by Cherry Adair
"It's complicated."
"I think I can keep up," she said dryly. The hard thumping of her heart behind her eyes indicated the level of her blood pressure. "I deserve the freaking truth after everything you've put me through."
"You're overwrought and hysterical."
Before she realized what she was doing, River lunged out of her seat and slapped him. Hard. Her hand left a red mark across his pale cheek. Tears of shame immediately sprang to her eyes, and she dashed them away with the heel of her stinging hand. Dear God, her mother would be appalled if she could see how River was treating her handicapped brother, especially when he was already afraid and confused and didn't realize the ramifications of being obtuse.
Or did he?
This wasn't the boy she'd grown up with. His eyes went wide as he touched his cheek, looking at her as if he didn't recognize her. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"
Blinking back the prickle of tears and curling her smarting fingers into a fist at her side, she said tightly, "Overwrought and hysterical? Really Oliver? I can show you overwrought and freaking hysterical, but Mom would roll over in her grave."
He waved her away like a pesky fly. "Sit down, you're making a fool of yourself."
“At least I’m not the one making shit that kills innocent people." Damn it, now that her temper was unleashed, it was hard to stuff it back where it had hidden for years. "And I’m not the one heading straight to jail. Talk to them, Oliver. Tell them the truth. Stop acting like you’re hiding something.”
Ash wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders, and handed her a napkin. River looked at it blankly. He took it back and wiped her cheeks with it. Shit. Had she been crying this whole time? River relaxed into the squishy leather seat, her pulse racing through her body like a drunk driving a Ferrari. She glared at her brother through a blur of tears. Losing her temper was counter-productive. Her chest ached and her throat closed as she struggled not to break down sobbing at this whole ball of crap her brother had dumped on her and everyone else on board.
Strong emotions bewildered Oliver, and coming on too strong would make him shut down even more. These were all things she knew, and had lived with all her life. River modulated her tone, and leaned back instead of forward, relaxing her shoulders, and evening out her face. “I know you wanted to work on this project because it was challenging, and you thought you were doing something good. How big a role did you play in Franco's business?"
"Just doing my job. For God’s sake, River, take a chill pill and get off my back." He sounded like a belligerent lush, his speech slightly slurred, and slower than usual.
The only reason River didn't damn the consequences and grab her brother by the scruff and shake him, was Ash's restraining arm on her shoulder. "You can either tell her how you knew she was in Los Santos, or I will," Ash told her brother when he clamped his lips tightly and shut his eyes to close everyone out.
"I saw the monitors in his lab," she admitted. She'd never done an act of violence on anyone, and the fact that she'd been driven to slap Oliver made her feel small and petty. Oliver swigged the last few drops of soda from the can, then crushed it and tossed it toward the table. It landed on the floor. "He saw everything that was said and done at the hacienda in real time. But why, Oliver?"
Oliver didn't open his eyes. "Ask your hotshot boyfriend."
"We have a pretty damned good idea." Ash's fingers tightened warningly on River's shoulder. "Xavier was on his way to Montana tonight, wasn't he?"
"How would I know?"
"Oliver, I swear, if you don't damn well start answering, I'm going to do more than slap some sense into you.”
"I don't know, but yes. Maybe his destination was Montana. But that's moot now, isn't it? Your people killed him."
"How did you meet Catherine?" Ash asked.
"MIT. Final year. She was the most beautiful woman."
The soothing stroking of Ash's hand on River's back paused. "You're saying you went to work for Francisco Xavier right after MIT?"
"No." She glanced up at Ash, then looked back at her brother who was quietly humming under his breath. The sound, the fact that he was humming, made the small hairs on River's arms stand up. This, like the rest of his behavior at the moment, was atypical. "Oliver started working for him five years ago, right, Oliver?"
"Wrong, River. I’d go from Boston to Los Santos in a private jet. I lived for the times Catherine would visit. She was a naughty, naughty girl, my Catherine."
River could see how a sexy woman showing her brother any interest must've been seductive and compelling. He'd been led by his penis.
"Seymour was a rogue operative of T-FLAC, Dr. Sullivan," Ash answered tightly, rubbing River’s back, as one would gentle a frightened animal. "Put one of the world's most dangerous terrorists together with a rogue T-FLAC operative, a trip to Montana with explosives, throw your expertise into the mix, and what do you think we have?"
Oliver lifted his eyes to give Ash a vaguely bland look. "Sup-Supposition."
"We know that there are seven bomb targets scheduled to detonate on the twelfth at three-thirty pm. What are those locations?"
"Catherine's birthday," Oliver smiled, his eyes dreamy. "She would've been thirty-six tomorrow." Slouching down further in his seat, he rested his head back as if it was too heavy to hold up. His coordination seemed off as he tried, and failed, to cross one leg over the other. His features slack, he looked down at his lower body as if he couldn't figure out what he was trying to do.
