Shades of Gray (KGI #6)(25)

He closed his eyes and looked away, unable to say the word rape. The bastards had raped her. They’d put their hands on her. They’d brutalized her. And he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it.

“I want to get her to the airfield,” Donovan said grimly. “The sooner we get her loaded and take off, the better. I’ll work on her while we’re in the air.”

“What about Sunday? What about those girls?”

“As soon as P.J. is stable, I’m putting a call in to Sam. He’ll have to call in Rio and his team. They’ll have to be briefed so they know what they’re up against.”

“I want those bastards,” Cole said through gritted teeth.

Donovan leveled a stare at him as they raced down the highway. “Make a choice, Cole. I won’t stop you. But you have to choose. You going to stay with P.J. or are you going in with the others?”

Put that way, it wasn’t even a choice. He belonged at P.J.’s side. He’d never want her to feel like her team had abandoned her. He didn’t want her to think he’d abandoned her.

Rio and Sam would exact justice. P.J. needed him.

“I’m not leaving her,” Cole said.

From the seat just in front of them, Dolphin and Steele leaned over the top, closely monitoring the conversation.

“None of us are leaving her,” Steele said tightly.

“Hell no,” Dolphin muttered.

“We live as a team and we die as a team,” Steele said. “I want to go kick the living shit out of those ass**les too, but P.J. needs us more than we need revenge. We’ll leave it to others in KGI to get justice for one of our own.”

Donovan barked up to Baker, “ETA?”

“Two minutes. Pilot is on standby.”

On time, the van pulled onto the dirt road to the airstrip on the periphery of the city. It was a regional airport, mostly used for cargo, and wasn’t a hub for passengers.

The plane was parked at an angle, ready to roll onto the runway. Baker roared onto the paved tarmac and slammed on the brakes.

The team sprang into action, opening the cargo doors to the van and making sure the hatch to the jet was open.

Donovan started to reach for P.J., but Cole brushed him off and gently gathered her in his arms, careful to keep the blanket around her to shield her nudity.

He hurried to the plane, carrying her up the three steps into the cabin.

“Bring her to the back and lay her on the couch,” Donovan said. “I’ll get my med pack, give her something for pain and then see what I can do to suture the cuts until we get her to a hospital. Tell the pilot to get us off the ground.”

To Steele, he gave a terse order. “Get on the horn with Sam and fill him in. Rio and his team need to be here in twenty-four hours and in position to intercept the shipment of girls.”

Cole bore his precious burden to the back of the plane and gently arranged her on the sofa so that she was shielded from the view of others.

The slashes to her body were horrifying. Two were deep and the flesh lay raggedly open. One carved a path down her midline between her br**sts. There were two just underneath her br**sts and one across her flat, muscled belly. And another two on the insides of her thighs.

The son of a bitch had carved her up and then forced himself on her because that’s how he got his rocks off.

“Damn,” Donovan murmured.

Cole focused on Donovan, trying to calm his fury. Donovan was holding P.J.’s right hand. It was swollen and bruised. Cole hadn’t noticed because it had been her left hand he’d clung to as they’d raced for the airport.

“Looks like she broke it,” Donovan said grimly.

He turned it over carefully in his palm and examined the swelling before returning it to her side.

Dolphin brought back the med pack and then took a seat across from the couch, his eyes burning with concern.

“Is she going to be all right, Van? How bad is it? Level with us. We’re going crazy up there.”

Donovan took in a deep breath. “Physically? She’s going to be okay. Eventually. The cuts are bad but not life threatening. Emotionally? I can’t say. What she went through was horrific. P.J.’s strong, but I don’t know of any woman who can escape what she suffered unscathed.”

Cole scrubbed his hands over his face and then through his hair. “This shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let it happen. Goddamn it, I knew it was wrong. My gut was screaming at me that it was all wrong, and I let her walk into that situation.”

Donovan sighed. “It was her decision, Cole. You can’t make those for her. It was a team decision.”

“It was bullshit,” Cole spat. “It was a coward’s move, using a woman to draw out a monster. There was another way. There’s always another way, but we were too anxious and lazy to find it.”

“Try telling that to the mothers of the girls we’ll send home,” Dolphin said quietly. “And then ask P.J. if she thinks it was worth it. Knowing her as I do, I know which way she’ll go. Do you?”

Donovan gave P.J. an injection of pain medication and then numbed the area around her wounds. Afterward he began the meticulous task of stitching the wounds closed.

“This is beyond my scope,” he admitted. “There is tissue damage that needs to be repaired, but my main concern is to get the wounds closed so infection doesn’t set in.”