by J. M. Madden
“Who the hell are you, Wulfe? What Agency are you with?”
Wulfe chuckled at the frustration he could hear in the other man’s voice. In the process of surveilling Wilkes, he’d realized that he wasn’t the only interested party. “No agency, Rose. But we call ourselves the Dogs of War. If you stick with this to the end you’ll understand why.”
“Did you have a part in the death of Priscilla Mattingly?”
“Get that team in the air, Rose. We’ll be talking.”
Wulfe hung up on the other man and sent him the coordinates that Fontana had supplied, then called Fontana on his satellite phone. “I have a CIA forensic team coming in. You should vacate the area within the next two hours.”
“I can do that, assuming the weather breaks. It’s raining like a bitch right now.”
Wulfe could hear the crack of thunder in the background. “If you don’t leave, CIA might take you in.”
“Understood. We’ll bug out.”
“Call tomorrow.”
Fontana sighed on the other end of the line, and Wulfe could hear the anxiety. Tomorrow he would be heading to the camp where they had been held. “Roger.”
Aiden stood where he’d left him, leaning against the wall in the hallway. “It’s done. CIA is sending a team down now. I called Fontana and he’s getting out of there.”
Aiden’s mouth hung open. “CIA? What the hell have you been doing out there in Virginia, Wulfe?”
He grinned, glad that he could still shock his buddies. “Making connections.”
Maybe it was time he told Aiden what he’d been up to for the past two years.
Fontana stashed the phone in a breast pocket of his vest, within easy reach, then swiped the rain from his face. He stepped under the tarp roof they’d erected and looked at Madeira. “Can you fly?”
She glanced out at the pounding rain. A flash of lightning split the sky, making it seem darker outside than it actually was. “I prefer not to fly in lightning. If it eases up I can, of course.”
He nodded and looked at the rest of the men. “We need to wrap up camp. Leaving within the hour.”
They started moving. It wouldn’t take them nearly that long to pack their gear, but it was always better to have more time.
“I’m going to see if I can spot our lookout,” Madeira said, “to let Grandfather know what’s going on.”
“And I’ll leave a sign even the CIA should be able to read,” he told her, flashing her a grin.
Then he sobered. For a moment he’d forgotten what lay just over the hill, where the sign would be pointing. And what lay just a few feet away from their own camp.
Fontana started gathering trash and left items, and lining it up into an arrow, pointed over the hill to the grave. It didn’t seem respectful enough, but he didn’t have time for anything else.
They would find those men justice.
Chapter Nine
Madeira stepped out into the rain, her emotions reeling. When Fontana had grinned at her, she’d been gobsmacked. As if the man weren’t handsome enough with his curly dark blond hair and bright green eyes. He had a smile to freaking die for and the dimples in his cheeks made him look younger than she ever would have expected.
Then it was like he’d realized that he shouldn’t be grinning in such a solemn spot, and his expression, his entire demeanor, had dimmed. She’d wanted to force that smile back, somehow. She’d wanted to bring the light back into his eyes, because his sadness was wrecking her.
Turning away, she headed toward where she’d last seen Grandfather walk into the forest. A young man met her at the tree line just outside where they’d cut the fence to enter. She told him that they would be leaving, and a new team coming in to carry the dead home. He seemed to understand, bowing to her.
By the time she returned to camp, most of it had been stowed in their bags. When they got back to Pablo’s airport they would have to spread everything in the hangar to get it to dry. She packed up her own small items, then stood looking out at the rain. She counted the rumbles of thunder and timed the lightning. Fontana moved up beside her. “I think it’s moving away,” she told him. “We can go.”
They trouped back the way they’d came, through the fence and the path they’d cut into the jungle. They’d only been here a long day, but already the foliage was leaning back in to fill the gap. Big Kenny took the lead, swinging the machete, and within a few minutes they were back at the chopper. Stowing her gear, Jordyn moved around the machine, looking for any sign that it had been damaged in the storm. Nothing. She ran through her preflight check as the men stowed their own gear and loaded up. Fontana climbed in beside her and she glanced at him. She couldn’t read anything in his closed down face.
“Are you tight?” she asked him.
With a sigh, he glanced at her. “Yes. I’m good. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Didn’t have to tell her twice.
The flight back was uneventful and the weather cooperated, which was a little surprising. She’d thought that the storms were settling in to stay, but it was so hard to tell here. They were on the leading edge of the rainforest and things could change, literally, minute to minute. As they flew north toward the airport the land began to dry, until Jordyn was fighting to see through red swirling dust as she landed Margarita on the trailer for her uncle to back into the hangar.
Such a drastic change.
Hugging her uncle, they moved around Margarita, checking her. Payne and the rest of the men spread their equipment out in the sun to dry.
“Take the men up to the house,” Pablo told her. “They are probably hungry. There is meat in the pan on the stove. I’ve already eaten, so the rest is yours.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
It wasn’t hard to entice the men to eat. Men could always eat. Especially men who weren’t always sure where their next meal would be coming from. Besides, most anything was better than rations. Fontana had disappeared though.
