by J. M. Madden
That needed not to happen. How did he prove to Damon that he had the company’s best interests at heart? Well, obviously, either get more test subjects or find the drives. Maybe even both. He reached for his phone to start jotting notes.
Heart thudding in her chest, the woman eased back into the darkness of the office. She didn’t touch the door, very aware of the tiny little squeak it had developed recently. It had almost given her away last week.
Her mind reeled with everything she’d heard. Anton, condescending slime that he was, had confirmed what she’d observed herself. Damon Wilkes was behaving like he’d lost a girlfriend rather than an employee. It was obvious they’d been sleeping together for years but he wasn’t one for emotional attachments. That was why she hadn’t been sure about his behavior.
Some secret little part of her was glad that he was in pain. After all the years of abuse she’d taken from him, it was good to see something finally put a chink in his armor.
Chapter Eleven
When they got up the next morning, Jordyn’s gaze immediately went to Fontana as she’d entered the kitchen. She’d dreamt about him last night. The feel of his fingers on her chin, the heat of his gaze as he looked at her had all conspired to leave her restless. It was easy to imagine that he was burning with need for her and that was why he’d looked like that last night, but in reality she knew he wasn’t. The man was remote, only speaking as much as he needed to. He probably thought she would welcome any attention she could get.
No, that wasn’t fair to him. He seemed like a decent guy, just… a little out of place.
Sometimes it was hard fitting into a new team, and even harder taking the lead. All of the LNF people knew each other. Fontana was the outsider. They didn’t necessarily mean to exclude him but when they talked there were things that he just couldn’t relate to. He didn’t know anything about Duncan’s new baby and the bossman’s resulting new outlook on life, or how bad the twins were being for John and Shannon. They tried to bring him into the conversation, but it was hard playing catch-up like that. He did laugh, though, when they explained about John’s love of the word fuck, and how he’d recently undertaken a campaign to cut the word from his vocabulary so that the twins didn’t learn it. John and Shannon tried to use other words, but they slipped occasionally, and it was probably only a matter of time before the twins picked it up. They were just ornery like that.
“I actually caught John singing the theme from Frozen,” Shane told them, grinning. “Last time he brought the twins in.”
They all shook their heads, bemoaning the utter domestication of a true hardass.
There was an odd look in Fontana’s eyes, like he didn’t understand what they were talking about, and she wondered again about his background before he’d been in the camp.
As she hugged her uncle goodbye, she thanked her lucky stars for the family that she had.
“I will call you as soon as I can,” she promised.
Cupping her face like he always did, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Fly safe.”
Fontana wore his sunglasses, but she’d seen his bloodshot eyes before he’d covered them in the house. The poor guy looked like he’d been pepper sprayed or something. As the men packed their bags into Margarita’s hold, she angled to catch his attention. “Are you tight?”
He nodded grimly. “Yeah. I’m good.” He glanced at the helicopter, as if considering something. “I honestly don’t know how I’ll react to being there. If I start to unravel, put a bullet in me.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock. “What?” she gasped.
His jaw hardened. “Put a bullet in me. Don’t let me get those men killed.” He tipped his chin toward the team. “Or you.”
Even through the sunglasses she could feel him staring at her as if trying to convey something to her.
“I don’t think I can shoot you,” she admitted.
“You have to,” he murmured. “Shoot me in the thigh. It won’t kill me but hopefully it will get me out of whatever loop my brain falls into. I know I’m okay right now, but I can’t promise you that I’ll stay that way once we get there. Swear it to me, Jordyn.”
The shock of the request was just as startling as hearing her first name on his lips. For a long moment she just stared, then she nodded her head reluctantly. “If you get out of hand I’ll do what I have to do, but you need to make me a promise. I want you to try to talk to me first. Look for me. Grab me, do something to get my attention.”
He nodded and reached out, stoking a finger down her cheek. “Don’t let me hurt you, Madeira.”
She gave him an arch look. “You called me Jordyn before.”
A slight smile tipped up the corner of his mouth and the dimple made a brief appearance. “Slip of the tongue.”
“You’re allowed to slip. I’ll let you.”
The dimple deepened with his smile. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”
Then something occurred to her. “I’ve only ever called you Fontana. Do you have a first name?”
“Yes.”
Turning, he walked toward the helicopter. She sputtered with laughter. “Seriously? You’re not going to tell me?”
He ignored her, climbing into the secondary cockpit seat, but there was a slight smile on his face.
Madeira— Jordyn— knew that he was anxious about flying to the camp today. She glanced at him more often the closer they got. Her looks should have felt intrusive, but instead he kind of appreciated her concern.
They’d been flying for almost four hours. The weather had cooperated for the most part but again, the deeper they got into the jungle the more erratic the weather became. Just like Venezuela, Brazil was going to test their mettle with gusts that made the chopper shudder and rain to slow them down.
As they neared the location, Madeira took the helicopter high, then pivoted on a wide imaginary axis to let Fontana scope out the camp below. They wouldn’t be seen by anyone below, probably, but it would give him the opportunity to try to decide where to land. As he lifted the binoculars to his eyes, he tried to prepare himself for what he might see.
