Jax was in a living hell.

It was like watching Molly die all over again but a million times worse. The only thing that kept him sane was the knowledge that Kira would come out of the coma. He sat beside the hospital bed and read to her, just like he had with Molly. Slade's mother had loved romance novels, which is how he got hooked on the damn things.

Because the induced coma required round-the-clock monitoring, he had insisted that Jenna get some rest. She had refused to leave her patient until Chaz settled the issue by carrying his exhausted wife away. Various members of the team and the women came and sat with him, but he barely even noticed their presence.

He wasn't eating or sleeping, and his concentration was shot to shit.

Slade was the only one who could get him to leave her side.

Jax took over changing her bandages and giving Kira sponge baths. The bite marks he discovered on her body nearly sent him over the edge again. Seeing another man's teeth imprinted on her flesh like a brand almost killed him. He was going to make Von Osterman suffer like no man had ever suffered before.

His heart demanded retribution because the bastard had almost killed the woman he loved in order to hurt him. The guilt destroyed him. Because he'd been there that night. He'd seen them together. And he'd walked away. He should have stayed and fought for her. Hell, if he hadn't let her go this never would have happened.

He'd been a fucking fool.

This time, he vowed to protect her until his dying day.

Jenna had a hell of a fight on her hands when she tried to evict him from the room before she brought her patient out of the coma. He raised immortal hell because Kira had been through a traumatic event and he needed to be there for her. Then the doctor reminded him that this wasn't about what he needed.

"Jax, I'm serious," the woman insisted. "She was out of it when I got to her, but Kira begged me not to let you see her like this. She's very fragile right now, and I'm not going to let anything stress her out."

Defeated, he asked, "You'll let me know when I can see her?"

"Just as soon as she agrees to it," Jenna confirmed.

Jax leaned over and placed a tender kiss on her brow before leaving the room. He stayed away from her even though it shredded him to do so. He spent countless hours watching her via the security monitor and saw how hard she struggled to come to grips with reality. Not being there for Kira was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

The hunt for Von Osterman proved as fruitless as the search for the Frenchman had been. The only person who could help them was still too traumatized to question. Jax and Reed were both at their wit's end, snapping and snarling at every little thing. Tempers were frayed, and tension was running high as they waited for Kira to recover.

The heart to heart convo with his son helped as much as it hurt. Especially when the younger man bluntly asked him if he was going to get back together with Kira. Jax confessed that he didn't know what to do. "You always know what to do, Dad. You're the man with all the answers," Slade pointed out.

"Not this time," he denied heavily. "After everything she's been through, everything I've put her through, my head tells me to let her go." But he'd tried that before, and it had been the biggest fucking mistake he'd ever made. A mistake that had almost cost the woman he loved her life.

"Then maybe you should stop listening to your head and follow your heart," his son imparted wisely. "Cause if you let Kira go again, you really are a fucking fool."

 

***

 

The first time that Jenna brought her out of the coma, Kira had started screaming hysterically and became combative. Since she refused to forcibly restrain her patient and further traumatize her, Jenna had put her back under to prevent her from reinjuring herself.

The second time she brought her out, Kira had been disoriented and terrified. She refused to believe that Jenna was who she claimed to be, or that she had been rescued. That time she had merely sedated her so she could get the rest that her mind and body needed to heal.

All the women took turns sitting with her, and as the days passed, Kira gradually began to accept that this wasn't some kind of mind game. The fact that her body was healing faster than her psyche was of great concern. It was also proof that the mental trauma she had experienced was every bit as devastating as the physical had been.

There were days when her patient broke down in tears and became completely unresponsive. She still jumped at every little sound and cringed from the slightest touch. And she woke up screaming with nightmares every time she slept. The doctor began to wonder what it would take to make her feel safe again.

Or if anything could.

Something had to be done, so she discussed the issue with Jax. Jenna knew the man was going through hell, but he had more psychological training than she did and his insight could prove helpful. Short of bringing a shrink to the island, he was her best bet. Although she balked at his suggestion, she also knew it would work.

Kira needed to talk about what had happened instead of keeping it bottled up inside. The problem was, Jax was the only one qualified to conduct the sessions. There was no guarantee that she would open up to him after their breakup. Even so, he was willing to give it a try and suggested heavy sedation be applied.

