Chapter 2
2
NATHAN
N athan Savage was out of the game.
He’d been out of the game for years. Two years, approximately.
But obviously, the seedy underbelly of Moscow didn’t check duty rosters.
Which had been his very first thought when he ventured out of Badgers Pub and waltzed right into the small but organized army. He was out of the game and it just wasn’t fair. But it only took a moment to think and another to get over it and then try to dodge the fists aimed for his torso.
They’d first beat the living hell out of him and proceeded to hogtie his limbs and toss him in the backseat of a dark SUV. It had been a group effort. Nathan wasn’t a small man, but they had done it with such efficiency and grace that Nathan, the six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-some-odd-pound man, felt like a kitten. A bruised, bleeding, and concussed kitten.
The second thought to flit through his mind while he was taking a fist to the face was that he was not, despite all his extensive training and ninja-like abilities, going to win. He wasn’t just gonna lose, either. He was gonna get his ass handed to him. His ass, and maybe some teeth too.
Being a citizen and all now, he no longer carried a gun. He’d figured when he had retired that he no longer needed to be armed. If by some random happenstance, he’d need a weapon, well, Nathan was more than capable of taking care of himself. Though now it seemed rather stupid of him to chuck all his weapons just so he could pretend to be a normal citizen.
The knife he kept in his boot only managed to piss off the three men he’d used it on and was promptly stomped out of his grip by a combat boot after he’d been tackled to the ground. Another couple of hits to the head, a kick here and there, and then a gun butt connected with his temple and put an end to his struggling.
Though the very fact that they took the time to capture and detain him and hadn’t killed him outright was a good sign. It meant they were taking him to the boss where he’d be held, questioned, and possibly ransomed, leaving lots of time for escape. Which made for an almost comforting thought as black swallowed him whole.
When he came to, the only thing to enter his mind was how convenient it would have been if he had just got that tracking node embedded in the fat of his left ass cheek like his brother had suggested. Granted, Nathan did get into a few snags from time to time, but at the time he’d brushed it off as Maddox being his paranoid self and bad-mouthed Han Solo. Maddox couldn’t help but get all up in arms and distracted if someone dared diss his role model.
Should he escape, Nathan would definitely reconsider his stance on tracking nodes.
But Nathan couldn’t say that he was at all shocked by his current circumstance. It hadn’t been a big shocker that some dark-side Boss Man had heard he was vacationing in Moscow, figured he was there on government business, and dispatched men to deal with him. It had been an ‘Ah hell’ moment when he’d rounded the corner and spotted the goons lying in wait for him, but not a shocking one.
And really, Nathan Savage was not a man easily shocked. He had a knack for adapting quickly and rolling with the proverbial punches. Having grown up with seven brothers had cured him of shock early on. The years he spent as a Navy SEAL and in Black OPs had only reinforced that bit of his personality. So being taken captive by any one of the garden variety assholes he’d pissed off while employed by the US Government did not shock him.
No, he hadn’t been shocked when they’d beat him into an unconscious state. Or when he’d woken up in a moving vehicle with his feet, wrists, and thumbs bound. Or when they dragged him into a dank foreboding-looking prison in the middle of nowhere Russia. If he was even still in Russia. Or when they dumped him in a cell no bigger than a broom closet with a corpse shoved up against the far wall.
He’d taken it all in stride.
Until the corpse rolled over and moaned.
No, the corpse suddenly waking from the dead hadn’t surprised him. The shock had come when he approached the figure and discerned a face.
Dried mud and blood matted her long, dark hair. Her torso was naked and covered with blood and bruises. A long crooked nose from one too many breaks sat on a slender pale face that was marred with dark bruises. Long dark eyebrows that, in Nathan’s experience, were always arching in mocking amusement. High cheekbones, thick pink lips, and a stubborn chin made for a pretty face.
Caden-goddamned-Quinn.
There was no mistaking her. The long scar that cut down her jaw and trailed past her collarbone made denial impossible. Nathan had experienced more than his fair share of Caden Quinn, so he was pretty damn sure of the corpse’s identity. They had butted heads more than a couple of times over the years. Well, no, ‘butted heads’ wasn’t the word for what they did, even if her head had connected with his on more than one occasion.
She took what didn’t belong to her.
The government sent him to take said items back.
She wreaked havoc.
He pursued.
She had been a constant pain in his ass and the reason for three of the many scars adorning his body. After he’d done his whole sabbatical/early retirement stint, Nathan had shaken her off like a bad dream. He figured he’d never see her again, let alone have to deal with her.
But there she was. All broken and bloodied, lying on the ground like she was one light beating away from death. Looking all kinds of vulnerable and pathetic.
There was a moment of hesitation that had Nathan feeling ten shades of shame and thinking of his mother. Sure, the bullet-shaped scar on his left shoulder was courtesy of one Caden Quinn and a sniper rifle, but that was not reason enough to let her rot.
There were a select few people, in Nathan’s opinion, who deserved that kind of death.
Caden Quinn was not one of them.
Even if she had run him over with a goddamn Mini-Cooper.
It took another beat to get over the shock and another to locate something he could actually use. A bucket of water and a bowl of what looked like white snot sat next to the door. Which was a slightly comforting thought. At least they kept their prisoners fed and watered.
