Page 19 of Rescued By the Convicts
“Reece? Melina?” he called out as he descended the steps. None of the lights were on. The kitchen, the bedrooms, showers. . . all dark. Fuck, they hadn’t made it. Where would Reece have taken her if not here? They’d never settled on an emergency fallback site. Fuck!
Ivan raced back up the steps, two at a time. He’d try the caves where Reece had caches.
A loud thud stopped him from leaving. Ivan moved down the hallway, regretting the automatic sensor that turned on the light, announcing his presence, but no one confronted him. He followed the thud, turning the corner. Light escaped the storage room door. Another thud.
With his knife drawn, Ivan eased the door open. Reece was punching a crate of all things. Sweat poured down his face as the crate disintegrated beneath his fists.
Then Ivan spotted Melina, sitting on a mattress on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She sat there, her expression lost, blank even as she rested her chin on top of her knees. Filth no longer clung to her. She’d showered and was wearing one of Reece’s shirts. Then Ivan noticed the bruises on her legs and arms. One on her chin.
“Melina?” he said, choking back a hard swallow when all the terror finally subsided. She was fine. Safe. Alive. The bruises would heal. And whatever else may have happened to her. . . He’d see her through it. They all would.
But it was Reece who worried him now. The man hadn’t flinched, hadn’t stopped pounding the crate even when Ivan entered the room.
“Ivan? Ivan!” Her face lit as she ran to him and threw her arms around him. He dropped his head in the crook of her head and shoulder, reveling in the feel of her body against his.
“What’s wrong with Reece?”
“He’s angry. I mean really angry.”
Ivan knew the feeling, but seeing Reece losing control like this. . . Ivan tossed his knife and coat against the far wall. “You need someone to punch, Reece?”
“No!” Melina said. “I don’t have any nanites here to repair bones.”
“He’s venting. Destroying a box won’t help him.”
Reece stepped away from the box and faced Ivan now, his light eyes turning cold and hard.
“Remember the last time he fought you?” Melina asked, grabbing hold of Ivan’s arm and trying to pull him away.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Little bird, I love that you’re trying to protect me, but right now Reece needs me. I trust if he hurts me too badly, you’ll patch me up.”
“That means going above, Ivan. Liden’s still up there.”
Ivan swung around. “Liden? He’s the one who stuffed you in a bag of garbage?”
“A bag of garbage?” she repeated. She didn’t remember.
Reece practically roared at that moment. He started signing, too fast for Ivan to follow. Ivan only knew a few signs at this point. He needed to do better at learning them, for Reece, for Melina. . . for his entire unit.
Melina rushed to the mattress and grabbed the pen and paper that had been sitting there and held them out to Reece, who thrust the items back to the mattress.
“I get it, Reece. You can’t communicate,” Ivan said. “You can’t tell her what you want to say, and you can’t report to me the way you’d like. But this is not the time to lose your shit. Be angry, take it out on me if it helps, but find a way to get past this rage of yours fast so we can figure out what happened earlier and why.”
Ivan spun back to Melina, wanting to ask her if she was okay. He’d been helpless to stop the dozens of miners from chasing Reece and her. The thoughts of what could have happened had they caught her haunted him, but he was sure it would pale in comparison to what had happened to her before Liden stuffed her in that bag. Regardless, he needed to know everything, to figure out their next move.
He bent down in front of her and rested his hand on her calf. She didn’t jump. Good. “What happened, Melina? Tell me everything. Who took you. Why. Everything.”
She held a hand out to Reece and silently waited for him to take it. Ivan wasn’t sure whether Melina or Reece needed that connection more at the moment, but the second Reece slipped his hand into hers, all the anger and all the hatred washed out of the man and Melina’s features relaxed. They’d had a special connection from the start, one that made Ivan feel like he didn’t belong at times.
Melina must have sensed his insecurity, for she reached her other hand out to him, resting it on his forearm.
“Thank you,” he whispered. She gifted him with a smile. Gods, he was so lucky to have her, and to think of what nearly happened tonight. . . .
Melina started talking, straining to remember details. The information came out in bits and pieces, disjointed and uncertain. From what she’d said, Ivan didn’t gain the sense that Liden had assaulted her physically beyond striking her a few times. The bastard had gone after her psychologically, scaring her so much that every time she recalled details, she started shaking. A debriefing that should have taken five or ten minutes took an hour as they had to stop continually for Melina to calm enough to talk again. Ivan couldn’t press her, not after what she’d been through.
“It’s over now. I don’t think Liden will bother you again. He probably believed you, or he wouldn’t have released you,” Ivan tried to comfort her, but she shook her head, unconvinced.
“He wouldn’t have just let me go. I lied to him, and I think he knows it. I must have escaped, but I can’t remember!”
