Page 45 of Savage Escape

“What I can do is clean up your back and all the cuts on your arms and legs. Alright, Caden?” Reid ignored him and kept on talking to the comatose woman. “I’m just going to be looking for infections and doing what I can for the smaller cuts. I’m going to have to remove the back of your shirt. Holden, he’s Nathan’s brother too, he’s going help me out, okay, Caden?”

“I love how comfortable you are volunteering me for things, Reid,” Holden grunted and stood, stretching, and waited for direction.

“Heat me up some water. We have to get this shirt off her. It looks like the wounds reopened and then dried to the shirt. We’re going to have to soak the shirt to get it off her without ripping chunks of her skin off.” He blinked and glanced back at the woman, as if just realizing she was within earshot. “It only sounds scary but we can do it without hurting you, okay, Caden?”

Holden was already heading towards the bathroom. Kade removed the pack from his face and went to help Reid remove the pieces of clothing that weren’t stuck to her skin. Reid just kept narrating, like the woman could hear him.

The SAT phone had rung every hour on the hour since they’d landed in Moscow. It was all Jackson could do not to chuck the damn thing on the ground and stomp the shit out of it.

“Fuckin’ fuck.” Jackson loathed cell phones and the convenient way they made him available at any time and anywhere. What sadistic asshole invented with phones?

SAT phones in particular pissed him off. They just ensured his availability no matter what hellhole he was camped in or far away from people he was.

People.

Fucking people.

The very word made him shudder in terror. Okay, that was a wee bit exaggerative, even for him, but close enough.

If only he had someone to field the calls, or fuck, take all the calls and do all the stupid paperwork and deal with all the people. Now that was an idea Jackson could get on board with. Dax would agree; he was worse at the people thing than Jackson was.

The phone rang again, eliciting another colorful metaphor.

Maybe he could put an ad out in the paper when he got back to town. Were there people who liked that kind of shit? Answering phones, talking to people, and doing paperwork? His common sense told him no, but people were weird, so who knew?

Jackson decided as the phone rang in his hand that he would find that weird-ass individual and pay them anything they asked.

This call, however, was a call he could not avoid. He’d seriously pissed off certain high-ranking officials with this mission.

Though Savage Security didn’t contract out exclusively to anyone, there were some problems that might come back to bite him in the face if he didn’t handle this correctly. He had a few connections in the government, connections he wanted to keep. There would be no financial difficulties if some contracts were terminated and certain contacts lost, but Jackson liked to keep the contacts and contracts Savage Security did have.

So regardless of his hatred for cell phones and talking to people in general, he could not let the phone ring. Ignoring it would not make his problems disappear. He was gonna have to man up and press the stupid green button.

With one last growled curse, Jackson quit his mental bitching and answered the goddamned phone.

16

CADEN

Caden came to with a jolt of adrenaline spiking in her blood. A jolt she barely kept under control. Alarm was marching up and down her spine and making her feel all kinds of cautious. Like maybe she shouldn’t open her eyes and alert anyone to her newfound consciousness.

The only thing that came to mind in the first few seconds of awareness was Nathan Savage and the fact that he was no longer beside her. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know he was gone. The last few seconds of memory on him was almost comforting. Shot in the leg and shoulder: not fatal. But that had been before she’d passed out.

Now, she didn’t know what the fuck was going on or where the fuck he was. Those breathing sounds filtering in through the roar in her ears were not Nathan’s. Judging from the sounds and smells of the place around her, they were not in that same tiny house she’d passed out in.

Captured a-fucking-gain.

Didn’t Kyott have anything better to do? What was the payoff for him? Aside from her getting dead. But didn’t he alreadypretty much say he didn’t give a shit that his son was dead? He’d offered her a job, for fuck’s sake.

Or maybe she was in a hospital, judging by the almost sterile aroma and the annoyingly consistent beeping.

The second thought to rip through her mind was that she was still alive. She was still alive, and that was... okay.

Good even.

Maybe improperly trained henchmen and their combined inability to kill her wasn’t the nightmare it had been before. Maybe the feeling in her gut wasn’t entirely displeased with still being able to draw breath.

She’d deal with that bag of cats later. Caden focused her mind and tried not to feel the sharp, burning pains coming in waves from just about everywhere on her body. The blood roaring in her ears quieted, and the merc made a concentrated effort on pushing the pain to the back of her mind. She could complain about it later. She had to focus.

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