Page 54 of Lucky Charm
“Classified. Can’t talk about it.” Hunt grinned.
The quirk of her lips was there and gone. “Is Quaid okay?”
The doctor mantle settled back on her shoulders. He hated that. He wanted his Cait. What the hell was he doing? “Yeah, he’s here in the hospital. I think they’re moving him to Germany, but I don’t have an update yet. K-Rock had a minor fracture in his upper arm. He’s back in quarters.”
“K-Rock got hurt?”
Cursing himself, he swept the hair off her face. “Slipped coming down that incline to the helicopter. Hairline fracture in his upper arm. He’s fine.”
He couldn’t help it. He leaned in and lightly kissed her.
The quiet squeak of the curtain pulling back announced his time with her was over. The colonel came quietly into the room.
“How did my blanket get here?” Her luminous eyes froze him in place.
“I brought it. I know how cold you get.” He kissed her forehead again and extracted himself. Her hand was slow to drop away, her reluctance another tie that bound him.
He nodded at the colonel. “You have a pen and anything I can write on?”
She nodded, handing him the items with no comment. He scribbled a number to his personal cell and handed Colonel Cartwright back her pen and pad.
Returning to Cait, he laid the paper right in her hands and kissed her forehead. “Rest.”
“Be smart out there, Hunt.” Cait’s soft words felt like a blessing which was a fanciful, stupididea. Who blessed a man who killed people for a living?
He waved a hand to her without looking back.
Her siren’s song stayed with him as he slipped unseen into the night.
∞∞∞∞∞
November 9, 2019
Day 5
The dreams were bad.
Every time Cait closed her eyes and dropped into sleep, they started. Filled with jumbled images, those she’d suffered through in the last twenty-four hours focused on the moments when she’d bounced on the shoulder of her kidnapper. The smell of his unwashed body, the chill of the winter day, the panic over getting separated from Hunt were all vivid, unrelenting, and more intensified because nothing in the dream followed reality. Her knifing the man was never part of the scenario, but the ping of the shot, the dropping to the snow, and raising her head to see Hunt’s face were there. Only every time he had a bullet between his eyes with the snow awash in red, and she was utterly lost in a snowy landscape with no one there – not Carter, not Quaid, not her kidnapper, not Hunt – no one.
Struggling against her covers, she kicked away the twisted mess and swallowed hard against a sobbing wreck of tears.
That wasn’t the way it happened.
She knew that.
But the images left her languishing in waves of fear. She didn’t need any experience with combat trauma to get it. The reality of what had happened triggered her, the despair of being left utterly alone crippling her emotionally. Again. The trauma of losing her father and brother and having a stepmother who, though loving, became emotionally distant because of mental illness was now supplanted by another difficult memory.
Her mind fought with dangerous, nasty truths from the mission – the situations she knew and the parts the team handled proficiently and silently, leaving her out of the loop. The confrontation had been bad, and the awareness that the fear left over was justified only pushed anxiety to towering heights.
Fortunately, she was without visitors right now.
She didn’t want to talk about the dreams with anyone. She needed to process, to unwind, to sort it out for herself. She wanted out of this hospital fishbowl – where people were dropping in because they could, each one bringing another tidbit of gossip Hunt warned about. Confirming or denying stopped by the third visitor. Classified became her watch word.
Every one of Hunt’s team minus Quaid had dropped in to check on her. The sheer caring touched her heart. They didn’t bring the gossip. They knew. Jo had been by her side non-stop. Duncan hovered like the best friend he was even though he was still on the mend from the flu.
God knows she appreciated the wonderful care, but the one person she wanted couldn’t come. Hunt’s duties gobbled a good portion of his time. He spent five hours in her room last night letting her sleep with his hand in hers, but that wouldn’t be repeated any time soon.
A surge of depression plummeted her spirits, and she shook with the need to cry again. She pushed away the bed cart with her lunch and sat upright to dangle on the bed. The lasting effects from the hypothermia were tight, sore muscles and dehydration along with many bruises and scratches, whether from her bout with the son of a bastard terrorist kidnapper or the tumbling fall with Hunt stayed undetermined. Hunt’s presence and a good night’s sleep wrapped in her soft blanket steadied her, but these back-to-back dreams through the day brutalized her tender memory.
