Everyone cheered then came up to congratulate her cousin and Curt. But she didn’t understand why. When there was a quiet moment, she pulled his face towards hers.
“Curt?”
“Yeah, little bit?”
“Why is everyone so happy for you? Did you win something?”
“I sure did.”
“Is it ice cream?”
He chuckled. “Even better. Your cousin and I are getting married.”
She should have used the snake.
Six years later . . .
She stared across the casket at him. The wind whistled around them, the sky dark and foreboding. It was a suitable atmosphere for a burial. A sea of black surrounded her. All of the mourners who’d gathered around the grave looked up at the sky then back to the coffin worriedly.
But she just watched Curt.
He looked terrible. She guessed that was pretty typical when your wife had just died. He’d changed over the years. She remembered him with the fondness of a child who’d thought of him as her hero. But back then, he’d been softer, gentler. Now there was a harshness to him. His face was more lined, his eyes colder, his body thick with the muscle he’d lacked in his younger years. And he was more gorgeous than ever.
She’d had a crush on him since she was three. He’d always been her hero. Not that he looked like a hero now. He looked dark and dangerous. And her eleven-year-old heart beat a little faster. Immediately, she felt guilty. How could she be thinking this way when they were just about to bury her cousin—his wife.
Her heart almost broke as she thought of the pain he had to be going through. She didn’t know why he wasn’t standing over here with the family, instead he’d positioned himself on his own, across from them. It was just family here at the burial, although the turnout at the church had been huge. Soon they would be making their way back to her house. Hopefully, she could sneak away to her bedroom. She could use homework as an excuse. Everyone knew Jenna wanted to be a doctor someday and was working hard to achieve that goal.
And if it meant she could get away from the fake condolences, all the better. She hadn’t been close to Amelia, despite their moms being sisters. And while she felt sad she was gone, most of that sadness was for Curt and what he had to be going through.
“He could have at least shaved,” her mother whispered to her father over her head. Jenna was ridiculously short which had put a wrench in the works for her mother, who’d seemed to think Jenna would grow up to become some sort of super model. That had been her mother’s dream, not Jenna’s. Besides, even if she wasn’t five feet two, the extra weight she carried kind of ruined that plan.
Jenna didn’t really care what she looked like. She knew what she was going to do with her life.
“And he’s barely spoken to Mary and Justin. My sister is beside herself, and he can’t even show her respect by shaving.”
“People grieve in different ways, Lorraine,” Daddy said in a low, warning rumble. When he spoke that way, he meant business, and her mother wisely quietened.
She glanced over at Curt, and caught him staring at her. She gulped and sent him a small smile. He just looked away. A stab of hurt filled her, but she guessed she couldn’t blame him. After all, they were burying his wife and unborn child today.
Daddy was right. People grieved differently.
***
“Hey, little bit.”
She let out a startled cry then turned, her hand going to her chest. “You scared me.”
“Sorry, saw you sneak out here and thought I’d join you. What are you doing?”
He sat next to her on the bench. The same bench where he’d sat with her on his lap so many years ago when she’d snuck out to see him on the night of the announcement of his engagement to Amelia.
“That looks like a thick textbook.”
“Biology,” she said, showing him the cover.
“Got a test coming up?”
“No. I just like looking through it.” She blushed slightly. “Probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Why is that?” He raised one dark eyebrow. Up close, he looked even harder. Almost mean. But her Curt wasn’t mean.
Except she hadn’t seen him for a while, and Daddy said he did a lot of top secret missions for the armed forces. Who knew what he’d seen and done.
“Because men don’t like women who are smart.”
“They don’t?” He raised his eyebrows.
She shrugged, embarrassed.
“Let me give you some advice, little bit. Your Mom doesn’t know everything about men, all right? Guys who don’t like you because you’re smart aren’t worth knowing anyway.”
“I know.” But it felt better to hear it from him.
He drew her close, and she breathed in his scent. “You smell good.” She immediately went red. Lord, Jenna, why’d you have to say that?
“I remember you telling me you liked when I smelled like mud and trees, not spicy. Amelia was the one who gave me that cologne.”
She stiffened and looked up at him. “I’m really sorry, Curt.”
He looked across the garden, his jaw tightening.
“I didn’t know if you were going to come today,” she said quietly.
“Your aunt cornered me in the parking lot. I was too scared to say no.”
She snorted. “Daddy says you’re the best of the best. An elite soldier. You’re not scared of my aunt.”
He raised one eyebrow. “No?”
She just smiled.
He tapped the book. “You like this stuff, huh?”
She nodded. “I’m going to be a doctor. I want to help people. I might even join the military.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What?”
He shook his head then sighed. “Sorry, forget I said anything. I think it’s great you’re going to be a doctor, little bit.” He stood.
“You’re leaving?” she asked sadly, wondering what it was she’d said.
He smiled and tapped her nose like he used to when she was a kid. It annoyed her a little. She was eleven now, not a child.
“Been here long enough. Got to get back to the base.”
“You’re going back to work?”
“Nothing to stick around here for.”
