Chapter 3 #3
He moved forward, lowering his rifle but keeping it ready. His voice dropped, becoming gentle in a way that felt foreign. He hadn’t had to be gentle since he was in civilized company back in the States. "You're safe now. I'm not here to hurt you."
Her breath hitched. It was a small sound that cut through him like a blade, but she didn't speak.
Talon crouched, keeping his weapon pointed toward the door, ready for anything.
Terrified eyes tracked his every movement with the hypervigilance only trauma could produce.
Her eyes were wide and bloodshot. Her pupils dilated with shock and possibly dehydration.
She looked young, maybe mid-twenties, though suffering like this would age her in ways that time alone never could.
Talon knew that for a fact. He’d lived the suffering.
He’d watched it play out with his mom and his aunt.
Snapping his attention back to the woman, he noted a jagged cut marking the line of her jaw and bruises spanning her neck in the distinctive pattern of fingers.
Someone had choked her, tried to snuff out her life with their bare hands.
The sight hit Talon like a physical blow.
His chest tightened, and rage—cold and methodical—began building in his gut.
He'd seen this before, witnessed what men could do to women when they thought no one was watching.
The memories of the Siege tried to surface, but he pushed them down.
Not now. This woman needed him to be present, needed him to be calm.
"I'm going to reach forward and cut those ties, okay?" he said, his voice steady despite the fury building inside him. The woman just stared at him with mostly blank eyes. Shit, did she understand him? "Do you speak English?" Talon asked.
She gave a tiny nod, the movement barely perceptible.
"Okay, I’m going to cut these ties, and then we're going to get the hell out of here. Do you understand?"
She nodded again, slightly more confident the second time.
He pulled his tactical knife, the blade catching the light, and carefully sliced through the plastic bindings on her wrists.
The zip ties fell away with small clicks that seemed unnaturally loud.
Her arms fell to her sides, and she winced.
No doubt her circulation was returning, accompanied by painful pins and needles.
"What's your name?" Talon asked as he sheathed the knife. He glanced down at her, taking in the full extent of her injuries with the clinical eye of someone trained in battlefield medicine.
Her mouth opened. Her lips were cracked, bloody, and raw from dehydration. No sound came out at first, then, barely audible, she said, "Riley."
She cleared her throat, and the noise cracked in the silence like a flare gun in the darkest void.
It was small but impossible to ignore—the acknowledgment of his words and her response told him she had cognition, and she had will because she was still conscious and fighting.
Despite everything that had been done to her, she was still fighting.
He leaned in slightly and lowered his voice even further.
His mind flashed back to what his mother and aunt had endured during the Siege.
Finding her here, in this condition, he melted.
Jesus, what had happened to her? It was instinct that kicked in.
Feral, real, and demanding, his gut told him this woman was something special, and he wasn’t going to fuck with gut instinct.
"Okay, Riley. My name is Talon. I'm with Guardian Security. You're safe now. Do you understand?"
She gave a small nod, but her eyes were still wild, locked in that primal state between disbelief and terror.
He had seen many people in this abyss. It was a place where hope had been beaten out of them so thoroughly that rescue seemed like another form of torture.
Her fingers twitched on the metal floor, reflexively curling and extending like she was testing whether she could still move them.
Talon's pulse raced, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He was fucking pissed. Not at her, never at her, but at what had been done to her.
The bruises, the swelling on her jaw, the deep red lines around her wrists that still bled, the trembling that hadn't stopped even after the restraints were gone. Someone had beaten and choked this woman and then locked her inside a steel tomb, and from the stench and filth and her state of dehydration, they’d forgotten her and left her to rot like garbage.
The rage in his chest was a living thing, fed by memories of his own past—images of his mother's bruised face, the sound of her muffled cries through walls when she awoke with night terrors.
The feeling of helplessness that had carved itself into his bones when he was too young to act.
But this time was different. This time, he could do something.
Jug's voice crackled through the comms: "Rest of the boat has been cleared. We’re circling back to do ID kits on the tangos in the hallway.”
Talon asked, “How many pirates in total?"
He was speaking to Jug, but the woman obviously thought he was talking to her.
"I don't know," she croaked, her voice like sandpaper on stone. She coughed and struggled to speak, and when she did, it sent chills down Talon's spine. "The one who gave the orders … the woman. Three others that I saw."
Talon's blood turned to ice. "Wolf?"
"She isn't going anywhere, Skipper.” Wolf chuckled through the comms, and Talon heard the distinct click of the rifle being thumbed off safety. The implication was clear—the cook wasn't just a cook.
"Do you need help with the hostage, Skipper?" Stryker’s voice came through the comms, professional and ready.
