Girl in the Mist
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
About the Author
Discover more Amara titles… Reckless Honor
Dark Justice: McCabe
Hard Pursuit
Witness in the Dark
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by S. T. Young. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 105, PMB 159
Fort Collins, CO 80525
rights@entangledpublishing.com
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Nina Bruhns
Cover design by Kelly Martin
Cover art from Shutterstock
ISBN 978-1-64063-467-1
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition February 2018
Dear Reader,
Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.
xoxo
Liz Pelletier, Publisher
We’d like to thank friends and family (you know who you are) for their support, and for cheering us on through the years, regardless of the obstacles in our path. Also many thanks to Entangled Publishing and Nina Bruhns for going on this adventure with us. And thanks to Dean Koontz for telling us to “just keep at it.”
Prologue
Pain.
It slashed through the young woman’s body and drew a resounding scream from her blue, cracked lips. The relentless current of electricity made her buck, had her every muscle tightening and coiling until they stood out in clear relief under her fragile skin. Her limbs jerked involuntarily at the restraints that kept her on the steel table in the center of the tiled room.
Disembodied voices droned commands into her ears, battering her resistance without pause. A blaze of light hammered down on her tear-streaked face, making it impossible for her to see, sapping even more of her willpower.
No relief. And nowhere to hide.
There was only pain, with no end to hope for—of what seemed to have lasted an eternity already.
Endless torture, along with the drugs, erased memory upon memory. The destructive deluge raged through her mind, leaving nothing untouched. Only emptiness remained.
But she was strong. She had fought long and hard, holding onto the faint spark that was the very core of her being. She endured. The way she always had.
Her purpose—so very clear—was her sole buoy in the storm that threatened to sweep her away. Desperately, the woman clung to the memories she still had. She recalled detailed events from the turbulent life she had led, but the voices behind the piercing light would not cease, kept urging her to forget.
To surrender.
“No!” The scream was torn from her. She wouldn’t. Not ever! She would die before she gave up who she was, would fight with every fiber of her being.
Mindless, she pulled at the shackles, her fierce defiance arching her away from the cold steel.
She couldn’t give up! She was Nina—Spanish for girl-child, she remembered. And yet, inner boundaries were crumbling under the all-encompassing assault on her senses, her thoughts, and her tortured body.
Another electrical charge pounded her resistance with the force of a sledgehammer.
“Never,” she whimpered.
Cold water streamed over her, as it had many times before. It kept her alert when everything inside her screamed for the relief of unconsciousness.
“Surrender!” commanded the voice she had come to hate. “You will submit.”
She shook her head in mute denial.
Finally, against all odds, one shackle snapped loose, releasing her mangled wrist. Lashing out in the direction of the voice, she struck flesh.
A startled cry came from her tormentor. He had been with her from the start, she vaguely recalled.
“Grab her!”
Sounds of crashing medical equipment penetrated her muddled thoughts.
No!
Frantically, she groped at the strap that held her other wrist and then dove for her ankles to yank the buckles loose. Blurry images flickered in and out of sight. Freed at last, she flinched away to tumble off the table and crash to the cold, unforgiving floor.
Her hands braced, she sought to find solidity in the world that seemed to cant and dip like a ship on a stormy sea. Bare feet slid over moist tiles as the squeak of rubber soles announced the advance of her captors. A frenzied cry escaped her.
Old instincts clamoring to the surface, she lashed out a well-aimed kick toward a leg that appeared in her distorted vision. The resulting exclamation of pain barely registered. Her mind could only think of one thing.
Escape.
Cruel hands grabbed hold and pulled her to her feet, heedless of her struggles. Roughly, she was lifted into the air and returned to the table.
“Hold her down,” the voice ordered.
Blindly, she twisted and bucked, every muscle straining. Their grip was unbreakable, and despair swamped her.
“Give it up, little girl,” the voice said with a sneer.
A painful stab of a needle drew another cry from her—an involuntary reaction to a violation that was minor compared to all that had been done to her.
