Chapter 9
9
CADEN
S urprisingly enough, it was actually uncommon that Caden found herself jarred awake, adrenaline already pumping, instincts set to kill, and blindly groping her weapon. It was uncommon (though not rare) because Caden was awesome at her job. Which went hand in hand with covering her ass well enough to feel secure in the fact that no one would actually be able to find her in order to kill her in her sleep.
It wasn’t rare because Caden didn’t live a nine-to-five-pick-up-the-kids-from-the-Y-and-more-toilet-paper-while-you’re-in-town type life. What with the professional violence and the frequent grand larceny and all.
What had her going for her opponent’s exposed neck and coming to with what felt like a shot of adrenaline to the heart was the feeling of someone big and muscle-bound attacking her. Not just attacking her, but on-fucking-top of her. And shit, she’d already fought off one scum-bag this week. Wasn’t there some kind of quota?
Muscles: tense and weak—like she’d lost too much blood. Arms and legs pinned. Fuck.
Weapons: not a damn thing. Double fuck.
But her senses came back to her in full force and she remembered exactly where she was, which wasn’t an altogether happy thought, and then recalled who was attacking her.
Or not attacking her.
Hugging—it was hugging.
And it was weird.
Nathan Savage had himself wrapped around her body as if he moonlighted as some kind of human blanket. Both of his muscle-y arms were wrapped around her middle and she was smashed face first into a whole lot of torso. Keeping her mouth firmly closed against doing anything... untoward (like maybe licking him), she settled on getting an eye full of his chest hairs and an up close and personal view of a white and fading scar. One of his legs, which now seemed like it was about as big as her whole body, was thrown over hers while the other was wedged under her knees.
The sensation of being held and not pinned was foreign. Disconcerting in all honesty. She wasn’t a cuddler by nature and not too big on the whole touchy-feely thing in general. The last person she’d held without the intention of injuring or killing was Ezzy.
Caden kind of liked it.
He was warm and softer than the cement. It felt... nice.
The Hitter hadn’t realized how absolutely bone-cold she’d been before Savage had tried to absorb her into him like some kind of freaky alien. Now she was warm and dreading the moment when she’d have to move away from him in pretend disgust. Maybe even get a solid hit in, just to reiterate.
Though why he was holding her in the first place or why she had no recollection of the previous night was cause for some alarm. Judging by the state of her pounding head and the dry scratchiness of her throat and eyes, Caden would have to say it was drugs and more torture. Which was most likely why she couldn’t remember shit and probably why Nathan was wrapped around her.
Dread knotted her stomach at the thought of what might have happened in that state. Caden and drugs never mixed well. She could barely consume alcohol without becoming a raving lunatic set on destroying anything and everything in her sights. She had to have attacked him.
Oh god, had she killed him?
The rhythmic thud of his heart and the warm flush of his skin against hers squashed that panic attack before it could sink its teeth into her gut. From what she could see (given that she had very little wiggle room) he looked well enough. A few new dark bruises marred his torso and were those scratches on his side? Christ, she hadn’t actually scratched anyone in years and years. Stabbed, kicked, punched, jabbed, and shot—yes, but not scratched. What the hell kind of night had it been?
Why her pants were gone was another panic-inducing alarm bell sounding in her mind.
Though she knew without a doubt that he hadn’t fucked her while she was out.
She trusted him.
The realization of that fact sent a shock wave through her system. Nathan Savage was a man she trusted. A man she liked. A good man who didn’t deserve to be tortured to death with her as a cellmate.
It was at that moment Caden decided she would get the man, who was drooling in her hair and wrapped around her as if she wasn’t the villain in their story, out. He was a good man and deserved a good life. She’d get over herself, make a plan, escape these godforsaken dungeons, and get him home to that family he talked so softly about.
She tried to shift out of his hold, but he was heavy. Two hundred and some odd pounds of sleeping muscle was not like juggling kittens. Not that she’d ever juggled kittens, but it sounded easy enough. They weighed like what, an ounce, maybe? Two ounces if it was dead weight. Stood to reason that juggling them would be easy. It wasn’t a perfect metaphor but shit, she couldn’t think straight with Savage all mashed up against her.
Then the rest of her aching body (not just the bits mashed up against Savage) made themselves known. The migraine exploding out the back of her skull reminded her exactly why she hated being drugged.
