Chapter 17
THE RISING HALF moon filtered lace patterns through the oak leaves onto Sophie’s face. The pale light didn’t stop Jack from recognizing the challenge on her features.
“I saw your anger when you disconnected,” she said. “You walked away to calm yourself. What is it?”
He searched for a solution in his empty wineglass. When nothing magically appeared in the residue, he set it down. “You might as well know. When I cut communication with the task force, De Carlo put out a call to have me brought in.”
“Brought in? Like a criminal?”
“Exactly. He thinks I’ve gone after Vadim on my own.” If he remained still another moment, he’d fly apart. He pushed to his feet and paced in their patch of moonlight. “He called me a rogue officer.”
“Vendetta, the Italians say. Now why exactly would he think that?”
He would tell her the least he could. “He dug into my background and found I have history with Vadim. He put two and two together and got ten.”
“But your friend agreed to help anyway. You told him about the leak you suspect, about why you aren’t checking in?”
“I spelled it all out. He believed me, thank God. He’ll do what he can to clear up this mess.” He flexed his fingers, stiff from tension, and stared up at the moon. “Until then, dammit, I’m a wanted man.”
When she took one of his hands in her soft one, sparks that had nothing to do with static electricity arced from his palm to another, more responsive body part. Cursing his testosterone, he observed their joined hands. His scars stood out white as bone in the moonlight. Twins of the scars on his soul. Hell of a maudlin thought.
“De Carlo’s not far off, is he?” she said, yanking him to attention. “I’m guessing that getting Vadim is more than a job to you. What did he have to do with the deaths of your wife and son?”
A jaw muscle he felt twitch was the only betrayal he allowed of the storm inside him. How could he bear to tell her? He jerked to his feet and wheeled toward the woods. “You don’t want to go there.”
“Oh, but I do. Your vendetta makes this mess a wheel within a wheel, a complex mess with circles of danger. If I’m in the center — the bull’s-eye — I want to know everything.”
Not much riled Sophie usually. She went along to get along, even when she shouldn’t. But on this she apparently wasn’t backing down.
He shook his head. “I don’t talk about it.” He couldn’t. The prospect of telling the story made his chest ache and every muscle in his body tense.
“Maybe you should. Holding in all that grief is eating you alive.” He could hear the choked-back tears in her voice. “I care about you, Jack.”
For a moment he stood silently contemplating the gloomy darkness surrounding them. Should he face the deeper shadows within him? Could he? Moment of truth.
Sophie knew he’d decided when his shoulders rose and fell in a shuddering sigh.
When he turned around, she saw all the pain and anguish he’d held at bay etched on his face and in his eyes. He was such a strong man, not handsome but so very male. Hating to see him suffer, she wanted to close the distance between them to wrap her arms around him, but his rigid stance stopped her.
“Grief? You think I haven’t grieved for them, for my son?” His jaw clenched as he sought control. “No, what I harbor in here—” he thumped his chest hard with a fist “—is more primitive and more savage. If you’d ever had a son murdered in cold blood, you’d know.”
“Murdered,” she whispered. By Sebastian Vadim? A child? Jack’s pain became her pain, his anger hers. Her lungs seemed filled with ashes. All at once her legs felt too weak to hold her, and she sat again on the blanket beneath the tarp.
“You would seek vengeance at any cost,” he continued, his focus inward. “You’d nurture your hatred, sharpen its claws and focus it until you could hunt down the murderer and destroy him.”
She blinked back tears. “Tell me what happened.”
He glanced up, seemingly surprised to hear her voice. He came to the blanket and sat on his heels opposite her. “I’ve never told anyone the whole story. I don’t know if I can.”
“Take your time. I’m here.”
“Five years ago, when I was a U.S. deputy marshal in Miami, a gang sold a jewelry wholesaler some stones that were illegal diamonds from West Africa.”
“Blood diamonds,” she offered.
