He was surprised that Joe had taken to the place. Joe was much more civilized than Gino. Gino was primitive and a little savage, and Joe was charming, sophisticated and easygoing. Joe seemed to love the swamp so much he didn't want to leave. Like Gino, he spent hours a day exploring when they had the time. The team had bought up as much land around the Fontenot home and between Wyatt's home and Trap's as possible. There was one tract of land they couldn't get, a prime piece they'd offered far more for than it was worth, but so far the owner hadn't bitten. Joe was obsessed with that piece of land.
He liked birds. Who knew? Big bad Joe Spagnola liked birds. The tract of land was home to quite a few. He went there often with his binoculars and watched them. Gino knew, because when Joe went into the swamp, he followed. He was used to protecting his foster brother, and having the man traipse around in a dangerous area didn't have Gino quitting his bodyguard ways any time soon.
"You got somethin' on your mind, Gino?" Nonny asked as she pushed open the screen and slid out onto the porch, pipe in hand.
"A few things," he admitted. He'd come to know Wyatt's grandmother, and he was fairly certain the Fontenot boys had gotten psychic gifts from her. It was useless to try to hide things from her.
She was small now, looking frail, with her silver-spun hair and her thin body, but she worked all day, never shirking, even when they all tried to anticipate what she might need or want. She slipped into her favorite rocking chair and regarded him over her unlit pipe.
"You're a much better man than you think. And you're deserving of happiness just like all the rest of them." She announced it as if by her decreeing it, that made him a good man.
She made him smile. He turned toward her, leaning his back to the porch post. "How do you know I'm a good man, Nonny, when I don't know it?"
"I see more than most people. I see you struggle, but you don't quite understand that sometimes, in this world, someone like you is needed. You go with a clear conscious and you find your woman. She needs you and your strength. We're not all made the same. Cayenne is all warrior. Bellisia can be a warrior but isn't thrilled with it, where Cayenne feeds off it. Killin' makes Pepper sick. She still will stand up and do what's needed, but it does sicken her. Does that make her weaker? Or does it make her the strongest of all of us? I don't rightly know. But I do know there is a woman needing you."
"My brand of loving wouldn't be easy for anyone, Nonny, let alone the kind of woman I want."
"It's need that matters, Gino. Find the kind of woman you need. Wanting can fool you."
He nodded because he knew she was right. He'd thought a lot about women and what would be right for him. He wasn't ever going to be easy, and the last thing he needed was a woman who would spend her life opposing him at every turn. He wasn't a man who liked a fighter as so many of his brethren did. He needed someone who would soothe him, quiet the dark demon when it began to emerge. A fighter wouldn't do that for him, and any union with the wrong woman wouldn't end well.
"My family has money, Nonny. So much. You have no idea how much money. I haven't touched a penny of it, although I offered it to the others to help with purchasing land for us. Or to buy weapons to keep the little ones safe. I mostly forget about the money, until I meet a woman. In the last few years, I haven't met one who hasn't already known about the money and deliberately set out to meet me with one idea in mind."
She laughed softly and lit her pipe. The scent was soothing and somehow fit with the swamp. "There are good women in this world, Gino. Hardworking, caring women who prefer to be partners with a man."
"Don't want a fuckin' partner, Nonny," he said before he thought. He ducked his head. "Sorry for the language, ma'am."
"I raised my own boy and then four grandsons. Language never bothered me none but it was fun to make them think so. A partner can be many things. I worked alongside my husband because there was need and I'm that kind of woman. Cayenne will fight beside her man. Your woman will find her place with you and whatever that is, it is a partnership with each of you having your role. You just need to make her feel loved and cared for. Communication is important, not just in the bedroom, but mostly out of it. You have that, you'll have no problems."
He wished she was right. He hoped she was right. He was damned tired of being alone. "I think it's your swamp, Nonny. It's cast some kind of spell on all of us."
She looked around her, out over the water and into the thick trees and foliage. Her rocker creaked softly, adding to the symphony of the insects and frogs. "It is beautiful here. I spent my days here, Gino, and never longed for another place. I love the beauty of it. The mystery. The wildlife. Most of all, the people. There are good people here."
He let himself grin at her, teasing her a little. "I suspect you loved the lazy bayou at night with your sweetheart."
She flashed him an answering grin, looking a little mischievous. "You wouldn't be wrong. My man made my life good right up until the day he passed."
"I'm happy for you. I'd like to think my father did the same for my mother. Believe me, having gone without a woman of my own so long, I'd know to look after her if I found her." He broke off abruptly when Draden joined them. It was one thing to talk like this to a woman in her eighties in the cover of darkness, but not in front of one of his fellow GhostWalkers. Likely, he'd never hear the end of it.
"Draden," Nonny greeted. "Did you get enough to eat?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "If I didn't run so much I'd be putting on all kinds of weight. Where did you learn to cook like that?"
"Growin' up here, in the old days, we didn't have much. Hunted, fished, crabbed, even shot alligators for food. Had to cook for my brothers and sisters. I was the youngest by a good few years and they were all workin' tryin' to help so I was home tendin' to the food and house."
