Doc Reynolds
McCabe: Get your ass to Hidden Agenda right now. Bring everything you’ve got. Sending you the address in the next message. Delete it the second you get here.
Reynolds: We agreed. I treat your people at their homes. Anything else puts me at risk.
McCabe: Raelynn’s in trouble. If you don’t get here in fifteen minutes, she might not make it.
Fuck. I’ve seen her three times since the team got back from some mission last month. She was fine a week ago.
Giving up on the steaming mug of tea and the relaxing evening I was planning, I grab my keys and unlock the trunk in my closet. My black medical bag is always fully stocked, but McCabe said “bring everything.” So I pull out the duffel underneath. If I have to perform surgery—without anesthetic—this might be the last time I answer the man’s texts.
It’s a damn good thing the drive from my home in West Seattle to Hidden Agenda is a short one. Less time for me to change my mind.
Light streams from the windows near the roofline. I park my Lexus next to the other three cars in the lot and step out into the cool, night air. For six years, I’ve treated McCabe, his team, and sometimes, those they’ve helped. Gunshot wounds, concussions, the occasional broken bone…
I don’t ask questions. Never have, never will. Why when the answers are only ever “injured in the line of duty” or “tortured by the worst of humanity”? Some things, a man doesn’t want to know.
A biometric lock with a keypad is the only indication this isn’t your normal warehouse. McCabe didn’t give me a code, so I try the handle. It opens easily to reveal a huge, brightly lit space with top-of-the-line gym equipment, a climbing wall, and a boxing ring.
“Doc?” Graham jogs over to me with Wyatt ambling behind him. “I didn’t think you knew about this place.”
“I didn’t. Not until fifteen minutes ago. Where’s Raelynn?”
“Ry’s five minutes out,” Graham says. “West and Inara will be a little longer.”
“I don’t give a damn about McCabe. Where. Is. My. Patient?” I’d walk out of here if I weren’t so worried about Raelynn. Ryker owes me a huge fucking debt after this.
“With Ry,” Wyatt says. “You can set up over here. She’s in bad shape.” The former SEAL gestures to a large table with eight chairs around it. “Best we can do besides a camping mat topped with a sleeping bag.”
I start unpacking the basics—blood pressure cuff, gauze, antiseptic, and suture kit—and Wyatt taps his ear. “Doc’s here.”
“Huh?”
“Comms,” he says. “Ry’s two blocks away.”
For the first time in years, I ask. “What happened?”
“You don’t want to know.” He and Graham head back to a group of couches arranged in front of large, flatscreen monitors mounted on the far wall. Two other men stare at me, one haunted, the other curious. If I thought Wyatt would tell me, would I ask their names? Or who they are?
Nope.
“Doc!” McCabe shouts as the door slams open. “She’s in trouble!”
Fuck. Raelynn’s covered in blood from her cheek all the way down to her waist. Cradled in the big man’s arms, she’s deathly pale, her eyes closed, and a pained expression twisting her full lips.
“Put her on the table.” I wrap the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm. Dangerously low. “You’re the only one with O-Neg, McCabe,” I say. “Pull up a chair.”
Raelynn doesn’t stir when I slide the needle into her vein. More evidence she’s barely holding on. Fluids first. Then blood.
“They cut off part of her ear,” Ryker says quietly. “Near as we can tell, they had her for almost an hour.”
“An hour? All this,” I gesture to my patient, “happened in an hour?”
The man’s multi-colored eyes darken. “She was lucky. In fifteen minutes, I could do a lot worse. And would if the men who did this weren’t already dead.”
This is the most he’s spoken to me since that night six years ago when he found me outside a bar, so drunk I could barely stand. McCabe offered me a way out of my own misery, and I was so desperate, I didn’t think twice about the answer.
Looking down at my patient, my gaze softens. She needs me. Whatever I think of McCabe’s work and the men who hurt Raelynn, I can help her.
“You’re done,” I say, pressing a square of gauze to Ryker’s elbow. “Pressure here.”
I drop the needle and tubing into my sharps container and pull out a roll of bright pink compression bandages. “Your choices are this or neon green.”
“Do I look like I care? We need to be wheels up by midnight, and I’ve got shit to do.”
“You’re leaving her alone? Here?”
