off.”
“What?”
“Quit apologizing.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Stop. I can already tell you’re about to apologize again. Don’t. Okay?”
What else could she say? “Okay.”
They trudged on until Trey held up a hand. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for Tara and Jake to stay put while he and Marco left the cover of the trees and headed for the river.
• • •
And now I should apologize. But he couldn’t. Because he couldn’t discuss drugs without pictures in his head of Lisa laughing and lively as a kid warring with those of her still and cold in the morgue—with the occasional screaming battle over drugs and booze thrown in for good measure. And those memories still had the power to rob him of breath, to leave him battered, shredded by his own guilt and surging anger.
How was he supposed to cope with Tara going down the same path? He’d told her he loved her. But they’d been undercover. Did she have any idea that he’d meant it?
The words were there, waiting. Given half a chance, he’d say them today, tomorrow, every day for the rest of his life. But maybe he needed to back off. The words had never comforted Lisa. In fact, she had accused him of using love to manipulate her.
You just say you love me to get your way, to guilt me into rehab. If you only love me when I’m straight, you don’t love me at all. She’d stormed out that night, and he hadn’t seen her again for five months, when she had called him t
o bail her out after being arrested in downtown DC. And then she’d blubbered all over him, telling him she loved him so much and she’d never meant to hurt him.
Would his love be a burden to Tara as well? Would she feel as if he was bludgeoning her with it, trying to remake her? And if she couldn’t remake herself, if she couldn’t get back to the person she’d been before she was taken, could he live with it?
Trey called softly for them, interrupting the never-ending spiral of his thoughts, and Jake helped Tara down to the bank, where Marco and Trey dragged a speedboat from the woods.
They made good time across the river, hitting the north bank as the sun peeked over the horizon and the water in the east went from black to pink. Before they could set foot on land, however, four armed men drove up in a battered olive drab Jeep. They all wore standard US Army combat gear, but Jake wasn’t about to risk Tara’s safety by believing the uniforms. He slipped his pistol into the patch pocket of his cargo pants, where he could easily access it, despite their orders to disarm and placed himself squarely in front of her in the boat.
“Look, guys, we’re citizens,” said Trey. “No need to get all uptight.” With a glance at Marco that Jake interpreted to mean not to relax his guard, Trey laid his rifle on the floorboards and put his hands up. “I’m going to step out of the boat. Very slowly.”
He did. The soldiers looked at Marco, who checked his watch and sat right where he was, though his weight tilted slightly. If the soldiers made a move to fire, Marco could capsize them instantly. It might not keep them safe for long, but every little bit helped.
Trey stood in front of the men, hands on his head. “If you look in my lower right pocket, you’ll find my passport. And there’s a piece of paper in there, too, with a phone number on it. You call that number, you’ll find out that we’re all okay to be right where we are. We can wait.”
Two of the soldiers came forward and frisked Trey, pulling not only his passport, but all manner of spare weapons from his pockets. They slapped flex cuffs on him, and then one of them stepped back to the vehicle and used the radio to make a call.
Jake couldn’t hear what was being said, but the guy’s face turned boiled-lobster red, and his jaw set. He took a deep breath before returning to the river’s edge.
“I’m to tell you that the word is ‘percolate.’”
“And the response is ‘ruined.’”
Still, the officer hesitated a long moment before pulling out a knife and cutting the flex cuffs from Trey’s wrists. Trey signaled to Marco, who set down his gun and disembarked. Jake, too, stepped out, though since he had never shown the men his weapon, he felt no need to give it up. Trey and Marco might have believed their job was done. His was not.
When Tara stood, she shook so violently that the boat threatened to go over. She sat back down and turned pleading eyes on him. “I can’t.”
“Not a problem. I can.” He waded down into the sandy mud at the edge of the water and helped her up. Then he reached over and slid one hand beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.
“Oh! You don’t have to—” But she wrapped her right arm around his neck and let him lift her out of the boat.
“I’m going to drop them off at HQ,” the soldier who’d cut Trey’s ties said to his men. “Then I’ll be back. Call in if anything odd happens.”
• • •
If every limb didn’t feel it weighed fifty pounds, Tara might have objected to Jake’s hold. Being carried to the waiting vehicle hardly projected the sensible, capable, intelligent cop image that had helped her survive in a predominantly male profession. But the drugs had sapped her of will, so despite the embarrassment, she allowed the indignity.
Jake settled into the back of the Jeep with her in his lap, and Marco joined them. Trey took the front with their guard. Despite the jolting, bouncing ride and the steep climb from the riverbank up to the ranch, Tara’s eyes first glazed, then shut. The outside world drifted into the comfort of sleep.
She was not so far gone, however, that Jake’s whispered “We’re here” when they arrived at the compound failed to wake her. The front gates lay open, guarded against intruders by more men in military uniforms. Their driver spoke to one of them, who in turn spoke into his radio and waited for a response before passing them through. Just as they pulled up in front of the ranch house, the front door swung open, and Lucy and Ethan ran out, followed more slowly by a man Tara didn’t recognize.
