“You’re hurt.”
“Just a little. Not like Merc. Don’t worry about me.”
Without hesitation, Ethan scooped her up. The banded steel muscles in his arm rubbed her newly opened wounds on her back and she didn’t have to fake the gasp of pain.
“I need to carry you to the helicopter to attend your wounds. Think you can handle it?”
At any other time, she would have scoffed at his worry, but not now. The weakness from her blood loss continued to grow. “Take care of him first.” Nightshade lifted her head to glare directly at Ethan. She needed to make sure he understood the seriousness of her tone.
“We’ve got him. Relax. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
Swept suddenly with the fatigue that always came in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush, she let her head drop to Ethan’s shoulder, craning her neck back to keep a close eye on Merc as his teammates grabbed the edges of the blanket and carefully lifted him in the makeshift litter.
The helicopter crested the mountain top, and the loud roar of the blades filled the small valley as it landed below. They picked their way slowly down the mountain to the road. Someone opened the door to the cab and Ethan ducked inside, holding her in his arms the whole time.
“Shit, what the hell happened?” Cord, another TF-S operator, turned from his pilot seat.
“I’ll fill you in when we’re in the air. Gonna need a stretcher for both of them.” Ethan made to lay her on the only visible stretcher in the helo, but Nightshade hooked her arm around his neck.
“I’m fine. You need that for him.”
Hunter jumped into the cab, his expression set with stubbornness. “With all due respect, ma'am, Merc's a tough guy. He can handle a few injuries. You can't.” The unspoken words fell between them as crystal clear as his command: If anything happened to Senator Tom Cotter's precious daughter, TF-S would suffer.
Her hate for the man who had kidnapped her sister at birth and tore her family apart festered inside. But as much as it disgusted her, Nightshade pulled her sister’s princess status for good. “And I'm telling you, soldier, if you don't take Merc first, I'll personally see to it that every single one of you are dishonorably discharged from the military.”
Hunter’s concern shuttered under her harsh command. But as team leader of her own unit, Nightshade knew how triage worked. The most injured were always cared for first. Always. And she owed Merc. She vowed to see him safely back to DC. Then she’d cut ties and they would be equal once more.
“Hunter, move over. He's heavy as all shit and bleeding like a stuck pig,” Aaron yelled.
Hunter immediately skated to the side, watching her until his attention was drawn to his injured teammate. With the help of Riser, Aaron, and Ranger, they were barely able to lift Merc up into the cab and onto the bright orange stretcher.
Hunter slammed the door shut. “Get back to base ASAP.”
The halo took off at stealth speed.
“Goddammit!” Ranger stalked to the side and slung himself against the wall. “They cut him up bad, beat the shit out of him. I swear to God I’ll string up the fucker responsible for this and peel his face off." Ranger, Hunter’s brother, shoved a hand through his thick blond hair and settled back against the wall.
“You know J’s responsible,” Hunter rasped out.
Nightshade fought the automatic need to defend her father. Her mission needed to take a side seat to Merc right now. “You can put me down.”
“You sure?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.” He set her beside him and she scooted into the corner, as far and out of the way as possible to give the men plenty of room to move about and work. Despite the fact that Merc was easily one of the biggest men she'd ever seen, his body only held so much blood, and she knew from the way her robe had caked to her arms, he’d already lost more than enough.
Ranger clicked on an overhead lamp, flooding the dark cabin with light.
“Jesus Christ, Ethan, she’s covered in blood,” Hunter bit out.
“It's not mine. It’s Merc’s. Just help him,” she said.
Aaron and Riser moved as a single unit, cutting away Merc’s bloody bandage. They hooked him up to an IV and cleaned his chest, revealing multiple slashes, hundreds beneath the blood. “What the fuck did they use on him?”
“A flogger,” Nightshade said automatically and immediately wished she hadn’t drawn their attention back to her. “I saw the man do it once.”
Hoyt loomed forward, his scarred face a mask of rage. “I’ll murder the bastard myself.”