“Do I look like a fucking idiot, Reynolds? Wyatt and Rip will stay with her.” Ryker sinks back into the chair, watching Raelynn closely. Halfway through the pint of O-Neg, West and Inara join the rest of the team across the room, nodding at me as they pass.
Raelynn’s eyes flutter and she groans weakly. A single tear trails back to her hairline, through a patch of dried blood.
“There you are. Don’t move, okay?”
Her lips twitch. “And here…I was gonna…ask you to dance.”
***
“Let’s take a look at that ear,” I say gently. Blood still oozes from the wound, but it’s slowed enough I can press a thick wad of gauze to what’s left of the lobe.
“How much longer, Doc? I need—“
“A hospital. A chest x-ray. An orthopedist to examine that knee. But since that’s not possible, you’ll rest. for at least two weeks.”
“Hell, no.” She pushes up on an elbow so quickly, I can’t let go of the gauze, and the gash opens, blood dripping onto her shoulder.
“Shee-it!”
Ryker rushes over to the table. “She’s bleeding again.”
“She wouldn’t be if she’d stay down. Don’t give me that look, McCabe. You called, I came. Like I always do. Only this time, I’m here. In the one place we agreed I’d never be.”
Pinching Raelynn’s ear—hard—I wince when she makes a small, pained sound. “You can’t afford to lose any more blood,” I say softly. “Breathe through the pain. In. Out…”
Glaring at the big man, I wait for him to tell me to go to fuck myself.
“I didn’t have a choice.” He stares down at her—at the blood glistening on the table—then at the pink compression bandage around his elbow. “We need her here.”
My outrage spills over. “F-for what? She needs rest! Two weeks of it. At least. Maybe more for that knee. You can’t seriously expect her to be field ready after all this!”
“I’m not an idiot. She’s benched until you—“
“Hell, no,” Raelynn says, her voice rough. She grasps McCabe’s arm. “You can’t. Nash…”
“You almost died!” Ryker shouts. “On my watch. So you’re staying here with Rip and Wyatt while the rest of us go—“
“Enough!” I can’t take my hand from Raelynn’s ear. If I could, I’d slam it down on the table hard enough to break something. Probably at least a couple of fingers. “You say another goddamned word, and I’m taking my patient out of here. You broke our deal. If I didn’t owe you…” With a shake of my head, I sigh. “Step away, McCabe. Or we’re through.”
Grabbing a chair, he throws it all the way to the boxing ring. “Patch her up and get the fuck out of here.”
“Well, that was something,” I mutter.
Focus on your patient. She needs you.
“I need to be field ready, doc. Please.”
I finish winding the bright pink compression bandage around her head at an angle. “No.”
“You don’t understand. Nash…he’s…”
Leaning closer, I meet her watery gaze. “No. You don’t understand, Raelynn. I’m a doctor. Maybe not a respected one, but I swore an oath. I broke it once. I won’t do it again.”
They say rock bottom is the lowest of the low. But they’re wrong. There’s somewhere worse. And I’ve been there.
“Have you ever been in love?” Raelynn asks. I help her sit up, staring across the room at the door.
“Once. You remind me of her.”
“My husband died in my arms. Four years ago.”
Oh, God. I should tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t get the words out.
“I didn’t think I’d have another chance to find love. Hell, I didn’t want one. Until I met Nash.”
It all makes sense now. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
Raelynn’s gaze darts from the dried blood on her flannel shirt to her bandaged knee. “They’ll kill him if we can’t get to him in time. That’s why we’re here. Why we’re not at my place right now. Why I ain’t lettin’ Ryker bench me, no matter what.”
I know that look in her eyes. She’ll find a way to get in on this rescue mission whether I help her or not.
Shoulders heaving, I open my black bag. “Listen carefully, Raelynn. If you have nausea, vomiting, confusion, memory loss, or blackouts, they could be signs of a serious concussion. The tape job on your knee should last a couple of days. Keep your leg elevated as much as possible. Ice it, and absolutely no running.”
Filling a syringe with a dose of cortisone, I wait for her to look at me. “This should start to work within twelve to eighteen hours. But it’s not a cure-all, and it won’t do a damn thing for the pain tonight.”
“I can handle pain.”
God. She reminds me so much of—stop. I can’t go down that road tonight.
“Then breathe deep. This is going to hurt.”