“Tara!” Lucy cried, rushing over to the Jeep before it even came to a halt. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
“It’s kind of a long story.” And she didn’t have any desire to tell it more than once.
“She needs a hospital. One with a good trauma unit,” Jake said. He shifted her off his lap, then climbed from the vehicle and reached in to help her get out. Even once she was out, she leaned heavily against him.
“Of course. We’ll take her where we took you. That girl you asked about—Aurora—she’s there, too.”
“You found Aurora? How is she?” Guilt struck. She hadn’t spared any of her fellow Chosen a second thought from the moment of her capture. Aurora and her baby, how were they surviving the withdrawal?
“She’s fine. The pregnant women are still at the hospital. In fact, most of the women are still in the hospital, but they’re coming up to the point when they can be released. From the studies we found on the computers, three days should allow the drug to get out of their systems. The psychological effects they can be treated for as outpatients, and they will be. Believe me when I say there is no shortage of doctors anxious to study the Chosen’s membership.”
The man who’d come out with Lucy and Ethan had spoken with both Trey and Marco and now tapped Lucy on the shoulder. “I’ll call for a chopper to fly them to the hospital. We’ll drive down and meet there, and we can use the medical center waiting room to talk. If the Feds want a more formal debrief, the field office isn’t far.”
“Thank you, Nash. That’s more than kind. Tara, this is Nash Harper. The two men who came with Jake to get you, they work for him.”
“Harper as in Harp Security?”
“That’s me,” said the man.
“Well, I am more than grateful. But I can make it in a car as long as I don’t have to drive it. You don’t need to supply another helicopter just for me.”
“Haven’t looked in a mirror lately, huh?” asked Lucy.
No, but she could imagine. She tried to smile, but Lucy’s face blurred and melted, and the earth spun. She reached out to steady herself on something, anything, but her hand simply disappeared, and blackness swept over her.
• • •
TARA’S BODY SAGGED against him. Her speech had slurred, so he’d had a tiny bit of warning, but still he almost let her fall. Instead, he held her against him and sank to the dirt himself so he could cushion her.
“Fuck.”
“It’s the smack,” said Trey, holding her wrist lightly between her fingers to check her pulse. “Her heart’s still pumping. If you can keep her breathing, she’ll be fine.”
Lucy knelt in front of him. “I am so sorry, Jake.”
“I’ll be fine, okay? Can we please worry about Tara?”
“Chopper’s on the way,” said Harper. “ETA twenty-five minutes.”
“Twenty-five—isn’t there anything closer?”
“Not that we can hijack. And even that far out, it will still get her to the hospital faster than we could driving.”
Jake slipped his arms under her. “We’ll take her inside, then.” He carried her into the house and laid her on the couch, twisting so he could sit with her head in his lap.
“Get a cold, wet cloth,” Trey said to Marco, “and a glass of water. And crackers, if you can find them.”
“They dosed her?” Harper asked.
“Repeatedly.”
“For w
hat possible reason?”
While Trey worked over Tara, cooling her face and listening to her heart and checking her breathing, Jake caught the others up on what they’d learned.
“So you think Francis was in charge?” Ethan asked. “Nothing in the computer files—we turned them over, but kept copies—indicates who actually ran things. Authorities have already busted stash houses in San Antonio and Oklahoma City based on information your Trojan horse program pulled from their server, but everything’s coded. They named their drug American Dream and referred to themselves by numbers. So it’s all ‘One says American Dream is key to getting what we deserve’ and the like.”
“Any idea who kept the notes?”
“Deborah, we think. And as far as we can tell, she was Three. So there were One and Two above her.”
“Francis and Samuel?” Harper asked.
Jake’s gut twisted. “I don’t—nothing about Deborah’s relationship with Samuel spoke to her having a subservient position. If anything, I’d have bet on her being the boss. I’m not the best judge, but that’s my feeling.”
“You think we’ve missed someone.”
“I hope not. But when we have a chance to talk to Tara, when she’s more clearheaded, maybe we can figure it out.”
The sound of chopper blades beating the air signaled an end to their conversation. Jake carried Tara out to the courtyard, where the rescue helicopter was landing. He handed her off to a uniformed medic and then climbed aboard himself. As the aircraft rose once more, he saw the others running to the cars parked behind the ranch house.
• • •
THE CHOPPER LANDED on the roof of the medical center and doctors were waiting to rush Tara inside. The medic had asked Jake a steady stream of questions during the flight, transmitting the answers to the hospital so that by the time they arrived he’d passed along everything he knew about what had happened to her.
“Her pulse and heart are strong,” the medic assured him. “And this is a Level One trauma center. She couldn’t be in better hands.”
Still, as Jake paced the floors of the waiting area, memories of other hospitals assaulted him, promises from other doctors who’d told him his witnesses, his suspects, his sister would come out cured. Doctors were human. They did their best, but they couldn’t save everyone.
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