Chapter Two
Eliot stumbled more than walked. He forced himself to keep a normal pace, but the pain and exhaustion overtook him so he flagged down a cab. He had the chatty man drop him off a block away from the safe house, reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. He didn't know who was after him or what injuries he'd received—or how. That woman said he fell off a pier. Already that whole scene was fading. Everything was fading.
He punched in the code for the third time. He'd set up the security system himself and chose code-entry access over a key because he knew if he needed this place—when he needed this place—he'd be injured. Injured meant he'd been in a fight. A fight meant he could lose the key or his enemy might get their hands on it. It was sound reasoning except some injuries scrambled the code from his memory. He tried another code. He had six tries left. He'd figured an enemy wouldn't guess his code in ten tries but he might be so confused he'd need them. He got it on the seventh attempt. Strange. He could have sworn…it didn't matter. He was in.
Grabbing the medical kit from the bathroom, he set to work. He hoped he didn't need a second pair of hands. If he had to cross that road, he would. The only thing worse than showing weakness to the enemy was showing it to the men he worked with. It wasn't like when he was in the military. There, the guys had his back and he had theirs. This group he found himself in now was made up of vicious, sadistic killers. Only recently had he woken up to it, realized where he'd ended up. He'd disappeared into himself after that last tour, he almost didn't make it. Not physically. Physically, he was fine. He preferred physical injury and physical pain.
He gasped as he took off his shirt and caught sight of his chest. He wavered in front of the mirrors, setting them up so he could see his back and any damage done by the fall. He believed the dark-haired woman about that, at least. He settled himself at the edge of a wooden chair. His back had scrapes and bruises, but he couldn't see any broken skin and felt no slivers—thank God. That was all he needed to do, hand a sadist a pair of tweezers to pull a sliver out of your shoulder blade because you couldn't reach it.
His breath caught in his throat as he stared into the mirror, leaning closer and closer until he nearly tumbled off the chair. The scars…He brought his fingers over his chest and stomach. He had what looked like old scars in places he'd never received scars. A knife wound here, a gunshot wound there. He touched the nastiest one. It just felt like a ridge in his skin. There was no pain, no unusual sensation. He'd remember getting shot. He'd remember every scar. These were new but not fresh—how was that possible? Then he saw his arms. His muscles…they looked different. They were more seasoned, tighter. He was leaner. And his hair fell past his shoulders. That morning it was cut short, as usual. He tugged and ran a hand through his locks. It was his hair, grown long. What was going on?
He shook his head to clear it but slipped off the chair from dizziness. He landed on his right side and stayed put. He wanted to sleep but that was also his biggest concern. Never sleep alone when you have a concussion. He knew he had one; the headache, the confusion, the dizziness, the mismatched pupils. He'd hit his head, that much was evident, and he'd lost consciousness. Bad symptoms.
He had little choice. Slipping into a coma was preferable to being vulnerable to the people he worked for, but he couldn't succumb yet.
The plan was to treat his wounds, get some food down, get a full night's sleep and then start the job a day late. Assuming he woke up in the morning, he'd set out to do what he'd started that morning. He didn't want the contract to go to the other men. He was the one Damien Moreau hired to kill General Flores.