“Natasha, he never—?” I don’t want to ask, but I have to know.
She shudders in my arms. “No. Never…that. He’d slap my ass every chance he could, but that was pretty standard behavior. I got used to it. Mostly.”
A gentle kiss flutters over my collarbone. She hasn’t stopped touching me in little ways. Her fingers skimming my waistband. Her lips grazing my neck. My pecs. Her toes brushing my ankle.
“A little over eight years ago, we were searching for a high-value target. But we had mixed intel. Two locations, four clicks apart. Command ordered us to split up. Chris and I went to one cluster of two houses. Bastian took the rest to the primary location. It wasn’t standard operating procedure. The entire squad should have stuck together. But those were the orders. We followed them.”
The longer Natasha talks, the more I want her to stop. She hasn’t gotten to the truly terrible part yet, and when she does, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give her what she needs. Or keep her from running away.
“Our location was deserted. There hadn’t been a soul there for months. Chris and Iknewsomething was wrong. We radioed command, told them we were going to rendezvous with the others. Comms cut out.” Her words are coming faster now, the memories stealing her away from me. “Bastian, Collins, Sutton, Doherty, and Bowen were in a house that wasn’t on any of our scans. We heard a woman screaming, so we approached. The door was cracked open. I saw…everything. Bastian’s pants weredown. The daughter couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He shot her first,” she says. “Then the mother. I watched him pull the trigger with his dick still covered in that poor girl’s blood.”
Sobs wrack her body. I’d give anything to lift this burden from her shoulders. But I can’t. All I can do is hold her.
“Tell me the rest of it, baby. Get it out. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Natasha
Doc knows everything now. How many times Bastian tried to kill me. How Parker found the safe house the night before I testified. How I escaped. How I came to Blakely. And how many times I thought about leaving.
I don’t have any tears left to cry. My eyes are hollow, the lids nothing but sandpaper.
“You have to sleep,” Doc says, his deep voice my only anchor in this storm. “He won’t find you here. Not tonight.”
“You can’t promise me that.” I wish I could believe him. Iwantto believe him. But he doesn’t know Bastian like I do.
“Maybe I can.” Doc reaches for his phone. The movement costs him. His ruddy cheeks pale, and his chest stutters until he gets his breathing under control.
“I can’t believe they let you out of the hospital,” I mutter as I rub slow circles over his bicep.
“Terrible patients, remember?” He types out a text message, then shows it to me before he sends it to Raelynn.
Doc: Did Wyatt and Inara leave any cameras at Natasha’s house? Or the marina?
It only takes the woman two minutes to respond.
Raelynn: This ain’t our first rodeo. The marina’s a busy place. But no one’s touched Nat’s house. And the harbor master has all the records she needs to send these idjits all over hell’s half acre searching for a man who don’t exist.
I rub my gritty eyes and stifle my yawn. I’m so tired, I could sleep for a week straight. If only I thought I’d be safe that long. “What in the world is hell’s half acre?”
Doc chuckles and returns his phone to the nightstand. “Raelynn’s from Texas. They speak a whole other language there. I’m pretty sure she means anything that might have tied me to Blakely has been thoroughly and completely erased.”
I scoff. “Not Clancy’s reservation system.”
“Yep. Even that. McCabe’s wife is a hacker. One of the best in the world, from what Raelynn’s said.”
Snatching my phone from the nightstand, I scroll through the text messages the computer sends me every week. All the ones that used to say D. Reynolds now show C. Jacks. “Who is C. Jacks? And how the hell did she hack my phone?”
“Now do you believe me?” he asks as he eases the device from my hand. “There’s still a lot we have to talk about. Including how McCabe and his team can help put an end to this. For good. But for tonight, you’re safe.We’resafe. Sleep with me, baby. In the morning, we’ll figure out what to do next.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Doc
My headand my heart battle for control. But this is a war neither can win. For an hour, I’ve watched Natasha sleep. I shouldn’t have been so reluctant to involve Hidden Agenda. That one text message from Raelynn was all it took to reassure the woman I’m falling for. She’s been asleep for almost ten hours now—a testament to how serious the infection was when I found her.
I know I’m not a good bet. I’m a fifty-six-year-old alcoholic who once showed up to my shift at the ER so intoxicated, the attending physician could smell the scotch on my breath.
I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved. My mother. Half my crew. Tessa. I couldn’t protect them. What makes me think I can protect the woman in my arms?
