Chapter 3 - Ranger
RANGER
“HEEEEEEEELP!”
“SOMEBODY HELP ME! THEY’RE COMING FOR MEEEEEE!”
“PLEASE! THEY’RE COMING! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL MEEEEE!”
I took off like a bat out of fucking hell.
The instant that ‘help’ hit my ears, I closed out of my programs at my desk.
The second I heard ‘they’re coming for me,’ I slammed out of my bedroom.
But nothing could have lit a fire under my ass when a woman outside screamed that she was going to be killed.
I’d never been the fastest or most agile of the men around me. It was why my tech smarts carried me so much.
But at that moment, I was the first outside.
Only to see the cloud of dust that kicked up just before a beaten, bloodied woman stumbled right through it.
“Oh my God,” I said breathlessly as I scrambled to her. “DOOOOOC!”
I heard her whimpering. I heard her shrieking. I heard her panting for air as tires squealed. The men charged behind me, but I already dropped to my knees. She tripped over something. A rock of some sort.
Fuck that rock.
I’d toss that rock over a fucking cliff once Ifound it.
“I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha,” I said breathlessly as I caught her seconds before she hit the ground. “I need Doc over here!”
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” he said as he dropped his leather doctor’s bag next to me. “Let me see her. Let’s get a good look.”
Her little fists, which I could already tell held dislocated fingers, beat against me while she sobbed.
“I’m gonna diiiiie,” she wailed out as I held her to my chest while she fought. “I’m gonna diiiie. I don’t wanna diiiie.”
“Ssshhh, sh, sh, sh, sh,” I hushed softly as I knelt down and rocked her side to side while the guys gathered around me. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You got away. I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.”
“We have to get her to my room,” Doc said.
The woman cried harder against me, shivering so badly that I could have sworn her bones were shaking. I scooped her up and she flinched before I turned to Doc.
“Lead the way.”
It was a rush to get her inside. The men ran in front of us, moving away anything in our paths that could have tripped us up. Cap barked orders, and every time he did so, she flinched.
“Hey!” I barked right back as I spun around. “Calm voices. She’s scared shitless.”
The guys all looked at me with perplexed looks before Doc herded us into his office in one of the little homes that surrounded our clubhouse on the compound.
“All right, get her on the gurney. I need to set those fingers,” he said.
The instant I tried putting the woman down, she scrambled against me. She raked her nails down my back as if she were trying to cling to my skin.
“No beds, no beds, no beds, no beds, no beds,” she whispered over and over.
“I have to put you down. We have to take a look at you. See the extent of your injuries,” I whispered softly as I rubbed my hand up and down her back.
I watched Doc prepare a relaxant in a shot.
I glared at him. “We don’t do anything without her permission.”
The woman sobbed again at my words as Doc gave me a sympathetic look. He flicked the shot before liquid shot out of the tip, and he gave me a look that said, ‘hold still.’ I tightened my grip around the woman and just kept whispering as he approached from behind.
“I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha. You’re safe now. No one’s gonna get you here. You have my word.”
The instant she was pricked, she bucked like a goddamn bull. Well, as much as she could anyway. She was easy enough to restrain, but lying her down on that gurney once she settled revived her fighting instincts. She flailed so much that Doc and I had to strap her down for her own safety.
And the way she begged made bile rise up the back of my throat.
“Pleeeeease,” she sobbed out. “I’ll be good. I’m sorry. I was just scared. I won’t be scared anymore. Just let me go, I swear, I’ll do whatever you want, whenever you ask.”
“Sssshhh, sh, sh, sh, sh,” I whispered as Doc began his evaluation. I slipped back up to her face and cupped her cheek. “You’re being seen by a doctor right now. That’s all this is.”
She yanked helplessly at her hands and feet, tears pouring down her face. “I’m so sorryyyyyy. Please don’t kill meeeee.”
“No one’s gonna kill you,” I whispered as I cupped her cheek, “I swear. No one is going to touch you ever again without your permission.”
Doc flashed me a look and I amended my statement.
“After this anyway,” I mumbled as I studied her face.
Her nose was broken, that much was for certain. Both of her eyes were bruised, but not necessarily swollen shut. I swear, her eyes were beautiful, despite the depths of the bruises. A beautiful pale blue that—
That—
Sky blue eyes…
“Oh my God,” I muttered.