“There’s no place you can hide from me,” he told her. The distorted image of a face appeared in front of the light. “You are mine.”
It was then the combination of drugs and torture became too much. With the horror of those three words, the last remnants of her resistance shattered with a resounding scream, leaving nothing but ruins of the strong woman she had once been.
Nina was lost.
But from the shards of her turbulent past, a multitude of personalities came into being. They would continue to fight, with but one purpose.
Save Nina.
Chapter One
A steady cadence of footsteps echoed through the corridors of the Prima Vista Psychiatric Hospital. Crudely plastered walls, once a faint green, had long since aged to dirty
yellow. Huge cracks everywhere made the walls resemble an intricate mosaic design. The black and white floor had been repaired so often the original checkerboard pattern was nearly unrecognizable.
“Again. I stand by my earlier recommendation,” said an unpleasant voice that rang through the desolate hallways. Laced with a Latin accent, the words spoken were inappropriately loud. It punctuated one of many agonized screams rebounding through the high security ward.
Four men, one in a suit, three in typical hospital garb, made their way past the long row of patient room doors, blind and deaf to their unfortunate occupants.
“I’m firmly opposed to your choice of action, Agent O’Donnell,” the wiry psychiatrist continued. “I agree that your credentials are impeccable, but a simple psychology degree will not be of any use. Miss Hernandez is a danger to her environment…and to herself. The fact that you have insisted on stopping her medication for the duration of your visit is, in my professional opinion, unwise.”
Rory O’Donnell cast the sleazy psychiatrist a steely-eyed, sideways glance. The man wasn’t worthy of the title doctor. Head physician of the Prima Vista Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. José Armand Lopez had been prosecuted and acquitted due to lack of evidence four times in his thirty years as a practicing psychiatrist. Rumors of negligence and endangering his patients had persisted throughout his career.
Presently, the corrupt shrink appeared more annoyed with Rory’s demands than worried about his patient’s welfare. The man disgusted him and had from the moment they met.
“Your objection is duly noted,” Rory said. “However, there is only one way to find out if this is the woman I am looking for. And that is to talk to her without heavy medication affecting her mind.”
“It’ll be on your head if anything goes wrong, Agent O’Donnell.” The doctor twitched his stained tie in a nervous gesture. “I will not be held accountable for Miss Hernandez’s actions while she isn’t properly sedated.”
“Naturally. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rory countered, doing his best to block out the strong antiseptic smell that permeated the hospital.
Sullenly, the doctor stabbed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and looked back at the two beefy attendants trailing them. He had been doing this regularly, as if needing to make sure they were still there. Both men ignored the head psychiatrist, showing little respect for the man who paid their salary.
They reached the end of the corridor and halted in front of a steel door with a small window in its center.
“She appears calm enough today, Agent O’Donnell. Do you want to go inside, or would you rather use the intercom?” asked the tallest of the bull-necked orderlies. He’d been introduced as Buddy earlier.
“Inside, thank you. That will be all. I’m sure you have better things to do than babysit me.”
The dismissal was clear. Dr. Lopez bristled, was about to protest, but then changed his mind. He rounded on Buddy, haughtily ordered him to stay before stalking off. The other orderly trailed after the shrink at a more sedate pace.
“I’ll be right out here,” bored Buddy told Rory. He unlocked the door and stepped aside. “Just holler if there’s a problem.”
Rory stepped over the threshold of the nine-by-eight padded cell. The place was a dump. There wasn’t much light compared to the bright fluorescents in the corridor, and it took him a moment to discern anything from the ominous shadows in the corners. The thought of anyone actually having to live in this room made his chest hurt.
“Miss Hernandez?”
A muted shuffle drew his focus to a huddled-up form, barely visible in the dark recesses of the cell.
“Are you Nina Hernandez of Rising Sun?” he asked softly. His eyes, intent on picking out details, rapidly adjusted to the semidarkness.
Rory, despite his years of experience in the harsh world of terrorism and espionage, was shocked at what he saw. Though the undeniably striking facial features could easily be matched to those of Nina Hernandez, the young woman he now faced looked considerably worse off than the photographs he’d studied.