Talon scanned Riley quickly, doing a tactical triage assessment that made his jaw clench tighter with each injury he catalogued.
She’d closed her eyes, and he didn’t know if she were conscious or not.
"She has facial swelling, possibly a fractured cheekbone, deep compression injuries around the neck, and possible nerve damage in her hands.
She's dehydrated, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, dry lips, sluggish responses.
" His voice was tight with controlled fury. "I'm going to bring her up."
“Roger, I’ll set up an IV.”
“Top deck,” Talon said. He needed to get her some fresh air.
"Dude, check the manifest again. We have a civilian on board.
Female. She's in and out of consciousness.
Her name is Riley. Injuries have been sustained.
No immediate threats in hold seven. I need a medevac protocol prepped, and a route cleared.
We're not going to delay getting her off this boat. Jug, the containers we need?"
“Identified and intact,” Jug said clearly. “I’ve attached transmitters to them.”
“I have good pings,” Dude said. “I’m working on getting the crew and the new security team to the ship ASAP.”
“Maintenance will be required. It could take weeks to fix those systems,” Talon said as he walked.
“Then we’ll get another ship there and transfer the cargo in question and get it out of there.” Talon could hear Dude typing rapidly as he spoke.
He turned back to Riley. Her head had started to loll sideways, consciousness slipping like sand through fingers. "Hey, Riley? Let's stay awake, sweetheart." He gently touched her chin, his calloused fingers careful against her damaged skin. "Hey, Riley? Look at me, honey."
Her eyes rolled a bit, but she found his. Her gaze was unfocused but seemed to be aware, fighting to stay present. "You're real," she whispered, the words barely audible but carrying the weight of desperate hope.
"Yeah," he said quietly, his voice rough with emotion he couldn't quite suppress. "I'm real. And you're not alone anymore."
She tried to lift her arm but failed miserably; the limb fell back to her side like a dead weight.
He caught it mid-fall, wrapping his hand around her fingers.
Her skin was cold and clammy, and her pulse was weak beneath the grime and dried blood.
Circulation issues from the restraints, dehydration, and possible shock.
The list of medical concerns continued to grow.
Screw asking if she could walk. "I'm going to carry you, okay?"
She blinked and looked at him as if there were four of him, her vision clearly compromised. She hesitated, then nodded ever so slightly—a gesture that took obvious effort.
After slinging his rifle over his back, Talon slid his arms beneath her legs and shoulders, lifting with all the gentleness that seemed foreign aboard this fucking vessel of horrors.
She was light. He could feel every bone, every tremor running through her damaged body.
Her head dropped against his shoulder, and her breath was hot against his collarbone.
She didn't speak again, but he could feel the rapid flutter of her breath against his throat.
Talon's mind wasn't just on the extraction of this woman.
It was already calculating vengeance. Vengeance in his mind for any woman treated like this was methodical and cold, and it would be absolute.
The rage building in his chest wasn't the hot, impulsive kind.
No, it was the deadly, patient kind that planned and waited, striking without mercy.
Whoever had done this, whoever had been in charge of this brutality, either on or off this ship, would pay. And when Talon got to that woman he’d had detained below deck, the one giving orders, she would regret every moment she’d drawn breath.
"I have her, and I'm moving topside."
"Skipper?" Dude’s voice came through as he was walking up the stairwell, each step measured and careful to avoid jarring his precious cargo.
"Go," he said.
"There's no female on the passenger manifest. Ask her what her last name is, see if you can find out what she was doing on the ship."
Talon stopped at a landing, the emergency lighting casting everything in hellish red. He looked down at Riley, her face pale and drawn in the harsh light. "Hey, Riley, are you still with me?"
She tipped her head back and looked up at him with eyes that struggled to focus. The trust in that gaze, trust given despite everything she'd endured, hit him harder than any physical blow ever could.
"What's your last name?" he asked, and started up the stairs again, his boots ringing on metal.
She whispered something, but he couldn’t hear her. Her head dropped back.
“She’s unconscious.”
"Damn it, what’s going on with her?" Dude said through the comms, and Talon tended to agree with his communications specialist's succinct question.
Why would this woman, an American by her accent, be held captive on a boat carrying yellowcake uranium? That was the question of the week, and possibly the answer to that question would provide a piece of the puzzle as to why everything had gone wrong on this floating nightmare.
As he carried Riley toward safety, toward air that didn't reek of human suffering, Talon made a silent promise. Whatever happened here, whoever was responsible, they would pay. The woman in his arms had survived hell, and he would make damn sure that those who’d put her here would answer for every moment of her suffering.
The hunt wasn't over. It was just beginning. The Siege echoed through his mind. The terror his mother and aunt had endured. He would never willingly let another woman suffer the way they had.