Chapter 4
4
NATHAN
N athan hated that smile. It wasn’t even a smile. It was a baring of her teeth. All predator, no lifelike spark in those dark eyes. Like she had no soul. Like she was nothing but a sack of organs that somehow functioned. It scared the shit out of him.
When she directed that shark smile at him, Nathan couldn’t help the cold shiver that crawled down his spine. He’d seen that same look on dead men, on men in firefights who had nothing at all to lose and didn’t give a shit if they took a bullet to the head.
She didn’t always smile like that; sometimes she smiled like she was human. He’d seen her smile in Bangkok when he’d pulled from his colorful mental archive of doozies.
And then there was that one time in Oregon. He’d tracked her from Egypt and somehow miraculously stayed on her while she took the most diluted and confusing route possible (three different modes of transportation into it, he’d figured she was shaking possible tails). She finally ended up in Portland, Oregon, and was all soft smiles talking on the phone like she wasn’t a wanted fugitive.
That had changed when he had headed her off at some Ma Nathan had followed, knowing he’d been sighted and expected a fight. They’d duked it out in the woman’s handicapped stall. He’d promptly gotten his ass kicked and was put out of his misery, rather forcibly, by way of his head connecting with a handrail three times. Generally, they were on pretty equal footing when it came to hand-to-hand combat; Nathan was big and strong, whereas Caden was fast and ruthless.
But in Portland, she’d had rage on her side and it had been scary. Her eyes got all kinds of crazy. That shark smile appeared, and she hadn’t even so much as taunted him. Usually, when they went at it, Caden Quinn was the picture of professional: calm, collected, and even jovial. Like she very much enjoyed his attempts at arresting her.
Which annoyed him.
She annoyed him.
So Nathan switched thought tracks and tried not to think of all the horrible things being done to the woman—no, genderless mercenary, not woman —who annoyed him.
Kyott.
The head honcho’s name was Ralph Kyott.
Nathan had recognized him from his days as the government’s bloodhound. Human trafficking was his main thing. If Nathan remembered correctly, the short man was originally from Boston, went down for kidnapping and murder way back when, but got back out again and disappeared. Nathan had never personally gone after him while employed by the US Government, but he had sure as hell heard of the asshole.
Caden Quinn did not fit into that picture. Her thing was high profile, high-value art, and occasionally (or well, more often than not) she’d involve herself in violent disputes. Last he knew she did not work for scumbags like Kyott.
Though that bit of knowledge was dated. But somehow he couldn’t see her involved with human traffickers.
Nathan hadn’t realized he’d dozed off until the sound of a door creaking open jolted him awake and got his adrenalin running. Someone aimed a light directly into his eyes and, if they were competent, a gun was on him as well. So Nathan put up his hands and didn’t move until they chucked a body inside and backed out again.
“Quinn.” She was slumped in a pile on the ground like she was dead. “Come on, get up.”
Panic shot through his system when she didn’t even so much as twitch. Usually, she was either hitting him by now or retreating from all physical contact.
Nathan bit back the rising panic, gripped her by the shoulders, and flipped her as gently as possible since he didn’t know the extent of the damage, so she was on her stomach. She moaned in his arms and started cursing.
Thank Christ.
She wasn’t dead.
Nathan had to take a moment to breathe that in before he went back to examining her hurts.
“What they do to ya, Quinn?” Nathan kept scowling when she didn’t answer. “Come on, Quinn! Talk to me; I can hardly see anything.”
The light was gone, but the moon was shining through the window bars. His hand came back wet and dark. Dammit, she was all bloody again. The back of his shirt was in pieces. Her back was all torn to hell. Like they’d whipped her until they broke the skin. Numerous times.
“Are you hurting anywhere else, Quinn?” He reached for the bucket of water, trying to keep from jostling her too much. “Caden, answer me!”
If she could curse like she was doing, she could sure as hell answer a simple question.
“Just...” Her voice was hoarse and weak and... and something he couldn’t name. “Leave me alone, Savage.”
