Given all she’d been through, she’d thought she had no more room for pain. Yet hurting Niko like that had torn a giant hole in her heart. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hide from the agony.
Stop it! She couldn’t afford such weakness. Not here. Not when she had to stay alive long enough to reach Kai.
“Welcome to my home, Señorita Paterson.” Alvarez’s voice was deep and cultured, with only a slight accent. The power of it rolled through her, setting off alarm bells. Every evil thing she’d heard about him came back, filling her with heavy dread. Suddenly, it didn’t seem such a good idea to have surrendered.
Her mouth dried out as she realized she might not survive this meeting.
Alvarez seemed to be waiting for something from her. How had Alvarez seen through her disguise so quickly, when his men still thought she was a boy? When she didn’t respond to his greeting, the man behind her yanked off her stocking cap and tangled his fist in her hair.
“Answer El Jefe,” he barked in thickly accented English.
Not in this lifetime, she thought.
“You do not answer my greeting?” Alvarez’s soft voice held only mild inquiry, yet her palms grew damp at the underlying threat.
“How is it that you were raised without knowing proper etiquette?” the crime lord prodded.
The man holding her forced her head up meet Alvarez’s scrutiny. His lifeless eyes stripped her naked and she barely smothered the urge to cover herself with her hands. Instead, she forced herself to look at the bridge of his nose, and hoped her fear didn’t show on her face.
“Speak,” the man behind her ordered, swatting her head with the back of his hand.
She opened her mouth and moved her lips without talking, hoping Alvarez would get the message.
“Ah, yes. My man slit your throat during the attack on your family. You have lost your voice?”
Jenna nodded.
“How…unfortunate.” Alvarez’s predatory smile would have stopped a hungry shark in its tracks. “I do so like to hear my guests scream.”
His eyes roamed over her again and she froze, afraid to so much as twitch in case he took that as a sign of weakness. When he shifted his gaze to Mark, she felt like she’d received a last-minute pardon from the governor on the night of execution.
Alvarez asked a curt question of one of the men in Spanish. The man grunted, kicked Mark, and replied with a harsh laugh.
Alvarez waved his hand. Two of the men picked Mark up and carried him from the room. The oppressive force of Alvarez’s eyes immediately smothered her again.
“I would like for you and I to get better acquainted, my dear Señorita Paterson. However, you must be anxious to see your brother.” He nodded to the man behind her and she was pulled to her feet.
“Tonight you can share your brother’s cell. Do try and convince him to be reasonable when I question him tomorrow morning about Nevsky’s microchip. If not, I’m afraid you will find the consequences…unpleasant.” His slow smile sent her stomach cowering behind her ribs.
“Sweet dreams, niña.”
Her guard dragged her across the room. They had just reached the door, and she was congratulating herself for having gotten out of the encounter unharmed, when Alvarez spoke up behind them.
“On second thought…Manuel, bring the lady back here.”
Jenna struggled, even though she knew it was useless. Her guard simply picked her up around the waist like she was a stuffed toy and carried her back to Alvarez. The man set her on her feet and wrapped his arms and one leg around hers, trapping her against his body.
“For every day that passes without your brother’s cooperation, you will be cut.” Alvarez held up a short, wickedly sharp dagger with a turquoise and silver hilt.
Jenna flinched, hating the way Alvarez smiled triumphantly at her reaction.
“What’s the matter, chiquita? Afraid of knives?” His left hand darted out and grabbed her chin. With his right hand, he placed the dagger at the front of her eye, so that just a tiny upward movement from him would slice her.
She sucked in air and widened her eyes, afraid that if she blinked, if she so much as breathed, she might inadvertently cause the knife to shift position.
Alvarez’s voice was full of good humor as he continued. “I could easily cut your eye out, or slice it enough to blind you. But not yet.”
He moved the knife a fraction of an inch away. Jenna exhaled in relief.
Too soon.
Alvarez’s grip shifted on the hilt. The knife sliced down, cutting open her skin from just below the bone of her eye socket to the point of her chin. He leaned in, his hot breath fanning across the stinging cut. “Never forget that I hold all the power.”
