by Cindy Dees
And once she’d done that, then the Blackjacks could gleefully take their personal revenge on her for setting them up all those years ago. Lovely.
Now what was she supposed to do? Should she continue trying to contact her father and make the trade? Would it be a better bet to buy Carina’s freedom rather than count on the Blackjacks to pull her out of Gavarone in some violent military operation? The very thought of Carina being subjected to the same terror she’d experienced that night a decade ago sent shivers rippling through Julia. She had to protect her baby sister from that.
At the end of the day, nothing had changed. She still had to proceed with her plan to ransom Carina away from Eduardo.
At least by involving his boss in this mess, Dutch wasn’t in as good a position to kill Carina to get revenge for losing his brother.
Dutch paced several laps around the small room. Finally he stopped. “I know you. You’re still not telling me everything. What else is there?”
She sighed. She should have known he would sense her holding out on him. They knew each other too well to hide big things from each other. She’d only seconds before decided to go ahead with her negotiations, and he was already smelling a rat. She needed to throw him off the scent.
She answered simply, “Haven’t I told you enough? I got your brother killed. Now you have the power to get my sister killed. You must be tickled pink.”
He stared at her for a long time, his gaze inscrutable. God, she would dearly love to know what he was thinking.
Finally, he asked, “What makes you so sure your old man will actually kill your sister? I mean, she’s his daughter, after all.”
She shrugged. “He killed his wife. Why not his daughter?”
Dutch lurched. “Jeez. The mother of his children? What a slimy motherfucker.” He flopped in a chair, thinking hard.
She girded herself for the next leap in his logic—the one where he remembered how she’d set him up once before and started questioning whether she was doing the same thing again. But he didn’t bring it up.
Instead, he said, “It’s going to get colder before morning. I need to bring in more wood to get us through the night.”
She hauled a bucket of melted snow into the tiny bathroom, poured it in the back of the toilet and prayed fervently that the pipes weren’t frozen. It flushed just fine and she made her way back to the lone bed in the main room.
Dutch carried in three big armloads of wood and stacked them on the hearth. He threw a pile of logs on the fire, and then he joined her in the cabin’s bed under a fluffy down comforter that was shockingly warm once their body heat built up beneath it.
It wasn’t the king-size affair she’d gotten used to in hotels, and Dutch’s big body seemed to swallow the whole mattress. But when he rolled on his side and tucked her body against his, spooning around her backside for warmth, it was pretty darned comfortable. A little heat reached her from the fire, and all in all, she was fairly cozy for being in an unheated log cabin in the middle of a blizzard. Exhausted by the day’s events, she fell asleep quickly.
Dutch woke up to the vibration of his watch two hours later. He crawled out of the cocoon of blankets to throw more wood on the fire and reset his watch for two more hours. At all costs, they had to keep that fire going. Their lives might very well depend on its warmth.
By morning, the stones should be warm enough to heat the whole room to a safe, if not exactly warm, temperature. But for the moment, his breath hung in the air, testament to the frigid night outside. He would bet it was below zero and still dropping outside. He didn’t even want to think about what the wind chill might be. He headed back to bed.
His thoughts full of nailing Eduardo Ferrare once and for all, he drifted off to sleep.
The jungle closed in around him, steamy even at midnight. He lay on the ground where the bullet had knocked his leg out from under him. The dull glint of a long, fanglike knife blade arced down. Into Simon’s gut.
Simon’s scream echoed his own howl of rage and all but ripped out his guts, too. Agony exploded inside him as if he was being eviscerated instead of his brother. He shoved to his feet. Damn, his gut really did burn like fire. He glanced down. A red streak slashed across his stomach. A bullet must have creased him. Didn’t feel as if it had penetrated. Probably just grazed him. Not that anything was going to stop him from getting to his little brother.
A crackle on his radio. “Dutch, get down! You’re squarely in the crossfire. A sitting duck!”
