Her Daring SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 5) (14 page)

“Huan wasn’t there, Albert.  He didn’t see the situation.  He must have told you about the gun Klein had, correct?”

“Well, yes.  But Klein knew you were ultimately in charge.  I made it clear before you arrived.”

Rylie decided she needed the drink after all, and swallowed the shot of vodka, somehow not grimacing.  “Apparently you didn’t do a good job, or perhaps you did too good of a job because he didn’t like the competition.”

Albert got up from behind his desk and walked over to the bar.  “I think I need something to drink now.”  He poured himself a scotch and water, and took a sip, eyeing her over the glass.  “I’m sorry, Sylvia, I made a grave tactical error.”

Bet your ass, you did you dumb motherfucker!
  “I think it is a fair assumption.  But I handled it.  I also handled the fact that those girls were not being treated correctly at all if we want them ready for an auction in five days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know how deplorable their conditions were?  They were being kept in a twenty by twenty food cellar under the floor of a barn.  All sixteen of them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you doubting me?” she asked it smoothly and softly.

“No, of course not.  I’m just surprised.  Klein came highly recommended.”

“As your partner,” she said emphasizing the last word. “We should have discussed hiring Klein.  He was totally unacceptable in that role.”

“Yes, I see that now.”

“What else have you been keeping from me?”

“Nothing,” he answered quickly. 

“That better be the truth.”  Rylie set down her glass with a thud and headed for the door.

“Wait, I’m not done.  I have more questions, and I’m still not happy with how the situation was handled in Victoria.”

“The situation in Victoria was handled appropriately.  The girls will stay where they are if you want this auction to be a success.  Nobody will miss Klein.  He was a bane against humanity.  I’m tired, and I’m done talking.” 

“I’m serious, Sylvia, I want to discuss things further.”  Rylie continued walking out the door her head held high.  One step in front of the other. 
Breathe.  She made it to her room.
  Somehow Darius managed to open the door before she could turn the handle.

In a moment, she was high in his arms, and being carried,
actually carried
, to the bed. 
Who carried a woman in this day and age?

Oh God, the vodka.  The smell in the little cellar.  Klein.  The smell of blood and pizza.

“Move,” she shoved him weakly.  “I need the bathroom.” She gulped.  She didn’t know if she was going to make it in time.  He must have known what she meant because he picked her up and got her to the toilet and held back her hair as she retched.  Tears ran down her face.  She kept heaving until finally there was nothing left.  Somehow a miracle happened, and a cool washcloth was held to her forehead.

Darius flushed the toilet, and she lay there for a moment until he pulled her into his arms.

“I have you, baby.”  He ran the cloth tenderly across her face. 

Finally, she could breathe and think.  “Let me up, I want to brush my teeth.”

“Sure, let’s get you out of this coat.”  He turned her around like a child, and unbuttoned the first three buttons, and sucked in his breath. 

“Rylie...”  His eyes shot to hers, then fell back to her neck, and softly traced the bruises crisscrossing the front of her neck.  “I need to get you some ice.”  His voice sounded rough, when she looked into his eyes they were filled with dark fire.

“Please let me brush my teeth.”  He gave her a considering look and nodded as he finished unbuttoning her coat.  He set it aside, then he went with her to the sink.  He didn’t let her go.  He helped her every step of the way, even putting the toothpaste on her brush.  She hated to admit it, but considering how shaky her hand still was, that was a blessing.  Soon she was feeling a little more human.

“Are you done with the Sylvia costume?”

“Yes, but I don’t have anything else,” she said looking around in agitation.

“Want one of my T-shirts?”

“God, yes,” her response was immediate and visceral.

“I’ll get it for you.”

He was back in a flash, looking extremely concerned.

“I’m all right, I promise.”

“Rylie, don’t lie to me.”

She looked down.

“Just get dressed, and then come out, we’ll talk.  I should be back by the time you’re out.  I’m just getting some ice for your neck.  Okay?  You need to talk, don’t you?”

“I think so?”  She looked up at him again.  “I don’t know Dare.  I don’t think anything can make it better.  I j want to crawl under the covers, or maybe crawl under the bed and make everything go away.”