His tongue darted out and licked across the wound.
Jenna whimpered, then realized that she’d made a mistake when Alvarez practically purred over her fear.
His smile grew wider and he laughed. “Oh yes, you and I are going to have such fun.” Still smiling, he ran his thumb down the cut, using his nail to separate the torn flesh farther. He smeared blood across her forehead and down her nose, almost like he was blessing her.
Leaning back enough to meet her eyes, he licked the rest of the blood off his thumb.
“Dream of me, Señorita Paterson. I’ll see you in the morning.” He winked at her. “On second thought, I hope your brother proves resistant to your persuasion. There is so much more I’d like to do to you.” With a dismissive nod to the man holding her, he turned away.
Jenna went without protest, letting her guard carry most of her weight. She was trembling too much for her legs to be any good, anyway.
The man dragged her through a long series of corridors and down several sets of stairs. She didn’t bother noting their route. There wouldn’t be any need to travel it again. By the time morning came, both she and Kai would be dead.
And thank God for that. The idea of having another encounter with Alvarez paralyzed her with fear.
#
Wednesday, Night
Zihuatanejo, Mexico
Niko didn’t let Rafe carry him into the backup bungalow the SSU had rented for them. They’d made a quick stop at their old house for Rafe to pack their things, but with Jenna in Alvarez’s possession, that location was compromised.
Knowing his leg would stiffen up if he didn’t use it, Niko hobbled across the tiled floor, glad that the bleeding had slowed so he was no longer dripping blood. Rafe dumped their bags inside the front door. He pulled out a white box and a brown leather shaving kit.
“I’m putting the first aid stuff in the bathroom,” Rafe told Niko as he headed down the hall. “Your prescription pain killers are in the shaving kit.” His cell phone was already at his ear. A moment later, Niko heard the bedroom door close.
Rafe was going to do his best to arrange for help with their rescue by calling in every favor owed him by the special ops community. And he was going to report in to Ryker.
Niko limped into the bathroom, holding on to the wall for support. He carefully tugged his pants off and examined the wound. The bullet had taken a quarter-sized chunk off the outside of his left leg, a few inches down from where the bullet had hit him in Afghanistan. What, did he have an X marking this spot for shooters? His lips curved in a grim smile as he wet a washcloth and prepared to clean away the blood.
This latest wound wasn’t as bad as the previous one, but it still hurt like a mother.
He unzipped the shaving kit, searching for the painkillers. He couldn’t afford to take more than one, but he needed something to dull the edge.
But the kit held only soap, deodorant, and a few tubes of moisturizer. Jenna’s kit. Not Niko’s.
The pain that stabbed through him had nothing to do with his leg. Furious that she had the power to hurt him, he grabbed the kit and threw it against the wall.
Damn her! If Alvarez hurt her…if he raped her.
God!
Niko gripped the edge of the counter and made a vow to his reflection.
If Alvarez hurt Jenna, Niko would make sure the man died a slow, painful death. Until then, he had to pull himself together. He wouldn’t be any use to her or Aunt Madalena if his leg gave out.
And if Jenna hurts her brother?
Uh-uh. He so wasn’t going there. Instead, he blanked his mind and focused on cleaning his wound.
Rafe knocked on the doorframe. He glanced at Niko’s leg, assessed the damage, and dismissed it as bearable. “Go ahead,” he said to his cell phone, “I’m with Niko.”
“Rafe filled me in on what Jenna said to you, Niko.” Even through the slight echo of the speakerphone, Ryker’s voice sounded tense.
“My fault,” Ryker continued. “I should have warned you.”
Niko taped a piece of gauze over his wound, then gave all his attention to the phone.
“I thought she was over her anger at Kai,” Ryker said.
Niko closed his eyes. Dammit, he’d been right.
“Jenna claims she heard Kai’s voice the night of the attack,” Ryker said. “She says she heard him tell the assassins to kill her family. She claims she saw him leaving the house, as well. We all know the knife they found with his prints could have been a plant. Or not.”
