Jack looked down at her, a thousand thoughts racing through his head. His gaze cut to Reese again, who stared back. Then he looked over at Sam, whose expression was unreadable.
“We have to get out of here.” It was Cassie who at last spoke. A voice of reason slicing through the stunned silence that had come over the room. She stood beside Annabelle’s unconscious figure, her fingers on her friend’s throat, searching for a pulse, as Jack had. When she found one, she straightened, her hand remaining on Annabelle’s arm. “The cops will be on their way. We’ve broken a thousand laws.”
Dylan stood beside them. He took off his jacket and laid it over Annabelle, not saying anything.
“An’ the bad guys might come back, eh’?” Beatrice added, nodding toward the now shut trap door across the room. In-between them and the trap door were several strewn bodies, all with pools of blood spreading beneath them. Jack assumed these had been dispatched by Sam.
The only living employee of the Colonel’s left remaining in the building was Reese. Who wasn’t moving and wasn’t talking. He was wise enough to keep even his breathing on the quiet side.
“Bring Reese. I have some questions for him.” Jack gave the order and then moved back to Annabelle. Cassie and Dylan stepped out of the way and watched, apprehensive looks on their faces, as Jack shoved Sam’s gun into the waist band of his jeans at the small of his back. Then he bent and once more lifted Annabelle into his arms.
Sam grabbed Reese’s upper arm and yanked the man off of the ground. “Come on, hoss. Step to it.” Reese stumbled ahead of him, shrugging his jacket straight as he did so.
Jack led the way out of the building, holding Annabelle in his arms. Once outside, he looked around, searching for a mode of transportation.
“Two lots down,” Sam supplied. “There’s a boat tied to the pier.”
Jack moved in that direction. In the distance, sirens wailed.
Chapter Sixteen
Jack gazed down at Annabelle’s sleeping face. A nasty bruise had blossomed across her right cheek bone and there was a bluish darkness beneath her long, thick lashes. Her skin was pale, her lips cracked. And she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
His fingers shook as he brushed a lock of her long hair from her forehead. The man who’d hit her hadn’t held anything back. He’d been angry at Jack’s foolish comment, that much Jack knew. And then Annabelle had prevented him from killing Jack, which hadn’t quelled the thug’s wrath any. He’d taken it out on Annabelle, striking with everything he had.
“How are you feeling?” a voice asked from behind Jack.
He turned to face Cassie, who was poking her head through the low door of the cabin. He shrugged, and then winced a little as he did so.
“I’m fine,” he told her. “Thanks for patching me up.”
“It’s my job.” Cassie shrugged, ducking into the cabin. “Or, it used to be.” She felt strange, now, making eye contact with the man who sat on the make-shift bed beside Annabelle. There was a lot about Jack Thane, and to be frank, his older friend from Texas, that made Cassie distinctly nervous.
During his rough treatment by the Colonel’s men, Jack had been sliced in several places, where someone’s rings or brass knuckles had dug into the flesh of his abdomen and sides and ripped gashes across his skin. By fortunate chance, other than a small cut on his left cheek, his face had been left intact, but more than a little bruised. Cassie had blithely asked for the necessary material to create stitches, which she honestly felt he needed on a few of the deeper cuts across his stomach. But she’d only meant it as a joke since they were on a boat and nowhere near an emergency room.
However, Samuel Price had produced the materials without so much as batting an eye, and Jack seemed to think nothing of it.
That was strange enough. To add to it, however, was the fact that when she’d been tending Thane’s wounds, she’d noticed two very palpable things about him. One, he had a body like granite. It was large and sculpted and rigid and it looked, for lack of a better descriptor, incredibly functional. She doubted he ever ate carbs.
Two, there were scars. A lot of them. Some of them weren’t at all small.
Plus, there was this relatively old tattoo on his left shoulder. She could tell it was old because another scar actually ran through the tattoo. The color was also no longer exceptionally vivid. It took several years for a tattoo’s color to fade. This tattoo was enigmatic. A number and a strange symbol. It wasn’t like any she’d ever seen before. She couldn’t help but wonder what it meant. She also couldn’t help but wonder whether Annabelle had ever seen the tattoo. And whether she knew what it meant.
Cassie was vitally aware, now, that there was not only a lot about Jack Thane she didn’t know, but that whatever it was, it was… violent. And she wasn’t sure she was interested in ever learning what it was.
She moved forward to place the palm of her hand against Annabelle’s forehead. She pulled one of Annabelle’s eyelids up, and then the other. Then she moved her hand away and went to the sink to get a glass of water.
“How is she?”
Cassie seemed to consider her words before she spoke. She took a deep breath. “Only a concussion can knock someone out like that, and if I had an MRI machine, I’d insist on a scan. However…” She returned to his side and placed the water on the low table next to him. “Her pupils look all right. She wakes up whenever we shake her, and she knows who the current president is – along with all sorts of trivial things that Clara and Dylan came up with to ask her. So, she’s got her head still screwed on, even if someone did try to knock it off her shoulders.”
Cassie sat down next to him and continued. “All in all, she wasn’t out long. We know there’s no amnesia, and apparently no confusion. Other than the brief bout she experienced when she woke up to see all of us standing over her. I think she was pretty sure she was dead at that point.”
Jack nodded, a small smile playing about his lips.
Cassie continued. “She’s got an incredibly hard head, I have to say. I think she just sort of… turned out her own lights.” She sighed and stood again. “I’m pretty sure she’ll be okay. If I wasn’t, I would tell you to get her to a hospital. But, we should keep waking her up every twenty minutes or so, just in case.”
Jack nodded again, this time in compliance.
“Try to get her to drink something,” she finished and then tried to leave.
Jack’s voice held her back. “We need to talk, Cassie.”
Cassie swallowed and hesitated before turning around, in the doorway, to face Jack once more. “Why?” she asked, forcing a smile. “You breaking up with me?”
This brought a smile to Jack’s face as well. In that instant, Cassie could see what it was about him that had Annabelle so enthralled. Whatever else he may be up to and whatever else he may have done, Jack Thane had a killer smile.
“I want to thank you, Cassie,” he started, his Sheffield accent massaging her nerves, “first, for being such a good friend to Annabelle.”
This caused Cassie’s brow to furrow. “Jack, I’m not Annabelle’s friend for your benefit,” she told him, matter-of-factly. “I’m her friend because she’s a good person, well worthy of friendship.”
Jack nodded. “I’ll second that. However, I am still grateful for it. Is that so wrong?” He asked softly.
Cassie honestly couldn’t think of anything wrong with it, so she shook her head.
“Second, I know you noticed the scars.”