Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

MCQUADE

I t was late when Patch went to bed. The briefing had been far more circumspect than she cared for, but we didn't skimp on our details. The only ones we edited were her condition when we found her.

Seeing her injuries, the filth of what clothing she had left as well as the blood and dirt embedded in her skin played on repeat my mind. The absolute darkness in her eyes haunted me. The memory of her wounds was seared into my brain, a permanent reminder of what she'd been through.

We'd catalogued every single injury, not only to treat them, but also so I could keep a running tally of what I would be doing to the people who took her. The fact the facility in Louisiana was still there was a sore point for me.

Though Remington had suggested the site might have been scrubbed since we penetrated their defenses. Not good enough. I wanted certainty, not speculation. I wanted blood, not escape.

The near inaudible, strangled sound came from her room. Rising, I abandoned the chair I'd claimed after she'd bid us all good night. Locke and Remington both stared at me when I said I'd take first watch. Neither of them cared for me going into her room to sleep.

I didn't much care what they liked or didn't. I checked the exterior cameras on the handheld monitor on the way around the chair to head to her room. If Patch needed me, I was not letting her suffer. Not when I could help.

Everything showed clear, so I turned the sound down. The motion sensors would send an alarm if they picked up anything. We'd scrubbed our route back after the cluster fuck at the mall. Switching roads and vehicles until we were certain we'd eliminated even the suggestion of a tail.

Still, someone had tracked us to that meeting. The logical conclusion was her ally had sold us out—sold her out. No one wanted to broach that subject yet. While I didn't think she was as infinitely fragile and likely to shatter as Locke and Remy did, I also didn't want to inflict more harm than good.

The door opened silently. I'd oiled the hinges because I didn't want to disturb her if at all possible. The fact another strangled sound came from the vicinity of the bed tugged at me to hurry my ass up.

She needed extraction.

Closing the door behind me, I circled the bed to the far side. She preferred to sleep closer to the windows than the door. I got it, though I wished we had a room with no windows on it at all. I didn't like the exposure. We'd covered the windows, however, and the blackout curtains were always closed.

Remy had also trapped the site lines to make sure anyone trying to set up would get a nasty surprise. The Brit was annoying, but he knew his shit. Any fuckup that came after her that way was going to lose more than a hand.

"Stop…" Her voice sliced through the darkness. Blood, sweat, and tears coated that single word. It made me fist my temper in both hands. She didn't need my rage right now.

Phone and gun on the nightstand within easy reach, I slipped my shoes off and eased onto the bed. The sheets were twisted all around her. One bare leg was out and the other hidden. Her shirt had rolled up, leaving her panties visible, but I dragged my attention upward and firmly on her and not her ass.

Even if she had a very nice, very rounded, sweet ass that would be a generous handful. Mind out of the gutter, I snapped internally. Even if my mind wanted to be further into the bed rather than the gutter, I resisted the urge to slap myself.

"No…" The choked noise underscoring the word strangled my libido silent.

Gliding a hand to her shoulder, I settled it there. No words, just my hand. A shudder went through her whole body before she stilled. It was almost preternatural how the thrashing ceased so abruptly.

Sometimes, all I had to do was rest a hand on her. The weight would be enough to push the dreams away. Despite her lack of motion, she wasn't rousing and her breath still came at a rapid rate.

The short, harsh gasps punctuated the air, warning that the nightmare still held her captive. Squeezing her shoulder gently, I shifted my weight on the bed. Sometimes, if I laid down with her and just kept my hand there, it was enough.

Then she flailed.

Sometimes it wasn't. She struck out with one hand. The glancing blow barely registered. As strong as she was, she didn't hit hard at all. It was more the abrupt surprise in the action.

"Shh," I soothed as I loosened the sheet so she wasn't trapped anymore. Keeping my hand on her shoulder proved a little tougher when she struggled, but then I curled her over against my chest and wrapped my arms around her.

I had to be careful, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. Keeping my arms loose, I was ready for her to pull away. It had happened a couple of times when she woke and found me here.

Other times?

She rubbed her cheek against my shirt, it was almost like she was burrowing into me. I didn't mind in the slightest. Flattening a hand against her back, I spread my fingers out.

With slow circular motions, I tried to ease the knots from her muscles. Another little wet gasp escaped her as I settled her more firmly against me. Bit by bit, though, she began to settle.

"There we go," I murmured, keeping my voice soft and easy. "Go back to sleep. No bad dreams for you."

