by Elle James
The smell of urine burned her nostrils and the cold hard ground pressed into her bones. She’d lost track of how many days she’d been there and couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there in the first place. Her captors kept asking her questions she couldn’t answer. They asked the same questions and she gave them the same answers. She couldn’t remember. No matter how many times they hit her, she still couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know.
She lay on the dirt, dried blood crusting on her lip and nose, her eye nearly swollen shut, and prayed for a miracle.
The door opened and a man yelled at her to get up.
When she couldn’t, he stalked into her cell and kicked her hard in the ribs.
She cried out, loud enough to wake herself out of her dream.
Still shaking, her rib still hurting from the dream kick, she sat up in the nice, soft bed and wrapped her arms around her legs. Going back to sleep was not an option. If she did, she’d be right back in that cell, suffering from the latest abuse.
She tried to think about anything other than Syria and the stench of her cell.
Jane. They call me Jane Doe. Whispering softly to herself, she tried to talk herself down from the nightmare. “You’re not in Syria. You’re in Virginia. You’re not being beaten. You’re okay.” Her eyelids drifted downward. Once...twice...
As soon as they closed, she was right back in that cell, her captor yelling down at her. Again, she opened her eyes, forcing herself back to consciousness.
When she thought she might fall asleep again, she pushed aside the comforter and left the bed, padding barefoot to the open door.
In the pale light from the stars outside the window, she could see Gus lying on the couch, his arms crossed behind his head, his eyes closed.
She wanted to wake him to talk to her and ground her in Virginia. But he looked so peaceful and asleep.
Jane sat on the carpet in front of the French door, determined to sit up all night. If she didn’t go to sleep, she couldn’t dream. If she didn’t dream, she wouldn’t end up back in Syria, wishing she could just die and get it over with.
Through the window, the stars shone, filling the sky like so many diamonds brilliantly sparkling. When she’d been in her cell, she hadn’t had a window to see outside. She’d gone days without fresh air or sunshine. Days passed, but she didn’t know how many or how long she’d been in her cell.
Now, sitting on a comfortable carpet, she should be grateful and happy that she was clean, well-fed and pain-free. But she couldn’t relax, couldn’t settle until she knew.
Who was she? Why had they captured her? What had they wanted from her?
Sitting in a plush house with all the food she could possibly eat, an endless amount of hot water for showers and people who could help her, she felt anxious, restless and worried.
If she could, she’d do her own sleuthing. By herself. That way if she learned anything about herself that was unfortunate or heinous, only she would know. She could live with that. But if Charlie and her team of former military men, Declan’s Defenders, learned that Jane Doe was a horrible person, she would feel that she’d let them down. All of their help would have been for naught. She’d have to leave, if they didn’t turn her over to the police, FBI or CIA first. A shiver rippled through her, shaking her entire body. She couldn’t bear to see the hate and disappointment in their faces after all they’d already done for her. And Gus would have been right to be suspicious.
She looked back at the couch and her heart stood still.
Gus was gone.
Jane sat up straight, her body tense, her pulse now pounding, shooting adrenaline through her system.
“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Gus appeared from behind her, carrying the blanket from her bed. “I thought you could use this.” He draped it over her shoulders. “I would have said something, but you were pretty caught up in whatever you were thinking about.”
Jane wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and pulled it close. “Thank you.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Didn’t want to,” she replied.
He went back to the couch, grabbed the comforter and returned, spreading it out on the floor beside her. “Bad dreams?”
She pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Yes.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk about them.” He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Or so my shrink said. I don’t always buy into that crap.”
She laughed softly. “In this case, I don’t think talking about it would help. It would only reinforce the memory.”
“Oh, so you have one?” He turned toward her, his eyes wide, questioning.
“Only from my captivity. And those are memories I’d rather forget.”
“Right.” He looked out the window. “If it helps, I thought some of my worst memories would never fade. I had nightmares for years about a mission gone incredibly bad. But the memories finally faded. They aren’t gone, but their impact doesn’t plague me nearly as much as it did in the beginning.”
Jane crossed her arms over her knees and rested her chin on them. “I don’t even have any good memories to think about to counteract the effects of the bad ones.” She wasn’t whining, only stating the facts. She didn’t want pity from the man beside her. Only understanding.
“Yeah. That’s gotta be tough.”
She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “So, you believe me about my memory loss?”
He gave a twisted smile, still staring out at the stars. “No, but I can imagine what it would be like not to remember the good times in life.”
“What are some of your good memories?” Jane asked. “Maybe I can borrow yours to think about when I’m in a bad place.”
He continued to stare out the window without speaking.
After a long moment, Jane didn’t think he would respond.
“The day I left the foster care system and joined the military is one of my best memories.”
“You were a foster child?”
