“Know what?” He asked gently.
“I need to know what happened,” she whispered, leaving him straining to hear her.
“You don't remember anything?” Aaron couldn't keep the incredulous tone out of his voice. Had they kept her drugged the whole time?
“No, I remember being taken from the wedding. I…”
When she paused for so long he wasn’t sure what she’d say, he prompted, “Why don’t you start from there?”
She sucked in a breath and shot upright, her wild gaze scaring the crap out of him. “Caroline! Where is she?”
Aaron’s heart squeezed. “I don’t know. We haven’t found her yet, but the rest of the team’s still looking.”
“I-I have to go find her. I can’t leave her.” Celine shoved weakly against his chest. Aaron locked his arms in a gentle but firm grip.
“Sweetheart, the entire Team is looking, along with the CIA and the DOJ. You have to rest and get better.”
She struggled another second and then collapsed, panting for breath. “What about Kate – Did you find Kate? We never saw her, not after we woke. Is she okay? Did they get her, too?”
“No. We were able to rescue Kate during the wedding. They’d drugged her, but left her behind when we caught up with them. Kate is safe and back home in the States, worrying about you.”And Caroline, but no need to bring her up again.
Celine collapsed against him once more. “Thank God.”
“We thought she might be…dead.”
Aaron captured her hand in his. “Not a chance of that.”
His guilt hit full-force and he leaned his head back to stare up at the cracked ceiling of the little hospital.
“Do you think Caroline’s okay?” She started plucking at his shirt and Aaron lowered his chin to rest on top of her head.
“I don’t know. I think so. She has value to the man who took you.”
“But he doesn’t have her any more. Mr. Mankel rescued us from him.”
“What do you mean? Who rescued you?” Maybe the drugs were still in her system. They’d only narrowly rescued Celine before she was sold into sexual slavery.
“Mr. Mankel. He said he’d been sent by Caroline’s father, Senator Cotter. He took us from that…that god awful prison in the dessert.” She shuddered and her nails dug into his chest with sharp little pricks of pain. Aaron barely registered them. Something else was going on here, he felt like they were talking in circles.
“What man in the desert? And who is Mr. Mankel?”
Her nails dug deeper. “There was a nasty man, he was Arabic or something, he kept us locked up in a tiny cell without food or water for what seemed like forever. He – he –” she stuttered.
His whole body constricted with realization. “He’s the one who gave you the bruises?”
She nodded against his chest, her breath hitched on a fresh sob that ripped another chunk out of his soul. “What’s his name?”
He would hunt the bastard down and rip his fucking balls from his body and feed them to him. And then Aaron would kill him. Slowly. He’d learned all sorts of ways to make a man suffer before death.
“I don’t know. He didn’t speak English. He just kept us locked up most of the time.” Her voice trailed off at the end so that he had to bend down to catch her words.
Shit. He didn’t know if he could hear this now. Or ever. She needed a counselor. She needed a woman like his Noni to talk to. Not some ill-equipped soldier whose trained himself to dial his emotional capacity down to zero.
His fault.
“Tell me about the other guy.” He knew he was a coward for changing the direction of her conversation and he accepted that fact. He sure as hell couldn’t sit here calmly and listen to her tell him how some filthy hired assassin had used her body.
“Mr. Mankel. He showed up after a couple of weeks, at least I think it was a couple of weeks. We weren’t ever allowed out so I’m not sure exactly. But Mr. Mankel negotiated our release from the Arab and took us to his palace.”