She'd worked hard all her life. As far as Gino could see, she was still working. But she was happy. She was a woman who wouldn't have looked at a man's bank account to judge his worth. She looked at whether or not he would take care of his family. Working hard, bringing passion to his woman. Those were the attributes she looked for in a man.
He wanted a Nonny, but not the fighter. He half listened to Nonny engaging Draden in conversation while he stepped back out into the night, thinking of Zara Hightower and wondering what was happening to her. His gut knotted with dread. Reading the file on Cheng was like reading a man's descent into paranoid madness. Cheng was rarely seen in public anymore, but if he was, he surrounded himself with bodyguards.
Gino didn't quite understand men like Cheng. What was he doing it all for? Stockpiling a fortune he couldn't take with him. Keeping to himself so he had no friends or family. Trading his government's secrets as easily as he traded those from foreign countries. Loyal to no one, not even the country he was born and raised in. In the end, what was the point?
Zara was being tortured. He knew she was. Cheng would never lose that data and let a foreigner leave his country. After, he would have to kill her. Even if she never admitted she was spying for Whitney, or running a mission, Cheng would still have to kill her. How could he not? He couldn't rely on her not talking about being detained and tortured. She might have the United States lodge a protest on her behalf. Cheng's government would have no recourse but to investigate. No, he had to kill her.
How long did she have? He was suddenly anxious to get started. They were making one last night jump, and he wanted to get it over and get on the road. He was a doctor, a damn good surgeon, and he had a healing touch. That was always a shock to him because his hands killed. Not just killed outright either. Ciro had taught him that sometimes killing cleanly didn't send the right message. If you wanted others to pay attention and fear you, killing cleanly didn't get you what you wanted and you did it another, very ugly way.
He didn't like inflicting pain on anyone, but he didn't mind either. He could shut down. He had shut down when intruders had murdered his family one by one in front of him. When they shot him three times and left him for d
ead. Over money. It had all been over money. He detested that money more than anything else. They had broken in with the idea of taking Gino and ransoming him back to his parents. His parents and grandparents had refused to let him go. They wouldn't step aside.
Gino remembered trying to push them aside and get around them, so no one would get hurt, but his father had quietly stopped him. He'd shaken his head and told the intruders very softly that he wasn't giving up his son. That was a man taking care of his family. He hadn't resisted, or tried to hurt the intruders, he'd simply said no.
Being nice didn't work with some men. Being nice was equated with weakness. Gino had made certain he would never be equated with weak. Like Ciro, he learned to be strong and feared. He wanted to be feared so no one would touch the people he loved. So no one would ever try to do to his child what had been done to him. Money cost him his parents and he'd turned his back on it. That was ironic, because now he was far wealthier than his parents had ever been. What was more ironic was the fact that he'd shaped himself into a man to be feared so no one would touch those he loved--but he was so cold and dark no woman would ever love him for himself.
The sky was clear tonight, and the moon shone over the water. A light fog moved through the forest, giving the interior an eerie glow when the sky and water were both so clear. He stared into the trees, looking at those fingers of fog pointing toward him. He didn't believe in signs or fate the way Nonny did. She saw signs in everything from rings around the moon to horny toads jumping across the road.
"We're coming for you, princess," he whispered to the night and hoped she heard him. Hoped she could hold on. "I'm coming for you and nothing will stop me. Not heaven. Not hell. I'm not leaving you in that place." He'd already made up his mind she wasn't working with Whitney, and that was plain stupidity. He wasn't a stupid man. It didn't matter. "I'm coming, baby, just hold on a little longer."
That was another thing he had to consider as he made his way back to the small airfield where they'd go through the jump one more time before they packed their gear for the night. Zara Hightower was smart. Way the hell smart. Like Trap smart. She was used to being in the spotlight, and he didn't want that life. He didn't want any one of his family members to ever set themselves up as targets. That wouldn't happen. She traveled the world, giving her talks. She might need that. Still ...
"Won't make a difference, princess," he whispered again. "I'm coming for you. Just hang on."
The jump went far smoother than he expected. They knew the feel of the power paragliders as they steered their chutes down to the rooftop. Each knew where he had to come down to avoid hitting the others. They were out of their gear and into formation in minutes, cameras disrupted, and then they went through the entire routine of finding the prisoner. Every movement was planned in advance including what to do if she wasn't able to walk.
"Good job, everyone," Ezekiel said. "Okay, everything is set with getting out of here and joining the work crew. We leave at twenty-four hundred hours. You have two and half hours to get everything ready and reset. Adjust your gear, get your chute repacked, do whatever you're going to do, but be back here on time ready to kick ass and get our girl back. You can sleep on the plane, it's a long journey. And remember, the minute you leave here, you are no longer soldiers, you're construction workers."
Gino inclined his head and went to work. He knew exactly what he was--and he was neither.