Ryker paused, and Niko had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what he heard next.
“Jenna doesn’t know this, but I also saw Kai outside the house that night. He looked furious. Deadly cold.”
Niko swore.
“He’d left me a threatening message a few days before. He cursed me for sending assassins after him, then promised that if I did the same to his family, he’d make sure I didn’t survive. I have no idea what he was talking about. Someone had deleted the message from my phone. I came across it by accident while trying to retrieve another message, and immediately warned her father to get the family out. But it was too late.”
“Does she know it was Alvarez’s assassins who initiated the attack?” Rafe asked.
“Yes,” Ryker answered. “But she never showed the anger toward him that she did toward her brother. Still, she stopped mentioning Kai after the second session with the psychiatrist. I hoped she’d put her anger aside and was just after the truth, not vengeance.”
Niko shook his head and bent down to pick up the contents of Jenna’s toiletry kit. “You fucking misread that one, boss.” When he went to transfer the spilled items into the kit, he saw that the bottom of the kit had shifted, revealing a hidden compartment.
Niko lifted the fake bottom away. Inside was a small, rectangular plastic case. He thumbed open the clasp and shook out the contents.
Fuck.
He put his hand to his chest. He couldn’t breathe. It felt as if he’d just been stomped on by a pair of size fourteen boots.
Rafe glanced down at the two small objects on Niko’s palm and exhaled sharply. At first glance, a person might mistake the round wax caps for ear plugs, but these devices were meant to fit over a person’s back teeth.
Because they were fucking old-fashioned cyanide tablets. Also known as suicide pills. Bite down hard on them during interrogation, and you died before giving up your secrets.
There were two empty spaces in the container, meaning Jenna’s mouth was loaded.
“Ryker…do you have any reason to believe Jenna might not want to survive?” No wonder her “I love you” at the ravine had seemed more like good-bye. She’d let Alvarez’s men take her not just knowing she might not survive, but fucking planning on dying.
Ryker’s sigh sounded weary. “I don’t know. She appears to have adjusted well. Maybe a bit too focused and solitary, but she’s not the only operator like that.”
Rafe’s hand grabbed Niko’s wrist. Only then did Niko realize his fingers had closed around the caps like he would crush them.
“The psychiatrists give a high probability that she’ll have some sort of emotional breakdown in the future,” Ryker added. “But they can’t predict when. Is she bent on murder? On suicide? I can’t say. Why?”
Niko slowly let his hand open. “Because I just found a pair of cyanide tooth caps in her toiletry kit.”
The silence on the other end was frightening. Niko wondered if Ryker felt the same sense of betrayal. Of fury. Of crushing pain in his chest, like someone had performed open heart surgery on him without anesthesia.
But Ryker’s voice gave nothing away. “Whatever her intentions, it doesn’t change your mission. We need the chip and we need to know the truth. Get both Kai and Jenna out of there alive.”
“About that,” Rafe began. He looked a question at his brother and at Niko’s answering nod, took the call off speakerphone and walked back toward the bedroom.
Niko trusted Rafe to take care of what they needed to stage a rescue. His job was to get this damn leg ready to carry his full weight, at a run if he had to. He’d figure out how to deal with Jenna once she was safe.
#
Wednesday, Night
Alvarez’s Fortress, Ixtapa, Mexico
Jenna’s guard halted in front of a thick wooden door with heavy iron hinges. Torches in sconces to either side of the frame provided smokey light. For a moment Jenna wondered if they’d somehow traveled back to a medieval castle.
The man pulled a thick iron skeleton key out of his pocket, inserted it into the lock and threw his whole weight backward in order to pull open the door. With a swift motion he drew his knife from its sheath and sliced away her flexicuffs.
He could have just slit the connecting piece and left the bracelets on her wrists, but no, he hacked away the bracelets too, leaving her skin peppered with cuts.
Then he shoved her into the dark, foul-smelling room. She fell onto her stomach, her canteen digging painfully into her hip. The man placed one of the torches in a sconce inside the cell. “Enjoy your brother while he’s still alive,” he said in Spanish.
