Raoul was on emotional overload. One glance at Zeke told him his buddy was similarly afflicted. Cantara had stubbornly clung to life during the unimaginable hell she’d been through these past three years, but had almost reached breaking point. Her mind was gone, her lovely body emaciated, her eyes blank, her hair lank, lusterless. She was terrified of her own shadow. But not of them. Raoul grasped that one positive aspect of her condition, repeatedly telling himself she still knew who they were. That had to mean there was hope for her.
Didn’t it?
“We’re gonna take you home and make you better, darlin’,” Zeke told her, running his fingers across the contours of her face with infinite tenderness.
Cantara simply looked at him, as though searching his face for the right answer. It was devastating to see just how comprehensively her feisty spirit had been broken, and it was all he could do not to give way to sobs fuelled by a combination of relief and fury. He would concentrate on the relief, and on ensuring Cantara got the best possible care to aid her recovery, however complete it turned out to be. Revenge could come later. It was too late to revenge themselves against Salim. The selfish bastard had deprived them of that pleasure. But they could and would redouble their efforts to find the traitor, Levi. No rock would be left unturned.
EMTs bounded on the plane.
“We need to get her onto a gurney,” one of them said.
At the sound of his voice, Cantara emerged from her near catatonic state and became very agitated. Her blank eyes blazed with fear and she tried to back away from the man’s voice. Still strapped into her seat, she couldn’t move.
“She’s petrified of men,” the female nurse who had accompanied her told Raoul. “You two are the only ones she hasn’t shied away from.”
“She’ll be all right with us,” the same EMT said.
“Not a chance,” Raoul replied, scowling as he tried not to think about what Salim and God alone knew who else had put her through to reduce her to such a wretched state. He leaned over to unfasten Cantara’s seat belt, moving slowly, being as unthreatening as he could. “Come on, darlin’. I’m gonna get us out of here. Will you let me do that?”
He waited for a response, wondering if his words had even registered with her. Eventually he was rewarded with an uncertain nod. Raoul wrapped one arm around her bony shoulders and slid the other beneath her butt, sweeping her effortlessly into his arms. Just by looking at her, he had been able to see how much weight she’d lost. Picking her up, feeling her bones protruding through her flesh, looking at her gaunt, sunken cheeks, was graphic confirmation of just how deprived of basic sustenance she had been. Salim sure had a strange way of showing his supposed love for her. Raoul wasn’t ready yet to think of what other indignities she had been forced to endure.
He expected her to struggle against him when he lifted her from her seat. Instead she sighed, closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. Raoul couldn’t tell if she was relieved, or wearily resigned, but he could feel her heart beating way too fast as her fragile body pressed against his chest. He shared a worried glance with Zeke as all the other people crowding onto the plane shuffled in the confined space to get out of his way.
With Zeke holding Cantara’s hand and whispering comforting words to her in his native Arapaho, Raoul carried her down the steps and back onto American soil for the first time in over three years.
“We have the wagon here,” the EMT said, pointing to the waiting ambulance.
“No need.”
“You can’t walk…”
This guy was starting to irritate the fuck out of Raoul. He dealt him a look that discouraged further argument as he and Zeke set out to walk the short distance to the administrative building. Cantara had been cooped up in way too many confined spaces recently. She needed to breathe fresh air, and to…well, to something. Hell if Raoul knew what. Her listless state was killing him and he would never stop blaming himself for screwing up the operation that had seen Cantara captured. He should have listened to his gut and known it was a set-up. Except Cantara would have been taken even if he had. Once they’d left the Israeli compound there was nothing he could have done to change anything, thanks to that groveling coward, Levi. They already had Cantara and were on to Raoul and Zeke. It was all such a fucking mess, but he and Zeke had been too busy wallowing in self-pity to go looking for answers. If they had, then perhaps—no, don’t go there. He glanced down at Cantara, thanking a God he no longer believed in for restoring her to them alive—in body, at any rate. For now she was his first, his only, priority.
He was pleased when, presumably because she felt the fresh air peppering her face, Cantara opened her eyes. But her gaze was unfocused and she was clearly disorientated.
“We’re at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, DC,” he told her. “You’re back in America, darlin’, and no one will ever hurt you again. I promise you.”
She showed no reaction, as though she had heard too many false promises over the past three years to believe anything anyone said to her. But he wasn’t anyone and she must trust him on a visceral level, or she wouldn’t be so passive in his arms. Would she? Hell if Raoul knew. She was giving nothing away. She had retreated some place where he couldn’t reach her, as though she had learned the value of silence.
“This way.” The EMT was still fussing around them. “She needs to be checked out in the medical facility.”