Was he drunk? No, Oliver didn't drink alcohol. Had he taken something without Ash's men noticing? It seemed impossible, because they hadn't taken their eyes off him since they'd left Los Santos. God. Had he been bitten by something somewhere along the way? But they'd been in the lab, the car, the helicopter. Still. Maybe.
"What are the exact locations of the devices, Dr. Sullivan?"
"I've been a prisoner for over two years, I'm not pr-i-vy to that information."
As annoyed and frustrated as she was, her brother's halting speech and the odd sheen of his unfocused eyes was concerning. "We're all aware you weren’t a damn prisoner at all, Oliver."
He didn't respond. His attention was fixed on Ash, who said, "We know T-FLAC HQ is one of those targets. What's the location of the bomb, Sullivan?"
Oliver shrugged.
River lifted her butt off the chair to reach over and knock some sense into him. When Ash gave her shoulder another warning squeeze she remained seated, but was still poised to charge. "Enough! Don't you get it that not answering makes you look guilty? Look around you. Do these men look like they want to play freaking games? They already know enough to put you in prison and throw away the key. Answer the questions, and damn well do it right now…"
"Shhh-tay out of this River."
"Are you insane? Look at us. I'm here because of the mess you're in. People are going to die, Oliver. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people will die in a few hours’ time unless you tell them where those bombs are and how to defuse them."
"I'm not admitting my own cul- culp-culpability. I want to make that crystal clear. I just overheard things."
#
"Spit it out, for God's sake, Oliver!” River was clearly at the end of her rope.
Daklin thought she was holding it together damn well, all things considered. That gentle slap she’d given her brother was nothing compared to what Daklin wanted to fucking rain on Sullivan’s head. The law, aka T-FLAC, would take care of Sullivan's crimes, but what he felt right now was a fuckton more personal. If this was Sullivan's usual modus operandi with his sister, he was stunned she’d travelled to a war torn country to find him. The guy was a prick, and clearly didn't give a flying fuck about his sister or the dangers he'd put her in.
Humming under his breath, Sullivan fought the drug they'd administered in his soda immediately they’d boarded. The drug worked best as an injectable, but they'd opted for the liquid form and ingestion in this case. Daklin had never seen resistance like it.
His eyes met Ram's. The other man gave a small shrug. They knew it would kick in. Eventually.
"You were brilliant in setting the bombs, Dr. Sullivan. Can you tell us where they were placed?" Daklin kept his tone even, with just a slight hint of authority. Someone under the influence of truth serum--which Sullivan was now fighting for all he was worth--tended to tell the interrogators whatever he thought they wanted to hear. Until he went deeper. For now, the questions had to be specific, while he still had cognizance and before the drug suppressed the part of the brain that made Sullivan assess the questions.
Daklin rephrased. "Where are the bombs located, Oliver?"
Eyes glassy, Oliver blinked him into focus, then said in a dreamy voice. "Manila Ninoy Aquino. Can I get another Coke? S-something to eat. Protein?"
"No," River interrupted. "Keep going."
With a puzzled scowl, Sullivan cast her a look of profound confusion, as if he was trying to place who she was, where he was. "Tehran Imam Khomeini. LAX. Atatürk International. T-FLAC Headquart-" Sullivan snickered like a naughty schoolboy. "That was our favorite target of all. Haneda in Tokyo. Soekarno-Hatta, Jakarta." His pause seemed endless before he spoke again. "Oh, yeah--Antonio Nariño, Columbia. That's what I know.”
Quietly and simultaneously, Daklin relayed the intel into his comm. "Other than Montana, those are all international airports," he noted, casually resting a calming hand on River's hip. Energy hummed through her body, a combo of sustained adrenaline and irritation.
"There are bigger and busier airports," he prodded Sullivan. "Why those in particular?" The death toll at those contested hubs would be astronomical. The Nuts would be almost impossible to find unless Sullivan knew, and divulged, the info in time to defuse the bombs.
Sullivan gave him a sly, albeit sloppy, smile. "Fault lines. My clever girl. Brilliant. Chaos, high death toll, power. Money." His uncharacteristic giggle indicated a loss of inhibition as the serum flowed through his bloodstream, finally becoming effective. "A--" His voice trailed off as his eyes lost focus.
"Fucking hell." Clipped tension tightened Daklin's voice. "Blackmail on a global scale." Detonating directly on a geological fault line would cause tens of thousands of deaths on site. It would also precipitate, for hundreds, possibly thousands of miles along the fault, earthquakes and tsunamis. This was man-made destruction of international proportions never seen before. Bigger, and a hell of a lot worse than any of them would've dared to imagine. And then some.
The scientist leaned back, his eyes closed, and slurred dreamily. “Pay up, or detonate. Simple and b-beautifully
executed."
Jesus. "How do we defuse the bombs?"