“Can’t,” he grunted back. “Simon—”
“You can’t help Simon if you’re dead. Get down. Now! That’s an order.”
He dropped. Automatic reflex reaction to an order, dammit. But he kept crawling toward Simon and the bastard who was now crouching beside his brother, stabbing Simon repeatedly.
He kept pulling the trigger of his empty rifle as if more bullets would materialize in the chamber and drop the bastard. Another reflex he had no control over.
“Retreat!” Captain Foley bellowed over the radio. The din of a burst of gunfire nearly drowned him out. “Fall back. Into the jungle. Proceed due south for a hundred yards, then regroup on my position.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dutch saw his teammates following the order and moving off toward his left in a fighting retreat. His brain felt wrapped in fog. He was supposed to go with them.
“Simon…” he protested into his throat mike.
“There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Foley bit out. “Fall back.”
“We don’t leave our own behind,” Dutch snapped back.
“We do this time. We’ve got to regroup. We’ll come back for him in a little while. I swear. But we’re all going to die if we don’t get out of the line of fire and get a head count and position fix on what we’re up against.”
Simon was less than a dozen yards ahead of him now. Just a few more seconds.
And then Simon turned his head and looked at Dutch. The kid was still alive! By some miracle, his eyes were open and aware and staring straight at him. Beseeching his big brother not to leave him here to die alone.
The bastard reached for Simon’s hair. Took a handful of it and yanked Simon’s chin up. The bloody knife descended slowly toward his brother’s jugular.
Orders be damned. All in one move, Dutch leaped up and flung himself forward. He caught the fist holding the knife, twisted the weapon still in the guy’s grasp, and drove it into the guy’s throat in a lethal blow.
And then another scream caught his attention. A high-pitched keening that had to come from a female throat. His head whipped around. He swore violently. Julia. What the hell was she doing running down the front lawn toward him? She was supposed to be hiding in the gazebo, safe on the other side of the house from this fiasco!
“Stop! Stop!” she screamed over and over. She was coming straight at him. She wanted him to stop? Not a chance. Simon’s intestines might be spread all over the front yard, but he was getting his brother out of here if it was the last thing he ever did. Hell, it probably would be the last thing he ever did.
“Dutch. Julia’s coming right at you. Get her out of there.”
He blinked at Foley’s orders. Glanced down at Simon. Looked up at the panicked girl racing toward him. But his brother…
He knew his duty. Get the innocent civilian out. He knelt down. Tore off his shirt. Awkwardly bundled the slippery mass of Simon’s intestines in the cloth and set it on top of Simon’s gut. He knew better than to stuff them back in his brother’s body before they were cleaned and repaired. Otherwise, peritonitis would kill Simon for sure.
God, he looked like an angel lying there. Almost otherworldly in his pale, blond perfection. So damn peaceful. Simon opened his eyes. Looked up at him. “Thanks, bro,” he murmured.
Something hot and wet ran down Dutch’s face. Stung his eyes like hell. Burned his cheeks. His heart felt as if it was cracking in two. “Don’t you die on me, you little punk. Fight, dammit!”
Simon’s han
d lifted an inch or so, then fell back to the ground. Dutch grabbed it, and Simon tugged on it so weakly he barely felt it. Dutch ducked as a barrage of lead flew close to his head and he put his ear next to Simon’s mouth. A bare whisper of breath touched his skin.
“Love…you…”
Foley’s voice cut into his other ear, sharp. Desperate. “Dutch, get the fucking girl and get the hell out of there before I shoot you myself!”
He ignored his boss’s order and lifted up enough to look down into Simon’s clear, sky-blue eyes. Tears ran unchecked down his face, dripping onto Simon’s pale cheek. “I love you, too, little brother.”
And then Julia was beside him, tugging on his arm with frantic urgency. “Get out of here! They’ll kill you, too,” she pleaded, close to hysterical. He heard the words, but they passed by him, not really touching his consciousness.
