Chapter Twenty-Four

Doc

"How bad is it? Really?" I ask Raelynn. Her hands grip the steering wheel hard enough, her knuckles are white.

"He done got his ass into a sling. But he's talkin'. And cursin' Ry for benchin' him. Damn fool has a hole clean through his thigh and he still thinks he should be with West for the interrogation."

I've met Wyatt a few times while treating his girlfriend, Hope. Nothing Raelynn says surprises me. "He's about as stubborn as McCabe."

"Damn straight." She offers me a tight-lipped smile. "But he's only been with us a few months. He ain't figured it out yet."

"Figured what out?"

Raelynn accelerates onto I-5, quickly gunning the Mustang up to eighty miles an hour. Thank God it's so early in the morning.

"There ain't nothin' more important than comin' home." She shakes her head softly. "Hope is his everythin'. Shee-it. He wouldn't even commit to joinin' us until Ry announced he was steppin' away. But Wyatt hasn't been with us long enough to know we always have each other's backs. He don't have to go on every mission to be a part of things."

We don't speak again until she turns onto Industrial Way. "Uh, Doc, there's one more thing you should know."

I tighten my hands on my thighs, digging into my quads hard enough to leave bruises. This isn't going to be good. Not with the way her shoulders hunch.

"Spit it out."

"Your couch, television, and fridge are about as useless as teats on a bull. You're gonna want to replace the carpet too."

"Is that all?" My grip relaxes, and I let out a chuckle. "I always hated that carpet. Those assholes did me a favor."

"Stay the fuck down." McCabe's booming voice ricochets off the high ceiling as I follow Raelynn into the warehouse. It's not my first time here, but I still gape at the sheer enormity of the space.

The climbing wall rises more than thirty feet, and I spare it more than a passing glance. The one at the little gym by my place can't compare. A boxing ring sits in the center of the building with large mats on either side of it. But what's most impressive is the quarter mile track that runs around the perimeter.

Close to the kitchenette, Wyatt lies on a table with McCabe standing over him and Murphy, Wyatt's Belgian Malinois, whining softly from the floor close to the man's head.

Not far away, Ripper is hunched over his computer with Charlie lying at his feet.

"About damn time," McCabe mutters. "If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to the doc."

I drop my bag on the chair. Wyatt's black pants are ripped open up to his briefs. Around his thigh, two of my t-shirts are held in place with a tight length of cord.

"Fucking hell. If the bullet caught your femoral artery?—"

"It didn't," Wyatt grits out. "Know what that feels like."

That wasn't the answer I was expecting. "All right, then. Let's take a look." I point to a spot close to Wyatt's balls. "McCabe, put pressure right there." I half expect one—or both—of them to refuse, but Ryker moves into position as I don a head lamp and shine the light directly on my patient's leg.

"Do. Not. Move." I glare at Wyatt until I'm sure he understands how serious this is. "And you owe me two new t-shirts."

"Put them on my tab," Ryker says. "Along with…uh, never mind."

"Raelynn already told me I'd need to redecorate." I cut the cord and pull the first soaked shirt off the top of Wyatt's thigh. "Jesus Fucking Christ. This wasn't a 9mm."

"Nope. Sombitch had a .45." Wyatt's words are starting to slur. I don't dare delay long enough to give him a shot of morphine if he's this close to passing out.

It takes me an hour before I add the final stitch and wrap his leg in several layers of gauze and surgical tape. He's conscious, but mostly quiet now. Worn out from the pain, I'd guess.

"He's benched for at least two weeks." I wash my hands at the sink in the kitchenette while Ryker starts a pot of coffee.

"I'll tell West." The big man runs his palm over his bald head. His fingers trace several of the deeper scars the Taliban left him with after fifteen months of what I suspect was constant torture.

"You really are out, aren't you?" I lean against the counter, watching some sort of struggle play over his features.

"Advisory capacity only," he says. "West has run every op since the day he joined Hidden Agenda. He's more than capable."

"McCabe, we're not friends. I don't know much more about you now than I did when you hired me four years ago. But I do know that you're not the type of guy who just…retires."

His raspy chuckle sounds like someone's strangling a chicken. "You never know. I could take up bird watching."

"Fuck no. You'd be out of your mind in less than twenty-four hours. The birds would turn on you." The idea of the man doing anything but this is too ridiculous to contemplate.

"Every time we take on a job, there's a chance we don't come home." He stares over at Wyatt, who hasn't moved off the table. "Wren and Harlow are my whole world. I can't leave them."

