“Just leave,” she begged of them. Her parents were wonderful people. They didn’t deserve having to deal with the nightmares that would soon come; the depression she could feel eating at her soul. The lies she would have to tell when people asked how she was… because she would lie.
No one ever needed to know what had happened to her. The scars were bad enough, but the things that were forced upon her, that she was forced to endure; nobody needed to ever know about them. The scars would tell their own story.
Waiting for her parents to finally leave was pure torture in the worst way. Even worse than what she’d suffered because she knew they loved her and wanted to help. Instead, she needed them to go so she could gather her resolve and do what she needed to do on her own to escape this living nightmare that was her own personal hell.
Hours later, after being poked and prodded like cattle at branding time, after endless hours of questions and telling the doctors she wanted no visitors no matter how persistent they were, she finally faked being in too much pain to want to deal with anyone anymore.
As the day faded and night came, the hospital became quiet and that’s when she slipped from bed carefully and grabbed the supplies she needed from the closet in her room. Taking one quick look in the hallway to make sure no one was coming to check on her, she made her way to the bathroom and closed and locked the door. With a deep breath, she said a quick prayer. “Please forgive me, Mom and Dads. I love you.”
Making her final escape, she felt free...
·?•? ?•?·
Looking through the scope of his Barrett M107 rifle, he waited for their target to appear. He needed just a split second. Sitting out at a distance of over a thousand meters away with the winds low, it was a perfect day for Linc to make the shot. Creed was on the other side of the mountain waiting in place as well, just in case their target wandered to his side of the compound— they’d been watching for the last week and a half.
He was more than ready to get back home, and he knew his brother was too. Kennedy was constantly on their minds, and when they’d been called away by Uncle Sam to eliminate this arms dealer/child slave trader they knew they had to do it. They were the only ones willing to do a straight kill for pieces of shit like this guy.
However, the toll worrying about Kennedy was taking on their minds was not conducive to concentrating and making sure there was no trace of them when they left. She hadn’t been in a healthy frame of mind either, refusing to allow visitors or talking to the psychological staff about what happened. Plus, she kept trying to rip her IV out and was just being plain stubborn.
The only time she mellowed out, as far as they could tell anyway, was when they were in the room. She might glare at those around her but she would watch the two of them while the doctors or nurses did what needed doing, which was usually just checking her vitals and making sure her wounds were healing correctly. About a week after she woke up, they’d learned really quick that needles, or anything sharp for that matter, could not be in the same room as her.
The first time they’d come in to take her blood and do a few small tests, she’d stabbed the doctor in the thigh with a syringe and ran from the room ripping her IVs right from her arms. Had he and Creed not been walking up to see her, she probably would have made a solid run for it. By the time she’d run straight into him, she had herself so worked up that she fainted as soon as he put his arms around her.
Once they found out why she’d run, they told the doctors to do nothing else unless it was absolutely necessary and only while they were there. They didn’t care that they weren’t anything to her yet. People needed to understand the trauma she’d suffered, and everyone just kept throwing things at her without thinking it through first.
Doctors studied her like a bug under a microscope, her family wanted anything and everything done to make her better, and Emily, just fucking Emily, he thought shaking his head… She was afraid to see Kenny for fear that she would be tossed back into her nightmare. What she didn’t understand was that Emily was probably one of the few people that could possibly bring her back from the edge she was always on.
The sudden crackle in his ear nearly made him jump as Creed told him, “He’s in my sight.” Pausing, he waited for confirmation. “Got him. Let’s go home.”
“Thank fuck,” Linc murmured back.
Packing up his gear and breaking down his gun, he made his way down the mountain to the Jeep he had waiting for him. Jumping in, he drove to the spot where he was to pick up Creed. Watching as the trees flew by the faster he drove, he couldn’t help admire the view, the freedom of the rolling mountains and forests of Argentina. If it weren’t such a drug and gun run country, he thought Kenny would enjoy it here. The peacefulness and openness of the country might help ease her mind but the violence surely wouldn’t.
Slowing down just enough for Creed to toss his gear in the back and hop in the passenger’s seat, he sped up again making their way to the airport as fast as they could.
·?•? ?•?·
Eliminating targets were one of the things Creed struggled with when going out on a job. They didn’t just accept the intel Uncle Sam gave them, they did their own research. Every once in a while they would get faulty info and have to scrap the job and head back to their unit, but the ones that were accurate, he always relished in the chase. Knowing they were helping to dispel the world of one more sick son of a bitch helped ease his conscience a bit.
They’d done some bad things in their time in the Marines, questionable things, where they had to follow orders or be court-martialed. So as soon as they could, they opted out and branched out to basically become mercenaries for their government. It gave them the freedom they needed to choose which assignments they did or did not take. It also meant they left at a moment’s notice because if they were being called, it indicated that things were dire and no one else wanted the job— whether because retaliation was a major issue or because they were just too frightened to do it themselves. Sometimes it was both. They were so good at their job that they were often called in from other governments to eliminate a target they couldn’t touch for political reasons.
They’d gotten the call for this particular job the first night Nate and Ty had forced them to go home instead of watching over Kennedy the way they had been since she’d been admitted to the hospital. They hadn’t been able to do anymore than call Nate and explain they had to leave before they hopped on the jet for Argentina.
Every thought of Kennedy left their minds while they checked the intel on their mark, one José Martinez, a drug runner and child slave trader. All indications showed him as one sick bastard and he needed to be eliminated immediately. It took them a week to find him on his compound deep in the Patagonia Forest region close to the Chile border. He was a smart bastard with his hideout far from any rivers or roads so there was no easy access. Hiking was the only way to get to him.
They spent nearly a week tracking him once their informant had told them where his compound was. After finding him, they both took up a sniper spot on opposite sides of the mountain waiting for him to appear because apparently, he liked to stay hidden like the rat he was. So when Creed had gotten his first glance of him beating a woman he took it and shot Martinez right between the eyes.
After packing away his rifle, he ran as fast as he could down the mountain to meet Linc before jumping in the Jeep, and now they were on their way to the jet and back to Austin. Not knowing if they would be pursued by Martinez’s men had them both too tense to talk about anything until they pulled up to the airplane.
At the captain’s nod, they were in the air about fifteen minutes later. Finally able to relax, Creed opened his laptop to check his email and boot up his phone because they kept all electronics, except for their two-way mics, on the plane so there was no distraction or possible giveaways during the mission.
When both of their phones started beeping like crazy, he had an ominous feeling snake up his spine. Looking at his messages, he saw dozens of texts from Nate and Ty. Opening them up, he scrolled to the top and his heart nearly exploded in panic…
Nate: Kenny’s gone…
That was all he had read before he exploded. “Motherfucker!” he screamed out, stomping to the cockpit and telling the pilot, “The faster, the better.”
Sitting back in his seat he looked at Linc, who was typing furiously on his phone, presumably to Nate or Ty. “Well?” he questioned more harshly than he’d intended.