Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries #11)(115)

How long had it been? Hours at least. Maybe a full day since she’d clung to Case and prayed that this had all been a shitty dream.

Granted, though, she’d been drugged for a while so her sense of time could be f*cked.

She had no idea what had been done to her while she was out. It made her feel ridiculously small.

Don’t think about it. Take stock of where you are.

She kept her eyes closed because she had no idea who was watching her. There was a hum all around her, a vibration beneath her body and a definite sense of motion.

“I know you’re awake. You might as well sit up. It’s almost time to land and this hunk of junk is going to descend pretty quickly. I’ve got a bag ready for you,” a voice said over the whine of the plane’s engine.

Mia opened her eyes and had to contain her shock.

Theo Taggart was sitting in front of her, his blue eyes staring down with absolutely no recognition in them at all. She gasped a little as she realized that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. He had a long, angry scar that ran across his face. It started right under his left eye and wove its way down to his jawline. It had to have happened sometime right after she’d seen him because it was already healed to a nasty pale pink. He held a hand out.

She took it, allowing him to help her up. Her mind was foggy, her stomach not exactly still.

The last thing she remembered was holding on to Case and then a man in a mask hit him and jabbed a needle into her arm and everything had gone dark.

“Where am I?” She shifted the robe so nothing was hanging out. It looked like someone had also covered her with a blanket. It draped across her lap, but while she’d been lying down it would have covered her body.

It was a stupid question because she was obviously in some kind of a cargo plane. She was sitting on one side and Theo on the other. As her eyesight came back into focus, she could see the metal all around her. It looked like they were in the back of the plane.

“You’re about to be in Sierra Leone,” he said over the hum of the engines.

“Are you going to give her a full report and maybe plans to the compound so she can escape?” Tony Santos strode over and slid his lean body into the seat beside Theo’s, his eyes finding Mia. “He got that scar the hard way. It was punishment for what he did to help you last time. You’ll find he’s been properly trained to obey during this op.”

Fucking Tony Santos. Oh, damn it to hell. Case was going to slap her ass silly for this.

“So you’re working with McDonald?”

Santos sat back, crossing one long leg over the other. “I worked for her father for a very long time. When it became obvious she was in trouble, I came to her aid.”

Theo frowned. “How did I help her? I’ve never met her.”

Santos’s lip curled up in a vicious grin. “The doc is still working on the right mixture for him. It’s a little different for everyone. He’s proven to be stubborn when it comes to bending to another’s will.”

“So you cut him up?” She wanted to reach out and grab Theo’s hand. He looked so much like Case. His face had been almost identical, but now there would be no one who would ever mistake them again. Another crime to lay at Hope McDonald’s feet.

How many more scars did he bear? Did he even know why they were there? Or did he wake every morning and simply accept what he saw in the mirror?

“I was angry at the time,” Santos allowed. “He had strict instructions. He tried to lie, tried to say his comm unit wasn’t working and the last thing he’d understood was a kill order. The kill order was for your boyfriend. I was very explicit in my instructions concerning you. You were to be brought back with the hacker and taken with us. Yeah, I think he was hoping we would be so busy getting the hell out of there that we wouldn’t notice. Sometimes it helps that the poor f*cker can’t remember much past a day or two.”

“Why would I lie?” Theo asked, his eyes tight. “Why would I go against direct orders?”

“Stop trying to remember and it won’t hurt so much, buddy.” Santos put a hand on Theo’s shoulder as if they were friends. “You know you’re not very good at thinking. It’s not your talent.”

“It is,” Mia countered. “You’re quite good at it, Theo. When you were a Navy SEAL you weren’t a grunt. You had to think your way out of tight situations.”

His face went hard. “I was never in the military. This has always been my home. Excuse me. I’m going to check with the pilot. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. Fucking mercenaries. Why Mother didn’t allow Victor to fly us I have no idea.”

He stood and strode toward the front of the plane, his hand briefly going to his head.

“You can’t get him that way.” Santos regarded her with curious eyes. “He’s been trained to think of certain things when the memories start to surface. First there’s the headache and then his brain goes to its safe place. He’s always been here, always had his brothers around him.”

“His true brothers will find him someday and then you’ll get a real taste of his family.” Mia didn’t mention that the day might come sooner than they thought.

If this plane was going to land in Sierra Leone, then they had no idea Case had laid a trap. She wasn’t about to give up that piece of information. Her man would need every conceivable advantage he could get because he was going to flip his shit when he woke up.