A bullet pinged into the car over his head and Aaron dropped to the ground and shoved Celine between him and the back tire.
A man stumbled around the front of the SUV, running to the side of the road. Aaron heard the sniper round a nanosecond before the man flew backwards, dead. The fight ended quickly after that. The team had set up a near perfect death trap for the swap.
“Clear,” Jared and Hoyt said almost simultaneously from their positions at over watch.
Aaron holstered his weapon and pulled Celine back into his arms, carefully brushing his fingertips across her cheek. A darkpuffy bruise marred the right side of her face. Her bottom lip was swollen. He'd seen worse, much worse, but on Celine...Mr. J was a dead man.
“Caroline's not in any of the vehicles.” Hunter stepped into his line of vision.
“I need to check her for injuries. They've got her covered in this damn thing.” The blue burka didn’t belong on her.
“You try to wake her?” Hunter asked.
Aaron drew in a steady breath. “Celine, sweetheart, can you hear me?”
She didn't move an inch.
Someone touched his shoulder, and Aaron glanced back to see Ethan standing right behind him. “If they used the same stuff on her as they did on Kate, she'll be out for a while.”
Fucking bastards. At the first kidnapping, in the States, the men had used a heavy dose of opiates to knock the women out. Ethan's girlfriend, Kate, was the only one TF-S had managed to rescue, and she'd been out for over twenty-four hours from the drugs.
Aaron gently brushed his fingers through her hair, attempting to hide the fact that his hands shook from the rest of the team, and checked her skull. “I don't feel any injuries. Give me an ETA on the helo.”
“Big bird, what's your ETA?” Hunter had pulled a comm radio from his belt.
“Ten minutes.”
“Roger.”
“Ethan, pop the hatch on that SUV, I want to check her.”
Aaron stood with Celine in his arms and the group of big TF-S men moved back to give him room. Hunter and Ethan let the back seat down, giving him the whole back end of SUV to gently lay Celine down.
“Riser, come help me,” Aaron said. He and Riser had the most field medical training in their group.
Riser came to lean in the back of the SUV beside him, effectively blocking Celine's body from the rest of the group. They would have to undress her to check for injuries. Aaron reached for the burka, his hand shaking like a fucking baby.
“Hey, let me.” Riser pulled out his knife and Aaron moved his hand back as his teammate lifted the collar of Celine's gown and sliced through the material.
Aaron blew out the breath he'd been holding when he saw that she had on jeans and a blouse beneath this one. They finished removing the burka and Aaron forced himself to stop thinking like a wounded husband and instead act like the trained soldier he was.
Careful for hidden injuries, he tugged the loose jeans down to her knees and froze. His hands went numb. His mouth went numb. His chest went numb. Nearly black bruises in the pattern of fingerprints spread out over her inner thighs.
Aaron started to shake.
“Fuck,” Riser muttered.
He tried to swallow but his throat wouldn’t work. She’d been…dammit. He couldn’t even finish the thought.
Riser gripped his arm. “You don’t know for sure yet, brother. Why don’t you let me finish checking her? We need to evac pronto.”
It was all Aaron could do to rasp out, “No. I need to do it.”
Fighting back the rage, he finished removing her jeans. The only other injury to her legs was covered by a bandage around her left ankle. He left it alone, knowing on some instinctual level that if he saw her skin rubbed raw from a shackle he might puke.
Riser resumed position, his back to Celine, and Aaron slowly lifted her shirt, her bruised and battered breasts a gut wrenching twist of agony to his heart.
Aaron threw his head back and bit his cheek to keep back the scream of fury. He tasted blood.
