Free Midnight Games: A Killer Instincts Novel by Elle Kennedy Page B

ideal place to get fixed up. At one time or another, nearly every man on Morgan’s crew had paid a visit to Sofia.
    “Good to see you, Derek.” She approached the gurney he was lying on, a grin on her face.
    “How’s it going, Doc?”
    She gave a mock gasp. “Wait. Did you actually ask how I was? You must have been hit harder than we thought.”
    She was right—he normally didn’t go out of his way to find out how the people around him were faring. Truth was, he didn’t give a shit.
    But he’d figured out a long time ago that if you weren’t nice to Sofia Amaro, you paid dearly for it.
    “Let me do a quick examination.” She pulled a penlight from the pocket of her flannel button-down shirt. “Follow the light, big guy.”
    For the next five minutes, he humored the good doctor, but only because the last time he’d given her grief she’d retaliated by telling Morgan that D required a week of bed rest, when they both knew he could’ve been walking around within a day or two. No way was he letting that happen again.
    The compound had been attacked, for fuck’s sake. Some asshole had hired a middleman to put together a hit squad of mercenaries. Mercenaries who’d been ordered to leave no one alive. So, yeah, he refused to let this sadist of a woman keep him from hunting down the fucker who’d ordered this morning’s ambush.
    “Pupils look good. Any nausea?”
    “Nope,” he lied.
    “How bad is it?”
    D glared at her. “I just said—”
    “I know what you said.” Sofia arched a brow. “How bad is the nausea?”
    “Manageable,” he muttered.
    “Headache or dizziness? Ringing in your ears?”
    “Mild headache.”
    “Feeling weak? Any trouble breathing?”
    “No.”
    “Good.” Those green eyes grew serious. “You lost a lot of blood. You would’ve died if Kane hadn’t performed an emergency transfusion.”
    D’s gaze flew to Kane’s, who grinned. “Yup. I did it on the plane. Congratulations, you’ve got two units of grade-A Woodland blood in you. Be prepared—you’re going to feel extra strong from now on.”
    The doctor rolled her eyes and stepped away from the gurney. “Bed rest,” she said, jabbing a finger at D. “A few days, at least. You’ll be weak and lethargic because of the blood loss and you need to give your body time to recover.”
    Not fucking likely.
    Aloud, D said, “Sure thing, Doc.”
    Clearly he wasn’t at all convincing, because Sofia turned to Kane and said, “Make sure he stays put for a while.”
    “You got it.”
    After Sofia left the room, D made another attempt at sitting up. This time he managed to do it without feeling like he was going to simultaneously puke and pass out.
    The moment they were alone, Kane resumed the situation report. “This is a total clusterfuck, man. And we can’t reach Morgan.”
    D narrowed his eyes. “He shouldn’t be out of touch. He went to meet his CIA guy in D.C., nothing high risk about it.”
    “Well, the bastard’s not picking up his phone.”
    “How long have I been out?”
    “Since we left the compound—five hours. But like you said, we should be able to reach him. Even if he was in the middle of a meeting, he would’ve seen my hundred SOS’s and called back. I also left a message with our contact at the CIA. So we’ll see what he says when he gets back to me.”
    Worry churned in D’s gut, making him even queasier than before. The boss often disappeared for days or weeks at a time, but never without warning. This trip to D.C. was a routine business meeting, only a two-night thing. There was no reason for him to be AWOL, unless . . .
    “Shit,” D mumbled.
    Kane lowered his voice. “Remember what the fucker said about how they were ordered to kill every man on the compound?
Morgan’s
compound, his entire team. Stands to reason that our boss really pissed someone off.”
    D had been thinking the same damn thing. Which wasn’t at all surprising—Morgan had almost as many enemies as D. Men in their