by Cindy Dees
“And have you succeeded?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. The compound still isn’t perfected, but I’ve hit upon the basic process for making what may very well turn out to be the next widely popular illegal drug of the twenty-first century.”
Whoa. No wonder her family had been snatched. “How long has your discovery been public knowledge? Surely the Mexican authorities knew to provide your family with round-the-clock security. How much force was required to overpower their guards and kidnap them?”
His mind raced with the complications this posed. He could be up against a veritable army up here in the mountains! This twist made it more imperative than ever that he get some backup before he and Melina reached the kidnappers’ hideout.
Melina frowned. “My work isn’t public knowledge.”
He snorted. “Somebody knows, honey, or we wouldn’t be sitting out here having this conversation.”
“It’s not possible. I’m the only person allowed in or out of my lab. Most of the executives at the company have no idea what I do, other than the fact that the government pays all my expenses.”
“Most of the executives?”
“I found the compound before Christmas. And no one kidnapped my family before now. Surely if there were going to be a leak, it-and any reaction to it-would have happened before this.”
Christmas. Over five months ago. That was a long time for a reaction to a discovery of this magnitude, had word of it gotten out. “Does anyone else know?”
“Just my parents. But they’d never tell. They understand how dangerous it would be for me if anyone else were to know about my discovery.”
“Your brother?” he asked.
She shook her head. “He can be…immature. I haven’t mentioned it to him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Michael.”
He pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed H.O.T. Watch Ops. While he waited for it to connect, he noticed Melina staring at him like he’d grown horns. “What?” he muttered.
“There are no cell phone towers out here!”
He shrugged. “You’re right. That’s why I’m using a satellite phone.”
A female voice said in his ear, “Go ahead, Cowboy.”
“Hiya, Raven.” Raven was the call sign of Jennifer Blackfoot, the commander of the civilian side of the house within H.O.T. Watch. She was an extremely sharp cookie.
“Is White Horse around?” That was his boss’s, Brady Hathaway’s, field handle.
“Nope. He’ll be out for at least the next two weeks. A search-and-rescue in a remote location.”
John swore under his breath. Search-and-rescue missions often turned into frustrating and fruitless searches for needles in haystacks. They could take weeks to complete or finally be called off. His boss was well and truly out of the picture for a good long time. John scowled. It wasn’t that he objected in any way to working with Agent Blackfoot. But right now, he needed a Spec Ops team in the worst way. They’d spent the past year cross-training the military and civilian sides of the H.O.T. Watch house for just this sort of occasion. Apparently, he was the lucky bastard who got to put the training to the test.
He said, “Pirate Pete’s delivered a package for a guy named Michael Montez a while back. I need to know what we’ve got on him and that delivery.”
“We’ll get right on it. Anything else?” Jennifer replied.
“Yeah. I’ve got a hostage situation on my hands. Three civilians. This Montez kid and my client’s parents are being held by probable drug dealers operating out of this area. Standby for the coordinates we’ve been given for our next rendezvous.”
Cool as a cucumber after she’d copied down the numbers, Jennifer asked, “Do you want us to run a profile on your client?”
A stab of regret pierced him. But there was no help for it. This was life and death stuff they were dealing with out here. There was no time for emotion or personal feelings. “Oh, yeah,” he replied. He dared not take a chance that she was holding out on him any further. This op had gone from milk toast to high explosives in the blink of an eye.
“We’re on it. What else do you need, Cowboy?”
“I need a team down here, ASAP. Covert insertion, area surveillance, regional intel, threat analysis. The works.”
A pause. “Peru isn’t a country I can randomly insert a full-blown team into without involving the powers that be. It’s going to take a little time to arrange.”
“The Tangos are threatening to torture and kill three American hostages, and I believe this bunch will do it. I can slowball our trek, but we’ve got three, maybe four days to pull this thing together.”
“Understood. I’ll do my best.”
Her best was usually formidable. “Thanks, Raven.”
“I’ll call when we have a briefing package for you.”
He disconnected the call. And looked up into a pair of snapping black eyes that would have struck him dead if they could. “What?” he asked Melina a bit irritably.
“You made my brother sound like a criminal!”
“No, I asked for more information on a possible connection to this mission.”
“He’s not connected to this! He’s a prisoner, at risk of dying, for goodness’ sake.”
John shrugged. “He’s a possible leak. My people are going to have a look at him.”
“Who were you talking to, anyway?”
“Some friends. Back at Pirate Pete’s.”
“And you think a bunch of mail haulers and bush pilots can find out about some drug lord who’s running around down here kidnapping folks?”
He shrugged. “You’d be surprised. It’s all about who you know, and we have a few connections here and there. If someone owes us a favor, we can ask a question or two.”
“If you drag your buddies into this, let the record show their lives are on your head, not mine.”
Her words were a dagger straight to his gut. He gasped in physical pain and struggled to draw his next breath. She might as well have given him a sharp blow to his solar plexus. His buddies’ lives were on his head. Christ. He couldn’t go there again. How long he sat there, gasping like a fish out of water, he didn’t know.
