Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries #11)(122)

Theo stood up. “I’ve got my bag. I’ll handle the girl. Why don’t you grab the computer equipment?”

“The geek’s getting that,” Victor said dismissively. “He’s going to take care of the plane and then grab all his crap. I don’t know why we haven’t killed him yet.”

“Because none of the rest of us can do what he does,” Theo replied simply. “Mother wants him alive. He stays alive.”

She saw Hutch move through the plane’s wide hold. He was thinner than she remembered and there was a hollow look to his eyes. He stared at her for a moment before grabbing a bag and turning his back.

What had he gone through? Something horrible, certainly. It was like his light had gone out and he was a husk of his old self, walking around.

She wanted to call out to him, to say something, but Victor was watching her like a rabid lion waiting to pounce.

“Stay away from the girl.” Santos strode from the front of the plane. He had a shoulder holster over his bulky body and Mia could see the big gun nestled in there. It looked like Santos was ready for a fight since he also had an AR-15 in his hands. “I told you she’s off limits. She’s worth more alive than dead. A lot more. If you touch her, I’ll cut off your balls and feed them to you.”

Victor’s body went rigid. “Yes, sir.”

Theo turned and offered her a hand up. “I’ll find something for you to wear.”

“But she’s so pretty like that.” Robert was armed to the teeth, too. He settled a light jacket over his torso, but she’d seen the guns he was wearing. “And I’ve heard it’s pretty hot where we’re going. Although it might be fun to dress her. I think she’d look good in blue.”

Dear lord, now she was going to be Robert’s Barbie doll. Still, she was surrounded by men with guns who might or might not know what they were doing. She gave him a smile. “Blue’s my favorite color.”

She was going to have to depend on Theo and Robert’s better natures. Victor didn’t have one and Santos would kill her the minute she wasn’t worth more alive than dead. And she wasn’t sure what was going on with Hutch. He seemed so different. She would do anything she could to save him, but she wasn’t going to count on him.

“Stop playing with the girl. We need to move. It looks like our contacts are here. Victor, finish securing the plane. We paid enough for it. It will be good to have a way out of here if we need it. Especially now that we have a pilot. I think Mr. Hutchins has been properly trained.”

“A few years of torture will do that to a guy,” Hutch muttered under his breath as he walked by.

So they’d done to him what they’d done to Tennessee Smith. The drug in small doses made hours seem like days, made the smallest pain into something monstrous. One of the potential future uses of the drug was in prison systems, to ensure criminals did their “time” but to keep crowding to a minimum. The prisoner would experience the time as if it was going by, but would come out of the drug’s influence to find only weeks had passed.

Hutch had gone through that. There was no telling how much pain he’d experienced.

“Let’s go and meet Dr. Gibson,” Santos said. “She’s off limits, too, but you can do what you like with the villagers around the clinic. I know you boys need to blow off some steam. Just wait until Mother gets here in a few days. She’ll wipe the girls’ memories so there won’t be trouble.”

Awesome. Now McDonald was wiping the memories of the victims of rape.

“I’ll make sure she has plenty of test subjects.” Victor winked Mia’s way, sending a shiver down her spine.

Theo put a hand on her arm. “Come on. Stay close to me or Robert and you’ll be all right. Don’t talk to the new guys. Tony won’t like it. We’ll have you in a room to yourself very soon. One of us will make sure to watch over you the whole time.”

Until they forgot to. She was going to figure out a way to defend herself. She silently thanked Ezra for all the training. After what happened in Colombia, she’d realized she’d panicked, and no amount of self-defense lessons could fix that. So Ezra trained her, made her stronger, more confident. If Victor thought she’d be an easy mark, he would find out she was a quick learner.

She followed Robert off the plane, her bare feet hitting the metal of the stairs that led to the concrete floor. She was in some sort of hanger, out of sight. Hutch was standing to the side, his gaze on the two people waiting to greet them. His eyes were wide and his shoulders had straightened.

He recognized them. Or at least one of them. Her heart started to pound. How far gone was Hutch? How much had they brainwashed him? She knew he hadn’t had the same protocols and memory wipes as Theo and the soldiers, but he was obviously complying with orders. Would he give up the game? Would he call out and tell Santos what was happening?

Hutch’s eyes averted, but he didn’t say anything.

Yet.

“Hello,” the brunette with the ponytail said. “I was surprised that you moved up our agreed upon date.”

She was frowning, her hands on her hips. It was probably easy to be aggressive when one had a massive, truly scary-looking dude by her side. The man standing next to the doctor was a mountain of muscle with what looked like a bad attitude. He had a gun on his hip and he wasn’t trying to hide it.