Avenged (Altered #2)(54)

Chapter Sixteen


She left him.

Kitty had forced him to walk away from her and convinced his pilot that he shouldn’t recover her. He’d bet she persuaded the sedans to leave without him, too.

Nick gritted his teeth as he hopped out of the Black Hawk, the propellers slowing over his head.

When he’d taught Kitty to fight, he’d made her promise to protect herself, too. But she hadn’t. This was everything he’d feared.

If he wasn’t so pissed and so scared for her, he might be proud. His mom always said that loving people made them strong. Kitty had become strong. So strong she’d decided she didn’t need him. It stung like a bitch.

Inside the helicopter, after his head had cleared from her demands, he’d urged the pilot to follow the retreating sedans. He’d told him that Kitty was fucking with his head. He’d said he needed to follow orders, to bring them both in.

Nothing he said mattered. Kitty’s will reigned supreme, and the pilot had been unable to resist her.

He could sympathize.

The copilot had struggled with him the best he could, but that had only added to the confusion. By the time the pilot resurfaced and the dust had settled they’d lost the sedans, which had undoubtedly been Kitty’s plan.

Now, a half an hour later, Nick trudged after the Black Hawk’s pilots and crew into a hangar at Camp Guernsey. They fell in before Major Martins. He looked like someone had taken a shit on his morning paper.

“What the ever-loving fuck happened out there? I told you to bring the girl home.” He scowled at the pilot. “Hamilton. Go.”

“Sir, she forced me to leave her behind, sir.” The words rang through the hangar.

“Forced you? She beat you up, lieutenant?” Martins glanced at a clipboard. “Says she’s about a buck twenty-five. You not eating your Wheaties?”

Martins inhaled, ready to launch into a proper chewing-out. Nick spoke up before he could get going. “Sir, permission to speak freely, sir.”

Martins stopped with a snap in front of him. “Enlighten me, Degrassi.”

“Sir, I told you. Miss Laughton can control minds, sir. A lot of minds at once.”

The major’s eyes widened. After a long pause, he addressed the rest of them without losing eye contact with Nick. “Everyone but Degrassi, dismissed.”

There was a chorus of “Yes, sirs” before they trooped out.

“At ease, Degrassi.” Martins sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “What the hell is going on?”

The story spilled out. How he’d tried to save Kitty, how Fields tested the drug on the private soldiers who had overpowered Nick and taken them both back in. He told Martins that he got a hold of some Solvimine, that he was a mover, too. He explained how Fields had been cut off from Goldstone, and that he planned to turn the drug and Kitty over to a Middle Eastern terrorist.

He ended with Kitty forcing them to leave her behind while she went back to Ahmed.

At the end of his narrative, Nick waited in silence. Kitty’s demand rang in his head.

Come for me.

Come for her? Why the hell had she left him? She had to have known how bad that would hurt. Even thinking about it made him want to cry out, to yank on his hair. She was back there. Again. This time, because she’d chosen to go. And he had no idea why.

She hadn’t bothered to tell him.

That stung. A lot. But the part that scared him absolutely shitless was that he might not get there to save her this time.

“Sir, may I speak candidly?”

Martins cocked an eyebrow. “That whole story wasn’t candid enough?”

“Sir, we need to go get Miss Laughton. Immediately.” He cringed. After all these years, doing his best to follow directions even when he didn’t want to, he was finally going to get himself reprimanded for insubordination.

He wasn’t surprised.

He didn’t have time to be tactful. Kitty needed him. He pushed on. “Fields is going to complete this transaction and jump ship as fast as possible. If we want to stop him, to catch him and make him stand trial for his crimes, we need to raid his camp. Now.”

“I see.” Martins clasped his hands behind his back. “That’s a very interesting perspective.”

Nick knew enough about commanding officers to know when one wasn’t pleased. He remained still, staring ahead.

“Tell me, specialist. What does this matter to you?”

“Sir?”

“You insisted on being part of the operation to recover Miss Laughton. If I remember, you were adamant about it. You subjected yourself to this drug to save her.” Martins lifted an eyebrow. “What is your interest in Miss Laughton?”

Nick knew where this was going. As he stared into Martins’s shrewd eyes, he knew that he was sunk. Martins wouldn’t let him go retrieve Kitty, not if he believed Nick was emotionally compromised.

And he was certainly emotional compromised.

But he needed to go. Staying behind would kill him.

“I love her, sir.” He could have explained. How he’d felt connected to her instantly, but over the past two weeks he’d discovered a million reasons why she was the perfect girl for him. How he couldn’t imagine leaving her or what his life would be like without her.

Even though she’d left him behind.