“He’s already dead.” I killed him. Although she’d like to see what Hoyt was capable of. A year ago, he’d been held by his own family in the Tennessee mountains and tortured to near death. His file detailed his brush with suicide before he’d managed to get his shit back together. She could only imagine what nightmare the man relived watching as Merc was cleaned up.
“I need to roll him. If his front is this bad, there’s no telling what his back will be like,” Riser said.
Once again, working in perfect synchrony, they gently rolled Merc over onto his stomach. The entire helicopter filled with silence. Even Nightshade’s heart stopped, and she’d already seen his back. She could only imagine what his teammates must be thinking. The wounds on his back, most likely from the explosion, had dried into a hard cake of crusted blood and dirt.
“I'm going to kill every goddamn man responsible for this,” Hunter said, “Starting with J.” The seething hatred in the helo held her hostage.
Nightshade shoved that thought aside. He’d done it for a reason, to remove any doubt that she was Caroline Cotter, and no matter how much TF-S's camaraderie and efficiency reminded her of her own team, they would survive. They would get to go home to their families.
If she didn't rescue Mayhem, her team would not.
Aaron lifted another needle, filled it and then inserted the liquid through Merc’s IV. “Morphine. It’s gonna hurt like hell to clean this mess up, and I sure as shit don't want him waking up in the middle of it.”
Using their distraction for the moment, she eased her robe over as slow as possible, so as not to draw attention to herself, and inspected her side. Her whole leg was wet with blood, as was her robe and side. If it hadn’t been for so much of Merc’s blood covering her, someone would have noticed by now.
A rush of dizziness crashed into her and she dropped the robe to lean back against the wall, her gaze meeting Ethan’s knowing one. Thank God he didn't say anything to Aaron to distract him from the task of peeling away the dried, encrusted blood from Merc’s back.
Ethan eased around to face her, his voice quiet, so that she had to strain to hear it. “Tell me where you’re hurt.”
Nightshade shook her head, the movement making her side burn even as her arms and legs turned to ice. “It’s just a scratch. I’ve had worse.”
“Have you now? Been on plenty of missions in your life?” Ethan gave her a crooked smile and Nightshade nearly bit her tongue when she realized her blunder.
Scrambling, she offered the only response she could think of. “Isn't that what they say in the movies?”
Heart pounding, she waited on his response and nearly passed out when his smile melted into a frown. He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Yeah, they say that shit in the movies but not in real life. I’ve got a little bit of medical training myself. Let's get this thing off of you and I can take a look, okay? The last thing I need is your father breathing fire up my ass because I let you bleed out on the way home from your rescue mission.”
Nightshade took a breath. Ethan thinks your Caroline, they trust you and you trust them. She capped the urge to shove his hand away and let him pull the robe off. She could’ve stitched her own side; she’d done it before.
He balled up the robe and used it as a pillow for her head as he eased her down to the floor. Ethan gently probed around the edges of the wound, every single movement like a fresh stab. “Hate to tell you this, but you’ll need stit
ches.”
She almost said big deal, she’d had plenty. If he ever saw the inside of her right thigh, he’d get to see what a real scar looked like. But that would definitely blow her cover. Instead, she said, “Will it leave a scar?” As if she didn't already have plenty of scars on her body. Scars she was proud of.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Hunter, pass me a bandage and some disinfectant.”
Ethan reached across her and came back with white cloth and a clear bottle. She tried to focus on his movements, but everything had started to run together.
Her body tingled. Her head felt light.
“This is gonna hurt,” Ethan warned.
Nightshade turned to Merc. His big hand lay close to her. She reached out and grabbed his hand.
Ethan poured the disinfectant in her open wound, and the fire swallowed her whole.
* * *
As soon as Caroline lost consciousness, Ethan got Riser’s attention. “Hey, I’m gonna need a little bit of help. She’s a lot more hurt than she let on.”