It was a bit of a letdown when he finally saw it. Shades of green upon shades of green, with a few angular contraptions thrown in. There was a beat up truck on one side of a building, and he thought he saw a person under one of the overhangs. “Contact!”
When he recognized the shaped of the cinder block medical building, the rest of the landscape began to look familiar to him. “There used to be a hole they cut into the jungle for her to land, there,” he pointed, “but it’s gone now. We’ll have to range further out.”
Madeira nodded and swung the bird back to the northwest, from the direction they’d come. “There was a cleared field back here.”
They flew for almost half an hour over lush jungle canopy before they finally circled a long, cleared field. Fontana hated that they were so far away, but there had literally been no other place to land the large helicopter. They’d seen the track of a single road winding into the camp, but it was more of a path. Certainly not big enough to land.
“Going down, Shane,” Madeira called out in friendly warning.
“Roger!”
Madeira circled the field once to look for the most accommodating spot. An old man came out of a hut at the edge of the field, waving what looked to be a homemade hoe at them. When he realized they were going to land on his crops, his hands went to his head in dismay and he dropped the tool. Fontana felt a twinge of regret as the wheels settled into the soft dirt of the field. He wasn’t sure what was growing there, but the wheels would probably crush at least a few of the plants. It couldn’t be helped, though.
“Let’s try not to damage this guy’s property any more than we already have,” he called out.
As soon as she powered everything down Madeira hopped down out of the cockpit and circled around to the old man. He was looking at his field sadly. The rotor wash had compressed a large swath of the field, but Fontana thought it would rebound in
a day or two. And he was amazed to see that Madeira hadn’t crushed any of the plants with her wheels. Was she really that good? Or was it just luck that she’d missed them? He thought she was that good.
Madeira started calming the man, explaining that they weren’t here to intentionally damage anything and that they would pay for what they had destroyed. The man’s gaze flickered at the mention of money, and Fontana knew that they had his cooperation. Funny how well cash worked all the way around the world.
Madeira gave the stooped old man a handful of cash, promising double if they returned and her chopper was fine. The farmer looked at her consideringly, then nodded his head, promising to have his son watch it for them.
Fontana thought they were done, but Madeira asked him a couple of questions. Normally, he was a lot better at listening to Portuguese than speaking it, but Madeira was using words he’d never heard before. Her voice was lyrical, moving up and down in tonality. The farmer didn’t appear to mind talking to her now, and he answered her at length. At one point he pointed into the jungle in the direction of the camp. By the time Madeira finally said her goodbyes, they’d been standing there in the heat and humidity for the better part of fifteen minutes.
Gathering her pack from the back of the helicopter, she kept a smile on her face as she turned toward the direction of the research camp.
“What did he say?” Fontana whispered.
Waving a hand at the man a final time, Madeira turned and led the team through the lines of plants and into the jungle. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” she hissed. “Let’s get out of this clearing.”
All of the men moved silently into the brush behind Madeira, following her lead. She’d been hiking for about twenty minutes before she finally turned. The men circled around.
“That was Señor Gata. He bitched and complained about my landing on his six plants, which, I didn’t actually. But he understood when I explained that his field was the closest to our destination for many miles. He said he understood that, and that at least I had offered to pay for the damage, more than the other group had a few days ago. They pushed him down and threatened him and his family with guns.”
“Did he describe them?” Payne asked, scowl on his normally easy going face.
“He said they were a military team like we appeared to be, but there was no soul in their eyes, no humanity. They landed their big machine and disappeared for three days. When they came back, there were more than they had come with, and three of the men seemed to be tied.”
Ice ran down Fontana’s spine, and he shifted his stance, grip tightening on the MP5 in his arms. “There were hostages here?”
Madeira removed her glasses so that he could see her olive-green eyes. “Sounds like it.”
Spinning away, Fontana tried to control the anger coursing through him. After all the time they’d spent in the states dodging the Collaborative, there had still been men here. Nausea turned his stomach at the thought of what they’d possibly gone through. Fuck! All this time later and there’d still been prisoners. He turned back to Madeira. “When?”
“He couldn’t say exactly. Just several days ago.”
Sadness and guilt began to replace the anger, but he pushed it away. He needed to keep the anger. It would serve him better for what they had to do. He could wallow in his own guilt later.
“Anything else,” he snapped.
Madeira didn’t seem to take it personally. She shook her head and put the sunglasses back on. “Nothing concrete. He did mention that some of the people in the area believe the old camp to the south was haunted, but they couldn’t say exactly why, just things they heard and items that had disappeared.”
Hm. If someone had broken out of the camp…
“Okay, men, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Fontana growled. “I want to get as far south as we possibly can before we lose the light.”
