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.