“What’s going on here?” Riser sidled over to them, Ranger easily filling in his absence to assist Aaron.
Ethan lifted the white square of material from her wound. “She’s been stabbed. And that’s probably not the only wound on her, but I can’t tell with all the blood.”
“I need to stitch that up first, before she bleeds out. Then we can take a look at the rest of her.” Riser grabbed a small kit and pulled out a hooked needle and threaded it.
Ethan brushed Caroline’s white-blond hair back from her face, cringing when he noticed the dark purple bruise she’d hidden behind her hair. This whole time she’d acted like she’d barely been injured, all because she was worried about Merc.
As if reading his thoughts, Riser glanced down at Caroline and Merc’s hands twined together. “What’s that all about?”
“Don’t know, but I swear to God, she was willing to give up her life for him. She probably would’ve bled out if I hadn’t seen her checking out her wound over here in the corner.” In fact, Caroline had acted braver than some soldiers Ethan had come into contact with. He wondered if the senator realized his daughter’s strength.
“What I want to know is, how the hell did they make it out of that camp? There’s no way Merc could’ve stayed on a horse the whole time.” Riser started stitching up Caroline’s side. Her stab wound was only about four inches wide, but it went deep.
“I have no idea. But who knows what Merc is really capable of. If anybody on our team could have made it out of something like that, it’s him. Besides, how else would they have made it to the cave? You think Caroline carried him?” Ethan cracked a joke.
Caroline Cotter weighed one hundred pounds, maybe. Merc was pushing two-fifty, easy, and all of it was solid packed muscle on his six foot five frame. “I hope Merc took out the man torturing him before rescuing Caroline.”
Riser finished stitching the wound and reached back for fresh linens, handed one off to Ethan and they began to gently cleanse her, starting with her face. “I hope Merc got to the bastard that did this to her, too. This is only starting to swell.”
They moved down to her bare but blood covered arms, gently washing her skin. When Ethan reached the raw red rope burns around her forearms and wrists, ice cold rage filled him. “Didn’t she say a man kept her in a tent? Do you think he kept her in there the whole time?”
Riser’s own expression filled with worry as he studied Caroline’s wounds. “It doesn’t look good.”
The thought of Caroline Cotter being taken by some filthy nomad in the desert, the wounds on her wrist obviously from being bound, her skin so raw and torn, like she’d fought her attacker… “I swear to God, Mr. J has got to die, even if we have to drop a bomb on him.”
Celine Latimer, Aaron’s fiancée, had nearly met the same fate under J’s hands not even a month ago when he tried to sell her off to a Russian sex slave trafficker. And now, it appeared, what had not been completed on Celine, might have been finished with Caroline.
“I can patch her up, but we won’t know anything for sure until we get to the hospital.” Riser glanced over his shoulder. “Top, you need to come have a look at this. You’re the one who’s going to have to call the senator.”
Hunter left Merc’s side and came to them, his already dark expression hardening with fury as he got his first real look at Caroline’s injuries.
Ethan felt his own rage rise again as he said, “She’s been stabbed and beaten. Her wrists… It doesn’t look good, Top.”
Ethan swallowed past the hard lump in his throat, guilt slamming into him with just as much force as the rage. He’d been responsible for Caroline’s safekeeping at her wedding, right along with Celine’s and Kate’s. He’d failed on all three counts.
With his chest feeling like someone had parked a two-ton truck on top of it, he added, “Looks like someone had her tied down and she fought. She fought hard.”
No matter how hard he tried, Ethan simply couldn’t say the word rape. It was too brutal, too disgusting an act to think about being perpetrated on any woman, let alone one he’d failed to protect.
“Dammit, when will this end? How many more innocents does J have to destroy before he gets what he wants?” Hunter dropped his head into his hands in the first show of emotion Ethan had seen from his commander in a long time.
“Let’s wait and have her examined at the hospital before we draw any conclusions,” Riser said, his words ringing with false hope.
