by Jen Blood
“I’m fine,” Solomon said. Her face had paled with the pain, but now a flush of color returned to her cheeks. “Damn it, Diggs, let him go.”
“I’m sorry,” Juarez said. He looked worlds more shaken by what he’d done than she did. “I just… Please, Erin.”
She turned her back on both of us and went into the other bedroom. When she returned, she held a copy of the page we’d deciphered. Before she handed it to the Fed, she looked at him intently.
“We have to get Kat back tomorrow. You have to promise me that you won’t put that goal in jeopardy.”
He didn’t say anything, his attention fixed on the paper still in her hand. She reached up and touched his face, forcing his gaze to hers.
“Jack? Please—I don’t want to lose her.”
He nodded. “I promise: We’ll get Kat back before I make a move. I’ll make sure everyone is safe.”
“Thank you.”
Against my better judgment, I watched as Solomon handed him the numbers. He took the paper and sat, poring over each entry. It was easy to see when he found the code for Nicaragua, his fingers tightening convulsively on the page.
He studied it for another minute or more, pulling himself together—gathering his resolve.
“They’re not done,” he said, indicating the paper. “Some of these entries here are dated years from now.”
“I know,” Solomon said.
“We have to stop them.”
“We will.”
I shifted uncomfortably, half wishing I had just left them alone. Juarez turned back to me.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “I won’t make you regret it. We’ll get Kat back… And then, we’ll make them pay.”
After Juarez had gone, Solomon sank back on the couch and closed her eyes.
“How can I be tired again? All I’ve done is sleep for the past three days.”
“Apparently getting shot is exhausting business. Who knew,” I said coolly.
She looked at me, one eyebrow arched. “You think giving him the codes was a mistake.”
“I don’t know. It seems like he’s in control now, but that may change once he actually has Jenny in his sights. You saw the way he lost it tonight. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I don’t sympathize with him. If anyone ever did something like that to you…” I trailed off, the thought a toxic burn in my stomach.
She studied me for a second before she held out her hand. “Come sit with me.”
“Are you pissed at me for going after him?”
“I’m too tired to be pissed. I think it’s a first.”
I sat at the end of the couch and wrapped her in my arms as carefully as possible.
“What are you thinking?” I asked after a few minutes of silence.
“I was thinking you looked pretty hot when you pulled that Ninja move on Juarez.” She looked at me slyly. I wasn’t ready to let it go, though.
“He had no right going after you like that.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“He did hurt you,” I corrected her, thinking of the look in her eye; the gasp of pain. “I don’t care what he’s going through. He had no right to do that.”
“You’ve always been too protective of me.” She pulled back to study me, running a cool, small hand along my cheek. “I’m not as breakable as you think, Diggs.”
“I don’t think you’re breakable. I know you can take whatever gets dealt to you. But given the choice, I’d rather see you avoid it. A crazy concept, I know.”
“Yeah, well... You can’t protect me this time. Whatever happens with Kat, I have to deal with it. There’s no avoiding that.”
“She’s a tough woman,” I said. I touched her knee, running my hand along her thigh. “She’ll be okay. She’s strong. Like her pain-in-the-ass daughter.”
“I’ve never been as strong as her. Nothing gets to her.” A minute, then two, passed before she spoke again. “I need her to be okay, Diggs.”
“I know.” I pulled her back into my arms, brushing my lips against her temple. Breathing her in. “I know you do.”
I wanted to reassure her—to tell her that everything would be fine. We would all come out of this unscathed. But the closer it got to showtime, the more we learned about Jenny and Cameron and the project that had destroyed so many lives, the more convinced I became: It wouldn’t be that easy.
This time, no one was coming out unscathed.
Chapter Twenty-Five - Juarez
Juarez walked the beach outside the hotel after he left Diggs and Erin, pushing himself to remember something other than jumbled fragments of his past. They had killed Lucia. It wasn’t God who took her away, it wasn’t random violence or some desperate guerrillas in a third-world country… It was the Project.
But why?
It made no sense—why kill her? What could that possibly accomplish, besides bringing him to his knees?
And then, there were those other flashes from his childhood: the woman teaching him how to hold a gun; the words he kept hearing… Forget the dark spots, Jackie.
He had no idea what any of it meant.
After an hour, when he found he couldn’t handle the chaos inside his own head any longer, Juarez finally returned to the room. It was after midnight, but Jamie was still awake, head bowed as she worked at her laptop in the living room. She looked up when he came in.
“I ordered up some room service if you want,” she said, nodding to several dishes on the table. “It might be a little cool, but it’s probably still edible.”
“Thank you.”
He sat and checked the dishes: tortillas, refried beans, chicken. His stomach rumbled.
Jamie remained where she was, continuing to work.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just budget stuff. I may be able to justify a few days of imaginary sex, but it doesn’t mean I can ditch work altogether.”
“I guess not.”
