“I don’t want you near that…” He looked down at a sleeping Georgina before mouthing a vile curse into the camera.
She smiled grimly. “I’m not letting Wenck scare me, Alex. He’s going to be knocked off his game regardless. And I think he’ll want to see me to find out what happened during and after the attack. Or to see if we think he’s involved.”
Alex’s jaw flexed. “Take the Fed with you, otherwise I will have to hurt the guy.”
“Noted.” Haley remembered something else. “One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the kidnappers took my grandmother’s watch and some Tiffany diamond earrings.”
“You loved that watch.”
“They were threatening to cut off my nose at the time, and I’m more attached to that.” Alex flinched, and she wished she hadn’t said anything. “I was just thinking that it’s almost bound to show up at auction at some point. I made a point of saying how valuable it was. The insurance info with photographs and more detailed information is in my safe.” Which Alex could access in her Georgetown home. “It’s the sort of thing you might track faster than the Feds, especially when they have other things on their minds.”
Alex nodded. “I’ll set up some web crawlers and trigger searches.” Georgina started to fuss. “Feeding time.”
Alex looked down with such adoration in his gaze, Haley felt another pang for what she couldn’t have. “Talk to you tomorrow. Give Mallory my love.”
She cut off the feed and sat there for a few minutes thinking about what Alex had said. Was he right? The idea she’d been running away all these years under the guise of fierce independence made her wonder what else she’d been lying to herself about.
She decided to go see Darby. It was early, but she couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t be surprised if Darby couldn’t either.
Haley eased her feet over the side of the bed and back into her dead man’s shoes. Truth was, she’d grown fond of the sturdy black military boots. She planned to keep them as a reminder of everything she’d been through, along with her gray woolen blanket.
She closed the door quietly behind her. Despite the hundreds of people onboard the ship, the area was deserted and quiet. She headed down the corridor to Darby’s room and knocked on the door.
The door was opened by one of Quentin’s colleagues, Eban Winters, who had similar coloring to his boss but was shorter and broader. And almost as handsome.
“She’s sleeping.” He didn’t look particularly pleased to see her.
“Who is it?” Darby’s groggy voice cut through the quiet.
Eban rolled his eyes and opened the door wider.
Haley slipped inside. “Just me. I couldn’t sleep and thought I’d come check on you. If you want to rest, I’ll leave.”
“No. Please stay.” Darby looked tiny amid the white sheets and pillows of the hospital bed. Her face was pale, her wild hair tamed into a tight, no nonsense braid, green eyes still worried. She held out her hand, and Haley walked over, took it, and sat beside her on the bed.
How long would it take before Darby stopped feeling that terror?
How long before Haley stopped feeling it?
“Where’s Quentin?” asked Darby.
A notepad sat on the nearby chair, and Haley could see that Darby had been writing about her ordeal.
Haley eyed Eban. No wonder he looked strained and over-protective. She understood him better than he understood himself. The desire to guard this vulnerable woman had seeped into each of their souls.
“He’s at some meeting that I suspect Eban should probably be attending too.”
“I don’t want Darby left alone…”
Interesting that he’d already claimed her.
“I’ll stay.” Haley toed off her boots and lay next to the other woman. Darby simply shifted over a few inches without a word. The time they’d spent together had bonded them more firmly than siblings.
Eban hesitated before picking up that notebook from the bedside table. Then he reached into his pocket and placed a phone in its place. “That’s my personal cell. My work number is in the contacts.” He reeled off the pin. “Call me if Haley needs to leave or if you get hungry or if you remember anything else you think is relevant.”
That reminded Haley. “Did you find my cell on Nabat Island?”
Eban nodded.
“Any chance of me getting it back?”
“It’s in Evidence back in Quantico now. You can put in a request.”
Haley pulled a face. She needed that phone as it contained the recording of Wenck’s attack on her. “I’ll do that.” She’d ask Alex to handle the request and a new phone in the meantime. She doubted they’d stay on the ship much longer. But she wanted to remain near Quentin which was unnerving. She didn’t usually do clingy.
Eban went to leave.
“Will you come tell us…” Haley asked. “When you know anything?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded. Then he left.
Haley turned off the bedside light, and she and Darby lay there with their shoulders touching, each to the other a reassuring presence in an unfamiliar place. Darby’s breathing finally eased into a steady rhythm, and Haley lay there, watching the water reflect off the ceiling and knowing that Special Forces soldiers were right now approaching the island, and that Quentin was in that briefing room watching the drama unfold. Still trying to protect her from unseen danger. Still trying to keep them both safe.
The armor around her heart was cracking, being pierced over and over again by the rapier that was Quentin Savage. She knew she wasn’t good enough for him and wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with the consequences when he finally figured it out.
* * *
By the time dawn came, Quentin was standing at the edge of the village where he and Haley had been held hostage a few short days ago. He wore full protective clothing with a military-grade air filter covering his nose and mouth. Not because the people here had died due to some unknown pathogen—death had been caused by the very obvious bullet wounds in each of their bodies. Unfortunately, those same victims now posed a danger to human health due to the spread of disease from their rapidly decomposing corpses.
