Retribution (4 page)

She was just vain enough to be slightly concerned about the fifty-plus cuts over her torso and thighs. They weren’t going to keep her up at night now, but they might concern her later. Some of them were infected while others had required stitches inside and out. She’d yet to look in a mirror, but she could tell the assholes who worked her over had chopped off her hair. Her head felt ten pounds lighter, and it wasn’t because of the pain meds. The heavy locks had once reached the middle of her back, but now they only swished softly against her cheeks and ears.

Again, not a big deal, but it’d probably piss her off once the pain meds stopped doing their thing.

She’d been on the ship forty-eight hours, but the hurting persisted in spite of the medication. It dulled occasionally but never quite left. And she’d never cussed so much in her entire life. She used to take such great pride in refraining from what her mama called “bad words.” The last few days had leached her proper upbringing right out of her, and she was teaching some of the sailors on the ship how to do it right.

One of the sailors who guarded her sick bay door had muttered she could teach someone named “Itchy” how to cuss. The name sounded familiar, like maybe she’d heard it in a dream somewhere, but everything from the past few days was foggy.

The only detail that stood out was Dray. Her heart tugged in yearning for the man who rescued her. At the same time, she felt abandoned. Wasn’t that just bizarre? How could someone who was just doing their job
abandon
their rescued? He probably hadn’t had another thought about her once she was off his hands.

She took a deep breath and tried to stem the sting flowing through her body. The constant thoughts of Dray, though strange and concerning, were most of the time eclipsed by agony. Sometimes the nightmares parted, and during those times she reflected that it should bother her to be hung up on someone she’d barely met. No matter that he’d saved her.

Why him? Why now? Why was she even worried about him? She’d done everything in her power to prevent anyone, with the exception of her family, from gaining the ability to arouse strong emotions within her. She’d taught herself how to endure hell the first six years of her life, but the Bennoits had taught her love and the strength that comes from family once they’d adopted her. It had taken her some time, but with their unending fidelity, she’d developed deep and abiding feelings for her mama and daddy and her four sisters.

No man had come close to encroaching on the bubble of self-protection she surrounded herself with as a young child. No one, it seemed, until Dray. She’d been engaged once, but not even her fiancée had brought out these overwhelming needs in her. That this man could do so was beginning to irritate her, especially since she had no way of even speaking to him.

She
had
spoken with her folks earlier and asked them to pass along her news to her sisters. If they’d heard about this before she contacted them, Kara would’ve rounded them up to perform a search and rescue herself. Kara was the middle child who liked to keep everyone in line and everything just so. When Sasha was out of the country, she had to check in with Kara twice a week so her sister didn’t jump on a plane to ensure she was okay.

Kara had done that once and ended up detained in Sierra Leone for not having proper identification. That had been a cluster of epic proportions. Hell, Sasha was the oldest, the one who was supposed to be the worrywart, not Kara.

She mentally shook her head. Sasha was due to speak with her entire family when she arrived in Washington in two days. Hopefully, Mama would keep everyone under control until they could see for themselves she was okay.

The door to her room opened and the onboard doctor drew her out of her musings.

“Hello, Ms. Bennoit. We need to look you over this morning and draw some blood, if that’s okay?” he looked behind himself at the door that was still slightly ajar.

An older, gruff-looking man, Dr. Creighton had the gentlest eyes she’d ever seen.

Her throat was dry, but she finally swallowed. “That’s fine. Let me go ahead and tell you your nurse isn’t coming anywhere near me with anything resembling a needle, got it?”

He glanced over his shoulder. In fact, he’d done it several times since coming in the sick bay.

“Um, are you expecting someone?”

Confusion passed like a cloud across his face. “No, I wasn’t expecting anybody, were you?” He shook his head and quickly hurried on, “Since you won’t let Amanda draw your labs, I’ll do the honors, if that’s all right?”

He raised the head of her bed while looking over his shoulder again and didn’t really appear to care if she minded one way or the other.