His laugh echoed in the room before the door slammed shut with a solid thud.
Jenna pushed to her hands and knees, unbuckled the canteen and let it fall away.
About two feet away, a man lay on the floor, wrapped in a thin, heavily stained blanket. Seeing him, something dark and ugly broke loose inside her.
“Kai, you bastard,” she screamed. She flew across the small space separating them and began pummeling his head and shoulders with her fists.
“Why?” Smack. “Why did you kill them? What did they ever do to you?” Smack, smack. “How could you do that to them? How?” Her voice broke on a sob and her hands dropped to her sides. “How could you betray us like that?” she whispered.
Kai groaned, a long, agonized sound of pain that reminded her too much of the attack. Part of her wanted to put her hands over her ears and block out the sound, but the wounded animal inside her said to enjoy Kai’s pain.
“Jen-shine?” he mumbled. The hoarse endearment was distorted, as if Kai’s lips couldn’t properly form the words.
“You don’t get to call me that!” she snarled.
“Am I dead?”
“Not yet, you bastard.” She fumbled with her belt buckle, releasing the hidden knife. The feel of the thin steel in her hand gave her courage. “Turn around.”
When all she got was another low moan from Kai, she moved around until she faced him, knife at the ready. “Why, Kai? Why did you tell the assassins to kill us?”
He looked up at her with amber eyes cloudy with pain. His face was so swollen and bloody she barely recognized him. “Jen-na. Sorry. So sorry. Didn’t mean…”
His eyes closed.
“You didn’t mean it?” she screamed. “They died because of you!” She pushed Kai over onto his back and raised the knife. With a howl of fury, she drove her hand toward his heart.
Her hand spasmed. The knife plunged into the dirt floor, sending a shockwave of pain reverberating through the bones in her arm.
Jenna released the knife and cradled her aching arm against her chest. She stared at Kai’s battered body. At the broad target of his chest. How had she missed?
Furious at herself, s
he yanked the knife out of the ground and raised it again.
Kai opened his eyes.
He stared at her knife and she swore the torn corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile. “I knew it. You’re an angel.” Calm acceptance shone through his pain. “Kill me, angel. Make the pain go away. Please. I’m so tired of hurting.”
Jenna shivered.
Don’t cry, Jen-shine. It was just a bad dream…
I won’t let those boys hurt you again…
That’s it. Keep pedaling. I’m so proud of you!
Kill them. Kill them all.
“No!” She drove the knife toward Kai’s heart again.
Her hand spasmed again. Only this time the knife fell from her numb fingers.
She skittered away from Kai until her back pressed against the wall. Stared at him in horror as her soul tore open.
Oh, God. She couldn’t kill him. He was her brother. No matter what he’d done, there’d been too many deaths. Too much pain. Her body began to shake with such violence, she thought she’d fly apart. She wrapped her arms around her torso, trying to hold herself together. But a fierce convulsion bowed her back and she collapsed forward, her forehead almost touching the floor.
She’d been lying to herself since the attack. Deep down inside, she still loved him.
“Mom, dad, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I can’t kill him. Can’t. C-can’t.”
Her tears soaked her cheeks, ran into her open mouth and into her throat, choking her. Her grief poured out of her in a long series of ululations that echoed in the tiny cell. She cried until the dirt underneath her face turned to mud. Until she was so lightheaded, all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep for weeks.
Until eventually her voice choked off.
In the ensuing silence, she heard the thud of boots hitting the corridor floor. Then shouting, muffled by the thick door.
No! She jumped to her feet. Glanced at Kai. His expression was one of stark terror. He feared Alvarez’s men but not death by her hand? Why?
The key turned in the lock. No time!
She stood to the left of the door, raised her knife, and waited.
Chapter 27
The door was flung open. Someone dove low into the room, catching Jenna off guard. Hands grabbed her around the knees and toppled her to the floor. Something hard slammed into the back of her head and she blacked out.
Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) Page 27