by Cindy Dees
She eased her cell phone out of her pants pocket and dialed a phone number quickly. She spoke in a bare murmur, “I have the American prisoner, but El Mari is dead.”
Navy Commander Brady Hathaway—he supervised military operations run out of H.O.T. Watch while she was in charge of all civilian intelligence operations in the surveillance facility—exclaimed in surprise. “What the hell happened?”
“Rich Boy got away from his guards and all but tore the Ethiopian’s head off with his bare hands. Who is this guy?”
A shocked pause was her only answer. Then Hathaway replied, “I have the same file on Winston that you do. Private prep schools. Harvard math undergrad. Master’s in microbiology from MIT. Jet-set lifestyle since college—beaches in Monaco, skiing in St. Moritz, fast cars, yachts, beautiful women. Classic spoiled, rich kid.”
“He violently murdered a man tonight. What the heck am I supposed to do with him now?”
“I wouldn’t bring him back to the States. Our extradition treaty with Ethiopia will get him sent right back there to face murder charges, and I don’t think that would make Leland Winston very happy. Go ahead and take him to Paradise Island for debriefing like we planned. Meanwhile the powers that be can sort this mess out.”
Paradise Island also had the advantage of being close to the volcanic island in the Caribbean that housed the H.O.T. Watch facility. Normally, Paradise was a private getaway for H.O.T. Watch’s staff when they needed a break from their high-stress jobs, but it occasionally doubled as a debriefing site.
Brady spoke again. “I’ll do some more digging and see what I can find on your prisoner.”
She caught a flutter of the American’s eyelids. Awake, was he? Well, then. She murmured aloud in a theatrical whisper, “News flash. I think I may be the prisoner.”
“What?” Brady squawked.
A quick movement made her look up sharply. It was the American. Holding out his hand expectantly, calloused palm up. The veins in his wrist were big and prominent. But then she already knew the guy was incredibly strong. It took tremendous strength to break a man’s neck the way he had.
Without answering her colleague, she laid her cell phone in Winston’s outstretched palm. She stared in shock as he crushed the thing in his fist, the plastic case shattering and the metal motherboard nearly folding in half.
No doubt about it. He thought she was the prisoner.
She forced herself to look him in the eye. She expected to see the same wildness from the road, the same murderous madness. But the blue eyes that stared back at her looked reasonably sane. At least for now. Was the guy schizophrenic or something?
“Why did you kill El Mari?” she ventured to ask.
“He was an animal. A butcher.”
That was almost comical coming from him. She thought back frantically to her hostage training. Her best bet to stay alive was to get on this man’s good side. Convince him she was a person with thoughts and feelings, and not some object to be crushed like her phone and cast aside.
“Would you like me to get that collar off of you?” she asked.
Surprise flickered momentarily in his cobalt gaze. Maybe even a hint of warmth shone there. The American was becoming more human by the second.
He slid out of his seat and knelt in the aisle beside her, offering her the back of his neck. Temptation surged to clobber him as hard as she could across the base of his skull. Except she wasn’t at all sure she could hit him hard enough to knock him out. And if she failed, he’d do the same to her that he’d done to El Mari. Or worse. Memory of his ridiculously muscular body smashing hers flat flashed through her mind. She shuddered.
Nope, her best bet was to befriend this psychopath for now.
She laid her hands on the buckle, but jerked them back when the American groaned in what sounded like intense pain.
“Continue,” he ground out.
What had the Ethiopians done to him? They must have tortured him brutally for even her lightest touch to hurt so badly. “I’ll try to be gentle,” she murmured, “but this buckle is really stiff.”
The thick leather was almost too rigid for her to undo. But finally, the tail of the buckle gave way and slid free of the metal. The collar fell away from him. She kicked it toward the back of the plane in disgust. No matter how crazy this guy was, nobody deserved to be treated like an animal. His neck was raw and bloody where the collar had been.
“Let me get the first aid kit and clean up your neck. That must hurt.”
One corner of his mouth turned up sardonically. She wouldn’t exactly call it a smile. The distant relative of one, maybe. It was a start, though. As gently as she could manage, she swabbed the raw flesh ringing his neck. As the filth surrendered to her gauze pads and peroxide, his dirt blackened skin took on a pink and mostly human hue. She worked her way around to his heavy, dark growth of beard. She estimated he hadn’t shaved in several months.
“How long were you in Ethiopia?” she asked.
He shrugged. Not the talkative type. Or maybe he’d just gotten out of the habit. If he’d been in solitary confinement for a while, he might not have had much opportunity for conversation with other humans. In her experience, once freed, such prisoners either wouldn’t shut up at all, or they became intensely taciturn like this man.
Jefferson Randall Stanley Winston. The name didn’t fit him at all. He ought to be called something like Gorilla Man. Or Jungle Giant. She snorted. Or Sasquatch.
Aloud, she asked, “Did the Ethiopians hurt you?”
He frowned as if he wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that.
She rephrased, “Did they torture you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
What the heck did that mean? “Care to elaborate?”
“Nope.”
She tried a different tack. “Your grandfather arranged for your release. He’s been very worried about you.”
