She winced.
He unlaced her boot as quickly as he could and tugged it off her foot.
She groaned, biting down on her lip.
Her ankle had started to swell. It was already bruised, turning a few different shades of purple.
“Can you wiggle your toes?”
She did as instructed.
“Okay. That’s good. How about rotating your ankle?”
She did that too, but it caused her some pain, even if she did try to hide it.
He found the first aid kit, cracked the ice pack, and wrapped it tightly around her ankle. “What else hurts?”
She closed her eyes, blinking out a few tears.
His heart crumbled. Savvy didn’t show too many emotions. She was cool under pressure. Her voice was always even and calm. She never fell apart—at least not until she was home. Then she’d climb into a hot shower, curl up in a ball, and purge. He’d caught her there a few times. She’d tried to push him away, but he’d managed to battle through her defenses. And she had a million of them.
“This was supposed to be an easy mission. That compound wasn’t very big,” she said softly in a monotone voice, but the tears told him something entirely different about Savvy’s emotional state. “I planned the operation from start to finish. All the intel went through me. I studied the satellite images. I knew exactly when the guards would change. Hell, I even knew their names and could recognize their faces. The operation should’ve only taken forty-five minutes from when we took out the first guard to when we extracted the rogue agent.”
“Wait a second.” Patch rubbed his jaw. “You were going into a hostile environment to extract a traitor?”
She nodded. “I uncovered a web of deceit coming from this agent—Bobby Jenkins. He’d been selling government ops for the last year while working undercover, of all things, putting our men and women in danger. There are people in my organizationwho didn’t believe it. Told me I’d finally lost my marbles, but West, my boss, he studied the information I brought him and told me to bring him in.”
“Who else knew about your op?” A million other questions raced through Patch’s brain, and none were good. But he’d start with this one.
“Not many,” she said. “However, it wasn’t sanctioned. At least not through normal channels at the CIA, or even the DoD.”
Shit. He knew what that meant. “But how many? Who?” he asked again.
“Me, my team, West, and the deputy director of the CIA. It was kept that tight because even though Vance struggled with my findings, he wanted Jenkins out of the field.”
A dozen other questions bombarded his brain. He’d met Vance when he’d been gunning for the position of deputy director. Vance was the kind of guy who didn’t cut corners. He’d moved up the ranks because he was deeply patriotic and well respected in many circles. He was reliable, dependable, but a royal pain in the ass. He’d known how screwed up the system was, and yet he’d played right into it by seeking power. Perhaps he’d been trying to change things within. There was always hope.
But Patch wondered. Guys like Vance enjoyed the neatly drawn lines between right and wrong. They believed in justice.
Sometimes, Patch wished he were still that naive.
“Let’s wait until we get back to the bayou to discuss this.” Patch leaned back, satisfied she wasn’t wounded in any other way. “I’m under strict orders to bring you to your brother.”
She groaned. “Can’t I just stay with you for a day or two before I face my brother? He will have more questions than a grade-schooler who just found out there’s no Santa Claus but is trying to reconcile the existence of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.”
“Of course.” He looped his arm around her, tugging her head to his shoulder, wishing she wasn’t wearing that stupid, bulky helmet. “What about West and the rest of the CIA?”
“Right now, they all think I’m dead, and if they don’t, they sure as hell left me for it.”
Patch squeezed her shoulder. Savvy had one of those jobs no one understood and prayed they never needed her brand of expertise… until they did. She was an expert at making people disappear and, in the same breath, bringing them out from whatever rock they hid under.
But it was the shadowy part of her other job that he constantly questioned. The one that no one talked about. The division that he knew she was in charge of but couldn’t name out loud, and neither could she. Not right now anyway.
It had been a combination of both those roles that had brought them together ten years ago. She’d guided him home when he’d thought all hope was lost, and then ten years later, she’d made him a ghost. She had more contacts than anyone he’d ever known. That was until she’d sent him deep in the bayou and now, he was the one working for one of the most elite organizations he’d ever come across. They had fingers everywhere, and Savvy thought she knew their innerworkings because she’d worked with a half dozen or so of the Brotherhood Protectors men and women.
But she didn’t know anything, especially about Shadow Hounds, which was ironic since she had a hand in putting it all together. But Remy Montagne, and his boss Hank Patterson, kept a tight ship and no one outside of those two knew anything about the assignments that Patch and his team took.
The only thing that gave him pause was that Savvy was the one who’d scrubbed them. But it no longer mattered if they were dead or alive. Those threats had been neutralized.