“Sebastian Vadim’s specialty,” Jack said with a bitter laugh. “These had been cut somewhere in Europe and smuggled into the States by boat. One of the gang members flipped to the cops. They nabbed the gang and the diamonds. The ring-leader was the owner of the boat, but he vanished.”
“Vadim.”
“Except he was using an alias, Renzo Adrik. When the case went to trial, I was assigned to protect the main witness.”
“The gang member who went to the police?”
He nodded. “Vadim-Adrik got a message to me that if I didn’t give him the witness, he’d hurt my family.”
“Oh, Jack!” Just thinking about it made her ache.
His shoulders were hunched, his hands fisted on his thighs. She could see him fighting for control. “Tonia and I were separated, divorced. She and David were living in Fort Lauderdale,” he said, his voice gravelly with emotion.
“David. Your son’s name was David?”
“He was three, would’ve been four the next month. I saw him as often as I could, but Tonia and I’d been growing apart ever since he was born. She was … high-maintenance. And she said I was never there.” He uttered a strangled sound that could’ve been a bitter laugh or an anguished cry. “She was right. In more ways than one.”
Sophie wanted to ask how but felt it was better to let him tell the story his way.
“I arranged for protection, but Tonia balked at agreeing to anything I said. She and I were quits, but I loved my son.”
Quits. Sophie tried to ignore the little bubble of relief inside her. A selfish reaction, not admirable or compassionate. So his son’s death was the true source of his grief and anger. Yes, protecting the weak was what Jack was all about. “Tell me about David.”
“He was … a gift, a terrific kid, smart and happy. He threw his whole little being into everything.” A wistful smile played over his mouth. “Whenever I was with him at bedtime, I had to read a Bob the Builder, only he pronounced it ‘Bob the Bidder.’ I was teaching him to play catch, but…” Sucking a ragged breath, he bent his head.
When he looked up, tears filled his eyes. “While the witness against the diamond gang testified on the stand, Tonia took David and slipped past the cop on duty.”
“Where did she go?”
“She must’ve been driving to her mother’s in Tampa. It was raining, one of those brief Florida squalls that seem like the whole sky is dumping on you. Reconstruction of the crash indicated she’d skidded off the road into a stand of palms. The sedan rolled over and over and landed upside down next to a drainage ditch.”
“An accident?”
“No. She was a careful driver. She would’ve pulled off to the side and waited for the rain to clear. But there was no paint from another vehicle, no second set of skid marks. The cops knew about Vadim’s threat, but he was in the wind. There was no proof he called me or that he even existed. In the end, the crash was listed as accidental.”
“Maybe it was.” But she didn’t really believe her hopeful words.
“I know better. He called my phone personally. To ensure I knew they’d been forced off the road. Murdered.”
Her heart sank at the thought of what he’d endured. At what he still endured. A cloud covered the moon, so she could barely see him, but heard him sniffing back tears.
He passed a hand over his eyes and inhaled a ragged breath. “I should’ve convinced Tonia to let the cops protect them. I should’ve been with them. God, they were innocent, murdered because my job put them in a monster’s way.” He coug
hed, cover for a sob. Or a howl.
She felt the grief and guilt emanate from him in physical waves. In his eyes, he’d failed to protect the ones closest to him. Atlas’s burden was a pebble in comparison. She squeezed his other hand. He held on, as she had done ages ago, it seemed, in the Venice hospital. That this strong man allowed her to see his pain, to see him weep, humbled her. “How did you find out?”
“When the squall stopped, a passing motorist spotted the wreck and called police on his cell phone. I heard the call in the courthouse. Got to the scene. Hell, I don’t have any idea how I got there. I must’ve driven, because ambulances and fire trucks were just pulling up when I did. I reached the car first. The doors were jammed, but I saw… Oh, God, I can still see him.”
He pulled away from her grip and pounded his fist on the dirt beside him.
She could only imagine the horror he’d met and how frantic he was when he couldn’t do anything. “Tell me. Get it out.”