She guessed not. He glanced over the fence. “Jonty the Jerk still giving you problems?”
“No, his dad sent him to boarding school. I know you had a talk with him. You’re lucky he didn’t tell his dad about that.”
“Just had a man-to-man chat about how to treat a lady.”
“I’m no lady,” she said, giving him a grin to show him she wasn’t offended. “I’m a warrior princess.”
He grinned and tapped her nose. “You’re trouble, that’s what you are.”
Chapter One
Fifteen years later . . .
They were back. She cringed as she heard a noise at the door to the hut she was locked in. There was no source of light. No windows, no cracks in the walls, nothing except that door. Sometimes it seemed like the darkness would smother her. She couldn’t even make out her hand in front of her face. It was the freakiest feeling. There were times she felt like she couldn’t even tell up from down.
Light filled the dark room, making her squint and blink frantically. Someone stomped inside. She knew better than to try and talk to them. The one time she’d tried that, the man had smacked her across the face and spat on the ground next to her. Her captor emptied the slop bucket and then put down a tray of food. Food she couldn’t bring herself to eat. All those years of diets her mother had put her on and all she’d needed to do was lock her in a dark room with no company, no light, and no way out.
The door slammed shut plunging the hut into darkness once more.
How long had she been here? It could have been days, even weeks. She felt weak and ill. Her lips were dry and cracked. And she stank. If she wasn’t sweating buckets from the stifling heat, she was freezing cold and shivering.
The leather cuf
f around her ankle chafed against her skin, digging into her. She’d attempted to pull it off several times, but that only rubbed her skin raw. A heavy chain that had been secured to a spike in the ground was attached to the cuff. It kept her on a short leash. She couldn’t even reach the door.
They weren’t taking any chances she might escape. Not that there was much possibility of that. Even if she could free herself, she had to get out of the camp undetected, then make her way out through the countryside. She didn’t even know if they were still in Sudan anymore.
Every movement made her whimper with pain from the beating they’d inflicted. She was scared, sore, miserable. What had she been thinking? Why had she joined Doctors Without Borders?
Because you thought you could make a difference.
Yeah, that had worked out well. After a month of being in Sudan, the village she’d been working in had been raided. Everyone had been killed except her, and she was starting to wish they’d murdered her too.
Aside from a few scraps as a kid, no one had ever hit her before, deliberately causing her pain. The beating had been methodical and emotionless. She wasn’t sure if that was almost worse than having them yell at her. Of course, she’d never been beaten before so she had nothing to compare it to.
They hadn’t reacted to her cries, her begging. Her screams. She whimpered quietly, cringing at the memory, the terror still all too real.
Agony. Fear.
One man had held her while another beat her, everyone else looking on. She’d thought she’d be raped. Instead, they’d sat her up and taken photos of her. She didn’t get it. Obviously, they were asking for a ransom, and her father did have money. But why kill everyone else in the village? Why not just take her? A cry escaped her lips, and she quickly squelched it. She could not fall apart. If she gave in to the hysteria trying to overload her system then she was letting them win.
She laid down, resting her cheek against the cool, dirt floor. It was the only way of grounding herself. Otherwise, she almost felt weightless. A bit like when she was swimming. Except then, at least, she could see. She liked to lie on the bottom of the pool and open her eyes, looking up, seeing the light glistening against the water. She remembered doing that once while Curt and Amelia were over. It was shortly after their wedding. She’d been their flower girl. She snorted at the memory. Amelia had been an absolute bridezilla. A total brat. Jenna had hated having to wear that hideous, white dress with all the bows and lace. She still shuddered at the memory. Luckily, she’d managed to keep it clean until after the ceremony.
As she’d walked down the aisle, with Curt at the other end, she’d imagined she was the bride.
God. She’d had a crush on that man for over twenty years now. That was a little sad. A case of hero worship when she was younger that had morphed into a teenage crush. And now . . . well, she hadn’t seen him in years. Apparently, he’d left the navy a while back and had gone to work for some private security company.
She wondered if he thought about her at all.
Of course he doesn’t, idiot. You were just a silly kid to him. He’d just been a nice guy who’d taken pity on his wife’s little cousin. Eventually, he’d probably hear she’d been kidnapped and killed and he might feel a little sad, but that was it.
He certainly wouldn’t come to her funeral. Or go off the rails like he had when Amelia had died. She’d heard the stories about his drinking. The bar fights. Getting into trouble with the navy.
He must have really loved Amelia. And his unborn child. She swallowed heavily. That was one thing she never had to worry about. Losing a child. She placed her hand over her stomach. Even if she made it out of here alive, and with each passing hour it seemed less likely, she’d never get pregnant. A car accident when she was ten had damaged her uterus.
She could still remember her mother screaming at her dad in the hospital. Her dad had been driving and he still felt guilty over what had happened. He’d been driving too fast and overcorrected, sending them spinning off the road. It could have been worse. Luckily, Daddy hadn’t been charged. He’d beaten himself up enough. And her mother was likely to never let him forget she’d never have grandchildren. Jenna was surprised she even wanted grandchildren. Growing old gracefully was not a term that applied to Lorraine Jasons. If there was a procedure to reverse the signs of ageing, she’d had it.
