Shades of Gray

CHAPTER 12

THEY bundled P.J. into the back of the van, and Baker hopped into the driver’s seat while Cole and Donovan took positions by P.J.

Cole managed to pry the knife from her fingers without her protest this time, but he pocketed it because she’d been adamant about keeping it. Then he closed his hand around hers, unwilling to let her think even for a moment that he wasn’t right here, by her side. That her entire team wasn’t surrounding her.

“What do you think, Van?” Cole asked, trying to control the anxiety in his voice. “That bastard cut her up pretty bad. She’s lost a lot of blood, not to mention that he . . .”

He closed his eyes and looked away, unable to say the word rape. The bastards had raped her. They’d put their hands on her. They’d brutalized her. And he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it.

“I want to get her to the airfield,” Donovan said grimly. “The sooner we get her loaded and take off, the better. I’ll work on her while we’re in the air.”

“What about Sunday? What about those girls?”

“As soon as P.J. is stable, I’m putting a call in to Sam. He’ll have to call in Rio and his team. They’ll have to be briefed so they know what they’re up against.”

“I want those bastards,” Cole said through gritted teeth.

Donovan leveled a stare at him as they raced down the highway. “Make a choice, Cole. I won’t stop you. But you have to choose. You going to stay with P.J. or are you going in with the others?”

Put that way, it wasn’t even a choice. He belonged at P.J.’s side. He’d never want her to feel like her team had abandoned her. He didn’t want her to think he’d abandoned her.

Rio and Sam would exact justice. P.J. needed him.

“I’m not leaving her,” Cole said.

From the seat just in front of them, Dolphin and Steele leaned over the top, closely monitoring the conversation.

“None of us are leaving her,” Steele said tightly.

“Hell no,” Dolphin muttered.

“We live as a team and we die as a team,” Steele said. “I want to go kick the living shit out of those assholes too, but P.J. needs us more than we need revenge. We’ll leave it to others in KGI to get justice for one of our own.”

Donovan barked up to Baker, “ETA?”

“Two minutes. Pilot is on standby.”

On time, the van pulled onto the dirt road to the airstrip on the periphery of the city. It was a regional airport, mostly used for cargo, and wasn’t a hub for passengers.

The plane was parked at an angle, ready to roll onto the runway. Baker roared onto the paved tarmac and slammed on the brakes.

The team sprang into action, opening the cargo doors to the van and making sure the hatch to the jet was open.

Donovan started to reach for P.J., but Cole brushed him off and gently gathered her in his arms, careful to keep the blanket around her to shield her nudity.

He hurried to the plane, carrying her up the three steps into the cabin.

“Bring her to the back and lay her on the couch,” Donovan said. “I’ll get my med pack, give her something for pain and then see what I can do to suture the cuts until we get her to a hospital. Tell the pilot to get us off the ground.”

To Steele, he gave a terse order. “Get on the horn with Sam and fill him in. Rio and his team need to be here in twenty-four hours and in position to intercept the shipment of girls.”

Cole bore his precious burden to the back of the plane and gently arranged her on the sofa so that she was shielded from the view of others.

The slashes to her body were horrifying. Two were deep and the flesh lay raggedly open. One carved a path down her midline between her breasts. There were two just underneath her breasts and one across her flat, muscled belly. And another two on the insides of her thighs.

The son of a bitch had carved her up and then forced himself on her because that’s how he got his rocks off.

“Damn,” Donovan murmured.

Cole focused on Donovan, trying to calm his fury. Donovan was holding P.J.’s right hand. It was swollen and bruised. Cole hadn’t noticed because it had been her left hand he’d clung to as they’d raced for the airport.

“Looks like she broke it,” Donovan said grimly.

He turned it over carefully in his palm and examined the swelling before returning it to her side.

Dolphin brought back the med pack and then took a seat across from the couch, his eyes burning with concern.

“Is she going to be all right, Van? How bad is it? Level with us. We’re going crazy up there.”

Donovan took in a deep breath. “Physically? She’s going to be okay. Eventually. The cuts are bad but not life threatening. Emotionally? I can’t say. What she went through was horrific. P.J.’s strong, but I don’t know of any woman who can escape what she suffered unscathed.”

Cole scrubbed his hands over his face and then through his hair. “This shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let it happen. Goddamn it, I knew it was wrong. My gut was screaming at me that it was all wrong, and I let her walk into that situation.”

Donovan sighed. “It was her decision, Cole. You can’t make those for her. It was a team decision.”

“It was bullshit,” Cole spat. “It was a coward’s move, using a woman to draw out a monster. There was another way. There’s always another way, but we were too anxious and lazy to find it.”

“Try telling that to the mothers of the girls we’ll send home,” Dolphin said quietly. “And then ask P.J. if she thinks it was worth it. Knowing her as I do, I know which way she’ll go. Do you?”