He stopped eating after the first few bites and studied the veritable stranger now sharing a suite with him. Her hair was up, her legs tucked gracefully beneath her on the sofa. She’d changed from shorts to light cotton pajama pants and a thin-strapped top that highlighted sculpted shoulders and a slim, graceful neck. When his gaze fell to her breasts, small and pert beneath the thin fabric, his blood warmed. He looked away an instant before she looked up, but he had the sense she knew full well that he’d been staring.
“If you want to talk, I can put this away,” she said. “I just figured I’d give you the option.”
“It feels weird, sitting here watching you work while I eat.”
“No one said you had to watch,” she said. Her smile was light, but her blue eyes smoldered when they met his. “Unless that’s your thing, of course.”
“No—I’ve never been a fan of the sidelines.” When it became clear she wasn’t going to make this easy for him, he nodded to the table. “Put the work away and come sit with me.”
She obliged without comment, putting the laptop back in its case before she chose a seat across from him at the table.
“You have everything set for tomorrow?” she asked.
The question brought the weight back to his shoulders. “As much as possible.”
“Good. We’ll meet up with Monty and Carl in the morning. I’ll be glad to know we have a little extra muscle behind us.”
He nodded his agreement. “It’s good that Diggs insisted on meeting here first. We might as well try to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
“You don’t think tomorrow will go according to plan, then?”
He looked at her frankly, eyebrows raised. “Do you?”
“I don’t know anything about these people,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe they’re all honorable, upstanding citizens.”
“Right. Honorable, upstanding citizens who kidnap, lie, kill...”
“Or maybe not,” she conceded. She watched him as he picked at his food, tearing off a piece of cooled tortilla
and dipping it idly in the refried beans. “I have my reservations.”
“That brings up an interesting point,” he said, meeting her eye once more. He set the tortilla down on his plate without taking a bite. The room got quiet. As much as he’d enjoyed having Jamie on this trip—and there was no denying that he had enjoyed it, more than he cared to admit—he had been avoiding some fairly serious questions since they’d left Maine.
“Jack?” she pressed, when he didn’t say anything.
“Why are you here?”
“Here in this room, here in this country… Here on the planet?” Despite her smile and the lightness in her tone, he saw a shade of unease in her eyes. “Sorry, you’ll need to be more specific.”
“You know what I mean. Why are you here with me? We barely know each other. You’re not getting paid. You don’t know Erin or her mother or Diggs well enough to justify sticking your neck out this far.”
She shrugged. He liked the fact that she didn’t break eye contact. Her slender throat moved when she swallowed. She wet her lips. “I didn’t see anyone else lining up to help you.”
“That wouldn’t matter to most people.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” he said, a residual heat still warming his blood. “You’re not.”
Their eyes locked, the heat intensifying. It was clear that she felt it, too—he could tell by the flush of color in her cheeks, the intensity of her blue eyes. After a moment, she dropped her gaze and nodded toward the dishes still between them.
“Are you going to eat all that?”
“You didn’t eat earlier?”
“I did,” she said. She pulled the tortillas toward her. “I’m still hungry. Late nights and deadly missions do that to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Six - Kat
Kat had no idea how long they traveled before she heard Jenny talking to the pilot about setting down. She’d dozed occasionally, her chin on her chest or else resting on Cameron’s shoulder. Her hands had been bound so long that her arms ached and back screamed with tension—both physical and mental. Her lip was bloodied and her face bruised from close encounters with Jenny’s temper. Which, it turned out, was formidable.
“When we set down, don’t fight,” Cameron whispered to her when they were alone, both Jenny and Lee up front with the pilot. “They’ll blindfold us next. Probably gag us. If you fight, it will be worse for you.”
He remained calm beside her. His mouth had stopped bleeding, but his lips and nose were crusted with dried blood.
“It doesn’t feel like it could get much worse. When we land, I say we make a run for it while they’re trying to move us.”
He twisted his head to look at her with the faintest of smiles. “I don’t recommend that. I know it’s not your strong suit, but right now we need to be patient.”
“Hey!” Lee lumbered back from the co-pilot’s seat. Cameron’s bullet had merely grazed him back in the hotel room. At this point, he didn’t show even a trace of pain. “No whispering. If you have something to say, you share it with the whole class.”
“Apologies,” Cameron said stiffly. He looked the man in the eye. “I was just talking about how pleased I’ll be when I slit your throat.”
The response caught Kat off guard—and Cameron, based on his gasp before he contained himself. Lee struck him twice, hard and fast, once in the kidney and once in the face. Cam’s head snapped back. Blood hit Kat’s cheek, warm and wet.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jenny roared from the front. She came back and knocked Lee soundly upside the head.
“He said he was going to slit my throat.”
“Yeah, well—Keep that up and I’ll do it for him,” Jenny said. “Now, go on up front. Jesus. I have to do everything myself around here.”
Jenny reclaimed the seat facing them and leaned forward, studying her father. “I know what you’re doing, you know.”
His nose was bleeding again, his face pale from the unexpected body blow. Still, somehow he managed to keep his tone even.
“Oh? And what’s that, sweetheart?”
