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Stepping back, he closed the door and turned to his brother-in-law. And God, she wished she could hear that conversation.
“I just have a few minutes,” Thomas told him. “She’s still showing a lot of bruising. Her throat, breasts, and thighs. Candace says it still looks like hell. She had pain pills in her luggage but she won’t take them until she goes to bed, and she wakes up often screaming with nightmares. She screams for you, you know?”
John only barely managed to control his flinch. He hadn’t been there for her, when he should have been. The regret of that would likely haunt the rest of his life.
“Did he send the doctor’s report?” John asked, knowing how thorough his father normally was.
“Everything is in the leather briefcase. The pilot is unloading her luggage now. ” He nodded to the plane. “X-rays, everything is there. Your father wants you to take her to Dr. Landry in Somerset and tell him the situation. He can be convinced not to contact the doctors in Boston and he’ll take care of her. ”
John nodded. “I know him. ”
Landry was old, but he was a damned good doctor. He was also part of a very small network of undercover Homeland agents positioned in the area and under the guidance of a special undercover agent who was supposed to be retired from the Office of Homeland Security.
“Good. Time for me to go. ” Thomas nodded to the pilot waving him back. “Take good care of her. She’s fragile, John, no matter how tough she acts. ” He clapped John on the shoulder before loping back to the plane and disappearing inside.
John, joined by the owner of the airstrip, ran to the bags and hauled them back to the Denali quickly as the Learjet began to taxi to its takeoff point.
The lights flared back on, and within less than a minute the small jet was airborne once again.
“Let’s load ’em up,” John called to the owner of the Dairy Farm whose private strip was often used for covert landings.
Raymond Hickley was one of those former friends John Walker Sr. rarely spoke of. Men who had helped him when he was younger, and were still there for him now that his children were in the county.
At fifty-five, still fit, and as redneck as they came, Raymond was proud to say he’d served his country without ever stepping off his farm.
John pulled open the back of the Denali and stored the luggage. He loaded the leather briefcase last, setting it to the side to ensure the x-rays it contained didn’t become bent.
“Dawg called while you were talking to your friend,” Raymond told him quietly after they loaded the luggage and the door was firmly closed. “He and his cousins and uncle will be at the houseboat this afternoon. He said don’t make them come looking for you. You should have known Dawg would glimpse that Lear landing and know whose it was. He’s smart like that. ” The other man grinned at the warning he was relaying.
John grimaced. Just what he needed, a plague of Mackays descending on them.
At least they were waiting until afternoon. Enough time for him to get Sierra settled in and hopefully to catch a few hours’ sleep.
Opening the driver’s side door, he stepped into the vehicle, started it, then turned and stared at the too quiet young woman beside him.
“Well, lollipop. ” He grinned at the nickname that suddenly snapped into his mind. The perverted reasoning behind it had his dick becoming instantly hard. “Looks like your running days are over, doesn’t it?”
He glanced at her, relaxing now, a sense of sudden balance invading that. That last measure of restlessness was easing now. He had Sierra back. Come what may, for the moment, she was his.
Her lips thinned. “It’s nice to see you again, too, John. ”
She stared straight ahead, like the perfect little mannequin despite the edge of nerves in her voice. She better be nervous, because he was damned upset that she had run as she had. If she had stayed, if she had faced him, she would have been here with him rather than in an apartment without protection when a rapist came looking for her.
She likely wouldn’t admit it. Yet.
“I bet it is. ” He grinned.
This might end up being fun. Hell, yes, he was going to make damned certain it was going to be fun. She had a whole lot of time to make up to him, he decided. A whole lot of pleasure to fit into a very short amount of time if he knew his father. And if there was one person he knew well, it was John Sr.
Maneuvering the Denali to the now empty airstrip, he hit the gas and raced down the clearing to the farm road at the end of the strip.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to have lots of fun,” he promised her. “I intend to make certain of it. ”
He could have sworn resignation pulled at her expression before it cleared once again.
She was quiet again. Too damned quiet. This wasn’t the Sierra he knew. She wasn’t quiet. She was either laughing or she was raging. There was rarely an in-between. Happy or angry, that was his Sierra. But this Sierra was a stranger. A woman who wasn’t even bothering to pretend to be the little troublemaker he had known all her life.
That was okay, though. Give him just another hour or so, and he was confident that the Sierra he knew would once again appear. He was going to make sure of it. If knew how to do anything, then he knew how to piss his Sierra off.