She scooped out some meat onto a couple of tortillas the neighbor lady made for her tío, and some crumbled cheese. Then she poured some of her mother’s homemade hot sauce over the meat. She was actually a little surprised that Pablo was giving up some of his precious sauce. Every few months Jordyn’s mother would send a care package to her brother. Sometimes it made it here, other times it didn’t, probably stolen during the trek. Mail delivery in rural Venezuela could be hit and miss sometimes, especially packages. Pablo had learned that it was more secure and definitely worth the expense to have a drop box in Caracas. Whenever he went in for parts or groceries he checked it.
She also grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“I think he’s out back talking to the dogs,” Zero murmured, not looking up from his food.
Jordyn smiled, loving the gruff man. He knew she was wondering where Fontana had gone.
Letting herself out onto the back patio, she scanned the yard for Fontana. There he was, sitting with little Humberto beneath the Araguaney tree. Lalo, the fluffy white dog, sat a few feet away, chewing on something he probably wasn’t supposed to have. The dogs were more scavengers than pets, anymore. Tío Pablo did what he could but Tía Emely had been the one to dote on the dogs, and when she’d passed a few years ago none of them had been the same.
She held the plate out to Fontana. He looked up in surprise. “I don’t expect you to serve me,” he said huskily. “Or feed me for that matter.”
“I know but if I didn’t dip some out for you, Kenny and Zero were going to fight over it. My uncle has turned into a great cook.”
He snorted, taking the plate from her hand. Humberto sniffed hopefully but Fontana shooed him away. “Sorry, dog. Not getting any.”
“He likes you,” she murmured, sitting beneath the tree as well. She made sure to keep space between them.
“He’s desperate,” Fontana said, shoving a huge bite of taco into his mouth.
Jordyn watched him chew, looking for a flash of those dimples again, but she didn’t see them. �
�He was my aunt’s favorite.”
“Where is she?” He asked, taking another bite.
“She died about four years ago. Cervical cancer.”
His chewing paused and he looked up. “I’m sorry.”
Jordyn sighed, missing her aunt. “She was a remarkable woman. Lived through a lot of craziness but didn’t let it get her down. And she lived life the way she wanted to. Pablo never knew she was sick until the very end, when it was too late to do anything about it.”
“She sounds like a remarkable woman.”
Jordyn smiled softly. “Yes, she was. I can only hope to be as strong.”
“Well, I didn’t know the woman personally, but I think you’ve got her beat. It seems like you’ve lived through your own craziness and survived.”
Automatically, her chin tipped up, as if she could feel someone—him— looking at her damage, even though he was sitting on her good side. “Yes. I survived mine, and have the scars to prove it,” she grinned.
If there were anything other than acceptance from him, she would move on. She’d decided long ago that the scars on her hands and face were a part of her now, and she would live with them the rest of her life. As long as they didn’t interfere with her breathing or fine motor skills, she saw no need to get them ‘fixed’.
“How did it happen?” he asked.
Jordyn was surprised. He’d seemed pretty… closed off. She hadn’t thought that he would even ask her such a personal question. She’d taken his distance as disinterest, but maybe she’d been wrong. “I had just returned from leave and I was being flown out to my Forward Operating Base. It was supposed to be a super quick shuttle ride, but the pilot was young and thought he would take a bit of a detour through a pass. There were Afghans in that pass, watching the FOB,” she chuckled. “Both parties were surprised. They started firing at us and the pilot banked away, but we’d been hit. I will say, he put us down right outside the main gates of the FOB, so when we crashed we had help there almost immediately. I was secured in the fuselage, but the chopper had fallen over onto the door. Fuel leaked down on me for almost half an hour while they struggled to get me out of the chopper and fought off the Afghan scout party. Just as they reached me, the whole thing torched, probably from a stray round or metal shrapnel.”
She sighed, remembering the feel of the corrosive fuel on her skin, then the mind-numbing pain of the fire. All she remembered was screaming, until she thought her lungs were going to pop. Then she quit screaming when she realized she needed that oxygen she was expelling. “It took about forty minutes to cut me out, and the last three I was burning. By the time they got the flames on me smothered and headed into the base, I’d been out there about fifty minutes, soaked in fuel.”
“Damn,” Fontana breathed. “I’ve been burnt before, and it is a feeling like no other.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I still feel the pain sometimes. If I’m blow-drying my hair on too warm of a setting or something, sometimes one of my nerves kicks in, screaming. Those overhead radiant heaters in some store doorways? Yeah, makes my skin scream. But, I’ve gotten used to it.”
Fontana took the last bite of his second taco and set the plate aside. She didn’t miss the fact that he’d left a scrap of meat there for Humberto, or that the little dog snuck in and grabbed it as soon as possible.
Distracted by watching the dog, she was startled when Fontana reached out and turned her chin toward him. Then, with his other hand, he reached out and brushed her hair away from the right side of her face.
Jordyn caught her breath, shocked that he’d reached out this way. He looked at all of the scarring on her head and around her ear, then looked down at her hands. When he looked up at her, his eyes had warmed. “Like I said, you’ve got her beat. These were extensive injuries.”