She shook her head, her jaw set. “You’re trying to make me feel bad for you.” The girl took a bottle of water and dumped a small amount on a handkerchief she produced from her bag. She slid forward in her seat and wiped the blood from her father’s face. Kat caught the tenderness there, the flash of conflict, before Jenny could hide it. “It won’t work, you know,” she said.
Cameron nodded, holding his daughter’s eye. “I know. Sorry.”
She wiped his nose and mouth, her lips pressed in a thin line. “There’s nothing I could do,” she whispered. “Even if I wanted to. You chose this—not me. You made your bed.”
Kat resisted the urge to speak, knowing it would break the fragile spell Cameron was weaving. She remained silent, hands bound, thinking of parents and children and the complicated bond between them.
She hadn’t been prepared for it, giving birth to Erin at eighteen years old. Her father had cut her out of his life as soon as she told him she was staying on the island. When Kat told him she wasn’t coming home—over the phone, too afraid of his reaction to do so in person—there had been a long silence on the other end of the line. He hung up without another word. When she tried to call back, he hung up again the moment he heard her voice. It was nine years before he even found out she’d had a child.
So... no, she hadn’t been prepared to give birth. She sure as hell wasn’t ready to be a mother—didn’t even know what that meant, really. Her own mother died having her. Kat was raised on military bases, while her father played surgeon to soldiers at home and abroad. All she had been was terrified, when she realized she was pregnant. That terror grew teeth once she understood who Isaac Payson was; the way he controlled everyone around him.
Maddie, the best friend who had once invited trouble at every turn, was so deep under Isaac’s spell that Kat couldn’t imagine ever getting her back. The preacher treated her like crap, like some whore continually putting temptation in his path… and Maddie couldn’t get enough of him. She wasn’t the only one, either: Kat saw other women pass through his doors and follow him to the greenhouse late at night. Saw the way his wife just pretended she didn’t notice. She saw how intent Isaac was on keeping other men away.
“We have to leave here,” she’d whispered to Adam, lying together in his room one early morning. It was a month, maybe less, before her due date. Adam looked at her like she was the crazy one.
“I can’t leave here, Katie—I’ve told you that from the start. I promise you, we are safe here.”
“You’re nuts if you believe that. You’ve seen what he does... How he treats people.”
“He has problems, I know. We all do. But he’s created a place for these people out here—that isn’t easy. Everyone has their weaknesses.”
Like they were talking about Isaac having a goddamn sweet tooth, instead of screwing every girl who crossed his path. Adam saw the look in her eye, how furious he’d made her, and immediately looked contrite.
“I know it’s hard for you. I know this isn’t what you would have chosen for your life,” he said. “You’d rather be headed to college right now, instead of being stuck with someone like me.”
And of course she’d fallen for it, assuring him that she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the planet. That he was the only one for her. Their voices had been soft, whispering in the sanctity of the bedroom they had shared since the wedding ceremony Isaac had performed six months earlier. Adam kissed her enormous belly, her tender breasts.
“I promise you, Katie… I’ll keep you safe here. I’ll never survive off the island, but I can control Isaac for you and the baby. We’ll be all right.”
It took only a few months before they both learned how wrong he was.
◊◊◊◊◊
After Jenny tended to her father, she pulled out a roll of duct tape and tore off two short strips. She looked nearly apologetic when she stuck one across Cameron
’s mouth, but she was downright gleeful when she gagged Kat. The fear built in Kat’s chest. When Lee handed Jenny two black hoods, that fear turned to panic.
Jenny saw it in her eyes before Kat could hide it. The girl smiled at her, her full lips twisting into a sneer. “Don’t worry, Kat. This will be over before you know it.”
She pulled the hood down over Kat’s face. For a few seconds, Kat fought against it—reduced to grunts and whimpers, trying to escape a darkness that seemed all-consuming; a black that came from within and spread. Cameron pressed his arm against hers, reminding her of his presence. She forced herself to calm down. Take shallow breaths. Go somewhere else. She could watch all of it from above, from a place where the pain and the fear couldn’t touch her. God knew she’d done it before, in circumstances every bit as bad as these.
She would survive this.
When the plane landed, she and Cameron were manhandled down the stairs and over uneven ground, to a waiting car. Bound and gagged, the hood still over their faces, they were pushed roughly into the backseat. Kat had no idea where they were, but within a few minutes they were on the move again.
When they reached their destination hours later, Kat felt the car slowly come to a stop. In the distance, she could hear kids shouting—in play, not anger, based on the bursts of laughter accompanying those shouts. The air inside the hood was stifling, her throat parched from too many hours with her mouth duct taped shut. Cameron was still beside her, equally silent, the warmth of his arm against hers one of the only things keeping her grounded.
Once they were stopped, her car door opened and someone took her arm roughly. Jenny—she could tell by the nails digging into her skin; the sickly sweet smell of her perfume.
“Time for a little walk,” she said, holding tight to Kat’s arm. Kat felt the barrel of a gun jammed into her side. There was the dense, ripe smell of verdant jungle all around them, the world alive with night sounds: the high-pitched scream of monkeys; the rustle of something moving through the brush nearby; a thousand unidentifiable screeches, calls, and cries.