The nightmares had been bad before. Since the shooting, they'd seemed to have grown worse. I had to wonder if this was how her mind was trying to process her trauma. Or was it something else?

Was she just retraumatizing herself each night? Was that why the memories weren't coming back? Or was this just how she dealt with the PTSD? Fuck, I had far more questions than answers.

Her breathing evened out, the rapid gasps fading to longer, deeper breaths. The fact she went almost boneless against me pulled a real smile to my lips. There was something utterly captivating about this woman.

I hated that she'd been scarred by what she'd been through. More than physical scars, too. The wounds they'd inflicted on her had gone deep. Her fisted hand against my shirt relaxed slowly as her leg hitched against my thigh.

Bit by bit, she sank deeper into sleep and I angled my head back against the pillow to stare up at the ceiling. If I turned my head, I could see the camera views on my phone. They were still clear, so I settled for mapping out the information we had so far.

Section Five.

Even the thought of them being involved turned my stomach. Admitting my father had been a part of the effort to set it all up had only been a partial admission. The rest… if they needed to know—if she needed to know—I'd tear open that wound and empty it out for her.

Until then, I could only hope that they were merely tangentially related. They definitely involved themselves in multiple operations, domestic and foreign. But would they take someone and torture them?

The automatic yes my brain supplied offered no comfort. How had my father put it? "There is no honor in war, son. Make no mistake, we are waging war."

Except, we should never be waging a war against our own people. Section Five didn't distinguish between enemies foreign and domestic. It just counted all of them as enemies. Treated our citizens like they would foreigners and made no distinguishing calls.

Ugly business.

The shift in her breathing warned me she was waking before she flexed her fingers against my shirt.

"Good morning," I murmured, keeping my voice low. "Go back to sleep. I'll keep the nightmares away."

Her huff defied me and I let myself smile. She couldn't see it in the dark. It was a good time to just enjoy her reactions. Her absolute impatience with us coddling her amused me, but I found her way of arguing with herself utterly endearing.

Even if I didn't care for the content of the arguments. Could she trust us or not? The fact she wanted to trust us helped. Now, if she could just let herself trust us. When she pushed herself upward, I forced my arms to loosen further and to stay still.

I was not the trap. I didn't want her to ever associate me with that. Thankfully, she didn't pull away or try to retreat, she just eased up and stared down at me.

My eyes had mostly adjusted to the dark. I couldn't make out her features, but I could see her silhouette. I could almost imagine the byplay of emotion flitting through her eyes like storm clouds.

The idea of being a storm chaser had never appealed to me so much.

"This keeps happening," she said, the sleep absent from her voice though the huskiness was present.

"It's fine," I said. "It's why I always take first watch. If you're going to have nightmares, I'm going to be here to chase them off."

Another huff escaped her, though I couldn't quite tell if it was more laughter or scoff. It could be both. Or neither. The fact I wasn't sure kind of annoyed me. I wanted to know everything about her.

"I'm not really sure we should be cuddling," she said, speaking carefully like she didn't want to offend me.

"No?" I wasn't playing dumb. But I did want to know what she was thinking.

"No," she said, as though turning that single syllable over and testing the taste of it. "I'm… I'm not comfortable with this. We're still strangers."

"Well, I understand you being uncomfortable, but not the why. We're not strangers, Sugar Bear. Pretty sure we went over that earlier today."

A sigh escaped her and I let my fingers trail down her arm. It was just a light petting motion. The first sign of resistance and I would stop. But I could practically feel the stress draining out of her.

Yeah, her mind was still trying to reconcile what it could remember—the past, the present, and the gap in between. As much as I wanted to put her at ease, a part of me did not have a problem with her memory loss. If it meant she got to forget the pain and the torture, I was fine with her not having to deal with it.

Except, she was still dealing with it. Not knowing ate away at her. Not remembering also didn't protect her from encountering those assholes again. If she couldn't recognize them, how did she avoid them?

"You do realize this is weird, right?" The question dared me to disagree with her and my smile grew.

"Not all that weird. I've been comforting you out of those bad dreams since they started." From the first night I'd heard her crying. No fucking way was I staying on the other side of the door and letting her suffer.

It wasn't going to happen. Not while there was breath in my body to stop it.

"That's the weird part," she admitted. Then to my surprise, she settled back against my chest. Her ear pressed right over my heart. "You guys have this history with me I can't access, and it's shifted our relationships, clearly. But I don't know all the details."

"That's the part that bothers you." It wasn't a question. "Let's see if I can ease this for you. You have all the control here. If you really want me to let you go. I will."