US and Indonesian forensics teams were en route from Jakarta. Ballistics experts were being flown in from both the US and the Philippines so that there was no doubt as to the veracity of the results obtained. The US needed full transparency as it would be easy for someone to point the finger at them carrying out this massacre in revenge for the hotel attack.
It could have been one of the private military companies who’d lost people during the terrorist attack. While Quentin understood the motivation, one slaughter did not justify another. Whoever the culprit, the FBI would do their utmost to bring them to justice.
“You’re sure these people were alive when you left?” Kurt Montana asked.
Ex-military with a knack for tactical operations, Montana considered negotiation a necessary evil derived from the launch of too many lawsuits when things had gone wrong in the past.
“Most of them were alive when I left.” Quentin had already made out his reports about the men he’d killed during their escape. “I would never have committed this wholesale slaughter after the fact.” Quentin’s voice shook. Figuring out who was behind the hotel attack and his own abduction was now a lot more difficult. Most of the participants were dead.
He struggled to view the carnage unemotionally. These people had understood the kind of life they’d chosen. He glanced around, knowing from the thermal images he’d viewed that what was up ahead was going to be much worse than the scattered paramilitary soldiers he’d passed in the camp below.
“That’s the hut where we were kept.” He pointed it out to the videographer and ducked his head inside. Empty, except for the narrow cot he’d briefly shared with Haley. The dead guard had been removed and presumably buried.
Quentin continued into the village past the other huts. They ducked inside each one, making it a drawn out and
depressing trek. All the dead were being catalogued. Photographed, fingerprinted and DNA samples collected for analysis, but Quentin didn’t wait for the techs to process the bodies. He was looking for three people. The leader of this murderous troop—a man called Darmawan Hurek whom Quentin had identified from old photographs—and the Alexanders.
Someone had taken the yacht.
It could have been whoever attacked this village, but why would they give themselves away so obviously by being in possession of a stolen yacht that linked them to the crime?
Quentin was holding on to hope that the Alexanders had somehow managed to flee when the village had been attacked.
He paused near the well. A large group of people had been rounded up here and gunned down. He spotted a brightly colored dress and recognized the young widow, Lyrita, clutching one of her children to her chest. She was barely out of her teens.
Bile churned in his stomach as he looked at the children. Innocents. Whoever had done this deserved everything the Indonesian and US governments threw at them. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes even though the sun was barely up.
“You okay?” Montana asked him.
“Fine.” Quentin carried on.
The men who’d found them on Darby’s volcano yesterday morning had been part of this terror group. Had they left before the death squad attacked? Or were they the killers? The fact the villagers hadn’t fled into the jungle suggested the shooters had been trusted enough to be walking amongst them.
Quentin had no idea. Maybe some people had gotten away and hidden in the jungle, but the drone hadn’t picked up any human heat sources on the island.
He ascended the steps into the old plantation house. The place was dilapidated, water stains on the ceilings suggesting the roof leaked, moth eaten furniture that looked as if it had been around since the glory days of the spice trade. But it wasn’t a total dump.
Several corpses littered the premises. One woman was naked in the bedroom, but it didn’t appear as if she’d been sexually assaulted. Gunned down but not raped—the killers had been fast and systematic. A half-filled suitcase sat near the closet. A man’s clothes filled some of the drawers and hung on hangers. Quentin was almost certain Hurek lived here. Was that his wife or lover lying there?
“Remind the forensic teams to get DNA profiles from the bedding.”
Montana keyed in his radio and relayed the message.
No sign of the commander’s body or his extendable baton which Quentin had wanted to shove in Hurek’s face.
Quentin exited and went down the steps off the front porch. He walked farther along the path. Flies buzzed. Brass bullet casings were strewn in the dirt and in the brush. To the right was a hut with a large metal padlock securing the door.
“Bolt cutters,” Quentin snapped.
An agent from HRT withdrew some from a heavy tool bag he’d lugged with him. Quentin let him snip the thick iron and gather the lock into an evidence bag before dragging the door wide. The stench hit as Quentin stepped inside, blood, sweat, and excrement. The overpowering sharpness took his breath and made his eyes water—that, along with the scene before him.
A tall, blond man lay stretched over the much tinier form of an older woman. Both of them were emaciated, hair long, frazzled and gray.
There were seven bullet holes in Erik Alexander’s back. He’d died trying to protect his wife.
Quentin closed his eyes. He’d failed these people multiple times over. First, he’d failed to negotiate their freedom, and then he’d failed by not rescuing them when he and Haley had escaped. He stepped outside and let the other members of the team do their job. Unlike him, they were good at it.
“Hey!” Kurt Montana yelled. “Someone call for a medical team.”
Quentin ducked back inside. They’d rolled Erik Alexander carefully off Alice, and laid the guy on the floor. She was covered in blood, but his sacrifice had paid off. Even though it took a moment, Quentin made out the shallow rise and fall of the woman’s chest.