There could only be one explanation for those types of wounds — Caroline Cotter had more than likely been raped.
Chapter 9
Nightshade had spent the past six months training and rehearsing how she would react the first time she met the man who had destroyed her family. She’d planned to walk right up to him and look him in the eye, knowing she'd have to swallow back her hatred and smile and pretend to be his daughter. She’d never expected to meet him while lying down in a hospital bed after regaining consciousness, finding him clutching her hand and staring down at her like she was the most precious jewel in the world.
Their eyes met, his a startlingly similar shade of blue, and her breath caught as she hung suspended and unsure.
Senator Cotter reached a hand toward her face and she instinctively flinched away. His eyes immediately filled with tears as he slowly lowered his hand back to envelope hers. “My precious baby, what did they do to you?”
She knew from studying his photos and following him in the media that the scruffy gray beard and deep hollows under his eyes were not a staple for the senator who usually appeared completely collected and calm.
A thought hit her hard – either he was the most consummate actor she'd ever born witness to or Cotter truly loved Caroline. Hope sprang in her chest, mixing with the bitterness in a strange cocktail she didn't know how to swallow.
Perhaps... Perhaps in his sick and twisted mind, he’d kidnapped Caroline and raised her as his own daughter, giving her a true life of privilege. Maybe Caroline never had to experience the darkness and shadows of the real world or the deadly nest behind the secret government agencies that Nightshade had grown up integrated in.
Had Mankel been wrong when he’d told her Caroline was a prisoner in Cotter’s home?
His hands, only slightly larger than her own and missing the calluses she was used to, gently squeezed hers. “Caro, please, say something.” His haggard voice broke into her thoughts and Nightshade licked her dry, cracked lips.
“Where am I?” Was that her voice all hoarse and weak sounding?
“Honey, you're in Germany. They flew you straight to the army hospital here. You're going to be all right.”
“How long have I been out?” She needed to assess the situation and regain control. These wild emotions rocking her right now, more than likely the result of all the trauma and exhaustion, needed to be reined in if she was to achieve her mission and save her teammates.
“You got here the night before last. I've
been so worried about you.”
Her eyes drifted shut with dread. That put her a full seven days behind schedule. Dammit. Here she was laid up in a hospital while her team suffered.
“Caro, do I need to call the doctor? Where do you hurt? What did they do to you?”
What were they doing to her sisters? Were they being tortured for information? And how had Cotter found them in the first place? It was a thought that had plagued her since she learned they’d gone missing.
Her team had been on a black ops mission, deep in the heart of Russia. She’d heard the playback from their comm’s system, knew the moment they’d been ambushed. Since then, there’d been nothing but silence. Nightshade, had remained behind with her father to train for this mission, a mission that would've taken place much later if her team hadn't been captured. She would’ve had more time to prepare.
Mankel had told her about how the government liked to experiment on their own assassins. If they’d gotten their hands on an all-female team of highly skilled operatives, there was no telling what types of horrors her unit had already been subjected to.
Seven more days lost. Seven. Were they still alive?
“Nurse! Get the doctor in here now!” Cotter yelled.
Nightshade opened her eyes, refocused and ready to do what she was trained to do. Your team. He has your team hostage. “Dad,” bile rose up her throat at the hypocrisy of that word, “I need some water.”
“Of course, darling. Here.” He yanked a Styrofoam cup from a nearby table and held the white straw to her lips. Nightshade took her time sipping the refreshing cool liquid. When she was done, her head dropped back to the pillow, the action having taxed her more than she’d anticipated.
Cotter dropped his head to her hand, pressing their skin together in a way that made her skin crawl. “This is all my fault. I almost lost you trying to protect you. I realize now that no matter how strong and powerful General Rainier is, I should've never asked you to marry him in the first place. All I care about is your happiness. Not power. Not my job. Not anything.” He swallowed convulsively, a fresh wave of tears tracking down his cheeks. “I was so stupid. Can you ever forgive me?”
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