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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 Bermuda. 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 clearing 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.
He groaned as his mouth puddled with anticipatory saliva.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you make a sound of pleasure instead of pain. What did your guards do to you, anyway?”
Not much, truth be told. He’d ripped out of a pair of metal handcuffs trying to save his guard’s life that first night in jail when the guy was murdered, and the rest of the jailers had stayed well out of arm’s reach of him ever since. They thought he’d been the one to garrote the cop in the interrogation room with him. With what, he’d like to know, since he had no wire, rope, chain or other material on him or in the room strong enough or long enough to wrap around a man’s neck and choke him to death. But that hadn’t swayed the Ethiopians.
His big problem had been the other prisoners trying to kill him for the huge bounty El Mari had put on his head. As miserable as he’d been never coming out of his tiny, dark, sweltering cell, it had been better than getting killed. But three months living in a five-foot-by-eight-foot box had been hellish.
The woman was speaking again. “Look, you’re far from the only guy I’ve debriefed. Nothing you can say to me will shock me. I’ve heard it all before.”
He highly doubted she’d heard anything close to the story he could tell. He’d bet a million bucks his tale would shock her speechless. But that wasn’t a theory he planned to test.
Wincing, he eased himself into a sturdy-looking kitchen chair. It held his weight, thankfully. If he were at anything remotely approaching full speed, he’d offer to help with the meal. Not that he could cook a lick. But he could’ve set the table or poured drinks or something. As it was, the room was starting to spin while invisible bad men poked him with cattle prods. His body jerked spasmodically as the pain assaulted him.
Clenching his teeth, he ground out, “What’s your name?”
She slid a juicy slab of sizzling steak onto a plate and set it down before him. “Jennifer. Jennifer Blackfoot.”
Desperate to distract himself, he concentrated on her name. Blackfoot? That sounded Native American. She looked Native American, too. Her face tended to roundness, her skin was a lovely walnut hue, and her exotic brown eyes were so dark they almost looked black. Her hair was true black with almost blue highlights glinting out of her long braid. He’d wager her hair reached past her slender hips when it was loose.
“What tribe?” he bit out.
“Despite my last name, I do not belong to the Blackfoot nation. My family is Chiricahua Apache. And yes, we were the violent ones who scalped white settlers and kidnapped white children. I am, in fact, a direct descendent of Geronimo, although in our tongue, his name was Goyakhla.”
A warrior woman, was she? Not surprising based on what he’d seen so far.
“Do your friends call you Jefferson?” she asked as she sat bowls of cold Caesar salad and hot green beans dripping with butter on the table.
“No. Jeff,” he muttered as he picked up a steak knife and fork. He swore as his palms cramped so violently he nearly cried out. The utensils clattered to his plate. His hands were too tightly clawed at the moment to master the fine motor skill required for steak carving.
The woman frowned but asked matter-of-factly, “Need some help with that?”
He scowled at her, too humiliated to admit that he couldn’t control his hands.
She leaned down next to him and efficiently cut his steak into bite-size pieces. Through the haze of his despair, he noticed incongruously that she smelled good. It was a floral scent, but not overwhelmingly sweet. It was green and wild and entirely fitting for her. His instincts flared in response to the light musk.
She stepped back a bit too hastily. Scared of him, was she? Smart girl. She mumbled, “If the fork’s too much to handle just now, go ahead and eat with your fingers. It won’t bother me. It’s how my people traditionally eat.”