Jenna sighed as she closed her eyes. She wondered what it would be like to have a man love her as deeply as Curt had loved Amelia. Not likely to ever happen, especially since she’d barely dated over the last few years. She’d been too busy getting through medical school and then she’d taken this job with Doctors without Borders. It didn’t exactly create many opportunities for romance. She snorted. Most of the time she worked fourteen or sixteen hour days, got back to her tent, washed as best she could, ate, then fell into bed. Then she got up and did the same thing again. Nope, romance was the last thing on her mind.
It didn’t help that she compared every man to Curt—and found them lacking.
You have got to get over it, Jenna. He’d never be interested in you. She was nothing like Amelia. Her cousin had always looked perfect. Her clothes, her hair, her social skills. If Jenna’s socks matched, it was pure luck, and she didn’t give a shit about fashion or makeup. As for her social skills, yeah, she knew how to hold a dinner party. How to make small talk. Her mother had made certain of that. But when was she ever going to use those skills when she had no one to invite to dinner?
“Sad, Jenna. Really sad.”
If she got out of here, she was going to make some changes in her life. She was going to stop being so damn focused on her career and try to live a little. All she’d ever wanted to be was a doctor. To make a difference. To help. And look where that had got her.
Every time the door to her hut opened she was so terrified it would be the time they dragged her out, beat her, raped and murdered her. She was so stupid. She’d been so sure she’d be fine. That nothing bad would ever happen to her. What an idiot.
Now she was paying for her naivety. Her mother had told her over and over that coming here was too dangerous. How she should leave this to other people. Jenna had just ignored her mother’s dramatics, like she always did. What had surprised her, though, was that her daddy hadn’t wanted her to come here either. She’d thought he would have been proud of her for doing this, but he’d asked her not to go.
And now, she really wished she’d listened to them. She’d give anything to be home. If only she was stronger, the warrior princess Daddy liked to call her then she might be able to figure a way free from this hellhole.
A loud noise made her jump and she gave a scream, huddling in on herself.
Screams. Terror. Death.
The first warnings of danger had been the gunshots. Then the screams. They’d just gone through the whole village and killed them all. Men, women, and children. All of her colleagues. She could still hear Alana begging for her life on her knees, tears streaming down her face. Then the gun had turned on her.
Nausea bubbled in her stomach, and she dry-wretched, huge sobs rocking her body.
Oh, God, please let this be over soon. She didn’t know how much more she could take.
***
He’d learned how to control his rage, to bury it deep where it wasn’t at risk of exploding out, but his defenses were down and his barriers had been chipped away, making it hard to keep the fury contained.
The icy façade had all but melted in a pool of fiery anger.
“You sure you can do this?” Travis whispered, as he crouched next to him in the bush, his night vision binoculars trained on the circle of huts below them. Black-Gray, the security company Curt worked for, had been hired by Jenna’s father to come to Sudan to rescue her. He clenched his hands into fists. What the fuck was she even doing in Sudan in the first place? She should never have put herself in danger.
As Travis turned to look at him, he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Travis had taken lead on thi
s rescue after Black-Gray had brought Raptor Inc. onboard. Travis owned Raptor Inc. and had overseas connections they didn’t. If it hadn’t been for Curt’s relationship with Jenna, Black-Gray probably wouldn’t have taken a job like this.
They were going to wait for the guard change then Curt, Travis, and his brother, Jace, would sneak closer, infiltrate the camp, disable the guard positioned in front of the hut where they figured Jenna was being kept, and sneak her out. Sounded easy, but it could all so easily turn to shit.
Please, let her be here—safe and sound.
He wasn’t going to consider any other alternative.
Jenna’s kidnappers sent photos to her father a week ago as proof of life, with demands for seven million dollars, but they hadn’t yet told him how they wanted to do the exchange. That wasn’t normal for a simple ransom demand. He could tell her father was hiding something but he didn’t know what. And he hadn’t really cared about anything except getting to Jenna.
He’d visited the village where she’d been staying, where she’d been working her ass off to help these people. The local police had already trampled over the scene and removed the bodies. Everyone had been murdered except Jenna.
She had to be so scared. Rage pounded at him as he remembered those photos of her, her eyes swollen, her nose bloody, and her clothes ripped. He was going to kill those bastards for hurting her.
“Curt? If your mind isn’t in the game no one will blame you, but I need to know before I let you in there.”
Before he let him? There was no way Curt was staying behind. This was Jenna. His Jenna.
But he knew he had to play the game. He’d been playing it for years, growing colder year after year as he’d buried the anger and pain deep. It had been years since he’d felt much of anything. Jenna was the only person who could bring out his emotions. The only person he truly cared about.
Oh, he cared about his team—his friends—and their women. He’d do anything for them. But what he felt for them wasn’t like this.
“I’m fine. I’m focused. Just want to get in there and get her out.”
To Save Sir (Doms of Decadence Book 7) Page 2