Instead of focusing on the drooling ex-agent, she mentally catalogued her hurts and the events leading up to her current state of being.
The last thing she remembered was—what did she remember? She’d told Savage her real name. Which now didn’t seem like the best move. He’d wanted to know why she wasn’t some accountant’s housewife with the picket fence and two-point-five children and... nothing.
She’d been drugged; though she didn’t know what exactly they’d pumped into her, she did have a few educated guesses. Given the freshly tortured state of her body, she assumed (and this was being ridiculously laughingly optimistic) that she hadn’t given up anything. Physical pain usually didn’t break her, but with drugs in the mix, she could never be sure what she’d do.
Her head hurt. It pounded and slammed against her skull like it was trying to get out. Blood was pulsing in her ears, adding to the ache in her head. Her throat was raw and burning, like she’d spent hours screaming.
Had she head-butted granite? Her head was not a third fist, and she had to stop treating it as such—she was gonna go brain dead. The rest of her, brain aside, was in working order. Though every inch of her was throbbing and stinging all at once. She felt crusty and itchy and warm. And dammit, her nose was broken again.
But she was warm, and that kinda made it less horrible. Which was a cringe-worthy thing to admit, but the merc only started making a show of pushing him off when he started to rouse.
“Caden?” He blinked down at her and Caden had to physically restrain herself from the sudden inexplicable urge to reach up, tug his head down, and kiss those pretty, sleep-swollen lips. “Are you... lucid?”
“Yeah.” She tried to shove away from his torso, but he didn’t let go. “Would you get off me!”
“Here.” He was up and setting her up straight before Caden could right herself. “How are you feeling?” His hand was on her forehead before she could get a word out. “You thirsty?”
She didn’t actually nod or make any indication whatsoever that she did in fact want the water, but regardless of her silence, the bucket was in her face. She reached for it but stopped when she caught sight of the state of her arms and legs. Underarms, inner thighs, and even her hips were all slashed up.
“I tried to clean ‘em up. They aren’t fatal—I mean, there’s some that need to be stitched, but we have to keep them clean to keep from getting infected.” He smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “Speaking of which, I should look at your back.”
“Okay.”
He opened his mouth, but then blinked in surprise and shut it again. “You should probably eat first, though.”
Caden tried not to feel awkward with his fingers on her back. So she focused her energies on wording the ‘Okay, let’s ditch this popsicle stand’ sentence, so it sounded less like she’d lost something and more like it was a decision she was happy about. But he was done with her back and had moved to the front half of her and it became increasingly difficult to worry over sentence structures when his fingers were on her thighs.
“All right.” Screw it, she’d just go for it. “Let’s get out of this shit hole.”
A startled crooked smile spread on his lips but then just as quickly disappeared when his brows furrowed and his blue eyes turned wary, like he was afraid to hope. Instead of answering, he only bit at his lip and kept on dabbing at the oozing cuts on her flesh. It wouldn’t take long—he could only hold out for so long. It had to be burning him up.
Caden schooled her expression, trying very hard not to smirk evilly at the sight of his jaw flexing every few seconds. Like he had to actually bite his tongue to stop his questions from pouring out. Finally, he tossed the rag and settled on the cement in front of her. As soon as he opened his mouth to start the inevitable interrogation, she spoke.
“Can you set my nose?” It was very hard to keep the smirk off her face at the sight of his clenched jaw and the questions burning in his eyes. It was killing him.
“Uh.” Big calloused hands hovered over her face for a good sixty seconds. They almost made contact twice before they dropped again to his sides. “I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Like he hadn’t tasered her into oblivion countless times before.
“Savage.” Was he serious? “How many times have we fought? How many times have you gut-socked me?”
“Yeah, but this is different. Now... you’re all broke. I don’t want to break you more.”
“Are you serious?”
“Caden, look at ya.” He gestured at her, making sure to keep from touching her. “A gust of wind could take you out.”
Well, now he was exaggerating.
“Ugh.” Caden steeled her nerves, raised her hands, and took three quick breaths, and when that didn’t spur her into action, she blew out three more. “Shit. Please, Savage, I promise I won’t die.”
His lips formed a thin grim line, but she could tell he’d relented by the sagging of his shoulders.