"You're my whole world, Gage. Don't go."

I haven't heard my mother's voice in more than thirty years. But now, it's like she's right next to me.

"Doc?" McCabe stares down at me, a coffee mug in his hand. "I said, ‘do you want a cup?'"

I shake off the long-ago memory. "Wyatt's stable. I should go."

He sets the mug in front of me anyway. "West and Inara will be back soon. Natasha's safe with Graham. Have a fucking cup of coffee."

This isn't the same man who told me to get the fuck out after I treated Raelynn. I stare at him for so long, he shakes his head.

"Last time you were here, I fucked up, Doc. Wren was eight months pregnant. Ripper had just gone on his first mission since Hell. And when Raelynn got hurt—and I couldn't get there in time—I lost my shit. You were a convenient target." Ryker stares into his coffee, his multi-color eyes unfocused. "Too convenient."

"And after?" I ask.

"After…" He hangs his head. "I'm not used to being wrong. And I'm not good at apologies."

"Clearly. Since you haven't managed to actually say the words yet." I lift my own mug to hide my smile.

"Asshole."

I turn, setting the cup on the counter, and shove my hands into my pockets. I don't think the man shakes hands. Ever. "Apology accepted, McCabe."

"Ryker." A muscle in his jaw ticks for a moment before he adds, "Or Ry. My…uh…friends and family call me Ry."

Two cups of coffee later, the door to the warehouse opens. West and Inara look like I feel. Exhausted. Beat to hell. Haunted.

"Ry, you get to clean up the mess we made," West says and beelines for the coffee pot. "Because we've got a problem."

"What is it?" I jerk to my feet from my spot on the couch across from Ripper. "Is Natasha?—"

"She's safe," Rip says. "Graham checked in five minutes ago."

West downs half his coffee in two swallows, then fills the mug up to the brim again. "The fuckers who attacked Wyatt and Inara got Doc's address from the resort owner—Clancy McNamera. They claim they didn't hurt him, but I called a friend of mine who lives in Georgia. He's on his way to St. Augustine now to check on McNamera."

"Fuck. Natasha…she won't handle this well." I've never met Clancy in person, but he's always been kind over the phone. "He's got to be close to eighty. If not older."

Inara huffs. "He's seventy-nine. But that's not our biggest problem. West needs to mainline a gallon of caffeine before he tries to give a sit-rep. He's burying the lead."

"I had my thumb in a man's eye less than twenty minutes ago. Cut me some goddamn slack." The former SEAL braces his elbows on the counter, then jerks up and curses at the smear of blood he left on the granite.

Ryker turns to Inara. "If we take ten minutes, is anything going to blow up in our faces?"

"No. But we should see if Pritchard's available. We're going to need him." She grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, cracks the seal, and downs half of it before she comes up for air.

"Sampson, hit the showers," Ryker orders.

The former SEAL draws up straighter, staring his former boss down like he's about to knock him on his ass. But Inara makes a comment about needing to talk to her husband, and West blows out a breath.

"Ten minutes. Not a second longer." He trudges toward the lockers, taking his very large coffee mug with him.

Ryker turns around and stares out the little window over the sink. Inara heads for the far corner of the building with her phone in her hand. Wyatt passed out on one of the cots a while ago and hasn't woken yet, and Ripper is still heads down at his laptop.

Great. Whatever pep talk McCabe needs now is apparently up to me.

"What was that all about?" I ask.

"Sampson has the most interrogation training." Ryker keeps his voice low and casts a quick glance back at Ripper. "Most of what we—they—do is retrieval. Hell, half of the time it's non-lethals only. Tranq darts, rubber bullets, flash bangs. Get in, get the target, get out. But when it's one of our own…"

He grips the edge of the counter hard enough, his knuckles crack.

"I thought I'd seen it all. Didn't think there was anything worse than all the shit they did to us in Hell. And then, I found Rip at the bottom of a goddamned well in Afghanistan six years after we blew Hell Mountain off the map."

"Fuck."

"He barely knew his own name, Doc. Thought I was a hallucination. I didn't understand how he could lose himself like that. Until West and Trevor explained it to me. How to break a man. They both know. They've both done it. And every time West has to extract information like he did tonight…it costs him a little more. One day, he's not going to be able to do it anymore."

"You're worried that day isn't too far off."

Ryker shakes his head. "He's got a few more years. Maybe even a decade. The man fucking loves running this team. But that's partly why I…'retired.' Once Harlow's a little older, Dax and I are going to start recruiting. Not for the team here. That's West's job now. But for new Hidden Agenda locations around the world."