He nodded. “Since I was seven and my parents and little sister died in a car crash on their way to pick me up from school. That was one of the days I had nightmares about for years,” he said, his voice so low, she barely caught his words.
“I’m sorry. It must have been hard for you.”
He shrugged. “You learn to keep moving. If you sit too long, you get swallowed by sadness. I kept moving. I got shuffled from one foster family to another. The first family had a boy of their own about my age. He was a bully and made my life pretty miserable. I put up with it until one day he shoved me so hard, I hit my head on the concrete sidewalk. I came up dizzy but fighting mad, and bloodied his nose.”
“The beast deserved it,” Jane said, wishing she could have been there for the little boy who had it hard enough dealing with the deaths of his parents.
“The boy’s parents blamed it all on me. I got placed with another family who had two other foster children. One was a teen with drug issues. The other was his brother, a kid just trying to survive in a world that had let him down. The teen ended up overdosing on meth. The foster parents were so distraught they quit the program and the two of us were farmed out to other homes. I had six different foster homes before I graduated high school. And I only graduated high school because I knew that’s what my mother and father would have wanted. I joined the marines to get away from it all.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“I’m not. You don’t know the good times unless you had the bad times to compare it with. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have a family who cared. Until I signed up for Force Reconnaissance.”
“Your team is your family?”
He nodded. “I’d give my life for any one of them. And they’d do the same.”
Jane sighed. “You’re lucky.”
> “Who knows?” Gus said. “We might find out that you have a whole family waiting to hear from you.”
“Or not. I feel like, deep in my gut, there isn’t anyone out there waiting for me.” She stared out the windows of the French door.
“Don’t give up yet,” Gus said. “Cole is pretty good at anything internet related.”
Jane gave a weak smile. “How can anyone find information about a person who has no basis or starting point?”
“The FBI and CIA do it all the time. Charlie has contacts in both from dealings her husband had with them. We’ll find out who you are soon enough.”
“And if you don’t like what you find?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Jane yawned and laid her cheek on her folded arms. “I’m so tired.”
“Would it help if you leaned on me? Maybe having someone close will keep you from reliving your nightmare.”
“Why would you do that?” She stared at him, her brow furrowing. “You don’t even trust me.”
“You know the saying... Keep your friends close but your enemies closer?” He gave her a crooked grin.
“Some say Sun Tzu was the originator of the quote,” Jane said. “But he said something like, ‘know your enemy and know yourself and you will always be victorious.’”
“So, you’ve studied Sun Tzu?”
Her frown deepened and she stared at the ground. “I must have.”
“Perhaps some of your memory is starting to come back.”
“I hope so,” she said.
“In the meantime, the offer still stands. You’re welcome to lean on me.”
She sighed. “I’m willing to try anything for a chance at dream-free sleep.”
Gus scooted closer and held open his arm. “Come here.”
She leaned into him and snuggled her cheek against his chest. “At least you won’t have to worry about me sneaking out while you sleep,” she said, her eyes drifting closed. Fully expecting the nightmares to continue, she waited.
Nothing. No images of angry men slapping her around, punching her and kicking her in the side. Just the arousing scent of male cologne and the reassuring feel of rock-hard muscles beneath her cheek. Gus, his military fighting skills and the backing of his band of brothers in arms would ward off the men who wished to hurt her in her dreams.
Jane drifted into a deep sleep. Her only dreams consisted of a man who held her gently, surrounding her with a feeling of family she was sure she’d never known.
* * *
GUS HELD JANE the rest of the night. At one point, he eased her down onto the comforter beside him and pulled her back against his front, spooning her body.
He told himself he only did it because it made it easier for him to keep track of her. If he were honest, he would admit he liked having her close.
Seeing her sitting on the floor in the borrowed nightgown, her long black hair hanging down her back and her narrow shoulders hunched, touched him somewhere he hated to admit existed. Because if it existed, it left him vulnerable in a way he hadn’t been vulnerable since his parents had died.
In some ways, she reminded him of the little boy he’d been with his trash bag full of whatever he could carry from his home to his foster family. He’d arrived at a strange house where nobody knew him and they knew each other. Every house he had gone to, he’d been the outsider, the person who didn’t really belong.
He saw that in Jane and it made his chest hurt.
Granted, she wasn’t a grieving seven-year-old who’d lost her parents. But, if she was telling the truth, she had lost a lot more than her family. She’d lost the memories that made her who she was.
Gus had faded memories of the father and mother who’d loved him, and the little sister who’d idolized him from the time she could talk. He had those memories to pull out whenever he was in a bad place.
What did Jane have? Memories of being beaten and held in a dirty cell in Syria?
His arm tightened around her, pulling her closer. He rested his cheek against her silky black hair and inhaled the scent of her skin. The first time he’d seen her he’d been impressed with her beauty. The long, sleek lines and raven-black hair had captured his attention, even before he realized she’d been watching Charlie’s movements.
