Her face was bloodied, her eye half-shut.
Rage bubbled up even as I caught another boot to the side.
“No,” she yelled as she was lifted and hauled up over one of the other men’s shoulders. “No!” she cried again as the man started making his way toward the door.
“Finish this. We need to go,” Adams barked at the man who loomed over me as I tried to push back up, but the pain that shot through my side made it impossible.
My gaze lifted, finding Shawn’s on me.
“Bellamy!” she screamed, her arm outstretched, begging for my help as she disappeared out the front door.
Fuck.
No.
No.
Goddamn it.
Rolling onto my side, I planted one hand as another foot slammed forward.
“You’re a disgrace to your country,” I started, then took a shot in the dark based on how he fought, “Jarhead.”
Something in him seemed to snap at that, like he was finally remembering himself, recalling that once upon a time, he’d done this sort of work for honor, for country, for his fellow citizens, not for some bastard who raped innocent women.
With that, he pulled back his boot.
And it collided with my head.
I didn’t know anything else for several precious moments.
When I came to, though, anyone living was gone, making my stomach twist hard.
Shawn.
I had to get Shawn.
Before something horrific happened to her.
“Fuck,” I growled, forcing my arms under my body, pressing up little by little as all the pains started to come back to me now that the adrenaline of the fight had been absorbed by my system. “Fuck fuck fuck,” I growled, feeling my vision swim in and out as I kept pushing myself up, trying to focus past the pain, trying to remember that you could withstand damn near anything for a few minutes. People endured burning alive. Or breaking damn near every single bone in their bodies.
I could get myself up.
I could get my phone to call my team.
And then I could go after her.
There was no choice.
I had to.
I had to get her back.
“The fuck…” a voice started, making my head whip over.
And there was Bob. The technical owner of the cabin, of the land around it.
He looked about the same as he had years ago when I’d made the deal with him. He was somewhere in his middle age and fit, but with a little extra padding to get through the cold winters.
Bob was a wilderness man, through and through. Heads on the wall, deer meat in the freezer, tanned hides on the bed sort of wilderness man.
His slowly graying hair was tucked under a cap with flaps to cover his ears. A puffy dark blue vest was over his simple blue and gray flannel.
“Bob,” I said, pushing back onto my ass.
“Heard screaming. Know the deal. Mind my business. But I ain’t gonna sit around and let a woman get hurt out here either,” he said as his gaze moved over the bodies scattered around.
“Bob,” I tried again. “They took my girl,” I said, waving outward.
“What way?” he asked, stiffening.
“I was knocked out,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he told me, turning and rushing out.
If he came across them, at least the rifle he had strapped across his back and the gun I’d seen in a holster at his hip would give him a chance of getting Shawn back for me.
I cursed my way back onto my feet, going into the kitchen to grab my phone where it was still sitting on the charger like there hadn’t just been a massacre and a kidnapping.
“Yeah?” Smith answered.
“He took her,” I blurted out. “Adams took her.”
“Shit,” Smith hissed, and I could hear him moving. “When? How? Where?”
I rattled off the area that the cabin was in Montana, then told him the general timeframe.
“Ambushed,” I admitted.
“Shit. Okay. I’m getting Quin now. And Holden. The others too. We will get Nia on this, figure out where he might take her. Did you get any of them?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking around at the bodies.
“Anyone alive to talk?” Smith asked, making me snap to attention again. Purpose gave me the focus I needed to think past the pain assaulting my system.
“Looking,” I said, wincing as I moved.
“You’re hurt?” Smith asked.
“They wouldn’t have been able to take her if I wasn’t,” I told him as I made my way into the living room.
“No one is blaming you, Bells,” Smith said before I heard the muffled sounds of him talking to the crew as he, I imagined, held the phone to his chest so I didn’t hear.
The first two bodies I hobbled to were dead. One had multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen that I only partially remember inflicting. The other had a much more minor looking neck wound that was just perfectly placed enough to make him bleed out.
“Any luck?” Smith asked.