“Get dressed, baby.  Holler when you’re done.”  His eyes were so kind and compassionate.  He didn’t touch her, somehow knowing if he did she would shatter like glass.  He shut the door behind him.

Staring at herself in the mirror, she realized how awful she looked.  Her carefully applied makeup was in ruins.  But wasn’t that perfect?  Finally, the outside matched the inside.  All of a sudden, it dawned on her she would have to share a bed with Darius, and no matter how tired she was, there was no way she was going to do it with the lingering filth of yesterday clinging to her.  She stripped and got under the hot spray of the shower.  She used the loofah to start scrubbing, and scrubbing, and she scrubbed some more.  She didn’t even notice it was beginning to hurt.

“Rylie, what in God’s name are you doing?!”  She hadn’t even heard him come into the bathroom.

“I can’t get clean, Dare.”  Even though he was there, she continued to roughly scour her skin with the loofah.  He had to pry it out of her hands.

“Enough, baby.  You’re hurting yourself.”

“Give it back!  I need it.”  She stood on her tiptoes, as he held it beyond her reach with one hand.  With his other arm, he turned off the spray, and gathered her close to his body, and pulled her out of the shower stall. 

“Let’s get you dried off.”  He threw the offending loofah into the bathroom sink and grabbed a towel off the rack.  He sat down on the toilet seat, and pulled her onto his lap and dried her like he would a little child. 

“Oh God, baby, look at your skin.  We need to get some ointment on some of these patches.”

“I’m still not clean.”  She shook her head, trying to clear it.  And then she looked down and actually saw the damage she had inflicted, and her mind finally registered the pain.  She sucked in a deep breath when he dried a rough spot.

“Ahhh, honey, you’re beginning to feel it now, aren’t you?”

She nodded her head, her blonde hair dripping all over him.  She reached touched it, and he pulled another towel off the rack and handed it to her.  She put her hair into a towel turban.

“I’ve never figured out how you girls were able to do that.  It’s just one of the many mysteries of women.”  He flashed a teasing grin.  She knew he was trying to lighten the moment, and tried to go with it.

“I’ve never understood how men are able to belch the alphabet, or why they started to practice and get good at it in the first place.” 

“That’s easy.  We wanted to impress the girls in elementary school.”  Rylie thought back to Jimmy Sherwood.

“Okay, I was impressed with how this one boy was able to make farting noises with his armpit when I was in elementary school, so I think I get it now.  Still doesn’t explain why grown men do it.”

“Again, an easy one.  We’re trying to relive our glory days.”  Rylie giggled.

“I think you’re dry now.  Want to put on that T-shirt?”

She shook her head.  “I’ve got to blow dry my hair first.  Otherwise, the T-shirt will get all wet.”

“Gotchya.”  He gave her a considering look.  “Will you be all right?”

She blushed.  She hated that he felt the need to ask the question, but she understood why.  “Yes, I promise, Dare.  I’ll be out in a few.  No more melt-downs.”  She sighed.  “At least not alone in the bathroom.”

He kissed her forehead.  “That’s good enough for me.”

She didn’t know how he was able to do it, but he stood up with her in his arms and then set her down.  Then he wrapped the towel around her and stood her in front of the mirror. 

“There’s my beautiful girl.”  She looked into the smiling brown eyes behind her in the mirror and saw nothing but sincerity.  It helped.

***

D
arius waited impatiently in the bedroom.  He flung back the covers on the bed.  And looked around to see if there was anything else he could do.  If he had been a nail biter, he’d have no nails left.  God, what happened in Victoria?  Her face was bad enough.  Obviously, she’d been hit, but she’d been strangled as well. 

Then there was Rylie herself, and the scene in the shower.  She looked shell shocked.  She looked like one of the men who had just been through a mission that had gone horribly wrong.  It had taken everything he had to leave the bathroom.

Finally, the door opened, and out came Rylie, no sign of Sylvia remained.  He scooped her up into his arms.  She let out a tiny squeak.  Ever so gently, like she was made of spun glass, he lowered her to the bed and pulled up the covers.  He crawled over her and pulled her into his arms. 

“Tell me.”  She breathed in a trembling breath, and the tears finally started.  Thank fuck.

“I killed a man.”  She shoved her face into his shirt and kept talking.  Not understanding her.