And then he heard a thud, and Julia toppled into him as if something heavy had just hit her and knocked her over. He caught her as much to keep her from crashing into Simon as to steady her.
“Go…” Simon gasped. A bubble of spit and blood formed at the corner of his mouth.
And that one word finally penetrated his brain. The lightning-and-thunder fury of an all-out gun battle slammed into him in a rush, along with awareness of the mortal danger that he and Julia were both in.
Julia. The innocent young girl he’d seduced into helping them set up this nightmare. He had to get her out of here. If he didn’t, she would be lucky if all her father did was kill her.
He glanced up at her. And blinked at the crimson stain spreading on her shirt along her right side. She’d been hit!
He glanced down at Simon, whose eyes were closed now. He looked unconscious, but just in case, Dutch called down to him, “I’ll get you out of here in a couple of minutes, Simon. I’ve got to get Julia under cover first. And then I’ll be back for you.”
A groan of agony at leaving his brother’s side escaped his throat as he grabbed her left arm and took off running, all but dragging her across the expanse of lawn toward the wall of black that was the jungle and safety…
“Please, Dutch! Wake up!”
He swam up through the layers of horror still clinging to his mind. Bit by bit, a cabin took shape around him, replacing the humid rot of the jungle. Something hot and wet still burned his face. Grief tore at him, as raw and fresh as if it all had just happened. An impulse to rip the agony out of his body by main force nearly overcame him. An urge to claw out his eyes, to tear at his flesh, rocked him.
He heard a moan of anguish. Had that sound come from his throat?
A curtain of dark hair fell around his face and darker eyes captured his gaze, holding it as forcefully as the slender but surprisingly strong hands grasping his shoulders.
“You’re safe. You’re with me, now. I love you.”
Who did those eyes, those vaguely heard words, belong to?
Pain so deep he thought it would kill him seared its way through his gut. Something shifted nearby, and his head was lifted. Gently set down on something soft. Warm. A hand stroked his hair. His face. Wiping away the tears.
Oh, God. It hurt. Simon…
The lap cradling his head rocked back and forth gently. Slowly, slowly, the motion soothed him. The soft hand wiped away more tears. And gradually, meaningless murmurs of comfort eased the suffering in his heart. Not a lot, but enough for him to breathe again. He reached up. Captured one of the hands and pulled it close, tucking it against his cheek. And finally, he slept.
He woke up some time later and sat up slowly. He ached all over. Where was he? He felt wrung out. Drained to the last drop of emotion. What in the hell had happened? He looked around in the dim firelight.
The air was icy cold, hanging brittle around him. The fire was down to a pile of glowing embers. By rote, he got up and stacked a half-dozen stout pieces of wood over the coals. Lord, he was tired. He felt as if he’d been worked over with a baseball bat. So exhausted he could hardly stand, he stumbled back to bed and crawled under the covers.
He curled around Julia’s body heat, huddling against her reassuring warmth. He hadn’t felt this lost in years. She was the only solid thing in his life, and he clung to her like the lifeline she was.
He ought to pull away from her. Stay away… But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why right now. She was so inexorably intertwined with his pain and its relief that he barely knew where the dream ended and she began.
He slept fitfully through the remainder of the night. He woke up once more, mumbling Simon’s name, and immediately felt Julia’s hands on him. He stumbled out of bed to pile more wood on the fire and then collapsed back into her arms again. He let her guide his head down to her chest. He shouldn’t need her like this, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. He sank into her. Accepted the loving comfort she offered. The steady sound of her heartbeat was the last thing he remembered before he went comatose.
By morning, the little cabin had warmed up to a civilized temperature, and the pot of water he’d hung by the fire the night before simmered hot enough to make a passable cup of coffee.