“Fine.” Warm fingers settled on her cheeks. “On three, okay?”
“Okay.” Caden huffed again and pressed her head firmly against the cold wall so she wouldn’t puss out and jerk away from him.
“One.” Fingers lined up on both sides of her nose.
“Two.” Fuck. It would hurt like all hell.
“Ya know what—you can’t even tell that it’s broken.” Fingers still hot on her skin, he grinned down at her. “I mean, you’re still hot. Let’s not do this.”
“Savage.” Caden couldn’t help the growl in her voice. She couldn’t do it herself.
“Fine.” Another grimace and then resolve. “Three.”
Pressure. A wet-sounding snap. White hot mother-fucking pain engulfing her face.
“Ahhhahahaa!” She tried to grip her face, but his hands were still there. “Son of a mother... fucking-cunt-sucking-donkey-fucking-shit-bag!”
His hands left but came back three seconds later with a cold wet fabric that was nothing short of holy salvation on her face.
“Thanks.” Caden plucked the fabric off her face when the pain subsided and examined it. It was a larger piece of her shirt that had been ripped to shreds.
“Sure.” He moved out of her personal bubble and settled on the concrete in front of her once again.
“So you think I’m hot, huh?” She could feel fresh blood trailing over the crusted blood under her nose. Her eye sockets had to be pure black and blue at this point and not an inch on her wasn’t bruised or sliced up. Hot didn’t quite cover it.
A slow smile pulled at his lips, and he dissolved into laughter when she waggled her eyebrows at him.
“Well, right now you look like a zombie straight out of a bar fight. But somehow you still manage to be attractive.”
Well.
Fuck.
What did she say to that?
“Why the sudden change of heart?” The attempt at casual interest was not at all working for him, but it saved Caden from trying to form a reply.
“I don’t see Kyott killing me any time soon—turned into a torture fest interrogation of sorts the last couple of go’s.” She shrugged and tried to push the flare of pain to the back of her mind. “And I can’t very well leave a person like you to fend for yourself.”
“A person like me?” His lips pursed and his hackles raised. Caden tried to suppress the smirk, pulling at her lips at the sight of him all defensive and riled. “You mean the well-dressed former Special Ops soldier?”
“That’s the kind.” She couldn’t help but smile back at his stupid, contagious grin. “It was Special Ops, huh? SEAL?”
That’s what was so familiar about his fighting style. But that bit of information did nothing to help her understand how he went from soldier to desk jockey in a completely separate part of the government.
“Hooyah.” He chucked his arm in the air and smirked at her.
“I don’t understand that transition... did you get injured?” She watched his expression morph into one of exhausted guilt. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.
“No, nothing like that... I couldn’t... do it anymore. The things that we were doing—the things that I did—it was too gray area.” He sighed and rubbed at his face.
That was something Caden could understand. Or, then again, maybe she couldn’t. Despite the big ol’ gray areas that all but blotted out the map of her life, Caden didn’t suffer the same moral compunctions as the ex-soldier.
Sure, she felt guilt; it knifed at her gut whenever she found herself in some dark, lonely corner of the world. And then there were the nightmares of all the things she’d done that ate away at her soul. But that wasn’t the same thing as removing herself from the situation entirely like he’d done. She’d actually done the opposite.
There was nothing Caden had long since proved she wouldn’t do for family.
“Bringing thieves like yourself,” he paused for dramatic effect or to smile at her again, she wasn’t sure which. “to justice... well, there was really no gray area.”
But he’d quit that too. Caden forced herself to shut up and stay on target. Swapping backstories and braiding each other’s hair wasn’t gonna get them anywhere. She needed to focus on coming up with some kind of escape plan that had him at least walking out alive and not on the Lifetime movie special that was Savage.
“What were you doing in?—”
“Nope—no more little heart to hearts,” Caden cut him off and ignored her hypocrisy.
“So you get to ask all the questions?”
A hypocrite was, by leaps and bounds, not the worst thing she’d been accused of being. She could deal.
“Yup—if and when I get your ass out of here, we will go our separate ways. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. Comprenday?”
His lips formed a thin mutinous line, but Caden glared with all her glaring might, which was a considerable amount taking into account people’s reactions upon getting up close and personal with it. He eventually sighed and folded his hands in his lap.
