24
Merc hadto call a car to drive Caroline back to the house after she’d bruised her leg on his body. He chose to walk back to the estate alone, needing time and space to think. Now Merc paced in his bedroom, in between the rows of bunk beds they'd been assigned on the second story. Ethan and Riser sat on the right bottom bunk, elbows resting on spread knees. On his left, sat Hunter and Ranger James in the same pose.
Hoyt reclined against the far wall. “She moved like we move.” Merc snapped his fingers. “Lightning fast and strong. She did a round house running downhill at full speed, a move most Marines can't even pull off.”
“Maybe she's had some training over her life,” Ranger shrugged. “With the Senator’s money and connections he could hire a number of private instructors.”
“Yeah, but if she was that good, how did they kidnap her in the first place?” Merc said.
Hunter, their team leader, said, “You know they were drugged. She might not ever have seen it coming.”
Merc planted his feet, unwilling to back down from his team leader. “Would you be caught unaware?”
Hunter shook his head.
“How many trained soldiers do you know that can perform a round house in a full out sprint with no warning?”
Hunter didn't say a word, just pressed his lips into a hard line and remained silent.
Merc shoved his fingers through his hair, frustration ticking through his body like a bomb about to explode. His instincts blared out a warning. Something bad was happening, something he couldn't quite figure out, and that something involved Caroline Cotter.
But who? And when? He needed to study her file again, maybe he'd skimmed over some paragraph about Caroline being a ju jitsu master or something... Anything that would explain her odd behavior, but he could come up with no plausible explanation.
The last thing he wanted to do was allow Caroline to be harmed again, even if by her own hand. For her, he’d kept secrets from his team. He hadn’t told them about catching her snooping around the study or her father’s bedroom. He hadn’t told them about Mankel holding her family’s lives over her head. He’d thought he could handle her on his own, just like he’d tried to handle Mankel on his own.
Merc dropped into a nearby chair, his energy demolished with the realization that he couldn’t do this alone. He needed his team. And he would have to trust in them not to condemn Caroline, but to help her, because deep in his heart, Merc knew she was a pawn somehow.
He blew out a breath and faced his teammates. “I need to tell you all something, but you have to promise to keep an open mind.”
Hunter, his team leader, nodded.
“I’ve been watching Caroline. I caught her snooping around Cotter’s study and then his bedroom.”
“His bedroom is the entry to the safe room,” Hunter said.
“I know, but I don’t think she does. When I confronted her, she broke down and confessed Mankel was threatening her family if she didn’t find Cotter’s classified government intel and pass it along.”
“Jesus,” Ethan said.
“I talked to her, let her know we would protect her and her family from Mankel and she seemed to believe me. Everything was working out, the bait for Mankel, I haven’t caught her snooping again. I thought it was resolved,” Merc drummed his fingers on the table, finding it harder to say his next thoughts.
But his team didn’t need him to spell it out. Ethan said, “Until today.”
Merc nodded, wracking his brain for another plausible explanation. “Exactly. She’s too good. And there’s something else. I keep having this dream from when we were held in the desert, a dream that up until now I dismissed as my imagination.”
“I think Caroline slit my captor’s throat and rescued me. Not only that, I think she took out the men guarding the horse pen and stole the horse we escaped on.” Which didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
“And she kept us pinned down on the mountain,” Hunter chimed in.
“Has she had training? You know, maybe she does Olympic shooting or something,” Riser said.
“Where’s her file?” Ethan asked.
Merc turned to the table, pulled up Caroline Cotter’s dossier on the secured lap top and passed it over to Ethan. There was an explanation, one that filled him with dread. “Do you think he could have gotten to her like he did Shane?”
Shane Carter had been TF-S’s original sniper and Ranger James’ best friend. He’d been taken captive during an ambush, set up by Mr. J, given over to ISA and brainwashed. A year after being declared killed-in-action, Shane had returned, brainwashed and on a mission to steal government weapons. He’d nearly killed his wife and child in the process.
Ranger shoved to his feet, his blue eyes blazing. “Impossible. Mankel held Shane for almost a year. He had weeks to brainwash him.” Ranger looked away, but everyone in the room saw the agony on his face.
