Breaking Point

by Suzanne Brockmann

That is, if he and Gina and the others had managed to avoid Emilio’s trap.

  If they weren’t already dead.

  Jules realized that the leather jacket was gone, and with it his cell phone and sidearm. His pants were missing, too. He was even wearing someone else’s underwear.

  God, he hoped Junior Miss Indonesia over there hadn’t been the one playing with him, like a giant Ken doll. Not for his sake, but for hers. What was she doing, in bed with him, anyway?

  Okay, she was sleeping. On top of the sheet that covered him. Close at hand, in case he awoke.

  She was babysitting him, he realized, much to his relief.

  He reached out to touch her, to nudge her awake, but the movement made him hurt like a bitch. Although he didn’t quite scream, the sound that came out of his mouth was pretty damn close.

  It did the trick. The girl sat up, wide-eyed.

  “Hey,” he rasped through a throat that was dry, through lips that were split and swollen. Had someone actually kicked him in the face? “May I borrow your telephone?”

  She started to speak, loudly and rapidfire, in that language he didn’t understand.

  Ah, crap.

  That memory he had of her speaking to him in clear, precise English must’ve been a hallucination.

  “My name,” he said slowly, hand on his chest, “is Jules Cassidy. I need—” he made the international hand signal for telephone, which was very similar to the ASL sign for “I love you” held up to one’s ear “—a telephone?”

  Maybe if she had paper and a pen, he could draw one for her.

  God, his head hurt. Just what he needed—to play Pictionary with what felt like a fractured skull, for life and death stakes.

  An older woman came into the room, carrying a tray with a glass of what he hoped was potable water. She set it down near his bedmate, who was still rattling on.

  The girl held the glass out for him so that he could drink.

  And then she surprised the hell out of him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cassidy,” she told Jules in crisp perfect English. “We don’t have a landline, and the cell towers are apparently still out.”

  “Man, you should be asleep,” Jones said, as Max came into the room where he was keeping watch.

  Dawn was coming. It was a matter of minutes, maybe a half hour, before the sky would turn to pewter instead of black.

  “Or at the very least,” Jones added, “showing Gina how much you love and worship her.”

  “She’s asleep,” Max told him. He’d slipped out of bed as soon as her breathing had turned steady. He’d . . . worshipped her quite nicely before that. Not that he was going to tell Jones about it. But shee-yit, as Gina might’ve said.

  Max found himself grinning into the darkness.

  “You do love her, right?” Jones asked from his seat beneath the window. He threw Max the pillow, so he could sit, too. “Message from Molly: if you’re just fucking around with Gina, you better stop right now. If you hurt her, I’ll fucking make you sorry you were born.”

  Message from Molly, huh?

  “I’m paraphrasing,” Jones told him.

  “I love her,” Max said, as he sat down. Ouch.

  “Yeah, it’s actually kind of obvious,” Jones told him. “But I promised Molly I’d do the tough guy threat thing. She’s awesome, by the way. Gina. You’re one fucking-go-lucky son of a bitch.”

  Max just shook his head. There must’ve been a military training course in Creative Swearing that, as a civilian, Max hadn’t been required to take.

  “So, you’re actually human,” Jones said. “And, as far as total bastards go, you’re . . . okay. Imagine my surprise.”

  “Yeah,” Max said. Although wasn’t that supposed to be his line?

  Gina was right—Jones was, if not quite a good man, a decent one. It was interesting, too, to see how quickly he’d morphed back into a highly efficient professional soldier.

  There was a saying in the counterterrorist world: “Proper training is permanent training.”

  But Max wasn’t at all surprised by that. His years of experience with operators from all branches of both the military and the civilian sector had provided him with his own adage. “Expect the absolute best from everyone, and prepare to be surprised at how far they’ll surpass those expectations.”

  “If this colonel who’s coming,” Jones said, getting down to the serious stuff without any further small talk, “is the colonel I think it is . . .”