A month after her rescue, Jenna determined that she was physically well enough to go outside and enjoy the tropical breeze. Kira looked like she was scared half to death at the prospect, but she didn't refuse. Her entire body was as taut as a bowstring as she was rolled out onto the pool deck in a wheelchair.

The view of the cove was breathtakingly beautiful to even the most jaded, and she gasped in surprise when she saw it. Jenna merely smiled as she parked her patient in the shade and sat in a chair next to her. Jax had told her that watching the ocean was cathartic to Kira and they had hoped that this would help her relax.

It did, although the strong sedative had helped.

Thirty minutes later, Kira breathed, "It's so beautiful."

"It is," she agreed.

"Where are we?" She asked curiously.

The doctor was elated. This was the first time that Kira had shown any interest at all in her surroundings. "This little slice of heaven is called Sanctuary Island," she imparted.

"I can see why," her patient admitted, and for once there was no tension evident in her tone or expression. "It's so peaceful."

"It's also the safest place on the planet," Jenna assured her seriously. "The guys went overboard with safety measures. They know if a strange bird lands on the island."

"How did I get here?" She asked in confusion. "Everything is so… distorted. I'm not sure what really happened and what didn't."

"Jax would like to be the one to explain everything and ask you a few questions," she said gently. The interrogator knew how to lead a conversation in the right direction and steer away from things that didn't need to be discussed. He also knew how far to push and when not to. "Do you think you're up for that?"

"I don't know if I can face him," Kira admitted as tears welled in her eyes. "It ended so bad between us, and he… he hasn't been to see me."

"Kira, honey, that's my fault," she admitted regretfully. "You begged me not to let Jax see you when we found you, but there was no keeping him away. He sat by your bed and read you romance novels day and night until I kicked him out. I didn't want his being there to upset you when you woke up."

Her patient looked surprised and relieved before she asked hopefully, "Will you stay with me?"

"I'll be right by your side," Jenna assured her and looked directly into the camera mounted on the wall. She knew that Jax was monitoring them, so she nodded confirmation for him to join them.

 

***

 

Jax walked out onto the pool deck and thought he was prepared to see Kira again. He wasn't. Even though her body had mostly healed, she still appeared too fragile. And when she looked at him, the fear in her eyes shredded him. He took a chair on the opposite side of the table to give her plenty of space.

"Hey, Vixen," he said gently. Kira's lower lip started trembling, and when her face crumpled, Jax almost lost his shit. Tamping his raging emotions back down, he knelt at her feet and extended his hand, exactly like he had the day they met. "I'm still your friend, Kira. Please let me help you get through this."

Sea green eyes filled with apprehension met his and held for an endless second before she dropped her gaze. When he had all but given up hope, her trembling hand reached out slowly and covered his. Elation at the minor victory filled his burdened soul. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze of reassurance before releasing it.

Kira clenched her hands together in her lap and said nervously, "Jenna said you'd tell me how I got here."

"I will," he agreed. "Are you ready to talk about it?"

"No," she admitted shakily. "But I need to know."

Jax pulled a chair behind him and sat down, so they were facing each other. He needed to be able to read every nuance of her expression, every subtle shift of her body language. Speaking in his calm, soothing tone, he explained every step of how they had come to find her and bring her back to the island.

"I thought it was you," she said quietly after he had finished. "When Slade got there. But I didn't trust anything I saw or heard. Not until Jenna mentioned sunblock." Then she turned to the other woman with a frown of confusion and asked, "Did that really happen?"

"It did," Jenna assured her. "You challenged me to prove who I was. It was the first thing I thought of."

"Jaeger… he kept playing mind games," she admitted tremulously as she stared at her hands tightly clenched in her lap. "Pretending to be… other people. Making me think that I was safe. But it was all a lie."

"Keeping you drugged with LSD altered your perception," Jenna informed her. "Since you were already frightened, those feelings manifested into terror filled delusions and a distorted sense of reality."

"Which is why I need you to tell me what really happened," Kira confirmed. "It was like I was having a nightmare… and I couldn't wake up. Everything is all jumbled up in my head. I need to know what was real. I need to know… what he did to me."

"Why don't we start with what you remember from before the incident," Jax suggested.

She frowned in concentration and shook her head. "Even that doesn't make any sense," Kira admitted. "Because what I think happened, couldn't have been real."

"Talking it through will help clear up the confusion," he assured her.