From the strength of her determination to get to Charlie and the answers she so desperately desired, to the vulnerability of a woman fighting horrific nightmares, she made Gus think. About her, about her story and about his own reaction to the way she felt in his arms.
The situation had bad idea written all over it.
Yet Gus couldn’t let go. She felt right in his arms. Her body fit perfectly against his. She wasn’t too tall or too short. Jane was just right.
Gus must have fallen asleep.
Sunlight filtered through his closed eyelids, forcing him to crack them open. He lay for a moment in the sunlight, letting the bright rays warm his body.
Jane lay with her head on his biceps and one leg slung across his thighs, making it impossible to rise without waking her. Her breathing was deep and steady. No signs of despair or nightmares.
Though he ached from lying against the hard floor, Gus couldn’t regret having defended the woman against her bad dreams. Not when her warmth pressed up against him with only the thin fabric of her nightgown between them.
As he lay there, desire built from a spark to a flame. The longer he held her the more he wanted. She was not someone he could make love to. She was an assignment, the job, his responsibility, not his lover.
Gus had to get up and move away.
He slipped his legs from beneath hers and was in the process of scooting his arm from beneath her head when she blinked her eyes open.
She stared into his face, a slight pucker forming on her forehead. “Who...what...” Then as if recognition dawned, she bolted to an upright sitting position. “I must have fallen asleep.” She pushed the hair from her face and turned toward the sun shining through the window. Her eyes widened. “It’s morning.”
Gus chuckled and sat up, pulling the comforter across his lap to hide the evidence of his desire. “Yes, you slept and it’s morning.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry I took advantage of you. It couldn’t have been comfortable sleeping on the floor.”
“I’ve slept on worse.”
For a long moment, she stared out the window, the pulse at the base of her throat pounding hard. Finally, it slowed and she turned back to him. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ve slept that well in...well, I don’t really know how long.”
With her hair mussed and her face pink from sleep, she was even more beautiful than she’d been in the black dress the night before. Despite the faint bruise near her eye. The soft morning sunlight added a certain vulnerability, making her no less mysterious, but more approachable.
The more he stared, the more he realized he was getting caught in something he wasn’t ready to deal with.
Gus pushed to his feet, immediately turning away from Jane. “People are usually up pretty early around here. Carl will have breakfast ready before we get downstairs. You should probably get dressed.” And he should take another cold shower. But he couldn’t explain the need without revealing why. Instead, he grabbed his jeans and held them in front of himself, waiting to dress until Jane went to her bedroom.
“I won’t be long,” she said.
The sound of the door closing behind him gave Gus the chance to release the breath he’d been holding. He quickly slipped into his jeans and eased the zipper up over the hard ridge of his erection. He pulled on a T-shirt and let it hang loose over his waistband, hoping to hide the evidence long enough for his desire to abate.
Socks and shoes came next and then he shoved the couch back to where it belonged in the sitting room. He collected the comforters from the floor and dr
aped them across the couch.
The bedroom door opened and Jane stood framed in the doorway, wearing dark slacks, a soft pink sweater and black shoes. She’d brushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears.
She lifted her chin and gave him a tight smile. “I’m ready when you are.” The vulnerable woman of minutes before was safely hidden behind a poker face.
Gus couldn’t imagine what this woman had gone through and was currently going through. His gut was telling him to trust that she was telling the truth. But what if she wasn’t? He worried that his desire made him soft and vowed to remain vigilant to protect his team and Charlie. “I’m ready.” He was ready to bring on the day and all that it might reveal.
Chapter Seven
Jane must have imagined the gentleness in the way Gus had held her the night before. His look as he opened the door to the suite had shifted back to the professional military man on a mission. She couldn’t blame him. He had a job to do. Knowing how he felt about his team, she would expect no less. They were his family and he had to protect them at all costs. From her.
Her chest tightened as all the horrible scenarios she’d come up with the day before resurfaced. Today could be the day that they learned who she was. Originally, she’d thought knowing was better than not knowing. Now she wondered.
Though he was all professional and cool, Gus held out a hand to her at the top of the staircase.
She laid her fingers in his palm.
He closed his hand around hers. Without a word, he started down the staircase to the ground floor.
They followed the voices coming from the kitchen. Before they reached it, Jane pulled her hand free of his. If she turned out to be a threat to his team, he didn’t need to explain why he’d been holding the hand of the enemy.
Some of the team were already there. Jane went through the names she remembered. Cole, Declan, Arnold, Carl, Grace and Charlie were gathered, along with a man she didn’t recognize.
“Oh good,” Charlie turned to smile at them. “I was about to send Grace up to check on you two. Carl has breakfast ready. I trust you slept well?”
