Pack Dynamics Read Online Free PDF Page A

walls.
    Janni pulled the blanket back to get a better look at Ben in the light and gasped.
    She’d seen him injured before, of course—even though Ben mostly had a desk job, he would on occasion go out into the field if her mom needed backup, and sometimes he got hurt. And there was the network of scars left over from Afghanistan. But this kind of recent, calculated brutality wasn’t something she was used to, and it shook her. Ben looked a whole lot worse than he had under guttering streetlights. Were those burns over some of his bruises?
    Chambliss’s brow lowered a fraction. “Yes, we’ll need to get the bits of his shirt out of those welts before they begin closing. I’ll be right back with a basin and a cloth and some dry clothing for both of you.” With that, he spun and hurried from the room.
    Janni combed Ben’s bloody hair out of his face with shaking fingers. “Oh, sweetie …” She had to hold it together, because it wouldn’t do for him to wake up and find her falling apart on him.
    Chambliss returned with hot water and a pair of washcloths, and she took a deep breath and steadied herself to the task of taking care of physical injuries instead of mental ones.
    She was better at the mental ones.
    O O O
    The torture hadn’t stopped when Ben passed out. The bad guys followed him into his dreams and bound his wrists behind his back, ignoring, once again, his panic attack. Grabbing his hair, they thrust his face into a bucket of icy water, half-drowning him before letting him come up for air. They shouted questions in a language he didn’t understand, questions he wouldn’t have answered even if he had the capability, before dunking him again. And again. At this point, he was just waiting for death to come and release him once and for all, because he knew he wasn’t getting out of this any other way.
    A shriek from above made everyone jerk their heads skyward, and the men scrambled away from him, leaving him on his knees, soaked and freezing and gasping. A dusky-skinned Valkyrie swooped down with white wings and a nasty attitude, tearing his torturers apart with her claws, screaming his name. They vanished, dead or fleeing, and she landed beside him with a whisper of feathers and a gentle hand on his head, the other hand working at the bindings on his wrists, setting him free to collapse against her as the wings wrapped around him.
    “Janni,” he said, and opened his eyes to find he was lying on his side in the softest bed imaginable with his arm thrown across Janni’s legs because she was propped up next to him against the headboard.
    “Oh, Ben,” she choked, and something warm and wet splashed on his face. Was she crying?
    “I’m alive,” he said, half-unsure. Then he sucked a breath into his sore chest and sat up much too quickly, as the threat “Your girlfriend’s next” echoed through his head. The blanket dropped down to his waist, and he heard Janni suck in a breath of her own. “They didn’t, they haven’t—” he started.
    “You’re safe,” Janni said. “Lie down, sweetie.”
    Safe was good; he was too dizzy to do anything about it if they weren’t. His ears were ringing and his vision had done that “black around the edges and spotty in the middle” thing. He laid his head back down and closed his eyes as she pulled the blanket back over his shoulder. But he’d seen her face, and, yes, she was crying, which made him wonder—she hardly ever cried, at least in front of him.
    Whatever painkillers they’d given him had brought the agony down to an ache, although his ribs were twinging pretty hard, and now he had another thought. Who were “they”? Because this wasn’t his and Janni’s place, or a hospital, which was the next logical place—and it sure as hell wasn’t their bed. “Safe where?” he asked.
    “Alex Jarrett’s house.”
    It was all too much, and his dizziness increased. “Alex Jarrett? The guy whose case we’re on? Why are we at his house?”
    “I