That elicited a completely indecipherable grunt from him. Could be disgust, could be gratitude. No way to tell. Sheesh, talking to this guy was like conversing with a brick wall. Okay, Plan C. “Where did you tell the pilots to take us?”
He didn’t even bother to acknowledge that one.
Ohh-kay. “Do you have any other injuries that need tending?” she tried.
He made a noise that might almost be a snort of humor.
She gave up. If he wanted to talk, he would clearly do it in his own time and on his own terms. Normally, she would get a man like this a good meal, let him take a shower and sleep a little, and then she’d sit him down and debrief him on what exactly had happened to him. But how she was going to get this guy to talk was a mystery to her.
She watched him through slitted eyes as he leaned back in his seat once more and seemed to all but pass out. Exhaustion, maybe? Except it looked more like he was bearing incredible pain in stoic silence. What was up with that?
What was up with everything about this man? What in the hell had happened to him?
Chapter 2
Just a little while longer. The plane would land in Bermuda where he’d told the pilots to go, and he would finally get the drugs his body was screaming for. And then, blessed relief. The pain would recede. It never went away entirely, but it would retreat into tolerable background noise. Until then, though, his entire skeleton ached as if every bone in his body was shattering into a million pieces. To call it excruciating didn’t even begin to do it justice.
He was no doubt scaring the hell out of the woman across the aisle, but he was in too much pain to care. A need to do violence, to lash out against the agony eviscerating him from the inside out, nearly overcame him. He clenched his fists until he feared he might break the bones in his hands.
Finger by finger, he forcibly unfolded his hands until his palms pressed flat against his thighs. He could do this. He could survive this nightmare. Just a little while longer.
The woman’s eyes popped open as the sound of the engines changed pitch and the plane began its descent into Bermud
a. Leland had a beachfront mansion there where Jeff could stay. More importantly, Doc Jones could fly there with his drugs relatively easily. He envisioned the hilly island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean bristling with gracious, white stucco homes. He had good memories of summers there as a kid. It would be nice to be surrounded by familiar things again. It had been a long time. The past few years had been pretty crazy, culminating in the disaster in Ethiopia.
The plane bumped onto the runway and a groan escaped from between his tightly compressed lips, in spite of his best effort to restrain it. It was probably a perfectly fine landing, but even the lightest jarring sent daggers shooting throughout his body.
He glanced outside as the airplane came to a stop and frowned. Heavy tropical jungle? Since when did Bermuda have such vegetation? Alarmed, he surged out of his seat.
A pair of ominous, metallic clacks froze him halfway out of his seat. He looked toward the cockpit where both pilots, grim-faced, pointed heavy-gauge pistols at him. A glance to his right showed that the woman had joined them in aiming her sidearm at him.
Well, well, well. The lady had teeth, after all. Reluctant admiration coursed through him. Unfortunately, his soft tissue was as susceptible to lead as the next guy’s. He subsided in his seat cautiously.
“Welcome to Uncle Sam Airlines, Mr. Winston,” the woman bit out. “We do not necessarily fly the Friendly Skies. This is my plane and my crew. And you are my prisoner, not the other way around. Is that understood?”
She had guts to stand up to him like this. He’d be amused if he wasn’t hurting so damned bad. But the prospect of having to wait even longer for his drugs threatened to swallow him in panic. He was out of strength to hold on. Out of endurance. Out of time.
With a roar, he surged up out of his seat. But the woman was surprisingly fast. She ducked down the aisle and out the door before he could lay a hand on her. One of the pilots passed her something as she raced by the cockpit, but he couldn’t see what it was.
He followed her outside and came up short as she aimed a double-barreled shotgun at his chest. Her black gaze, leveled at him down the length of the weapon, was lethal. What little sanity he had left recognized death in her eyes. He pulled up short.
“Need us to restrain him, ma’am?” one of the pilots asked from the doorway of the plane.
Her gaze remained locked on him. She spoke slowly, as if she doubted his ability to understand her. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. “Let’s establish a few rules of engagement right up front, shall we, Mr. Winston? If you will give me your word of honor that you will not harm me in any way, I will swear not to sedate you or physically restrain you. But, if you break your word, I will not hesitate to do the same. Nor will I hesitate to kill you if it becomes necessary. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” he answered wryly.
“Do you give me your word?” she demanded.
He studied her curiously. She was a courageous woman to face him like this. But, then, she probably didn’t realize exactly how courageous since she had no idea who he was—what he was. “I give you my word.”
“Say it. What do you swear?”
Another wave of pain slammed into him and he ground out from between clenched teeth, “I give you my word I will not harm you.”
She spoke to the pilot still hovering in the door. “If you’ll off-load my bag for me, Captain, I’ll let you be on your way.”
“Are you sure you want us to leave, ma’am? We can stay here until more backup arrives to, uhh, help.”
“No. The two of us will be fine. We have an understanding. I need you to go.”
Jeff wasn’t sure whether to be complimented that she trusted his word of honor or to despise her naïveté.
“All right.” The pilot sounded deeply doubtful. Smart man.