They started in with a slow jog. The foliage here wasn’t as thick and a few times they ran along bare dirt paths. Fontana made sure to stay cognizant of the direction they were heading, and adjusted accordingly when the paths veered away. The men kept up well, but he found himself glancing back to check on Madeira. The woman puffed along without complaint and looked like she could go for a long time. Determination drove his feet, but the old injury in his leg was beginning to ache big time. After a couple miles of jogging, he slowed down. They were having to duck and dodge more trees anyway.
“Don’t brush against that,” Madeira warned, pointing at a tall tree bristling with sharp thorns. “You will want to rip your skin off.”
The group veered wide. Several times, she warned them of unknown hazards; they’d all done jungle deployments but it was nice to be reminded about the dangerous things by someone who knew them more intimately. Eventually, Fontana just let her take point. She kept up a grueling pace, only slowing down when they started to have to hack their way through the fading light. They slowed to a walk as Kenny took the lead, hacking away with his machete.
When the land began to slope down toward a river, Fontana had a bit of a flashback about the last time he’d gone down terrain like this. Rather forcefully. His right ass cheek and leg twinged as he remembered the pain. Actually, he realized, they probably weren’t far away from where the accident had actually happened.
At the bottom of the slope the foliage thinned to a slight rocky beach. A muddy creek about twenty feet across, not quite a river, flowed strongly in a southeasterly direction, drawn toward the mighty Amazon. Fish glinted in the stream, and Fontana knew there was a decent chance that they were piranha.
Without hesitation he waded into the stream and across, feeling things brush against his legs as he did. If they crossed quickly, they could avoid any nastiness.
Fontana gasped as the water line moved up over his thighs. It was a lot deeper than he’d expected. And the current was a lot stronger.
“Wanna piggyback, Madeira?” Zero asked her, pausing at the edge of the river.
Laughing, she shook her head at him. “Not even. I think you’d dunk me just for the hell of it, then I’d have to tattle on you to Izzy.”
They all grinned and Zero waved Madeira ahead of him. She removed her pack and rifle and held both above her head as she waded into the water. Fontana waited on the other side, breath held, for her to meet him. She gasped as the water level got above her crotch, then up to her waist, and she seemed to be struggling against the current a bit, bouncing on her tip toes. Fontana dropped his pack to the ground, ready to jump in if she needed assistance. When she got to him she allowed him to take her pack and rifle as she clambered up onto the bank.
Behind her there was a splash. They turned to see Shane DeRossett flailing in the water. Fontana frowned as the man’s pack went under and he hoped he’d sealed up the top correctly to make it waterproof, otherwise it was going to take on water and pull him down. The young man kept his weapon up out of the water, even though he was gasping for air. Dropping Madeira’s shit, Fontana took off down the short beach, hoping to catch the man before he really got into trouble.
Shane struggled, obviously unable to right himself.
“Lose the pack!” Madeira cried.
Shane either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to do it, because he continued to struggle. Fontana got to the end of the beach and leapt into the water, mere feet from the flailing young soldier. He got a glimpse of Shane’s single brown eye, wide with fear, just before he went under completely.
Before he could grab him, Fontana hit a submerged tree, bashing his bad leg. Gasping in pain, he prayed he hadn’t broken it again. Disentangling himself, he shoved himself over the tree with his good leg. Shane was a few feet away. He’d resurfaced again and it looked like he’d finally shoved off the pack. The man’s weapon was long gone, but they could worry about that later. Surging forward, arms slamming through the water, Fontana grabbed the other man’s vest and righted him.
Shane seemed disoriented and Fontana allowed himself to peek at the man’s emotio
ns. He was scared, but it didn’t feel like it had a deeper cause than being tumbled in the river. Fontana had worried that the guy was having a PTSD flashback or something, but he wasn’t reading that.
Fontana planted his legs down, praying that the river was no deeper than it had been and that his bad leg would hold. Someone upstairs must have been listening because he was able to catch his footing and stay vertical. He held onto Shane’s camo safety vest and looked around.
They were at least a quarter mile from where they’d crossed.
“Are you okay?” Madeira called out.
Fontana glanced to the left and the steep bank where she stood. It was obvious she’d run here, and she appeared to be ready to jump into the river with them if she didn’t get an answer. “We’re okay.”
“It looks like there’s another beach a little further down,” she pointed. “Might be easier to get him out there than try to go back up against the current.”
Fontana agreed so he nodded, letting the current carry them along. He saw the beach and angled for it.
Madeira beat him there and helped drag Shane up onto the rocky stretch. The younger man was groaning slightly and holding his head. She went to her knees beside him as they stopped, calling his name.
“I’m okay, I’m okay. I just…,” his voice drifted away. He kept one hand up over his eyes, obviously aware his glasses were lost.
Madeira pulled his hand down. “Hey, I’ve seen you without them before. I think we all have. Don’t worry about it.”
Shane let his hand fall to the beach as he tried to catch his breath. He blinked up at the sky for several long seconds before he sat up. Even then he swayed a bit, so Madeira put a bracing hand on his shoulder, but he appeared to be gaining strength. Finally, he looked up at Fontana, who stood blocking the sun from his face. “I can’t thank you enough for dragging me out of there.”