Finally, he gathered himself enough to say, “We’ve got to get well away from this car before daylight. Let’s go.”
“So you’ll go with me?” she cried out joyfully.
“Are there any more bombshells you haven’t dropped on me yet?” he retorted.
“No. That’s everything.”
He shook his head. “Then I guess I’m going with you. I can’t let a lamb like you walk into a den of lions all by yourself.”
She reached over and squeezed his hand. Her touch shot through him like a hot shower on a cold day. That woman sure had gotten under his skin.
To her credit, Melina held up fairly well through the initial trek away from the Land Rover. She must work out in her spare time. That, and having lived in Mexico City at five-thousand-foot altitude, their current altitude of around nine thousand feet hadn’t done her in completely.
But even he was feeling the thin air, complete with a distinctive altitude headache and lightheadedness, by the time dawn began to tint the sky in front of them. He paused, and Mel pulled up beside him and sank to the ground gratefully, panting.
“What do you say we find a nice hidey-hole and get some rest?” he said.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“You should’ve said something if you needed to stop. I’m not out here to kill you, Mel.”
He winced at the pained look that flashed across her face. Okay, poor choice of words. “You sit there and rest. I’ll build us a shelter.”
She nodded wearily as he moved off, looking for a likely spot. He found a pair of fallen trees lying side by side about six feet apart. It would be a tight squeeze for the two of them, but for camouflage, he couldn’t ask for better. Efficiently, he slung a tarp between the logs, being careful not to disturb the layers of moss
on the bark as he lashed the roof into place. A couple minutes of tossing dead leaves and dirt on the tarp, some brush to hide the entrance, and they had a cozy little nest, safe from prying eyes.
Melina must be more exhausted than she was letting on. She made no comment when he led her to the shelter. She just crawled inside, stretched out on the down sleeping bag he’d spread out on a bed of soft boughs, and closed her eyes.
“I’m going to get some sleep, too,” he murmured as he crawled in after her. “If, for some reason, something wakes you up that doesn’t happen to wake me up, give me a poke, okay?”
One eye opened to stare at him blearily. “In about two minutes, a marching band could go through here and I wouldn’t hear it.”
He laughed. “Okay, then. We’ll rely on my reflexes.” Although, as he lay down, doubt in his reflexes flashed through him. He hadn’t been out in the field in a very long time, and his system was far from clean from the sedatives and narcotics he’d been doping himself up on for months. Who knew if a threatening noise would wake him from a deep sleep in his current state? He dared not pull a sixty-hour, no-sleep marathon, though. He was alone out here without backup, and there was no telling if the anti-fatigue meds would work properly on him right now-or work at all, for that matter. Damn, he was a mess. What the hell had he been thinking to let himself get hooked on painkillers and muscle relaxants? Hell, he’d even started taking sleeping pills about a month ago.
He set his wristwatch alarm for four hours and closed his eyes.
He must’ve slept because he dreamed. Disjointed, bloody nightmares of the Afghan ambush and being chased by the animated, dead bodies of his team. No matter how far or fast he ran, their ghosts were always right there behind him, reaching out to him, trying to speak to him. He didn’t want to hear what they had to say!
He awoke, agitated and out of breath, disoriented. Where was he? Green half-light filtered down from a tarp overhead, and the cold and damp of lying on the ground had seeped into his bones. His back, unaccustomed to these conditions, was killing him. He glanced at his watch. The alarm wouldn’t go off for another fifteen minutes or so. Perfect.
Taking his backpack with him, he crept outside, being careful not to wake Melina. He rummaged around in a side pocket, experiencing a moment of panic when what he sought wasn’t immediately obvious. Urgently, he dug around, and then breathed a huge sigh of relief when he came up with the brown plastic bottle. His hands shaking so badly he almost couldn’t tear the lid off, he got the bottle open and poured a half-dozen white pills and four pink pills into his palm. He didn’t bother with water. He tossed the lot down dry, and closed his eyes in soul-deep relief. The pain hadn’t even abated yet, but just the knowing that it was going to be better soon was enough to send sweet freedom singing through his blood. He already felt halfway human again.
He opened his eyes.
And jolted.
A pale face stared at him from beyond the curtain of brush, still and shocked.
Melina.
Crap. She’d seen it all.
Chapter 9
Stark, cold fear washed over Melina. How bad off was he, this man who was supposed to save her family’s lives?
No sense hiding from the truth. He’d already seen her staring out at him. He knew that she knew. She crawled outside on her hands and knees and sat back on her haunches to face him. “Just how badly did you hurt your back eight months ago?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“Are you asking as my client or my doctor?” he retorted sharply.
“Both,” she replied evenly.
He shrugged. “Bad enough. It may never be right.”
“What exactly did you do to it?”
“You already saw the scar. I was shot. And then I crawled around on it for a couple of days. It got infected, and the surgeons who removed the bullet had to take out a chunk of meat, too.”