“What? No.” He was growling again and ignoring her protests as he stripped her of his shirt. “Just let me help you! How are you gonna reach your back—you can’t even sit up by yourself!”
“Savage!” Her gravelly all-outta-screams voice got louder, but it died in her throat and she kept on struggling to get away from him. “I don’t want your fucking help! Leave me alone!”
“No, I will not. First of all, I ain’t doing nothing but helping you, so stop freaking out. And second of all, my mama would kick my ass if she knew I sat back and watched you rot in here. Jesus, it’s like you wanna die.”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing here, Savage?” Her voice was fading out like it was taking too much energy to form sounds. “Taking a vacation?”
It took a long moment for her words to sink in because it was so at odds with everything he knew about her. She took advantage of his shock and slipped out of his hold.
Caden Quinn was suicidal.
Well, maybe he knew that already, taking into consideration some of the insane jobs she’d pulled, but he placed her in the crazy but not suicidal category. It wasn’t just that. He’d seen her eyes go all wild and gleam with ‘what ifs’ before (usually when she did something stupid and insane), he’d seen her kind of crazy before, but it wasn’t just that. Now it was... it was all that fight, that innate thing that made her Caden Quinn, that trait Nathan had figured was seared into her bones, had been drained right out of her.
It was her giving up.
The same woman who had navigated on foot through a war zone, crawled through a maze of sewers, and then took a butcher knife to the stomach, all for some golden statue of a cow.
He couldn’t process it. He couldn’t understand the why or how of it. So Nathan did the only thing he could do. He got mad.
“Well, that ain’t gonna fuckin’ happen.”
She hadn’t gotten far, not that there was anywhere to go. So he waited until she quit crawling and then held her down until she wore herself out cussing and kicking at him.
It took him a bit to wash off the blood and clean out the cuts. Which was surprisingly easy now that she only had energy enough to flinch under his ministrations and occasionally let out a pained moan.
“Why is your hair wet?” Nathan found his voice again as he carefully tied together the dangling bits of fabric that now made up the back of her shirt. “Do you have a head injury?”
“He...” She breathed like speaking was taking too much energy. “He wanted to see his handy work, so they sprayed me down.”
“What a bastard.” Nathan finally relinquished his hold on her and sat back against the wall.
“Savage, I don’t need you to hold my hand. I’ve had much worse. So… can you just... go do your good citizenry on the other side of the room?”
“It’s called being a decent human being, Quinn.” How she could make even that insulting was a gift only she possessed. “And seeing as how you’re now on suicide watch, you can look forward to days and days of hand holding. Or well, however long we’ll be bunking together.” At the sound of her disgruntled huff, he couldn’t help but tack on an overly enthusiastic “Roomie” at the end.
Another groan.
“We could even make friendship bracelets.”
“Yeah.” She shoved his hand off hers and buried her face in her arms. “We could pluck a few tails off the rats and make real pretty ones.”
“I’m sensing some sarcasm in there, Quinn.” Nathan shifted so his butt wouldn’t fall asleep on the hard cement. She ignored him and eventually, her breathing slowly evened out.
Nathan didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He’d only once before been caught and tortured by the enemy, but it had been part of the plan. His team had infiltrated and rescued his ass before any real damage had been done. There would be nobody coming for him this time. It would be easy enough for his brothers to track his passport to Moscow, but then they’d be at a dead end. And they probably didn’t even know he was missing yet. So escaping was up to him.
And he somehow had to keep Caden Quinn alive, which would be difficult if she put as much effort and will into dying as she did everything else. He couldn’t write her off; he wasn’t that kind of person.
Besides, he needed her. According to the very small file on Quinn, she’d escaped imprisonment a fair amount of times and Nathan believed it. She’d escaped federal custody twice from him alone. She’d escaped Marskib’s dungeons. He’d seen how incredibly messed up she was when she came out the other side, and that alone was a testament to her fight. So all he had to do was figure out how to turn that frown upside down.
And then maybe they could escape.