"Okay," she agreed but didn't look convinced. "Jaeger and I were supposed to meet his friends for dinner, but it was Char and that French guy that she introduced us to. The client with the nasty man bun."

"Jean," Jenna confirmed.

"Yeah, Jean-Claude… Vanderhorst," she said after a moment's thought, and Jax's heart began to hammer in his chest. Char's abductor had a name to go with the face. They were one step closer to finding the fucker. Which meant he was one step closer to getting his hands on Von Osterman.

"Char never told us his full name," Jenna reminded her.

"That was how Jaeger introduced them," she clarified. "Jean-Claude and Charise Vanderhorst. It had to be a delusion, right? Char would never leave Reed, and she didn't even know who I was."

"She didn't recognize you?" Jax queried.

"No, she didn't," Kira confirmed. "It was such a shock seeing her with him that I didn't know what to say. And she'd changed so much. At first, I thought I had to be mistaken. That the woman just looked like Char, but he introduced her as Charise, and it's such an unusual name that I knew it had to be her."

"When I said it was good to see her again, she looked confused and apologized for not remembering that we'd met. Then Jaeger told me that the couple had been in an accident and Charise suffered from amnesia," Kira informed them. "It explained why she didn't know me, so I dropped the subject."

"What else can you tell us about Charise and Jean?" Jax pressed gently. He was certain that they had done something to alter Char's memory, just like they had played with Kira's mind. "Did they mention where they lived, what he did for a living, anything about their lives?"

"The men conversed in German at times," she recalled. "Mostly they reminisced about the mischief they'd gotten into at school. The pranks they'd pulled on their instructors."

"Did they say what school?" He queried.

"No, but it must have been in France. They mentioned a field trip to the Louvre," she replied. "Jean said their dorm rooms were assigned alphabetically and since they both had last names starting with V that they had been roommates."

Then Vanderhorst must be the bastards real name. Jax seriously doubted they would have shared that detail with Kira if they'd been planning to let her live. Which meant the French fucker was just as guilty as Von Osterman.

When she lowered her head into her hands, Jenna asked in concern, "Are you all right, Kira?"

"Trying to remember makes my head hurt," she admitted ruefully.

Jax shared a look with the doctor before saying, "I think we've done enough for one day."

"But I want to know," she protested as she looked up at him with desperation in her beautiful sea green eyes. "I need to know."

Wanting to ease her mind, Jax took a chance and gave her a few details. "We have surveillance footage to prove everything you've said so far. Char was there with Vanderhorst." He paused a minute to let that sink in. "What they didn't tell you was that she was kidnapped the same night that Cat was."

"Kidnapped?" Kira gasped in horror.

"You've given us the first lead we've had, Kira," he informed her proudly. "What you just told me about Vanderhorst could be the key to getting her back." And now he was absolutely certain as to why she'd been tortured and left for dead.

"My God," she breathed.

Jax reached out and took her hand in his. "You did good, Vixen. Now get some rest, and we'll talk again when you're up to it."

Kira gave his hand a gentle squeeze and said, "Thank you, Jax. It means a lot to know I'm not losing my mind."

"We'll get through this," he promised. "One step at a time."

Jax had removed the earbud while he was talking to Kira. It was bad enough that everyone knew what had happened to her, but they didn't need to hear the humiliating details. She deserved some semblance of privacy. Not that his team would ever mention a word of the incident to her.

They'd do everything in their power to preserve her dignity and spare her any further discomfort. As would he. Which was why he hadn't asked where Von Osterman might be hiding out. They'd get to that when she was ready and not a damn minute before. No way in hell would he cause her any more distress.

He put the earbud back in place and relayed a message to his teammates. "Pepe Le Pew has a name." That was all it took to have the war room filling up right behind him.

"Who the fuck is he?" Reed demanded, and the question came out sounding like he was chewing gravel.

"Jean-Claude Vanderhorst," Jax informed the room at large. "He and Von Osterman attended school together in France."

"What else?" Ashe demanded.

"Char didn't recognize Kira," he admitted. "Von claimed that she'd been in an accident and had amnesia. It's more likely that they've altered her memory. Which is why they wanted her to meet Kira. It was a test to make sure that Char didn't remember her or anything about her past. After that, Kira was expendable."

"How the fuck can they do something like that?" Chaz queried.