“How did you get shot?”
His gaze clouded over with painful memories. She’d meant the question in a technical sense…how close was the shooter, what angle had the bullet entered his body…but he seemed to be thinking of more than that. But whatever was on his mind, he didn’t answer her.
Okay, then. Not gonna be the world’s most cooperative patient.
“I can’t help if you won’t talk to me.”
He snorted with what was supposed to pass as laughter, but came out sounding more like a gasp of pain to her. “I’ve lost count of the people who’ve said that exact line to me over the past few months.”
“They’re right.”
He glanced up at her, his gaze piercing her with its power. “I’m aware of that.”
This was no simple guy with a painful secret. This was a warrior in his prime. A man of authority and responsibility. Used to being in complete control, of himself and his environment. And clearly, he was not adapting well to not being in control over this.
She replied dryly, “I gather from that look that you’ve declined to answer any of them?”
His gaze narrowed even further.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She pondered him thoughtfully. What could mess up a man like him so badly? It was no great feat of logic to figure out he’d been involved in some sort of law enforcement or military profession until very recently.
She asked neutrally, “Did the bad guy get away when you got shot?”
He jolted. Not the directions his thoughts had been running, clearly. And just as clearly, he didn’t like the question. “Thanks, Doc, but I don’t need any more people like you poking around inside my head.”
She smiled lightly. “So, you’ve become lovers with all of your doctors? I would have to object to the blurring of the patient-client boundary implied by sleeping with your physicians.”
He turned away from her sharply. “Enough already. I didn’t sleep with any of them.”
“Then please don’t lump me with them.” When he continued to stare into space in stony silence, she probed again. “Okay, so we’re not talking about what happened to the bad guy. What happened to your partner or partners?”
The response was incredible. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. And yet, all of a sudden, waves of rage and grief poured off of him so forcefully they all but knocked her over.
And it all clicked in her head. His comments about not deserving to be happy or to live…his deep sense of responsibility…that terrible scar…his utter refusal to talk…
Survivor’s guilt.
Somebody he’d worked with, maybe even led, had died. And he, while terribly injured, had lived.
She asked lightly, gently, “So, just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of a thing called survivor’s guilt?”
His gaze narrowed. “Free psychoanalysis was not part of this deal. And besides, that’s none of your damned business.”
Damn. He was not going to cut her any slack, even if they’d made mind-blowing love together and bared their souls to one another. She hated to hurt him, but her gut and her training suggested a little shock therapy might be in order.
Her gaze narrowed back. “My neck’s on the line here, sport. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’re in trouble. If you want to crawl into a hole and kill yourself after this delivery is done, that’s your affair. But right now my life and the lives of my parents and brother are in your hands. The state of your head damned well is my business.”
His glare flickered briefly and he had the good grace to look away. Score one for her.
She continued, “You, my friend, present every symptom in the book of survivor’s guilt.”
He reared back at that. “I am not a head case.”
“I never said you were. You’ve suffered terrible wounds, both physical and emotional. You shouldn’t underestimate either.”
He snorted. “I’m the one popping painkillers and sweating bullets over whether or not I can do this mission.”
“Your body is only part of the equation. What about your soul? I’ve looked into your eyes, John. I’ve
seen your pain. Please don’t turn away from me.” She would’ve added that she wanted to help, but it sounded too doctorish in her ears, and he’d clearly had his fill of platitudes from medical professionals. She had to keep this real. It had to stay personal and private between them.
He crossed his arms, his body language screaming defensiveness. “I hate to burst your bubble, Sigmund, but we don’t have time for me to go through a couple months of counseling before we continue with this mission.”
She shook her head. “This won’t be a project for a few months, John. You’ll need long-term and qualified counseling to deal with these issues.”
He threw up his hands. “Great. Just what I need. Years of shrinks poking around inside my noggin! So much for the rest of my career.”
She asked reasonably, “What’s more important? Your career or your life?”
He stared at her in angry silence.
Yup. Survivor’s guilt all the way. He didn’t value his life at more than a plug nickel at the moment. She shrugged. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. It’s your life. Your decision. But I do have a right to ask if you’re going to be able to do what needs to be done for me and my family.”
He stared at her a long time, the look in his eyes grumpy and bordering on rebellious. She did her best to let all the compassion and calm acceptance she could muster seep into her own steady gaze. She dared not look away from him right now. He’d leap all over any show of weakness from her, and she needed him to face this thing head-on and not turn away from it. She didn’t know a blessed thing about sneaky missions and intelligence briefings, or the covert insertion stuff he’d talked to his buddies about earlier, but she did know he wouldn’t be good for a damned thing if he didn’t at least start to deal with his guilt, and soon.
“We need to get going,” he finally said woodenly.
She sighed and nodded. “Okay.”
“You rest. I’ll pack up and fix us a bite to eat.”
She watched in silence as he took down the tarp and packed it away. He sat down on the other end of her log and passed her a steaming pouch of…something.