What’s that about?
“Um, no, not expecting anybody, but then again, I’m not the one who’s continuously looking over my shoulder at the door. Feel free to take what you need. You’ve been wonderful, Dr. Creighton. I don’t mean to be so bitchy and uncooperative, but has your nurse ever drawn your blood? She’s a masochist,” Sasha murmured as she found herself peering over his shoulder looking toward the doorway while he gathered his vials and needle.

What the hell was he looking at?

“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal for you to be out of sorts with the trauma you’ve had. Now, I have some news for you, and I wanted to talk to you about your ordeal. You remember the team that rescued you, yes?” All business now, his gentle gaze turned laser sharp, pinning her to the spot.

She almost snorted. It’s not like she was going anywhere. “I remember Dray.”

“Yes, I know Captain Bonner and all the members of Team12. Really great team of ops boys. You couldn’t have gotten any luckier than to have that crew in your area. Anyway, I haven’t heard
from
Captain Bonner, per se, but I have
heard
him.” He cleared his throat before he continued. “He’s on his way here to the ship. He and his team are—well, they’re on their way. He’s requested that he be allowed to see you. I need to know, Ms. Bennoit, if that’s okay?” he resumed, his neck craning looks toward the door.

“That’s fine, Dr. Creighton. Listen,” she began in a soothing voice. He seemed really anxious and out of sorts, and even though most of her feelings were muted by the medication, she was becoming nervous with a distracted doctor holding a needle so close to her arm. “Why don’t you just concentrate on sticking that needle in my arm? Is there anything I can do to help you? Hold a vial? Swab a vein?” she laughed nervously. “Tell you what, let’s both just concentrate. Breathe deeply, Doctor. You can do this,” she encouraged.

Her head was pounding. Her ankle and hip were on fire, and pins were surely being shoved under her toenails.

Dr. Creighton barked out a quick laugh and smiled as he murmured, “You’re quite the pistol, Ms. Bennoit.”

Finally, he bent his head to his task and drew her blood.

Relieved to have it over, Sasha began to ponder Dray’s imminent arrival, and it hit her that she needed a shower. She voiced her request to the doctor.

He shook his head sadly. “No shower. You have multiple suture sites that must be kept dry for forty-eight hours prior to water exposure. You’d also require assistance that we don’t have the staff to provide you with. That will have to wait. And your pain medicine is already flowing through your IV.”

Dr. Creighton’s tone was apologetic but firm. It pissed her off. Irrational as it was, she wanted a damn shower. Lethargy stole over her and she fought it.

“Dr. Creighton, please tell Dray to wait until I wake up. Don’t let him leave me again before I’ve had a chance to speak with him,” she begged and for a brief second hated herself for it.

But the medicine was going to drag her under any second, and she wanted reassurances that she would get a chance to see Dray.

“I’ll do what I can. Sasha. Is it okay if I call you by your first name?” Dr. Creighton asked.

“Yeah, ’cause as you can tell, I’m all about the rules of etiquette. Sure, s’fine,” she managed to slur out before the world turned dark again and she succumbed to the pain meds.

*

Dray had heard their entire exchange. It broke a heart he didn’t know he had anymore to hear her plead for the doctor not to let him leave before she woke up. Dray didn’t have a choice. He’d be gone in a matter of minutes. His entire team had returned to the site of her rescue and discovered nothing but ruins. The entire compound had been blown to smithereens by what looked to be American bunker busters. Overkill for a supposedly deserted compound.

He had to find out what had happened. General Post was going to ensure Sasha’s safety on his end while Dray was going to put a permanent end to el-Din. Team12 had adopted a new member the minute they’d seen Sasha lying on the ground of that compound, bloody and broken. Their presence in the infirmary with him now proved that no matter what, even if they didn’t understand Dray’s bond to this woman, they had his back and hers.

Dray wanted to see her once more, make sure she was alive, breathing,
safe,
before going back to Afghanistan to clean up and get answers.

“Dray, there’s confirmation that transport’s here; we’ll be on deck.” Even as he spoke, Itchy laid a small piece of paper under Sasha’s left hand. The unbroken one.

He wondered what it said but respected Itchy enough not to question him. He also didn’t want to give Connor or Itchy any more ammunition for their teasing.