"Pharmacological torture, hypnosis, brainwashing or a combination thereof," he imparted and noticed that Reed's expression was growing darker by the minute. Yeah, this was gonna suck. "Char believes that Vanderhorst is her husband."

The look in Reed's eyes was so feral that it had every one of his teammates shifting into battle stances in case they needed to take him down. He turned that bowel loosening stare on Hunter and snarled from between clenched teeth, "Find him."

"Roger that," the team geek confirmed grimly.

 

***

 

Over the course of the next week, the hunt for both men proved futile. It was like Von Osterman had dropped off the face of the earth and Vanderhorst had never existed. Kenzi and Hunter had camped out in the command center, digging into every database known to man without yielding any results.

Jax's sessions with Kira had been productive even if they had shredded him from the inside out. She still wasn't sure what had been real, and there were things that she just couldn't bring herself to talk about. He didn't push for more than she was ready to give. Truth be told, he wasn't sure he could handle it.

Hearing the woman he loved describe being raped with a knife would fucking break him.

He tried to focus on the small details needed to tie up loose ends. Like how she had wound up doing the independent audit for Von Osterman, to begin with. Kira told him that he had requested her specifically because she had come highly recommended from another client, though he never said who the client was.

Which confirmed that the bastard had deliberately sought her out.

There was one piece of the puzzle that continued to disturb him. A key factor that had set the wheels in motion and facilitated Kira's rescue. Why had she told her friend to contact Raven if anything happened to her? What made her think she was in danger? And if she had, why the fuck hadn't she contacted him or a member of the team?

So he asked, "Why did you tell Savannah to contact Raven if something happened to you?"

"I assumed he'd contact you, and he did," she confessed, her eyes locked on her clenched hands.

That comment did nothing to assuage his guilt and everything to exacerbate it. Because even though he had treated her like shit, Kira had still trusted him enough to place her safety in his hands. And he'd let her down by not being there when she needed him. His next question was, "What made you think something might happen to you?"

"The files I copied," Kira replied.

"From the club," he deduced.

"And the ones from the bank," she added.

Jax had a hard time keeping his astonishment from showing. "You copied bank records?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. "I found a connection between account holders and the club, so I copied them."

Jesus Christ! Jax could not believe that she had done something that risky. The Hell Riders were involved in all sort of illegal activities, so she had to know how dangerous delving into them could be. It also provided another reason for Von to want her dead. Especially if she had proof that his bank was dirty.

"Did anyone know you had the files?" He queried.

"No. I used the lipstick thumb drive that Hunter gave me," Kira explained. "It was almost too easy."

"It was also too dangerous," he pointed out and kept a tight rein on his anger. Kira paled to ash and finally looked up at him, the sea green eyes huge orbs of color in her face. "I think we need to get Hunter involved in this convo," he suggested. The records might give them something else to go on.

She swallowed hard and admitted, "I think you're right."

Jax wheeled her into the building and down the hall to the command center. The pulse-pounding beat of hard rock reverberated through the room at near-deafening levels. Two massive Rottweiler's lifted their identical heads from the floor in sync and stared at them through intelligent eyes.

Hunter was sound asleep on the cot shoved against a wall, one arm slung over his face, one leg hanging off the side, his booted foot on the floor. Kenzi was draped over him, her face buried against his chest, her arm hanging limply toward the floor. Yeah, those two definitely had some kind of history.

Although how the hell they could sleep with the music blaring was a complete mystery. Jax met Kira's look of astonishment and shook his head. "Yo, Stealth," he yelled to get the other man's attention. Two heads sprang up and sleep laden eyes peered back at him.

The two geeks managed to untangle themselves, and Kenzi rose with a yawn and a stretch. Her white blonde hair was cropped in a short, spiky style with a purple streak through one side. The bright pink tank top that read Eff Off was paired with a pair of black tactical pants and well-worn shit kickers.

The woman was as eccentric as her style proclaimed.

While Kenzi went to the bank of computers to turn the volume down, Hunter walked over to them. He dropped down on one knee in front of Kira and flashed her his most lethal smile. "Vixen," he said in his usual playful banter and cocked his cheek toward her. "Plant one right there, honey. Show me how much you missed me."

Kira smiled. She actually smiled at his nonsense and playfully pushed his face away. Jax was as envious as he was proud of her progress. "You are such a horn dog," she accused lightly.