“Honey, slow down, I didn’t understand anything you said, except you killed a man.  I can promise you something, if you killed him, he needed killing.”

She looked up at him with tearstained eyes.  “You can’t know that,” her voice was hoarse.

“Absolutely, without a doubt.  If you had to kill someone, he had to die.”  He put his hand on the back of her head, supporting it so she could look at him.  Her neck was so slim and bruised, it looked like a wilted flower stem holding up a beautiful bloom. 

“Now talk to me, Rylie.”

“I killed him.”  Her lip trembled.  He kissed it, tasting salt.

“I got that part.  Can you tell me his name?”

“Does it matter?  He’s dead.”  It mattered.  He needed to inform the team.  Needed to find out everything they could about the fucker. 

“Tell me his name, and then tell me what happened.”

“His name was Klein.  He had cold dead eyes.  They were blue, and he had terrible breath, and he wanted to kill me.  I don’t know anything else about him.”

“That’s enough, baby.  Now tell me the rest.”

“It was horrible.  I got to the barn, and the girls were all in this tiny root cellar under the barn, it was so small, and there were sixteen of them. 
Sixteen,
Dare!  They hadn’t even dug a hole for them to do their business, they gave them two buckets, and threw food down to them.  They had been treating them like animals for the last three days.” 

“And you stopped it, didn’t you?  You and Sylvia did your kick-ass thing, and stopped that shit cold, didn’t you, Rylie?”

“But not before it had been happening to the girls for three days.  I failed them.”  The tears started again, and he used his thumbs trying to stop the flood.  When he saw it wasn’t working, he pulled up the bed sheet and wiped at her eyes. 

“Baby, you have to stop blaming yourself.”

“Well, who else is there to blame but me?”

“Did you kidnap them?  Did you bring them there?”  He knew his tone was harsh, but he couldn’t stop himself.  She needed to see things correctly. 
She was not to blame.  She was helping these girls. 

“But, Dare, they trusted me.  When I left Vancouver, I had gained their trust, and I had told them they would be sold, but that...” her voice trailed off.

“You had told them what?”

“I didn’t promise them anything.  I couldn’t.  I couldn’t give them hope things would be okay when they were sold because they knew it wouldn’t be.  They’re smart girls.  I couldn’t give them hope they would be rescued because it would ruin everything.  My hands were tied.”

“Of course, you couldn’t tell them anything else.  You did the exact right thing.”

“I felt like a piece of shit.  Do you know how dirty I’ve felt when I went home to my family?  It’s been a nightmare.”

“You should be feeling like a God damned hero.”

“Yeah, but what if I fail?”

“You’re like a SEAL, and you won’t allow yourself to fail.  Now, tell me more, tell me how you kicked ass and took names when you
did
find out they were in that God-awful cellar.”  He grinned at her, willing her to smile back at him.  She still looked sad.

“I went down and made sure each of them got up the ladder.  I argued with some of them because they were mad at me, just like I told you.  After the last one had got to the top, there was sudden silence, and I knew I was in trouble, so I pulled out my knife.”

“What knife?”

“The knife I keep in my laptop bag.”

Dare looked at her and rubbed the muscles in her scalp and at the back of her neck that had tightened to new heights. 

“You’ll have to show me later.  But tell me what happened next.”

“I hid it in my boot.  When I got to the top of the ladder, there was a man who just hit me.  Hard.  In the face.  I got him back.  I kicked him in the legs, and he went down.  But he got up really fast, and started to strangle me with my own purse strap, that’s when I pulled my knife out, and he pulled his gun.”  Quietly, so quiet he could barely hear, she said, “my knife won.”

Darius was sure there was a lot more to the story than her abbreviated version.  What’s more, there was the toll this would always take on Rylie’s soul. 

“I am so happy your knife won.  There have been plenty of times my knife has won, Rylie.”

“You’re a medic.  You save people.”  He raised his eyebrow.

“Really?  Is it really all you think I am?  Just a medic?”

“No, you’re more.  I know that.  You do what you have to do.”

“Just like you did.”

“Dare, it happened so fast.  I didn’t consciously know I was killing someone.  I was just fighting for my life.”

“There’s the difference.  I’ve known I was killing.  You’re an innocent.”