Like Nina’s, her hair was black, due to her Hispanic origin. Instead of glossy shoulder-length strands, the patient’s hair was cropped in a haphazard mess. It stuck out in uneven spikes, emphasizing her sallow features. Her skin was almost transparent, blue veins visible at her temples. Dark smudges cradled gray, very suspicious, fearful eyes, giving a hollowed-out impression. Her shoulders, narrow and fragile, stood out in the straitjacket she was wrapped in. Thin, long legs, encased in baggy, standard issue hospital garb, were drawn up tight against her chest. She sat there suspended in time, it seemed, shivering, so vulnerable it made his heart ache just to look at her. He hadn’t expected that when he had first tracked her down. He’d thought of this as just another mission, only to discover that just looking at her could make him feel outraged on her behalf. What the hell had they done to her?
Fear emanated from her every pore.
And yet…there was something predominantly aggressive in her all-too-clear eyes. How she could pull off the appearance of a frightened animal caught by the flare of headlights at the same time was disconcerting to say the least.
Not wanting to frighten her more than she already was, Rory lowered to his haunches and took in the sharp angles of her cheekbones, the delicate sweep of her jaw, her parched lips.
“I am Agent Rory O’Donnell,” he said. Technically this wasn’t a lie. It was just that the title would only last as long as his present assignment for Naval Intelligence. “I’m trying to locate Nina Hernandez, to make sure she is safe and well. Are you Nina?”
He watched carefully for any reaction to the name. There was none. Her unblinking eyes never wavered. Could he have been wrong? Or was she that good at faking it? He couldn’t be sure.
She studied him, measured him up, no doubt trying to figure out the threat he posed—and how to stop him if he turned out to be a danger. He’d recognize that calculating look anywhere. It was typical of all Rising Sun’s child-soldiers. More than a decade ago, a political sect called Rising Sun gained power rapidly in South America. They’d had a hand in toppling several governments and had taken over the most powerful drug cartels.
Snatching children from remote villages and orphans from the streets, they began creating their child-soldiers. Trained to be ruthless assassins and infiltrators, these children had been unwitting pawns, used to expand the cult’s influence on an international level.
Had the U.S. government not decided to bring down the sect by any means possible, Rory had no doubt that the child-soldiers would have taken world terrorism to an entirely new level. They were trained well in the arts of strategy and combat, a lethal combination.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Nina,” he told her, deciding to address her as such since she didn’t confirm or deny its accuracy. “I was asked by Morgan McCabe to find you. I’m here to help you, Nina…if you’ll let me.”
Due to their unusual shared past, Morgan McCabe had been Nina Hernandez’s sister in every way except by blood. They were two of the five child-soldiers that had survived the raid of their camp so many years ago. The other thirty-three had not been as lucky.
For a moment, at the mention of Morgan, he thought he saw a change in her but couldn’t be certain. It was fleeting, and the weak light of the single bulb hanging high above the grated ceiling didn’t make reading her any easier. Was she even able to comprehend him?
What kind of crap had the crazy doctor been pumping into her system, anyway? His outrage grew, making stopping the doctor a future priority.
Rory tried again, “As I said, I’m here to help—” He fell silent when her eyes suddenly shifted up to the ceiling. An increase of tension sent a shiver through her body. Intrigued, he followed her gaze up. Through the grated ceiling, on the walkway over the cell, a furtive shadow caught his eye.
Son of a bitch.
Rory straightened. “Dr. Lopez!” he called, never doubting the identity of the unwanted observer. “This is a delicate matter. I’d appreciate— No, I expect privacy.”
“Hijo de puta!” the woman in the corner hissed. That single expression, so soft and yet filled with so much hatred, made Rory look at her sharply. In her gaze, the same emotion burned with all-consuming intensity.
He was about to tell the sleazy shrink to fuck off, when she spoke again. “He is dead!” She snarled the words in a heavily accented voice. Her revulsion flowing freely now, it found a target in Rory, as well. “And so are you!”