“Not too long after you hurt yourself, actually. We were sent to Cartina to aid in a smash and grab, to bring out someone from a drug lord’s compound.”
“Not your usual trash-hauling mission.” He took the mug from the table and knocked back a swallow.
“Not by a long shot.”
“So what went wrong?”
She couldn’t miss the dual intent in his eyes, concern for her and assessment, a need to understand on a professional level what had gone wrong as if perhaps he could have saved her. Would she have been rescued right away if someone like Rick had been sent out? She felt the shift inside her, the tiny voice whispering, Trust him.
“Our squadron commander went for a walk and didn’t come back. I got worried, didn’t follow orders, went looking for him. Everything went to hell when a rival drug lord staged an attack. I was caught flat-footed there in the middle of a jungle war.”
She downed the rest of her cocoa. “Definitely not my finest judgment moment, but you would have to know this commander. He was one of those who…well, he wasn’t the warm fuzzy type. He micromanaged the hell out of us. Then all of sudden we hear he had this wife who died, except maybe she was alive after all. Suddenly he had this vulnerable chink like the rest of us.”
“So you worried when he didn’t come back and went searching.”
“Right. And got caught in the middle of a turf war between two of the biggest badasses in Cartina.”
The horror of it washed over her again.
“Which group caught you?”
“It wasn’t a group, but rather the leader of one group fleeing after his compound was overrun. Luckily, he didn’t know I was military. I ditched my flight suit and just kept on my running shorts and the tank top I was wearing underneath. The last thing I wanted was to be identified as military to these guys.”
Nola shivered. She’d been under the knife so many times during her surgeries. She’d never imagined landing in the hands of amoral animals who cut people for pleasure. “I pretended to be an escaped captive of the other guy. I figured things would go better for me that way since I would have some value as a hostage.”
“You think well on your feet.” He set his mug aside and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning closer. “You’re a tribute to the uniform.”
“Thank you.” She shoved her mug out of the way and cupped his face. “And no, I wasn’t raped, in case you’re wondering.”
A long exhale rattled through him. “I wasn’t going to ask, but thank you for letting me know. I also know, though, that there are plenty of other horrors. It must have been a hellish time.”
“Ramon Chavez was a strange man.” She sagged in the wingback chair. “A brute on the one hand, but with these old world values on the other. He didn’t think twice about slapping me around, but he never laid a sexual hand on me. It was as if he saw me as a rebellious daughter type and he was a tyrannical father.”
“A father with a gun to your head.” He gripped the arms of his chair with barely contained rage.
She nodded.
“For how long?”
“Time was so weird, surreal, but basically about three days.” Those days rolled through her memory again, the determination and the fear. Silence stretched now and she appreciated that Rick gave her the moment to digest those memories in this quiet room with nothing but the sound of the dripping faucet and Lauren’s gentle snoring.
Eventually—she had no idea how much later—he turned his mug around and around on the table and looked at her again.
“How were you rescued?” More of that professional assessment gleamed through, but with a steely determination that he would have rescued her faster.
“Rescued? I got away from Chavez myself.”
“Oh.” He blinked hard and fast. “I apologize for underestimating you.”
“I managed to stay alive long enough to find a time to overpower him and escape.”
She remembered well the thrill of that fight, the need for vengeance. It wasn’t a pretty feeling to realize how vulnerable she was to someone like Chavez. She’d been so close to plunging a knife between the man’s ribs while he lay there unconscious.
In the end, she’d palmed the blade, hog-tied him and run for the nearest city where she knew a safe house waited. “I bided my time and kicked Chavez’s butt. He died later in a tunnel collapse trying to infiltrate an airbase.”
“There is justice in the world.”
“I guess.” The death seemed too easy for all the grief he’d caused so many. “Although I would have preferred to see him stand trial for all the havoc he wreaked on people’s lives. I figure that just wasn’t meant to be.”