Lots and lots of dried blood crusted all over her. Hands, chest (that he was not looking at inappropriately), stomach, feet, and face. Christ, he was kneeling in a puddle of it. There were some cuts on her, but none were deep enough to produce that much blood. Bruises, cuts, and what looked like electrical burns sat under the layer of dried blood.
All of which were things he could do nothing about.
What he could do was clean out the cuts on her arms and stomach, hope they weren’t badly infected, and wash off some of the blood.
As soon as he touched her, she jolted awake. Her left arm shot out and just about connected with his jaw before he ducked it. Her other hand reached out and clutched his left wrist. Feeling like a fool, the man tried to put his hands up in the universal sign of surrender and leaned into her line of sight. Caden Quinn was lethal with or without a weapon, tortured and weak, and even half dead. She was dangerous.
Wild, dark eyes glared up at him from under her matted hair. Nathan held very still while she assessed the threat. A blood-soaked arm moved to her side before recognition sparked in those shark eyes and confusion was scrunching her eyebrows.
“What... how in the fuck...” Her voice was hoarse, like she’d screamed for hours and her face was scrunched in confusion. Then she was scanning her surroundings, panic and frustration starting to seep into her dark eyes. She swept the place twice before the confusion disappeared and was replaced with a smirk that instantly had the man feeling defensive.
“Ah.” She fractionally untensed and the wild in her eyes softened a bit. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”
Blood-caked hands retracted, dark eyes set on his, and still smirking like she’d won a prize, she let out a laugh. Or what he assumed was supposed to be a laugh. It kind of wavered off into a pained moan. Red fingers fluttered to her chest and then away just as quickly, like she didn’t want him to be aware of her broken ribs.
“Yeah.” Nathan settled for a grimace and tried not to scowl at the woman. “Fancy.”
“Nathan Savage.” Her busted lips curled, and she blinked up at him again. The thing about Caden was that she could turn anything into an insult; even his own name sounded like something rotten.
“Where are you hurt?” Nathan decided on ignoring her smirk and went back to searching for serious damage. She should have been dead from all that blood loss and not smirking up at him like she was privy to some secret joke.
“If you wanna keep those fingers, I’d keep ‘em to yourself.” Red hands swatted his and went up to cover her naked chest.
“Like you’re in any state to be makin’ threats.” Nathan frowned at her smirking face and settled on his heels. “I’m only tryin’ to help ya.”
“I don’t need any help and I can sure as hell still kick your ass.” The smirk was now gone, and Nathan felt a tingle of satisfaction at her reaction. At least he irked her as much as she did him.
“Where are you hurt?”
“Leave me alone, Savage.” Her jaw clenched and her fists balled.
“I’m not gonna leave you alone to bleed out in this goddamn cell!” Nathan prided himself on keeping a level head at all times, but he always seemed to be short on patience when Caden Quinn entered the equation. “Look at ya! You look like you’re two heartbeats away from dead. It looks like you suffered some head trauma, those look like electrical burns—which means you’ve been tortured—so internal injuries that Caden can’t do shit about, a broken rib or two, and you’re covered in your own blood! You’re gonna die if you don’t let me help you!”
How much more did he have to spell it out? She wasn’t stupid. Why was she pretending like she was?
“It’s not my blood.” She positioned her body against the wall like she was getting ready to strike out if he moved towards her. “I am fucking fine.”
Well, that changed things. Seeing as how she wasn’t the owner of all that blood, Nathan could, without a nagging conscious, retreat to what would now be his half of the tiny cell and attempt to rein in the temper that only flared up when this woman was within a ten-mile radius of him.
“Whose blood is it?” When he settled into the reality of his situation, he put his attention back on the mercenary and blushed. “Oh, sorry.”
That predator gleam in her dark eyes sharpened when he shrugged out of his shirt. Surprise had her blinking at him when he tossed it to her. Nathan decided not to get offended as the surprise dissolved into suspicion and hesitance.
“Would you just put it on!” He couldn’t take the suspicion anymore.
Dark eyes shot to his and Nathan was wishing he’d gotten tossed in with someone— anyone else. No one ever looked at him like Quinn looked at him. Like she couldn’t decide what he was. A bad guy pretending to be a good one, waiting for a moment of weakness, or some kind of alien not yet accustomed to human interactions. He didn’t like either thought.
And if anything, she was the alien.
What kind of life had this woman led that made her suspicious of common damn courtesy?
“Christ, it’s a shirt! Not a bomb. I’ll not be asking for anything in return. I’m not that kind of an asshole.”
After a long minute of intense scrutiny, the merc finally came to a decision and pulled it over her head.
Nathan figured she finally decided that she could trust him or kill him outright should he prove to be that kind of asshole.
“The blood... it’s my first cell buddies.” Her voice was gravelly, and high sounds kept dying in her throat. “Who also couldn’t keep his hands to hisself.”
It wasn’t a subtle threat, but Caden Quinn was about as subtle as a steeled-toed boot in the face.
“Are you all right?” The question was met with a glare and a slight shaking of her head.
Other than the coat of blood (that wasn’t hers, he had to remember) and the bruises and scrapes he could see, she looked fine. She wasn’t moving stiffly or favoring any limb that he could tell, so he dropped it and tried not to scowl at the woman.
Figuring he was in for a long silent night with the possibility of interrogation/torture thrown in there somewhere, Nathan settled himself as comfortably as possible against his wall and rested while he could.