“All right, so what’s the secret? How did you escape Marskib?”
The merc blanked her expression out of reflex, barely suppressed a shudder, and then promptly locked down that madhouse before it really got away from her and released all her pent-up crazy.
Usually, just the man’s name didn’t conjure up long-buried memories of all the things that had been done in those dungeons, but she figured the torture was wearing on her.
“That was a trial an’ error run. With a whole lotta error.” Nonchalance was key in hiding weak spots and, happily, it was something she’d perfected over the years. “But I eventually escaped.”
There were a lot of things Caden was scared of: getting a limb chopped off, airplanes, small talk, old people, contracting some rare disease, and normal people—maybe people in general.
What terrified the living hell out of her like nothing else did or could was Marskib. Definitely something to be dealt with later (preferably in the dark, under covers, and gripping her favorite knife) and not in front of Nathan holds-a-drugged-and-lethal-mercenary-like-she’s-an-actual-person-and-not-a-killing-machine-oh-and-look-at-my-perfect-ass Savage.
“All right so, the two golden rules of escaping are: accurate mental lists of everything—times, protocols, guards names anything you can get. Second: know the terrain, building layout, and all the little toys they’ve got to keep us in here.” She watched Nathan take it in like he was engraving it on his skull. “They’ve got the home team advantage. You see any CCTV on your way in and out?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Me either. No video surveillance means more manpower as well as more guns. This isn’t an actual prison—more like a half-assed upgraded hospital. Kyott’s too small a fish to be getting all land grabby yet. So he’s renting our room, which is both good and bad ‘cause the flunkies running this chop shop aren’t gonna be focused on us. Plus, we’ve got their patterns, times, and routines down. Which makes Kyott the wild card. We don’t want him waltzin’ into an empty cell and having them gun us down before we get any kind of mileage.”
“So, fast and stealthy, then?” He quirked an eyebrow and nudged the water bucket at her again.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Usually want to avoid direct confrontation but... well, it’s either die by torture and thereby infection or die fighting. And you seem like the die-fighting type.” She’d thought that’d sound a lot less corny out loud.
“A trait we share.” He smiled that crooked smile at her, and Caden couldn’t help roll her eyes and violently obliterate the butterflies in her stomach.
Fucking butterflies !
Like she was some kind of teenager with all that hormone imbalance and pent-up sexual frustration.
It didn’t take all that long to plan. Their options were few and far between. It took maybe ten minutes in all to plan, two minutes to cringe over, and maybe sixty seconds to get over and focus on the point zero one percent chance of success. At least it was something. Which, unfortunately, left a whole lot of time for Nathan to do his talking thing.
“So, can I ask you a question?”
“Savage—no more little heart-to-hearts—I believe I already covered that bit. Me and you, we are not friends. So the conversation topics are restricted to: weather, rats, and escaping.”
“Ahh!” He actually flinched back and looked hurt. “We—me and you,” he mimicked her hand movement and raised his voice a few octaves, “we are friends.”
“How do you figure?” What exactly went on in that weird brain of his? Was everything cupcakes and rainbows?
They were not friends. They were cellmates, plain and simple. Any affection he was feeling towards her was because they’d been forced to... coincide over the same emotion-heavy adrenaline-filled experience. And vice versa. Right?
“Caden, you told me your real name.” Like that was some kind of stepping stone. “And you have mine. I like you. You like my abs.”
“They are your best feature.” Caden refused to blush at having been caught staring again. Damn it.
“Next to my intelligence and sparkling personality, you mean?” Curling his arm and flexing his stomach, he quirked an eyebrow. “Right?” Oy.
“Yeah, definitely what I meant.” She couldn’t help but smile when he chuckled.
“You know about my six brothers. I know the story behind one of your scars. We are friends.”
“Whatever.” Because she could think of nothing to say in rebuff, Caden scowled at the giant and frantically tried to rack her brain for the reasons that they were not friends. There were reasons. Good, legitimate, logical reasons. What the hell were they? “Shut up.”
It was then that the former soldier smiled like he’d won the lottery, which did funny, fluttery things to the Mercenary’s stomach. So Caden decided the best possible defense was to ignore him and pretend to sleep.
Fucking butterflies !