Donovan gave P.J. an injection of pain medication and then numbed the area around her wounds. Afterward he began the meticulous task of stitching the wounds closed.

“This is beyond my scope,” he admitted. “There is tissue damage that needs to be repaired, but my main concern is to get the wounds closed so infection doesn’t set in.”

He checked the pulse in her injured wrist and then did another perusal of the swelling. Then he wrapped an ice pack around it and secured it so she couldn’t move it if she awakened.

Steele ducked into the back. “How is she?”

Donovan’s shoulders heaved. “I’ve patched her up. She needs care more advanced than I can provide, but she’ll do until we get to Fort Campbell. Have you gotten us clearance to land there instead of Henry County? Will sure as hell save us some time.”

Steele nodded. “Sam’s getting it worked out now. They’re pretty pissed and they want blood. He’s called up Rio and his team. This could get messy. I told him we were staying with P.J. unless he absolutely needed us. I don’t want to leave her, but I don’t want any member of KGI getting killed either.”

Cole studied his team leader for a long moment. Steele wasn’t much of a talker. He rarely volunteered more than a terse order or a very cut-and-dried summary of a situation.

But this had shaken that legendary composure of his and melted some of the rigid ice that seemed to encase him. Anger—no, fury—burned in his eyes, making them colder than ever. His jaw was set in a permanent bulge, and he looked like he wanted to physically put his hands on someone—anyone—and make them suffer a long, painful death.

But then Steele was all about the team. The team was it for him. He lived it, breathed it. He performed his duties, and he’d never failed in a mission.

Until now.

It was a weight they all had to bear. They weren’t used to failing. They always did whatever it took and they accomplished their goal.

Well, they’d accomplished what they set out to do, but one of their own had paid a very dear price, and for Cole, that was unacceptable. It was an epic fail on their part that they couldn’t keep P.J. from harm and succeed in their mission.

It was a truth they’d all have to confront, live with and deal with in their own way, but Cole knew his team and he knew this weighed heavy on their minds and would for a long damn time.

WHEN they landed at Fort Campbell, they were met by Sam and Garrett along with the base commander who’d given permission for the jet to land. A medical team hurried in with a stretcher, and P.J. was loaded and quickly hustled away.

Cole put up a fight when they wouldn’t allow him in the transport with P.J. She was still out. Donovan had kept her medicated during the flight so she’d be pain free, but Cole didn’t want her to wake up and feel like she was back in that nightmare.

Dolphin, Baker and Renshaw restrained him, pushing him back against one of the vehicles parked nearby.

Sam and Garrett both wore fierce expressions.

“What the fuck happened, Steele? What went wrong?” Sam demanded.

Steele’s demeanor was normal for him. Cold and formidable. But his eyes told another story. Usually cool, icy even, they blazed with a fury Cole hadn’t seen in all the time he’d worked for his team leader.

Steele met Sam’s gaze unflinchingly. “I failed my team.”

Garrett swore. “Bullshit.” He glanced around at all the members of Steele’s team, almost as if he could see the same thought in all their heads. “Look, I get that you’re all feeling shitty over this but you can’t get so down on yourselves. We need facts. Not guilt.”

Steele’s lip curled but he gave the report, not leaving a single detail out. Cole closed his eyes as Steele repeated what Brumley and Nelson had done to P.J. The rest of the team stood stiffly. Dolphin looked down as if he didn’t want anyone to see his eyes or expression.

Cole just wanted to get all the chitchat over with so he could go to P.J.

“Son of a bitch,” Sam swore, closing his eyes momentarily.

“What are you doing for the shipment of girls?” Steele demanded. “We belong here, with P.J. She needs her team right now.”

“Rio and his team are already en route, and Nathan, Joe and Swanny are meeting them in Vienna. They’ve been briefed. Resnick wants Brumley alive, and he might very well get him that way, but after Rio and his team heard what the son of a bitch did to P.J., I think he may be missing a few body parts when he’s delivered.”

Cole curled his hand into a fist. He wanted to be there when Brumley was taken down. He wanted it badly. He’d never wanted to hurt someone as much as he wanted to make Brumley pay.

He’d killed people when he was a SEAL and then in his time with KGI. He was a sniper. It was his job to take people out effectively. Quickly. Quietly. But it had never been personal. He did his job without emotion because it was what he was paid to do. The people he dispatched were the bad guys. He didn’t need to justify his actions, but the world was a better place without the people KGI went up against.

But with Brumley, rage was a living, breathing fireball inside him. Cole wanted to make him suffer many times over what he’d made P.J. suffer.

“If everyone’s been briefed then can we get on with this and get back to P.J.?” Cole snapped.

“Hooyah,” Dolphin said, his lips thin.

Even Steele looked impatiently at Sam and Garrett.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Sam said, motioning toward the two parked SUVs.