I stare at the man, not quite sure what I'm hearing. "You're…franchising?"

His laugh isn't as forced this time. One corner of his mouth tips up, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. "I guess we are."

"Huddle up," West says. His hair is still damp, but he's changed into a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt. He has that look so many elite operators get after years in the field. Cold. Hard. Detached. McCabe—Ryker—is right. In five or ten years, the former SEAL might not have anything else to give. I hope to God this team has some sort of therapist on speed dial.

We all take seats, filling the couches, loveseats, and recliners surrounding several large monitors on the north wall. West taps his tablet a few times, and a man's face appears on the center screen.

"This asshole is Michael Lyden. He and his brother, Parrish Lyden, broke into Doc's house a little after 2:00 a.m. this morning. They were both wearing body armor, which is the only reason they lived long enough to shoot Wyatt in the leg. Inara slit Parrish's throat and put a bullet in Michael's knee cap before he could finish Wyatt off."

I sit up a little straighter. "The guy on Blakely—Parker—was wearing body armor. Either that or I've forgotten how to shoot a gun in the past fifteen years." It suddenly occurs to me that's a real possibility. I can't remember the last time I went to the range.

"He was," Wyatt says. His eyes are half closed, and from the odd thickness to his words, the morphine is still doing its job. But he's with us enough to pay attention.

"Michael," West continues, "cracked after less than an hour. He gave us eleven names. Six, we already knew. Rip?"

With a few keystrokes, Ripper sends half a dozen photos to the center screen. "Bastian and the rest of the Ranger squad Natasha testified against. Wren and I have been hoping they'd pop up on facial rec, but they're doing a damn good job hiding. Or they have help."

"Like your kind of help?" I ask.

"Yup." He scowls, the annoyance on his face obvious. "If there's someone better than us out there, I don't want to be around when Wren finds out."

"No one's better than the two of you," Ryker says, pride lending a tone to his voice I've never heard before.

Five more faces appear on screen. "These are the new players," West says. "Two Army captains, the Ambassador to East Timor, and a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel. This is the kind of power we're dealing with. And why, if we have any hope of keeping Natasha and Doc safe, we need Pritchard's help."

"Who's Pritchard?" I ask.

West arches a brow, then quickly shakes his head. "Sorry, Doc. You've been around so long, I forget you always stayed on the outside. Major General Austin J. Pritchard. Former head of the Joint Special Operations Command. He was shit-canned a few years ago for going rogue to save Trevor and Dani down in Venezuela. So he started his own black ops team."

"With the world's worst name," Ryker mutters. "Rescue Operations Group? The man has no creativity. At the very least, he could have called it Rescue Operations Group and Underground Experts."

Everyone turns to stare at him. "The hell?" West asks.

"R.O.G.U.E.?" Ryker shakes his head. "No one here appreciates my sense of humor."

"Because until recently, you didn't have one," Inara says and elbows the man in the side.

I'm losing patience. "So, where is this guy? Will he help you? Me? Us?" My words trip over one another. I'm too tired. Drained of all my energy and running on pure adrenaline and caffeine. But I don't get the sense anyone at Hidden Agenda has a problem with dragging someone they need out of bed at all hours of the night.

West rubs the back of his neck, something I can't quite read in his eyes. "Oh, he'll help. But he scheduled a fucking colonoscopy for this morning. So until he comes out of sedation in an hour, we wait."

A hand on my shoulder startles me awake. "Natasha's on her way with Graham," West says.

I don't remember lying down on one of the couches. I definitely don't remember someone covering me with a thin, gray blanket. But I sit up and blink the sleep from my eyes. "Isn't she safer if she stays at the apartment with Graham?" I'd give anything to have her in my arms right now, but she's in enough danger already.

"You're in the safest place in the goddamn world." This, from Ryker, who ambles over with a cup of coffee in his hand. "All the traffic cameras in a four-block radius loop whenever one of our vehicles is in range. If anyone did get wind of us, this entire place can lock down tight. The walls, ceiling, and doors are reinforced. No one's getting through without a fuck-ton of firepower, and even then…it'd be a goddamn miracle if they managed it. Should a lockdown be triggered, every member of our family around the world gets notified. They can be here in anywhere from three to twelve hours. Not to mention the fucking arsenal we have locked behind some of the best biometric security money can buy."

"She'll be safe, Doc." West unwraps a protein bar and sinks down across from me. "And this is her fight. You're just along for the ride."