All his men moved out to go up on deck and wait. Dr. Creighton went with them after giving Dray a pointed don’t-wake-her-up look.

Dray took a deep breath. He might not see her for months. Shit, he was lucky he was getting this small amount of time. General Post had to have rigged this, and Dray wondered if Surrey was behind it too. Hell, Surrey or Con. They’d seen his face when she lifted off in the bird. Torment had echoed in his soul, so surely it’d been written all over his face.

He was normally stoic, but this tiny woman? She brought him to his knees. Her voice was as broken and rough as her injuries, though they’d cleaned her up some. She was as beautiful as he had suspected, but so pale. He picked up her left hand, being careful of Itchy’s note, and brought her fingertips to his mouth. He kissed each one and rubbed them over his beard-roughened jaw. He placed a tiny kiss on her wrist and laid her hand back down.

He rose from his chair, pulled a box of lemon drops he’d filched from a vending machine from his pocket, and set them on her bedside stand. She wouldn’t know why they were there, but he would. He had another box to take with him. The lemon drops weren’t her, but they’d have to substitute for a while.

He moved from the bed to the door, stopped just before he opened it, and did something he hadn’t done in years. He prayed to the god of his childhood that He would protect her, let her mend, and become healthy. Then he prayed for the chance to exact vengeance on behalf of the woman he recognized he wasn’t going to be able to let go.

Four Months Later

Emory University Hospital, Atlanta

The antiseptic smell of the hospital hit Dray’s nostrils and burned, reminding him of all the things that’d put Sasha here in the first place. Damn, he was sick of seeing her in this setting. Over the past four months he’d visited her in Atlanta twice, both times immediately after a surgery, without her knowledge. Her right hand had been pinned back together, and her shoulder had required a minor surgery. This surgery was for her hip, a full titanium replacement because the rehab hadn’t taken.

His lips curved. She was so damn feisty. Always adamant the doctors get her going as quickly as they could. She’d worked so hard to prevent surgery on that hip, not wanting the delay a replacement would cost her. He’d put pressure on General Post to lean a little harder on her doctors to do what was right, which might not always correspond with what she wanted. He wanted her fixed and tougher than she’d been before her abduction.

While Dray understood some of what motivated Sasha’s desire to return to PFF quickly, her health and safety were his primary concern, not necessarily what she thought she didn’t have time for. He knew about her birth and the events surrounding her first six years of life. He understood her personal need to return to work.

According to the testimonials given by her immediate supervisors and co-freedom fighters, she was effective and didn’t have an off switch. She got women and children out of dire situations and into lives where they could thrive.

She was an amazing woman, but she was an amazing woman who still needed the hip surgery to complete her physical healing. The stubborn attributes that worked well in her job hadn’t been able to translate into the healing of her body without the surgery.

He’d been in Afghanistan when the plastic surgeon had fixed her knife scars. Itchy had come in his stead. Team12 had adopted her. About one month after her arrival in the U.S., the boys had taken a little two-day trip to Georgia so Sasha could officially meet the ones who’d saved her life.

All the boys except him.

Surrey and Con had both told him how forlorn Sasha looked when they told her Dray wasn’t able to make the trip. General Post remarked occasionally that Sasha’s second-youngest sister, Halloran, had been utilizing her contacts within DOD to find out more about the elusive Dray. A part-time clerk for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, Halloran was going through law school at the University of Georgia and was not shy about using her contacts to uncover information for her sister.

He felt kind of bad for Halloran. She wasn’t going to find out anything General Post didn’t want her to. In fact, he was buried so deep now, only whale shit could find him.

That’s what going into the private sector got you: another level of anonymity.

Post also took great pains to inform Dray of Sasha’s progress and found ways for Dray to get into her hospital room directly after surgeries without anyone else knowing.

Bleak and Itchy had given him the rundown of their visit—each minute detail and play-by-play of how wonderful Sasha and her family were.
He
should have been there eating pot roast, creamed corn, and cornbread with her family; instead, he’d returned to Afghanistan multiple times to make sure her future was free and clear of danger.