Vicious Scars, page 1
Vicious Scars
JANE BLYTHE
Copyright © 2023 by Jane Blythe
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover designed by RBA Designs
Created with Vellum
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. My wonderful cover designer Letitia who did an amazing job with this stunning cover. My fabulous editor Lisa for all the hard work she puts into polishing my work. My awesome team, Sophie, Robyn, and Clayr, without your help I’d never be able to run my street team. And my fantastic street team members who help share my books with every share, comment, and like!
And of course a big thank you to all of you, my readers! Without you I wouldn’t be living my dreams of sharing the stories in my head with the world!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Also by Jane Blythe
About the Author
Chapter
One
April 16th
8:41 P.M.
The shrill sound of the alarm ripped him from sleep.
Years as a Delta Force operator and Gabriel “Tank” Dawson was instantly awake and fully alert, every one of his finely tuned senses honed.
They had an intruder.
A quick glance at the clock told him it was a little after twenty-thirty. He’d only been asleep for a bit over thirty minutes, but already he’d tossed the covers off. They lay in a tangled heap at the side of the bed, and he stepped over them as he reached for a pair of sweatpants that he’d tossed onto the chair by the bed.
Sleeping naked had its advantages—he didn’t sweat so much when the nightmares came—but it also had its disadvantages—it took longer than it otherwise would to be ready in an emergency.
Still, he didn’t waste much time shoving his feet into a worn pair of sneakers and grabbing his weapon and comms unit. Neither was very far away. He and his team were a paranoid bunch.
They had reason to be.
After breaking up a notorious trafficking ring a few years back their cover had been blown and targets painted on their backs.
Living with a threat like that had pretty much terminated their Delta Force careers, but they had been lucky enough to be offered jobs by the revered Eagle Oswald at his world-renowned security and black ops company, Prey Security.
Now he and his team lived on a remote compound deep in the woods. They never had visitors. Well, other than the occasional one by Eagle, but the billionaire former SEAL spent most of his time in New York with his wife Olivia and their two children, three-year-old Luna and three-month-old Apollo. Most of their correspondence was done by video call because the man knew they didn’t like people in their space.
There was zero reason for anyone to have set off one of the alarms lining the property’s perimeter.
Especially at night.
“Check-in,” he demanded as soon as he had the comms in and was heading out his door.
His team immediately checked in.
“Rock,” Sebastian “Rock” Rockman said.
“Scorpion,” Mason “Scorpion” Markson said.
“Damn, spider,” Patrick “Trick” Kramer muttered, sounding more horrified than he should for a former Delta turned Prey operative. “Beast was right beside the doorhandle, almost touched it.”
They could all but hear Trick’s shudder, and Tank rolled his eyes.
“Computer already up and running,” Rafe “Panther” Neal said.
“I’m here,” said Axel “Axe” Lindon. Axe had been their team leader up until eight months ago when his wife was snatched on what should have been a routine trip to the grocery store. Tank had stepped up when Axe had asked him to, and although it still felt odd to be the one in charge, he respected the man who, in his mind, would always be their leader for stepping away when he knew he couldn’t give one hundred percent.
“Alarm was tripped in the 2-C quadrant. You’re closest, Tank,” their computer guru Panther informed him.
When they’d first moved to the remote compound, they’d split the seventy acres into seven distinct sections. They each had ten acres that was their own personal space, and the remaining ten had a communal building they shared along with a large training ground so they never had to leave except when they worked a mission.
His ten acres were designated 2, and C meant it was on the acre closest to the fence.
A barbed wire fence that should be enough to deter anyone who happened to wander too close to the remote compound.
Obviously, this intruder hadn’t gotten the memo.
Only someone who knew they were here should be determined enough to make it up and over that fence.
Which meant bad news for him and his team.
“I want him alive,” Axe’s cold voice came through the comms. Their team leader had changed a lot in the last eight months. Losing the woman he loved had come as close to breaking Axe as Tank had seen in the almost decade he’d known the man.
Already outside, Tank made quick work of closing the distance between his cabin and where the intruder had set off the alarm. Although there were cameras in the woods, they couldn’t put one on every single tree, so as much as he would prefer to have a visual before heading in, he had no choice but to go in blind.
Not that he was worried.
He was highly trained and able to take on and eliminate any threat. Whoever had broken into the compound tonight had no idea just who they were up against. Taking on six former Delta Force operators who chose to lock themselves away from the rest of the world was not a smart move.