“Sonofabitch. She’s alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Eban stared out the porthole in Darby O’Roarke’s room. He itched to get to work and help figure out what the hell was going on but didn’t want to leave Darby alone. Haley Cramer was being taken on a tour of the ship by the captain. Eban had the feeling his boss wasn’t going to like that.
Or maybe he wouldn’t care.
Maybe theirs was one of those relationships that had sprung out of emotional intensity and proximity of the moment and would fizzle out just as fast. Eban didn’t blame the guy. The woman was a walking wet dream. Eban didn’t feel that way but, unfortunately for him, his weakness had always been redheads.
The door was open to make Darby feel more relaxed and to get some air moving around the small cabin. But they were in a metal boat near the equator and, despite some attempts at A/C, it was damn hot.
“What is it you aren’t telling me?” Darby asked suddenly with a frown.
“What do you mean?”
She rolled her eyes. According to her files, she was twenty-four years old and had started her doctorate work at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, last September. That she was smart was a given but what a paper record couldn’t tell you was the spark of defiance that lit her clear green eyes when she managed to forget, however briefly, what had happened to her. Or how those shadows reached out and ripped his heart out whenever she didn’t.
“Where are we going then?” she asked.
The ship’s engines had started up thirty minutes ago.
“I don’t know.” But he had a good idea.
Darby gave a huff and kicked off the sheet that covered her bare legs.
He glanced over and caught sight of some of the mottled bruises and cuts on her thighs. One bruise looked like a handprint on her pale skin.
“Stop it,” Darby snapped. “I don’t need your pity.”
What he was feeling wasn’t pity. It was burn-the-house-down fury, but he doubted his manly rage would make her feel better. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Darby.”
She looked away and changed the subject. Sometimes, he noticed, she faced what had happened to her head-on. Other times she couldn’t seem to face it at all. “I need something to wear.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Where do you intend to go?”
She gave him a perplexed look. “For a walk?”
“The doctors want you to rest.”
“I’m done resting.”
“I—”
She held up her hand. “If you aren’t helping me then you can leave.”
Little Miss Pissy. He went to an overhead locker, opened it and pulled out a canvas bag of her gear. He tossed it on the bed, and she grinned at him and damn if he didn’t feel like a goddamn hero. Apparently, his ego really was that fragile.
He stepped outside the room while she dressed. When she came out, she was wearing green canvas shorts and a yellow t-shirt with some sort of geology conference logo on it. She’d strapped river sandals to her feet and pulled a University of Alaska ball cap over that vivid hair which was now constrained in a ponytail. Looking at her, aside from the bruises that dotted her body, you’d never know she’d been brutally assaulted a few days ago.
Her eyes shied away from his, and she seemed to know what he was thinking. He pushed himself off the wall.
“Where do you want to go?” He sounded surly.
“The deck. I want some fresh air.” She looked about uncertainly. “I don’t remember which way it is.”
“This way. Come on.” Eban led her through winding corridors up several staircases and then up onto the main deck. They passed seamen along the way, and he felt Darby shrink every time she drew their attention.
Up on deck, she went straight to the railing and wrapped her fingers around the metal bars. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sky, clearly enjoying the cool breeze if her flushed cheeks were any indication.
A group of sailors came on deck, joking around, laughing. Darby’s eyes startled open, and she angled herself so he was between her and them.
As soon as they spotted Darby, the sailors sobered, and their expressions morphed to pity, and they shuffled away.
Darby turned her back on them and stared out at the sun low in the east. “Is this how it’s always going to be, do you think?” she asked quietly. “Me acting like a scared rabbit and men looking at me with pity.”
“Of course not.” He hoped.
Her green eyes narrowed at him. “Will every man I sleep with treat me differently because of what they did to me?”
This wasn’t exactly what he wanted to be discussing with her. He didn’t have a psych degree. But pushing her to talk, to get every piece of bitterness out so she could start to heal…
“Most reasonable men would want to be careful they don’t upset or scare you if they were lucky enough to find themselves in that position.” He didn’t even want to think about all the buffoons out there who might mess it up for her. “The best thing might be to let yourself fully heal before you become intimate with anyone. If they are in any way worthy, they’ll wait.”
“I was a virgin.”
Her words struck him so hard he reached out and held onto the railing, his knees threatening to buckle.
“Pathetic, right? I was dating a guy before I started my Ph.D. He dumped me because I wouldn’t sleep with him. It feels like such irony, like such a waste of time. I was a fool to guard something so fiercely when it could be so easily taken by force.”
The words felt like a serrated knife being dragged backwards and forwards over his heart. He already knew the world could be a vicious place. He saw it regularly. But rarely was it this raw or personal.
“You weren’t foolish, Darby. You made a personal choice. One day you’ll find a guy worthy of all that.” He frowned. “And I don’t believe that rape takes someone’s ‘virginity.’ Rape isn’t sex or making love. You’ve never had sex, never experienced genuine intimacy.” He tried to keep his voice even. “You can still make the choice of who you want to cross that threshold with.”
Colder Than Sin (Cold Justice - Crossfire: FBI Romantic Suspense Book 2) Page 25