“Tonia was dead. Because it wasn’t a head-on collision, the air bag didn’t deploy. Her head hit the windshield as the car rolled. But David … David was in the back, hanging from his child seat, upside down. Blood was dripping … so much blood … but his eyes followed me.”
She could barely breathe. “He was alive.”
“I had to reach him.” He held up his hands, curled in helpless supplication. “I had to.”
Darkness concealed the jagged scars on his fingers, but suddenly she knew how he’d gotten them. “You broke the window with your fists.”
“I don’t remember. The EMTs said I did. Blood was everywhere. His, mine, I don’t know. Loose objects in the car had slammed into David, cut him bad. I touched his cheek. He was warm. And real. And then the life went out of his eyes. After that the EMTs pulled me away.”
Tears bled down her face, a red-hot stream of pain and anger and grief for Jack’s loss. From somewhere she dredged up what she hoped were words of comfort. “He saw you and felt his father’s touch. He knew you came for him.”
“Too late.” His voice raspy with pain, he seemed to tear the words from his soul. “I carry his picture so I can make myself remember him laughing instead of dying.”
He twisted off his knees and stretched out. “We should get some sleep. Got to meet a guy with a car in the morning.” He folded his arms, then turned on his side away from her.
End of conversation.
Sophie unfolded their extra blanket and spread it over them both before she lay down. Only inches from Jack, she longed to spoon against his hard body, but he needed space and time alone. She comprehended the savage hatred that drove Jack the father. “Was joining DARK part of your … quest?”
Silence. Perhaps he slept. But then he said, “I told you my other reasons for going to DARK. The main reason was that I’d have better resources for finding Vadim.”
Hello…. “Five years. Your search took five years.” Five years of hell.
“He operates under so many aliases, moves around. When Interpol connected his aliases for the task force, I got myself assigned here. One way or another, Sebastian Vadim will die. If I have to, I’ll kill him myself.”
“Justice? Or vengeance?”
“In this case vengeance is justice. Sebastian Vadim understands vengeance. The diamond-smuggling gang were convicted with evidence from the witness I was protecting. He didn’t want the creep freed. He wanted revenge. Later I heard the guy had been shanked in jail.”
“Shanked?”
“Stabbed to death with a makeshift knife.”
She shuddered. She had no doubt that Jack would kill Vadim with any weapon he could, his bare hands if necessary. He blamed himself for putting his family in danger. She understood, but vengeance had its price. Too high a price. “If he were my son, I would never give up until his killer paid. Vadim is wanted for many crimes. You said he murdered the uranium courier or had him killed. The task force will find him. He’ll be punished.”
“A trial and prison? Not good enough.”
Her stomach clenched as she grasped Jack’s intention. “If you get to stay on the task force, what then?”
He twisted around to face her. Shadows hid his face, but the live-coal force of his hatred and resolve seared her. “He’ll resist capture, and force will be necessary. In a firefight, he’ll go down. Legit if possible. If not, I’ll do what I have to do.”
“You’re walking a fine line between necessary force and murder. If you cross the line, the consequences—”
“Damn the consequences,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “Don’t you think I know? Vengeance is my only reason for living.”
“Killing him won’t bring them back.” She scraped at her brain for arguments. “Is it worth giving up your life, the possibility of a new family, for revenge?” It sounded crass, but it was all she could come up with.
“No family. Even if I come out of this clean. I’ll never again allow my job to put a woman or a child in harm’s way. Never.” He slugged his big body over, turning his back to her, like pulling a curtain.
“But Jack—”
“Go to sleep, Sophie.”
More argument would accomplish nothing tonight. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. His career and his freedom — and oh, God, maybe his life — would be forfeited if he killed Vadim outright. She bit her lower lip to hold in a sob.
Jack was a good man. Underneath his guilt and hatred remained an honorable and dedicated man, a man who could laugh and joke and who had love and loyalty to give. He kept that man under tight control, but she’d glimpsed him. That man deserved better than ruining his life for revenge.