“What?” Doc asked as he rushed back to my side. “What is it? What do you see?”
I was fucking speechless.
I knew this woman.
She was the woman from the bar that night.
I heard the sounds of licking from the darkness of my closet, and it tugged me back into my memories.
She looked a lot better than she did a couple of weeks ago, I noticed.
Doc took care of her once I convinced her to let me pick her up, which took some convincing.
She was unrecognizable from everything they had done to her.
I wondered if she recognized me, too.
The sounds of her eating, nonetheless, were fucking beautiful. It took us days before she’d even eat any of the food we gave her. Wrecker theorized that it was because they spiked her food, most likely. So now, she’s wary of all of it.
And no one questioned the ideas of the POW in our ranks.
He’d seen some shit, you know?
The thought angered me. It flashed me back to that night in the bar, wrapped up in one another in that fucking supply closet. How soft and pliable she was. How her curves jiggled against me with every thrust of my hips. The way she molded to me so perfectly.
It was all gone now.
How long was she missing?
Was anyone even looking for her?
The longer I thought, the angrier I got, so I turned back to my computer setup.
It was the easiest thing to keep me distracted, especially since we had so much fucking work to get done anyway.
I tried not to think about the fact that she licked her plates.
I tried not to think about the fact that we finally earned enough of her trust for her to eat our food.
Maybe I could get some weight back on her here soon.
It wasn’t natural for bones to jut out on her the way they did.
I didn’t even realize I stopped typing to listen to the sounds of her guzzling that soda down before her gravelly voice wafted from behind the cracked door of my closet.
“You don’t have to stay with me, you know. If you have things to do.”
I didn’t turn to her. I didn’t want to spook her. But I did respond as I clicked around on my computer screen. “I know. Let me know when you’re finished up and I’ll take your dirty dishes.”
“Oh.”
I grinned a bit while at my desk. I loved it when she said that little word. That little ‘oh’. She did it a lot, and I had come to find out that she did it whenever I responded in a way she wasn’t used to.
I liked that I challenged her notions of the world she had come to expect as normal.
I also liked it when she talked to me.
It reminded me of that night.
God, she deserved better from me that night.
They all did, really. All of the women I fucked and left behind. They deserved more of me, a better version of me.
I scrubbed my hands down my face.
Since when the fuck did I start having guilt trips over good sex?
I heard something scuffling across the floor and I whipped my head back to the direction of my closet, only to see the tray of empty plates and glasses being slid along the carpet.
I got a brief glance of her arm. Enough to tell me that the angry bruises it once held were finally fading into those yellowish marks that denoted the last of the healing spell before a bruise disappeared altogether.
Her fingers, all sitting in the right spot and pointing in the right directions.
I tried not to think about how bony her fingers and wrists looked as her arm quickly tucked back into the darkness.
“Thought I’d help,” she said.
Her voice was a little less gravelly that time.
She talked enough now for her voice to warm back up.
Victory.
“Thanks,” I said as I stood and walked over to where the tray was on the ground in front of the closet.
I heard her shuffling about inside the closer I approached.
“Just gonna take the tray,” I said as I bent down slowly to retrieve it.
I had no doubt in my mind that she watched me through the cracks of the sliding door of my closet.
“Would you like more?” I asked as I stood.
Usually she turned me down outright. But that time, she hesitated before she responded.
“No thank you, I’m all done.”
I paused. “Are you sure? We’ve got more chocolate pudding. I could put extra crispy bits in it?”
Another pause. “No, I’m okay.”
I nodded and left it at that. “All right then. Let me know if you need anything else before dinner. I’m just gonna go stick this in the kitchen.”
Another lengthy pause. “Will you be back?”
I looked into one of the cracks of the closet, hoping she was on the other side looking back at me. “Of course, I’ll be back. Want a glass of water to sip on?”
Not as long of a pause. “Could I have another soda?”
I smiled. Good. Something with calories. I remembered how hard and unforgiving her body was when I scooped her up to take her into Doc’s office after she ran up on us the way that she did.
That just wouldn’t do.
“Of course you can,” I said as I turned toward my bedroom door, “I’ll be back in a flash.”