Backblast by Candace Irving (miss read books TXT) 📕

as they squirted up and out from two mangled holes at opposite sides of the man's neck, splashing across her forehead, over her cheeks and damned near into her eyes.

Instinct combined with relentless training and the time-tested reality of combat as she shoved her thumbs into Durrani's neck, digging in at his pulse points.

A fresh round of scarlet burst forth regardless, this time coating her jaw and neck as it arced down into her ACU top. She could feel the blood dripping beneath her tee shirt and soaking into her bra as she dug her thumbs in deeper. But Durrani's neck was also with slick with blood, forcing her to readjust her grip.

"Damn it, Doc, stop pulling away!"

The bastard just stared at her—and smiled. That blasted serenity had returned too, and it was directed solely at her.

"Vetter, get his cuffs." If he could get Durrani free and laid out on the deck, she could turn the physics of gravity and pressure into their favor.

The Marine worked as rapidly as he could, but the blood was still squirting out through those mangled holes with each beat of the man's heart. There was less and less force behind each jet, too. Less and less blood splashing into her neck and chest.

Shit.

She didn't need Colonel Tarrington's vaunted skills, much less a formal autopsy, to confirm that Dr. Durrani had managed to shred both his carotids. The proof was in his blood. Most of it was outside the bastard's body now—coating her.

Slicking those damned cuffs.

Between slippery steel and the scarlet stain still spreading out over the rolling deck, it was impossible for the Marine to keep his grip.

What the hell had Durrani used to cut himself with anyway?

But, deep down, she knew. Just as she knew this entire, senseless fiasco was her fault. She should have made the connection sooner. Before the doc's lap had begun to fill with his own blood.

The cuffs finally clicked open and fell away. A split second later, half the ship's medical department barreled into the brig, and then the cell. Dr. Mantia and the beefy corpsman from the conference room that morning were in the lead.

Behind them, and coming up fast, a livid Riyad.

She ignored the spook and concentrated on the splatter of red now barely bubbling forth as Vetter worked around her hands, hooking his arms behind Durrani's neck and knees so he could lift and lay the man out into the ocean of his own blood. But she could tell—even before the Griffith's physician reached her side and knelt to assess the situation, shook his head, resigned himself to the reality—it was too late.

The bastard beneath her thumbs had already given her his last fucking smile…and died.

15

"What the hell have you done, woman?"

Riyad.

Regan leaned back on the heels of her bloodstained boots and stared up at the NCIS agent, silent. Resigned. With everything that had happed, she couldn't even screw up anger over that slur. And that word, from this man, in that tone of voice?

"Woman" was definitely a slur.

At the moment, she just couldn't give a crap. Unfortunately, Vetter did.

The Marine jackknifed to his feet and stepped up into the spook's face. "Agent Chase didn't do a blessed thing, sir, except try and save the bastard. I saw it all."

Even Riyad backed down beneath that righteous fire. He took several paces to his left so he could level that scowl on her again. "How the fuck did Durrani even—"

"The scissors."

It took a moment for her quiet words to cut through Riyad's seething ire. Suspicion quickly followed. "What are you talking about? What scissors?"

The ones Petty Officer Nguyen probably hadn't even realized were missing because the corpsman had been so rattled by the black eye that Durrani had given her during the suture removal. The scissors Riyad would have known about if he'd stuck around up on the flight deck earlier instead of grabbing the microTLC out from under her and slinking down to the master-at-arms shack to fire it up all by himself.

She would've explained now, but Riyad had already turned away, executing a slow, three-hundred-sixty-degree, searching turn made even slower by the rolling deck and the slick ocean of red spreading further and further out around them.

The spook finally circled back to her, his standard filthy expression locked into place. "Unless they're beneath the body, there are no scissors."

Regan nodded toward the doc's coveralls. Vast swaths of the dark blue twill covering his torso, abdomen and thighs were darker still from all that wet, glistening blood. "Check his sleeves, up inside the cuffs."

Dr. Mantia passed a pair of sterile latex gloves to the spook.

Riyad accepted them, his stony stare rife with disbelief as he donned the protective gear. Hunkering down, he carefully tucked the fingers of his left hand beneath the cuffs crowning Durrani's right and fished around. His suspicion faded, though not completely, as he slowly slid a pair of Littauer suture removal scissors out from beneath the fabric.

Constructed of stainless-steel, they were roughly five inches in length, with the slightly parted blades taking up at most an inch, an inch and a half of that. A tiny—and in light of what had just happened—ominously scarlet-coated hook formed the tip of one end.

Several distinctly relieved sighs filled the compartment, momentarily competing with the creaking of the ship. None of them belonged to her.

Though the prints on those scissors would exonerate her, possibly even in Riyad's eyes, she knew better.

Tonight had been her fault.

If she hadn't been rejoicing in relief over that strychnine and what its presence meant for John—and, yes, if she hadn't also been in such a rush to clear him so she could bring John into this very cell and use him against the bastard now lying dead at her knees—she'd have given more thought to what Chief Yrle had said about how the suture removal incident had gone down.

Specifically, how Durrani had bashed his skull into the corpsman's eye.

The bastard hadn't been taking out his anger on Petty Officer