If only she could remember that last day at the villa, if only she knew Vadim’s hideout, she would try to keep Jack from crossing the line. She would help the task force apprehend Vadim. But too much of her memory remained a blank screen.
Guilt made him think revenge was his only reason to live. She longed to show him he was wrong. But all she had to offer was herself. And why not?
Between them flamed awareness hotter than she’d ever felt before. Every touch flared sparks within her, every look ignited flames. He wanted her as much. Simple, right? At first, maybe, but no more. He appeared harsh, but that was his natural reserve and dedication. His vulnerability wrenched her heart and his wounded soul called to hers with a power stronger than sex.
She’d have to keep herself under control or she’d fall in love with Jack. No way did she need a man who locked his emotions inside. She needed no man at all before she found her own strength. Love? No, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. But…
He felt so deeply and focused so totally. Would he concentrate as fully on a woman in bed? Would he lose control in lovemaking? The thought made Sophie’s skin itch and a pulse throb between her legs.
Chapter 18
JACK OPENED HIS eyes and closed his hand around the grip of his 9mm. He drew it slowly from beneath the blanket edge and listened.
A light breeze shivered leaves and stirred scents of loam and green things. Nearby an owl hooted. In the distance, another answered.
No bad guys in the woods. He exhaled and laid down his sidearm. The luminous dial of his watch read one o’clock.
He hadn’t expected to sleep, but exhaustion must’ve done the job. When he turned on his side, sharp twinges in back and hip muscles protested a night on lumpy ground and days of crimping his legs into a sardine can disguised as a car. Settling again, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. In the woods the night was darker than the tombs dug into the hill, but in the clearing the moon shone silver on the grass.
And on Sophie sleeping beside him.
She was facing him, on her right side, the blanket over her sling-bound left arm and tucked around her feet. Even without the moonlight he’d recognize the curve of her hip, lush and round and womanly, not Popsicle-stick thin. And if he couldn’t see her, he would know her by the rhythm of her breathing and the scent of her skin.
God, he’d told her everything. Too much. But she’d perceived his pain. In their situation, he owed her the truth. Tonight she’d absorbed his grief and cried along with him. And he bawled like a baby. Dammit, he hated tears. He hated the choking feeling, the weakness. He needed strength — she would need strength from him.
She shifted in her sleep and then sighed, a soft murmur that jazzed his pulse.
Imagining Vadim touching her, taking her, had stuck a knife in his gut. Her reassurance that she’d never been in the creep’s bed withdrew that particular dagger. Relief swept over him in waves so strong she must’ve noticed. Man, he wanted her. He’d been with a few women since his wife, but those had been just for sexual release.
With Sophie, it was more.
Impossible. A man with no future and no right to endanger another person could expect only brief passion. Passion that would block from his mind and soul the damn beast that drove him. Oh, God, to forget in her arms…
She was intuitive, smart and sensual — a woman who experienced life with all her senses and reacted without artifice. She should never play poker because all her emotions were hanging out there — happy or sad, curious or exuberant. He ached to know if she tackled sex with the same gusto.
He brushed a curl from her cheek. The thick mane had come loose. Repairing her braid in the morning was the only way he ought to touch her. Heart stumbling with desire and regret, he withdrew his hand short of contact.
“Afraid I’ll bite?”
“Afraid I’ll wake you.” True, as far as it went. Uptight about her reaction to his meltdown was more like it.
“Too late. This rock under my hip already did the job.” She edged closer to him and placed her right hand over his now-sprinting heart.
Was she offering sympathy? Dammit, pity was the last thing he wanted from her. “Look, about earlier—”
Her fingers on his lips stopped his words. “Jack, chill. You needed to let it out. Honest emotions are healing. I always feel better after a good cry.”
The smile in her voice eased his coiled nerves a notch. He kissed her cool fingers. “Now you’re reading my mind.” God, he hoped not. His thoughts might singe her hair.
Dark Vengeance (The DARK Files Book 4) Page 14