"But you still love me," Stealth singsonged and shot her a wicked wink.

"Yeah, and you love every woman you meet," she shot back in their usual teasing manner.

Hunter raised her hand to his lips and placed a loud, smacking kiss on the back of it before asking, "What brings you to my lair, fair maiden?"

"You mean my lair," Kenzi corrected and lightly smacked the top of his head. "Hi, Kira. Welcome to geek heaven."

"I'll bet it is," she replied as she took in the mind-boggling array of computer monitors filling one wall and covering the workstation that ran the length of it. "This place is… wow."

"My point exactly," the hacker said with a huge grin as she plunked her ass down in a rolling chair and popped an ever-present Sugar Daddy lollipop in her mouth. "What can we do for you?"

"We need you to access the cloud account you set up for Kira," Jax replied.

Hunter frowned as he stood and asked, "You think we might find something in the Hell Rider's records?"

"Vixen took it upon herself to do a little espionage," he explained tonelessly. "She copied bank records."

"Ooh. Nice one, girl," Kenzi approved and extended her fist for a bump that Kira returned with a grin.

Hunter tsk-tsked even though his expression showed admiration. "Any particular reason why?"

"The records show wire transactions to the Hell Riders and a variety of other numbered accounts," Kira confessed.

"Sweet!" The feminine half of the dynamic duo cheered as she twirled her chair around in a circle.

"Not so sweet," her partner denied. "The club files were so heavily encrypted that I couldn't crack them."

"Psshht. Never met a code I couldn't crack and you know it," she chided and cracked her knuckles. "Bring it on, baby. Mama likes a challenge."

"Yeah, but the challenge will have to wait until after we've located Van and Von," Hunter said wearily as he stood and stretched.

"Located who?" Kira asked in confusion.

The two men froze in place and shared a look. Jax's condemning, Hunter's apologetic. Kenzi, ever a wild card, admitted the truth. "We're trying to track down the SOBs that kidnapped Char and hurt you. Any idea where they might be hiding out?" She queried.

Kira's face lost what little color she had, and she wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture. "Jaeger lives on his yacht."

"Yeah? She got a name?" The other woman asked around the lollipop crammed in her jaw.

"It's called the Terrr der Meere," Kira imparted.

"The terror of the sea," Kenzi snorted in disgust. "I'll bet it’s a big ass yacht that compensates for an itty bitty dick."

The computer geek had no fucking filter at all. Jax was about to chew her ass out for reminding Kira of the dick that had assaulted her when she laughed. His Vixen actually laughed. The sound washed over his tormented soul like the sweetest balm.

The other woman chortled merrily and removed the lollipop from her mouth. "Do ya know where she's registered?" She queried.

"She flies a Cayman Island flag," Kira admitted.

"All right, sweetheart, let's find that boat," Hunter said as he wheeled Kenzi's chair over to her workstation.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard like lightning, and in less than a minute she announced, "It's registered to a corporation called Phobos International."

Kira gasped in shock, her eyes huge orbs in her face. "That's one of the companies that I downloaded the records for," she informed them. "I remembered the name from the club's account."

Kenzi went to work digging into Phobos and kept running into dead ends. "It's connected to shell companies," she said in frustration. "I can't track it back to an individual."

"Follow the money," the forensic accountant suggested. "The bank records show where the money came from and the client names."

"Girl, you are badass," the other woman assured her and gave her partner a victorious smirk. "Looks like I get to crack the code after all."

"Find the boat first," he suggested indulgently.

"Let me know what you find," Jax commanded and got Kira the hell out of there. Once they were in the hallway, he said, "Sorry about that. Kenzi has no brain to mouth filter."

"I like her," she admitted, her eyes once again downcast. "She doesn't treat me like I'm going to break… even though I might."

He wheeled her back into her room in the infirmary and said seriously, "You're not going to break, Kira. You're the strongest woman I know."

A lone tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away. "Thank you, Jax."

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and hauled ass back to the command center. "Where the fuck is he?" He demanded and knew damn well that they'd already found the yacht. Those two really were the dynamic fucking duo.

"Cuba," Hunter informed him and pointed to the screen where satellite imagery revealed a yacht at anchor. "Kenz pulled up the specs, and I called in the team. We're meeting in the war room in ten."

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Jax breathed as a rush of adrenaline filled him. He was finally going to get his hands on Von Osterman.