His thumb traced circles on her right hand. When Jordyn looked down, she could see him making the motion, but mostly felt only pressure. Then the circles shifted to the top of her hand and she could feel every delicious stroke.
“I see no reason for you to change anything about yourself.”
The strength in his voice was her undoing. It was one thing to tell yourself that, or have your mother tell you the same, but for some reason it was very different when a man said it. No, it was very different when this particular man said it.
“Thank you, Fontana,” she whispered. “That’s a very nice thing for you to say.”
“It’s the truth,” he said simply.
“Where is your burn,” she asked.
Fontana stiffened and pulled away, letting her hand fall. What had she done? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
He sighed, looking out over the dusty ground. “No, it’s okay. It’s just… I have no scars.”
Jordyn was confused. “I thought you said…”
“I did, but the scar is gone. When we were going through testing, we were being given regular doses of the serum. They burned me, but you can’t tell where anymore.”
She stared, shocked at what he was telling her. How could it leave no mark?
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Fontana held out his right forearm. “They used a blowtorch from elbow to wrist until the skin blackened and peeled away.”
She held his wrist in her hand and traced fingers over the tan skin. Not a single mark.
“Then when that didn’t keep me down long enough, they used a flame thrower.”
He’d stripped down to his black t-shirt to accommodate the heat, and now he lifted the front of it up under his chin. Jordyn’s gaze drifted down, over his rounded pectorals and mounded abs. The man was lean, little wrinkles of skin bunching around his belly button. Golden hair furred his chest and narrowed to a strip down the center of his abs. If she could have swallowed right then, she would have, but her mouth was suddenly parched. The man was absolutely delicious.
There were no scars, though. At least none that looked like burns. She reached out and traced a line down his right side. The skin shivered from her touch.
“That was from an injury when I was a SEAL. Before the testing program. Everything received during the program healed.”
His words were clipped, and she looked up into his eyes. There was a struggle going on there. The physical scars may have healed, but the mental scars were still there. “But you still felt the pain.”
“Oh, yes, we felt the pain. Pain killers would have interfered with our response, we were told. We were never given pain control.”
Jordyn thought of the hours and hours it had taken her to heal. Not having prescription drugs would have been unbearable. It had damn near been unbearable with drugs, every single second of her recovery had been agony.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him. Jordyn doubted that he would accept a full hug from her, but maybe… scooting her butt around, she leaned into his shoulder, lacing her arm through his own. He didn’t move for a long minute, then he leaned a little of his weight into her. Jordyn didn’t think about the time passing. She just leaned into him and hoped he felt her understanding.
Eventually, not wanting to crowd him, she pulled away. “Tomorrow is going to be hard for you, isn’t it?”
They were traveling to the camp where he’d been held captive, Taraza.
Fontana sighed, looking out over the fading skyline. “Yes. Good thing we’ll be in the jungle. No lightbulbs.”
Jordyn jerked back and looked up at him. There it was. The dimple in his right cheek appeared as he gave her a lopsided smile, the green of his eyes glittering.
Jordyn laughed. “It’s a damn good thing. You freaked me out when that happened.”
“I know. I apologize, again. When my emotions run high my control gets a little frazzled.”
“Hm. Must make it hard to be in a relationship then.”
The words hung in the air awkwardly. She snapped her mouth shut and looked out into the distance, praying that her skin didn’t color. Times like these she was appreciative of her Venezuelan heritag
e. Why the heck had she said that? Because she wanted to let him know she was open to a relationship without actually saying the words.
“Mmm…” he said, but he didn’t make eye contact with her.
Jordyn put some space between them, suddenly realizing that she had no idea if he was attached to anyone or not. They hadn’t exactly talked about it. The fact that he was ready to go around the world at a moment’s notice kind of made her think that he didn’t have anyone to be accountable to, but that was kind of a big thing to get wrong.
Maybe it was best to get away now.
“I think I’ll go in and sort out where the boys will sleep.”
Hoping that he would tell her stay, she paused for a moment, but he stayed silent.
Pushing to her feet, she fought not to look at him again, humiliation snapping at her. She’d been practically laying against the man and he must be taken. The silence had felt like agreement. Okay, she’d been a little bowled over by him touching her face and his apparent acceptance. Obviously she’d read too much into the action.
No more.
Fontana gritted his teeth and watched Madeira leave out of his peripheral vision. Arousal throbbed in his veins. She’d leaned into him and he’d been struck dumb for a minute, relishing the feel of her breast against his elbow, as ridiculous as it sounded. The woman was tiny, but voluptuous. And it had been such a long time.
Aiden and Wulfe thought he was a player and he’d never disabused them of that notion, when in fact he was quite the opposite. Just because he looked like he could have any woman in the sack he wanted didn’t mean he did.
When she’d said something about a relationship, he’d literally locked up. The thought of opening himself up to anyone with his deepest and darkest secrets held no appeal. He’d been through torture and didn’t want to do it again. He thought sex might be nice again someday, but it would have to be with the right person.
Madeira leaning against his arm had been nice though. She’d been trying to console him. He got that. He just couldn’t let himself feel that, though. Especially now, the night before he had to walk back into his own private hell.