  Max waited.

  “It’s important,” Jones said quietly, “when you turn me over to him—his name is Ram Subandrio—that I’m already dead.”

  Max cleared his throat. “I don’t think—”

  “Yeah,” Jones said. “Well, I don’t think either. I know. And I’ve been figuring out the best way to do this. To make it . . . easier for Molly . . . But, fuck. It’s not going to be easy whatever way . . . All I know is that I’m going to need you to do it, because I’m a fucking coward, and I won’t be able to do it myself.”

  Christ. “Look,” Max said. “Grady. Maybe—”

  “Here’s what I think we should do,” Jones told him. “You should walk me out there. Get me out of the building. We can tell Molly and Gina to go into the escape tunnel, so they won’t be able to watch. I’ll have my hands up as you take me into the square. You’ll have a weapon and—”

  “Tell me about Subandrio,” Max said. “If he is the colonel who’s coming, he’s the man I’m going to be talking to.”

  “He’s a fucking maniac,” Jones said. “Chai found him in the same prison where he found me. Only he was working there. By choice. Will you just promise me—”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Max told him. “We’ll figure something else out.”

  Jones was silent. “Like what?”

  “Jesus. Like, anything.”

  Max couldn’t see the other man’s face clearly from where he was sitting, but he could see that Jones was shaking his head.

  “How about if I told you that Subandrio will strip the skin from my body to get me to tell him where I brought Nusantara’s mistress,” Jones said, his voice low. “What if I tell you he’ll keep me alive for weeks? Months. Kill me just a little and then let me heal. What if I tell you that as long as I’m alive, he’ll try to get to Molly. Gina, too. He’ll have me, and he’ll still blast a hole in this house with his tank, so he can peel the skin from them—in front of me, to make me suffer even more. And you, you’re not immune to this, either, friend. He’ll make you watch as he tortures them, too. He’ll cut my baby out of Molly’s body—you want to watch him do that? Believe me. He’s done it before. He’s probably looking forward to it.”

  God.

  “I don’t know,” Jones’s voice shook as he continued. “It’s entirely possible that Subandrio will torture Molly and Gina anyway. Even if I’m dead. The kindest thing might be just to make sure the end comes quickly for them.”

  “Maybe it’s not this Subandrio who’s coming,” Max said.

  “Yeah,” Jones scoffed. “And maybe Molly doesn’t really have breast cancer.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t.”

  “Right.” He laughed, and it was an ugly sound.

  Max exhaled hard. “Grady, look, I know you’re scared, but I’m not going to—”

  “You’re a fool—still believing in miracles. Thinking . . . What? I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  “No,” Max said, but Jones wasn’t listening.

  “I’m a coward, I’m less than,” he ranted, “because I let myself be broken? Jesus, you’re a fucking arrogant prick! You think you’re better than me. You think you wouldn’t have broken in that prison, don’t you? Three years of torture—shit, you could do that standing on your head, couldn’t you? Well, fuck you, Bhagat. Despite what you think you’re human, too. And just like every other man on this planet, you’ve got a breaking point.”

  “Look, Grady,” Max tried.

  “You really want to find out where you
rs is? Let them slice the skin off the bottoms of your feet. Let them whip you til you’re one more flick of their wrist from dead. No fucking problem. You’re indestructible. Your goddamn self-righteousness will keep you alive. But wait. What about when they bring Gina into the room? How you feeling then, champ? Having to watch them rape her, hear her scream and be unable to move, let alone help her? How’d you like to sit through that? Because you’re going to have to.”

  Silence.

  Max didn’t know what to say. Like, Yeah, actually, I’ve done that. Hearing Gina scream, being unable to help her.

  He hadn’t realized, while he was living through it, while he was suffering from the aftereffects, that there was a name for it.

  Torture.

  In his life, he’d only had one experience that was more horrific.

  And that was believing Gina was dead.

  Jones stood up. Right in front of the window.

  “Get down,” Max ordered him.