Tank was closing in on acre number three when he heard the sound of heavy breathing. It was obvious whoever had breached their perimeter wasn’t highly trained. Anyone who was, wouldn’t be running as though they were being chased by the devil, taking no care to attempt to hide their location.
It was almost like they wanted to be found.
Remaining on high alert in case this was a trap, Tank judged the location of the sound and the direction the person was running, then hid himself behind a tree and waited.
A minute later, a figure dressed in white rushed past.
One smooth move was all it took to get the intruder pinned against his chest with an arm banded around them, holding their arms immobile at their side.
Despite their small size, his captive fought hard. Thrashing and screaming, flinging their small body about to the point where he actually loosened his hold because he was afraid they were going to hurt themselves.
That was when he saw it.
The long golden-brown locks, now tangled and knotted.
The wide doe brown eyes, now filled with pure, undiluted terror.
The slim body that belonged to a woman was now gaunt and much too thin.
“Please!” she sobbed hysterically, “don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me. Not again. Please, please, please,” she chanted over and over again.
It wasn’t possible, and yet …
Here she was.
Fighting against his hold as though her life depended on it.
“It’s Beth,” he said into the comms. He wanted to adjust his hold on her, offer comfort to a woman he considered a sister, but he was afraid if he let go, she’d be off running again, and even in the dark, she looked like a strong breeze could blow her over.
For a moment silence met his words.
Then he heard a choked sob.
“Beth?” Axe asked as though hardly daring to believe that his wife who they had searched tirelessly for these past eight months, had randomly turned up here on the compound.
“Yeah, man,” he said gently, unable to comprehend the mess of emotions Axe must be feeling in this moment.
“Is she … okay?”
How could he answer that question?
No.
The simple answer was that the woman struggling against his grip was nowhere close to being okay.
In fact, she was the opposite.
She was much too thin, dirty, barefoot, covered in blood and scratches. But he didn’t want to say all of that when he knew Axe was holding on by a thread.
“Just get here, man, yeah?” he said.
For the next several minutes, he alternated between making sure Panther was doing everything he could to trace the path Beth had taken to get here in hopes of finding a lead on who had taken her and where she’d been held and attempting to calm the hysterical woman in his arms.
Nothing he said seemed to work. Beth was too trapped in whatever nightmare she’d somehow managed to escape to hear a word he was saying.
It wasn’t until Axe screamed her name that she finally went still.
As soon as he reached their side, Axe grabbed Beth and hauled her into his arms. His friend was openly crying as he clutched Beth and rocked her, holding her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
Because she was.
When Axe finally loosened his hold on Beth, her soft voice spoke words that stunned them all.
“Who is Beth?”
They all exchanged confused glances.
Axe’s hands framed Beth’s gaunt face. The woman looked so fragile, so very breakable. “You are Beth.”
Her brow furrowed. “And who are you?”
“I’m Axel. Your husband.” The pain in Axe’s words about broke Tank’s heart. He’d been searching relentlessly for his wife, and now that he had her back, she didn’t seem to remember anything about him or herself.
“Husband.” Beth echoed the word like it was foreign to her, had no meaning, no context. “Who are they?” she asked, looking at him and the rest of their team gathered around the couple.
“They’re my team. My friends. Your friends. Sweetheart, what do you remember?”
“Fight,” Beth replied immediately. “To survive you have to fight.”
The words meant nothing to any of them, but Tank knew that finding out what had happened to Beth and making sure the person responsible was punished was all of Bravo Team’s top priority.
April 16th
10:02 P.M.
New house, new name, new life.
Tallulah “Tillie” Russel looked around the small, empty cottage. It was old but nice and in reasonable condition, and she’d certainly lived in worse places growing up. Downstairs, there was a kitchen that opened into a dining room, a lounge room with a large fireplace that she intended to make good use of next winter, and a tiny office that she already had plans to turn into her own little library.
There were changes she’d make, the dark brown floorboards were nice, but she hated the white walls, they were so … plain. Plain was something she’d been called enough times in her life to have developed an aversion to it, and her first job here would be painting all the walls bright, vivid colors.
Pinks, and purples, and blues was the color pallet she always gravitated toward, and even though she was supposed to be a new person now with a brand new bought and paid for by the state identity, there were some parts of herself she just couldn’t let go of.
This was one of them.
It might be a new life, but it was still a life she had to live, and that meant some things weren’t negotiable.
So much was lost to her. The social worker job she had adored and worked so hard to achieve, as well as her volunteer work fostering puppies and kittens and other animals that had been neglected and abused. That was something she always identified with, whether it be a child or a pet, and she wanted to do her part to ease that suffering since no one had ever been there for her or cared about her own suffering.