I paused right there. She was awake and the dreams had let her go. So, it was safe for me to release her. Rather than accept the offer, she relaxed more against me. I went back to my light petting of her back, rubbing gentle circles there.

"Thank you," she said in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper.

"You're welcome," I told her and then kissed the top of her head. Some of her hair snagged against my stubble, so I smoothed it away. I should probably shave in the morning. It was getting to near whiskers again.

"John…"

I went still at the use of my given name. "Yes?"

She didn't respond for the longest time and I half-thought she'd gone back to sleep. Finally, she sighed. "Never mind."

"Hmm, talk to me Sugar Bear."

Her half-snort wasn't quite a laugh, but I'd take it. "That's my line."

"But I said it this time. So talk to me. Tell me what's going on in that beautiful head of yours?"

"I don't even know the answer to that." She shifted against me, but she didn't pull away. I lifted my hands so she could make herself more comfortable and she settled against my side.

One thigh hitched against mine, but safely away from the not-so-subtle boner I'd been sporting since she started wiggling. She moved her cheek to my shoulder and spread one of her hands out over my chest right above my heart.

"Right, let's try this." I settled my arms around her again and just rested my hand on her hip. If I started rubbing her back now, I'd be playing with her ass too. Not the best idea at the moment.

Later, I promised myself.

We were going to have a later.

"What were you thinking when you called me John?"

More silence, but I waited her out. Her breath feathered against my throat, teasing the skin and electrifying me with each exhale. I stroked my thumb up and down in a short, isolated motion that didn't venture near her ass.

Course, now that I'd thought about her ass, I couldn't stop imagining gripping her ass as I sank her down on my cock. That made the boner about ten times more uncomfortable.

Right, I needed to start thinking about bullets, gunpowder loads, and distance between targets. Not that it was distracting me at all from the weight of her resting against me.

"That maybe you could tell me a story." It was such an unexpected request, I blinked and waited. Waited long enough that she let out a little cough. "I know it's ridiculous but each time I close my eyes, I feel like he's right there waiting to burn me again."

He.

Anger was acid in my blood.

"The problem is, I don't know who he is. I can't even describe him. It's like this deep, dark living shadow. All I know is it terrifies me and I don't want to be scared."

Of course she didn't.

"Okay, what story would you like to hear?" Mission accepted.

"Um… you mentioned something once about target shooting?" She didn't sound quite so certain about it. "It's when you headed into Libya for that quiet extraction. I said it was probably going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. You said to remind me sometime to tell you how not easy that is…"

I turned the request over in my head and then chuckled. It took me a minute to even remember what she referred to, but then I had it.

"Ahh," I said. "Right. Fish in a barrel. It was during some specialized training when I was in the army. We were being tested for combat technique and thinking outside the box. It doesn't really matter what they had us doing, but the live fire range covered about five acres. You had to make entry at one point, locate the hostages, mark them for pickup and eliminate all the enemies along the way."

"Sounds tough," she murmured, she was drawing little circles with her finger against my chest.

"Eh," I said with a half-shrug. "I loved live fire exercises. It gets the blood pumping. The thing was, our trainer had a real whacked sense of humor." A chuckle worked its way free. I hadn't thought about Sergeant Billy in a long time. What a dick. "He always set traps so if you had a misfire or hit the wrong target, you paid for it in the moment and not just points docked."

"What happened?" Her voice was far more alert. Maybe I should have picked a different story.

"Well, I took out one of the enemies but the bullet passed through him and right into one of the hostages. Winged the guy, so at least I didn't kill him. Then a barrel of fish water soaked me from above."

"Fish water?"

"Yep," I said. "It sounds about as rancid as it was. It reeked . It also cost me points in stealth because there was no way to not smell me coming."

"Oh my god…" She pulled her hand from my chest and pressed it to her lips.

"Yep. Got to spend the next four hours stinking of three-day old fish and briny water. By the time the day was done, I couldn't smell it anymore, but my team didn't want to be anywhere near me."

Her shoulders were shaking.

"So yes, shooting fish in a barrel is very easy until the barrel gets you back."

Her giggles surfaced then and I grinned. She was going to wake herself up, but it was better than the nightmares.

"Enjoying my misery?" I asked and she snorted, but couldn't quite contain her giggles.

"Yes," she admitted. "Should I apologize?'

"Nah. Want to hear another?"

"Yes, please."

The dark of the night wrapped around us and I glanced at the camera angles on my phone. Still all clear…

"Well, it all started when I had to steal an airboat…"