  But he didn’t. He just walked upright, out the door. “Finish up my shift,” he said. “Let me know when you’ve finally run out of options. I’m going to go spend the rest of my life with my wife.”

  Jules looked from Dr. Dewi Ernalia to her three gorgeous brothers and back, praying that they were going to believe him.

  Hell, if anyone deserved to be skeptical here, he should be first in line. This skinny little girl supposedly had a medical degree from Tufts University?

  Of course, she had set his leg and stitched him up, so it was probably better to believe the degree thing. The alternative was slightly less confidence-inspiring—that she was a precocious teen working on her ER Surgeon Girl Scout badge.

  As Dr. Ernalia’s trio of brothers gathered at the foot of the bed, she’d told Jules that she was the only doctor on this side of the island, and this little cottage without electricity was the closest thing there was to a hospital for miles.

  She was worried because brother number one had told her there were terrorists holed up in a house further up the mountain. Brother number two apparently reported that rumors were afoot that the military was bringing in a tank to blast those terrorists out.

  Which meant, according to the Doc’s experience, that there was a potential for some serious casualties.

  Yeah, no kidding.

  And the worst of those casualties were going to be Max, Gina, Jones, and Molly. Those were no terrorists, holed up in that house. Those were Jules’s friends.

  Of course, the doctor told him, the potential for serious casualties would be even greater if the Americans were involved.

  But apparently the Americans were being kept away because it was believed that these terrorists were part of a cell that had attacked the American embassy in Jakarta—where a beloved statesman from Pulau Meda had been killed. If the Americans became involved, they would take the terrorists into custody, instead of dishing out immediate and just punishment.

  “I’m an agent with the American Federal Bureau of Investigations,” Jules told them, wishing he was wearing something more dignified than borrowed underwear—a pair of boxers bearing the logo for the Boston Red Sox. They were pinned precariously together on one side, to accommodate the splint on his lower leg. “I came to Pulau Meda investigating the kidnapping of two American woman.” He waited while the Doc translated for her brothers.

  And then he waited even longer, while another man came into the room. He was another of the young doctor’s brothers—these people could not look more like siblings if they tried. They were all exotically beautiful.

  There was more discussion, lots of gesturing, many furtive glances in his direction.

  Dr. Ernalia finally quieted them down. She turned back to Jules. “My brothers want to know,” she asked him, “whether you killed Emilio Testa.”

  Jules looked at that row of faces at the foot of his bed, and he could not read them. Not even slightly. Blank expectation. That was all he got. This family could have been the most successful team of Texas Hold “Em players in the world.

  And gee, he really hoped Emilio Testa wasn’t a good friend of theirs.

  Molly awoke to find herself alone in the bed.

  But she wasn’t alone in the room. Jones was hunkered down on the floor just inside the door, a shape in the darkness, watching her.

  “Hi,” she said groggily, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s happening? Is your shift over already? Is it time for me to take a turn?”

  “No, it’s . . . no,” he said. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “You didn’t.” There was a candle on the table next to the bed, and she found it by touch, found the matchbook. The light didn’t quite reach as far as the wall, though. It didn’t make it any easier to see his face. “What are you doing over there?” She propped herself up on one elbow.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

  “If that’s the beginning of an apology,” she told him. “I accept. You’re forgiven.”

  “I am sorry,” Jones said. “I should have stayed away from you. I never should have gone to Kenya.”

  While Molly hadn’t been looking forward to this conversation, she’d been expecting it. Jones’s spirits had taken a real nosedive when he’d found out that Max couldn’t use their knowledge of the planned terrorist attack on the Jakarta embassy as a bargaining chip, because the attack had already happened.

  It was possible he’d been chugging along in dire situation mode, but that Max’s idea had given him real hope.

  Hope that had quickly been dashed.

  “Well,” Molly said now, “okay. Maybe if you’d skipped the Kenya trip, neither of us would be right here, right now—”

  “Damn straight.”