As weird as it was being away from everything she had ever known, and the life she had built for herself, at least she was alive.
When it all boiled down to it that was what mattered the most.
“To new beginnings,” she whispered aloud, not that there was anyone to hear her.
Alone.
For now, she had to rebuild her life alone.
Still, at least she had a life.
And it wasn’t like being alone was anything new for her. She had basically been on her own since she was three years old. Growing up in foster care was a hard enough way to live out your childhood and adolescence, but when you had a family history like hers, it made it that much worse.
She was the kid nobody wanted to get too close to for fear she would turn out like her father.
No matter how hard she tried to shake off that weight hanging around her neck, she never seemed to be able to actually do it. Tillie had worked so hard in school, got perfect grades, played several musical instruments, sang in the choir, performed in school plays, and was good at sports, but none of it ever changed where she’d come from.
Even as an adult that stigma was still there.
At work, people gave her wary looks when they thought she wasn’t looking. No one could deny she was good at her job, that she had a way of making abused kids feel safe enough to admit the truth of what their lives were really like, but that doesn’t mean her colleagues liked her. Or trusted her.
There was always that doubt.
Maybe there was some of her father in her that she hid behind her long blonde locks, big turquoise eyes, and freckles.
Maybe if someone said or did the wrong thing, that evil monster would come out.
Only there was no evil monster lurking inside her.
She carried her father’s DNA. Yes, of course she did. But that didn’t mean she carried the demons that had plagued him for a lifetime.
At least her book club friends hadn’t treated her like a freak. Okay, so they had never known that the Tillie they knew who loved anything with a romance arc but was partial to suspense, mystery, thrillers, action, and military romances, was really Tallulah Russel, but it was so nice to be treated as just her and not Frank Russel’s daughter.
Now Tallulah Russel didn’t exist.
She had become Matilda Malcom. Still Tillie to anyone she would meet in this new life, but no longer the woman with the infamous father.
In a way it held—or should hold—a kind of freedom she’d been lacking for almost thirty years.
All things considered, she knew she had a lot to be thankful for, and she better start remembering that instead of the things she had lost.
To that end, Tillie straightened her spine, set down her suitcase—packed with the only things she had been allowed to bring with her—and headed for the kitchen. She had brought one bag of groceries on the way here, she’d make a late dinner and then sleep in the sleeping bag on the floor.
Tomorrow she’d hit up some charity stores and try to find some cheap furniture to get her started. She had a little money to get by, but she was going to have to find a job, and quickly. Since she couldn’t go back to being a social worker, she was going to have to look for something else. Likely something where she couldn’t use her skill set because if anyone was looking for her they’d be looking in those very places.
Working in a library had seemed like a good compromise since she couldn’t do social work or really any work with kids. But the agent assigned to her case had told her that possibility wasn’t on the table.
She’d tried arguing for a job in a bookstore, something to give her some sort of connection to who she really was, but that had been vetoed as well.
Probably she’d end up working in a bank, or a supermarket, or something else equally boring.
There was nothing wrong with those jobs they just weren’t her.
Tillie knew she was a little odd. Growing up shunned the way she had she was often awkward in social settings. Dealing with traumatized kids was fine, she was comfortable in that work because she related to them. The same when it was other bookish people, they had something in common, something she could connect to.
But making small talk?
That was her kryptonite.
Since she didn’t really have a lot of options, she was going to have to find a way to make it work. Right now she just needed a job. There were bills to pay plus all the expenses of starting over from scratch.
Furniture wasn’t all she needed. Clothes, sheets, blankets, towels, cutlery, plates, bowls, pots, pans, oven trays, casserole dishes, toiletries, a vacuum cleaner, mop, broom … the list went on and on and on. Everything a home needed she would have to purchase. All she had with her were a few outfits, a couple of pairs of shoes, and one or two mementos from her old life she had been allowed to keep.
It was overwhelming, and she was way too tired to obsess over it now, so Tillie deliberately shoved away her worries, and set the bag of groceries on the counter.
Getting out bread, cheese, and butter she set about making herself a toasted cheese sandwich, the ultimate comfort food for her and one she had basically grown up on. Also something she could make in the tabletop oven that had thankfully been left behind by the previous owner.
Comfort food was going to be featured quite heavily in her diet for the next few weeks. Anything to help make this transition as easy as it could be. Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, chicken pot pie, mmm … her mouth watered just thinking about it.