He felt like hell, but somehow the wan light of day pushed the terrors of the previous night back to the margins of his consciousness. He had a blurry memory of Julia holding him, talking him back from the edge while he was snared in his nightmare, deep in the throes of his darkest hours. He got the distinct impression that, had it not been for her, he would have been in serious trouble last night.
She’d said something important. But it was as lost to him as the rest of the night’s details. If he could only remember! It tickled at the edges of his mind, tantalizing him with its nearness. But it wouldn’t show itself.
Frankly, he didn’t want to remember more. If he could halt his memory’s return, he would. Better the black void and the frustration of not knowing what had happened that fateful night in the jungle than trying to live with the ghastly details flooding back into his mind so relentlessly now.
The snow let up in the afternoon. He went outside in the bitter cold to restock the woodpile and made a trip through chest-deep snowdrifts to the Jeep to fetch the laptop computer.
He wanted to touch base with Blackjacks headquarters. He’d already tried his cell phone today, but the battery was getting weak. The Blackjacks should be moving into this general part of the country by now and as soon as he and Julia got out of this cabin, they could get her into proper protective custody and get on with the business of putting away Eduardo Ferrare once and for all.
He went inside, shook off the snow, and warmed up, then he signed online via a wireless connection and checked his e-mail quickly. No word from the Blackjacks reporting their movement yet. That was odd. Unless this blizzard was more widespread than he’d realized and had shut down travel to this entire region of the country. Or maybe they’d gone comm silent while Tom Foley tried to figure out who the mole in their ops center was. A prickle of foreboding crawled down his spine.
Julia had been unusually subdued this morning, withdrawn almost. Had he said or done something last night in his sleep to frighten her? God, he hated these nightmares and what they did to him.
He mumbled, “I’m going outside to take a look around. Do you need anything from the Jeep while I’m out?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, then. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He went outside and scouted the area. His biggest find was a storage shed behind the cabin. Or more to the point, his big find was the pair of snowmobiles inside the shed. Excited to tell Julia about his discovery, he headed back to the cabin.
He was just stomping the snow off his boots when he heard the faint sound of his cell phone ringing. He reached inside his jacket to answer it, but it wasn’t there. He patted his pants pockets. The noise stopped after the third ring. That was an awfully quick hang-up. Everyone who had the phone number knew to let it ring seven times until his voice mail kicked in.
He heard J
ulia’s voice murmuring from inside the cabin. Ah. He must’ve left his cell phone inside and she’d answered it for him. Crap. He opened the door quickly and was just in time to see his cell phone tumble from her fingers, clattering to the floor. Julia collapsed into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, her face ashen.
He was in front of her in a flash, kneeling with his hands on her knees. “What’s happened?”
Julia shook her head, her eyes black with fright.
“Talk to me,” he ordered urgently.
“Colonel Foley just called. They were too late. My father moved Carina last night. To his beach house.”
Dutch frowned. And why did that provoke such a terrified reaction from her? “And?” he asked aloud cautiously.
She gazed up at him in anguish. “There are sharks like crazy off that stretch of beach. They devour anything protein-based that gets thrown in the water.”
Okay. He was missing some major piece of information here. He frowned, confused.
Julie explained in a choked voice, “It’s where he always takes his victims to murder them.”
Chapter Twelve
This was bad. Very bad. Dutch leaned down and picked up the phone, putting it to his ear. He heard only the hum of a dial tone.
He thought fast. How in the hell did Ferrare know to move so quickly to kill the sister? It had to be that damned informant inside the squad. If they’d needed any more proof that this person existed, they’d just gotten it. Furthermore, they now knew the bastard had access to the team’s classified telephone logs. He swore violently under his breath.
His brain went into overdrive calculating the implications. Would Julia still testify? Could the team get permission to launch a major rescue op for the sister? How was he supposed to keep Julia out of harm’s way with informants lurking behind every goddamned bush?
Julia interrupted his turbulent thoughts. “I can’t do it, Dutch. I can’t testify against my father as long as Carina’s life is in danger.”