4
A
lready three days had gone by and no one had come looking for her, or if they had, Cheng had given a plausible explanation for her disappearance. Zara knew she was going to die in this hellhole. If Cheng didn't have her killed, she wasn't going to escape in time and the virus Whitney had planted in her would begin to make her sick. It wouldn't be an easy death. Whitney had made that clear. She would die screaming, writhing in pain. She knew she wasn't a good spy. She wasn't stoic like some of the girls. She hated pain.
Whitney detested her. He had the moment he realized she was useless for his purposes. She'd been two years old the first time she was really hurt and screaming in pain. She saw the disgust on his face, and after that, he introduced her to pain, trying to build her tolerance. The other girls tried to shield her, but he was insistent. None of his attempts worked--and over the years there had been many. This was going to be bad.
Zhu had questioned her multiple times that first day. She had been pushed around a little, and that horrible little toad Heng Zhang had stared at her several times with an ugly grin that promised he was going to personally administer pain to her. There was no confessing. That would earn her a death sentence. She'd have to brace herself for more torture. The very idea made her sick.
They'd used chemicals on her the second day and her insides still were raw and shaky. The chemicals had raged through her body, blistering and burning with horrific consequences. She writhed in pain, screaming, trying to outrun her insides as they twisted and burned as if a blowtorch were cutting a wide path through her. Zhu had restrained her to keep her from hurting herself, and twice he'd wiped the sweat from her face with a cool cloth that only added to her misery because the moment he took it away, the flames felt hotter on her skin.
He'd stripped her clothing away, leaving her bare and vulnerable, afraid of being raped. Of being humiliated on top of being tortured. It was the longest day of her life, the questions coming at her until she was so confused she could barely hear him above the noise in her head. The drugs messed with her mind, so sometimes she didn't know her own name.
Zara had endured pain before, Whitney had seen to that, but it was nothing like the chemicals Zhu kept injecting her with throughout the long day and most of the night. She knew she'd resorted to begging. Anything to make it stop, but he was relentless. He never raised his voice, it was always the same low tone, demanding she tell him the truth. The questions he asked her bounced in her head like Ping-Pong balls. Each time they hit the side of her head, it felt like a blow.
Strangely, toward morning, Zhu sat her up, his arm supporting her, holding a bottle of water to her lips, forcing her to drink the cool liquid. Those times he'd given her water, he was always unfailingly gentle. He was impersonal, as if he hadn't noticed she was naked. He didn't threaten to rape her. Once, when Cheng came in to see the progress, Zhu covered her body with a blanket to prevent the other man seeing her. She wanted to cry in gratitude, which was insane since Zhu was the one who had taken her clothes.
She woke alone and thirsty, her body hurting beyond belief. Every muscle. Every joint. There was a terrible taste in her mouth and even brushing with her finger didn't get rid of it. She didn't know what she'd said or done the day before. She only knew she didn't want a repeat of that torture or anything like it that Zhu had devised. She also knew she was going to die here. She actually felt she might welcome death from the virus, although if Cheng did an autopsy, he would find the SSD in her brain and might find a way around Whitney's protections, and everything she suffered would be for nothing.
The one chance she might have was Zhu. Shockingly, while her strange reaction to him when he'd slipped her a drug on her teacup had faded completely, his reaction to her seemed to increase the more he was around her. She was well aware his attraction to her wouldn't stop him from doing his job; he'd certainly proved that. He had subjected her to hours of chemical interrogation and hadn't batted an eye that she was in terrible pain while he'd done it.
Cheng was angry. No, angry wasn't the right word for what he was. Over the last couple of days, he'd discovered the exact extent of the damage done to his computers. Every secret he'd collected over the years, the locations of guns, of traffickers, of drug routes, all were wiped out. His precious data on the GhostWalker program he'd sacrificed his men for was gone. Someone had to pay, and she was fairly certain that someone was her.
Several times she heard gunfire reverberating on the floor and knew others--innocents--were being interrogated and probably killed. The screaming individuals in agony really
got to her. Her heart stuttered as she considered maybe someone was coming to try to rescue her. She couldn't sit still and jumped to her feet, hope blossoming. She paced unsteadily across the room, wishing she had a window to look out of. They hadn't even given her a view. Just four walls. It felt as though she were suffocating.
Footsteps. Many people. She closed her eyes and tried to will a rescue team to open the door. She hurried back to the bed and pulled the thin blanket over her. Heart pounding, she waited. The lock thudded. Clinked. The door handle rattled. The door opened, and Zhu's broad shoulders filled the doorway. Her heart sank. Of course no one would come for her. Who would? Whitney? He made it clear, when one of them went out on a mission, they were alone. Get in. Get out. Come back or die.
Bolan Zhu stepped inside and she shrank back, one hand to her throat defensively. He didn't look as though he'd come to free her. He threw her the clothes he'd taken from her. "Get dressed."
She didn't wait to see if he would leave. She knew he wouldn't by the way he folded his arms across his chest. He kept his eyes on her the entire time. Her heart shivered inside her body and the tremors started. She'd never been so afraid of a man in her life. She pulled on her clothes, praying that he was going to let her leave. The moment she was finished, he reached out, took her arm and began to pull her toward the door. Suddenly, the four walls felt like protection, not a prison.
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