  “—but you have to know that I wouldn’t trade the past four months with you for anything,” she told him fiercely.

  “You’d really rather die,” he said flatly. “For four lousy months of living a lie?”

  “No,” she said. “I’d really rather not die, thanks. And what exactly was the lie? Your name? Your fake accent? Big deal. Stop beating yourself up for making me the happiest woman in the world. Well, except maybe for Gina, when she was on the kitchen table . . .”

  Jones didn’t laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. He put his head down, resting it on his folded arms.

  “Come on,” Molly said. “What’s with this defeatist attitude?”

  She pulled back the sheet, took the candle from the table, and with it, crossed the room. Naked. With all of her forty-something jiggles, and that maybe-she-just-ate-too-much-chocolate-cake of a soft, round belly that didn’t quite look pregnant yet. With her breasts expanding by the minute. She’d always been full figured, but pregnancy was turning her into a burlesque star anomaly. At least it felt that way.

  But when Jones looked at her, she felt beautiful. Sometimes even svelte. And always unbelievably sexy.

  Even despite the bandage covering her Frankenstein-looking biopsy stitches.

  Problem was, he didn’t want to look at her right now. He was frightened and angry, and he had no room in his soul for anything but his misery and self-loathing.

  “I should have died years ago,” Jones said, as she sat down on the floor, next to him. “I think I was probably supposed to, but I was too much of a son of a bitch to realize it.”

  “If you were supposed to die,” she pointed out, “then you would have. Assuming there’s such a thing in life as supposed to. But okay, let’s run with that. When were you supposed to die?”

  “When I got that infection,” he told her. “I almost did die.”

  Molly nodded. She remembered.

  She’d first seen his souvenir of that event—a new scar in his vast collection—on their wedding night. It was on his back, jagged and still angry looking, long after he’d been injured.

  Stabbed, actually.

  He’d told her that he’d gotten that scar while on his way to Africa. Years earlier.

  It had happened right after Molly had left Indon
esia, in fact. After she’d been shot, and he’d been beaten half to death. After they’d both messed up their lives and their relationship by mistrusting one another.

  Jones had gotten aboard a ship heading east, intending to do whatever it took find her, to grovel and beg for forgiveness.

  But Chai’s men had tracked him down. They’d found him and nearly killed him, and as he fought for his life, he’d been stabbed in the back.

  And it was then, as he crawled off that cargo ship in Sri Lanka, bleeding from a knife wound that would damn near kill him a second time when it became infected, that he came to the realization that Chai would not rest until he was dead.

  He could not hide, he could only run. And if he continued on to Africa, he’d told her, he knew he’d lead that son of a bitch right to Molly, putting her into terrible danger.

  Jones had vowed then and there that he would not make that mistake again.

  Molly knew he was thinking about that now. “You weren’t supposed to die,” she told him. “Stop blaming yourself—this isn’t your fault.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re not going to convince me of that. Damn it, Mol, I feel like I’ve killed you. One way or another. If you survive this ordeal, well, shit! Then it’s time to battle cancer—except, if I’m alive, where am I? It’s hard to hold your hand from jail.” His voice shook. “If I hadn’t come to Kenya, then I wouldn’t have gotten you pregnant, and you’d be worrying about your own health, instead of the freaking spawn of Satan inside of you!”

  “Wow,” she said. “That was pretty harsh.”

  “God, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Do you think he heard me? Shit, it’s probably better that I’m . . . I would’ve made a lousy father—”

  “No,” she said, purposely ignoring his defeatist verb tense, focusing instead on the fact that, for the very first time, Jones had acknowledged the life—their baby—that she was carrying as a person. “I don’t think he even has ears yet. And if he does, his English needs work. I meant that was harsh on you. I mean, come on. If I’m carrying the ‘freaking spawn of Satan,’ what does that make you?”

  Jones turned to look at her. “You’re naked,” he said, as if the fact had only just registered.