The woman stood statuelike and continued to point the shotgun at him as her bag thudded to the ground, the jet behind them cranked up its engines and taxied off. He glanced away from the woman and her shotgun long enough to watch the white jet accelerate down the runway and lift off into the afternoon sky.
There went his best and fastest hope for relief from his private, living hell. He swore under his breath and looked back at the woman. How to convince her to get his drugs for him before he died from the agony of his withdrawal?
“Now what?” he asked her cautiously.
She lowered the weapon slowly. “Now we head up to the house. I imagine you’d like a shower, shave and a decent meal. Then we’ll talk.”
What he’d like was a nice fat injection of Doc Jones’s magic serum. Although he had to admit, a shower didn’t sound half bad. In the first days of his imprisonment, before his world collapsed down to a pinpoint of exquisite agony, he’d craved a hot shower almost more than he’d craved a good meal.
The foliage looked Caribbean… No way. They wouldn’t have brought him to the one place he’d kill to go, would they? A low-level hum of eagerness to do violence vibrated in his gut. Patience. Someone would pay someday.
He fingered his thick beard. He must look like some sort of wild mountain man. Although maybe the look wasn’t so far from the truth. Without comment, he followed as she slung the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder then turned and walked toward a small, metal storage building.
She grasped the lock and dialed a combination. It didn’t open. She tried again. No luck. She swore under her breath.
“Problem?” he asked.
“They must’ve changed the lock since the last time I was here. I’d call and ask for the new combination, but you destroyed my phone.”
“What’s inside?”
“A golf cart. Trust me, it’s a long, steep hike up the mountain to the house without it. And it’s really hot out here.”
He shrugged. After the searing heat of Africa, this tropical climate felt almost gentle. Daytime highs in Ethiopia at this time of year routinely hit the high one-twenties. But the lady did look badly overheated. He eyed the lock and muttered, “Step aside.”
“Excuse me?”
He brushed past her and she gasped as his arm came into brief contact with hers. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the light sound. He took the lock in his hand and gave it a sharp jerk. The hasp tore half off the building. He yanked again and a rectangular piece of galvanized metal sheeting gave way. The entire lock tore free in his hand.
“Door’s open now,” he announced.
She stared at him in shock. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. There wasn’t much to say. She’d seen exactly how he did it. He grabbed the lock and ripped it off.
“Do you have any idea how much strength it took to do that?”
He frowned down at the ragged hole in the building. “Aluminum of that gauge can typically hold something like twenty pounds per square inch. Given the size of the hole…maybe thirty square inches…that means it took about six hundred pounds of force.”
Her jaw sagged.
“Of course, if there was metal fatigue, the required force might have been much less,” he added lamely. What in the hell was he doing? He knew better than to show off for some woman he’d just met! Especially one who worked for the U.S. freaking government. It would be disastrous if she caught even a hint of his secrets, and here he was, laying them out before her like an open book for the reading!
He grabbed the handle and lifted the garage-style door hastily. Must distract the woman. Fast. His ploy seemed to work, for she ducked under the door as it was still rising and headed for the golf cart inside.
The vehicle groaned as he eased his weight down onto it. She threw him a strange look, which he pointedly ignored. After tossing her bag in the back, she drove the cart outside. He waited, arms folded, as she got out and closed the door behind them.
She guided the cart onto a dirt path that zigzagged back and forth up the steep side of a substantial mountain. It looked like a dormant volcano covered in heavy tropical undergrowth.
Near the summit, a small clea
ring opened up and a gracious one-story home came into view under a canopy of trees. It was long and low with a deep, covered front porch stretching its entire length. A ceiling fan cooled a pair of cane rocking chairs, and plantation shutters slatted the windows. Unquestionably Caribbean architecture.
The Caribbean, huh? So his guess had been correct. He eyed his companion speculatively. What were the odds she was attached to the secret government surveillance facility in that region of the world? The one that had gotten so many of his men killed and caused him no end of problems?
His more immediate problem asserted itself as a wave of molten agony engulfed him. He needed his drugs, and soon. At least he wasn’t far from the United States. He should be able to get his drugs flown in here fast.
Assuming the prickly woman beside him allowed it.
* * *
He stared at his beard in the mirror. He would need clippers to trim it down enough to be properly shave-able. Not to mention, the idea of dragging a razor across his super-sensitized skin made him cringe in abject terror. There were not many things in this world that scared him, but the prospect of inflicting that kind of pain on himself was one of them. He was already stretched just about to the limit of his tolerance.
For now, he’d leave the beard be. He eyed the shower stall warily. Desire to finally be clean warred with his fear of the water hitting his skin. What if he couldn’t take the pain? What kind of a wimp would he be if he couldn’t even tolerate that small pressure? Fear won out over filth. Like his mother always said, a little dirt never killed anyone. But more pain could very possibly break him in his current state.
He backed out of the bathroom and headed down the hall toward the mouthwateringly delectable smell of meat charring.
“Steak okay for supper?” the woman asked from beside one of those indoor grill stoves that sucked down the smoke into a powerful fan.