"Simult--"
"Yeah. We got that. What are the exact locations of the explosive devices in each building, and how do we defuse them, Dr. Sullivan?"
"He's asleep? How the hell--?" River asked unnecessarily.
"Bring him back by whatever means necessary," Daklin instructed his men, his tone grim, as he nudged River into motion. "Keep him awake. Get answers. I'll be aft. Come."
As he steered her to the rear of the plane they passed several of his men stretched out, resting, but always alert. "Sorry," he said as they sat down out of earshot of the others. He saw by the rigidity of her shoulders, and the tension around her eyes that the adrenaline that had sustained her for hours, that had kept her alert, had dissipated, leaving her spent and depleted. She needed sleep.
Glancing over her shoulder with a frown, she asked, "For what?"
"For your brother being such a dick."
"Yeah, me too." They shared a moment fraught with things unsaid and questions unasked as they slid into their seats. "He's a sociopath, isn't he?"
"You knew?"
"My parents suspected. We didn't want to believe it." She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them to give him a steady look that jolted his heart and reminded him just how strong she was. "I've spent my entire life making excuses for him. Trying my freaking damnedest to love him, and feeling guilty as hell because he's always been just so damned hard to love."
There didn’t seem to be any love lost on Sullivan’s part, either. His team had discovered that the fucker had tried to get Xavier to kill her. Daklin had no intention of sharing that. "Yet you came all the way to Los Santos to find him."
"He's my brother."
He got it. "What did he give you back there?"
"No idea." River lifted her hip to retrieve the item from her back pocket.
Daklin extended his hand, and she transferred a small chamois leather pouch to him. He muttered, "Fuck," under his breath as he felt the weight and shape of the contents.
"Oh, God." Her gaze shot from the bag to his face. "Is it--?"
Jesus, he hoped to hell not. Opening the bag, he gently dropped the contents into his palm. They both breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the three, walnut-sized, green stones. "Emeralds, not Nuts." Returning them to the drawstring bag, he handed it back to her. "Hang on to them. No reason you can't keep them."
"Don't you need to book them into evidence or something?"
He smiled. "We're not the police."
"Okay. But the last thing I want is a souvenir from Los Santos. If I do get to keep them, I'll give them to Father Marcus with the money Oliver stuck in my account." River shot a look in the general direction of the front of the plane. "Did you have to resort to drugging Oliver to get that terrifying information out of him?"
Daklin nodded. "We gave him a powerful truth serum to alter his higher cognitive function, which as you saw, he resisted for longer than I've ever seen anyone resist. We suspected he wouldn’t tell us what we had to know in our short window. Not without assistance."
"You suspected right. He takes stubborn to a whole new level. I had no idea things were so bad." She grimaced, and it was so fucking cute, Daklin wanted to grab her and kiss her until she begged for mercy.
"We knew it was bad, but not this. The fate of millions rests in his hands. Those airports are on major geological fault lines. The ramifications of a targeted E-1x explosion in any one of those locations will be devastating. A coordinated detonation of this magnitude would be cataclysmic. We're talking earthquakes, tsunamis. We couldn't leave his confession to chance."
Eyes troubled as she turned to face him, River clutched a seat back, her face bone white under the smeared dirt. “Oh God, Ash.” She seemed paralyzed with the realization. “I can't even pretend that Oliver is a good guy, can I? He’s as culpable for all of this as Franco.” Storm-gray eyes met his. “More so because he invented those damned Nuts, didn't he?"
Twenty-Two
Looking bright-eyed and achingly beautiful, River emerged from the aft cabin in time to enjoy a hearty breakfast with Daklin and some of his team a couple of hours before landing. With her wet hair slicked back from a makeup-free face, the black pants, T-shirt, and boots she wore gave her a tough edge that she usually kept adroitly hidden under pretty clothes and a sunny smile. She might be a lingerie designer, but she was as kick-ass as they came. She slid into the empty seat beside Ram, directly across the table from Ash. Daklin had planned it that way. Close enough to look his fill, but far enough away, that he'd keep his hands off her.
She'd showered again, and even though the soap in the dispenser was, by necessity, fragrance free, he imagined he could smell the intoxicating scent of summer rain and flowers on her skin. He would always associate these scents with her, no matter where he was, because it was the essence of River. Pure perfection.
Several groupings of swivel seats faced inward, the low coffee tables raised to dining height so that up to twelve people could sit together at the same time. Usually the arrangement was left this way after takeoff. It was where the operatives ate and convened before and after an op.
It was odd to have River here. In his work place, with his men. Odd, but right somehow. Fuck. He looked his fill, while the ache in his chest seemed to expand exponentially with her every smile. Sunlight streamed through a nea
rby window, making her clear skin look as though she glowed from the inside. All signs of fear and stress from the night before seemed to be gone. She was as resilient as she was beautiful, and his heart felt as though it had been cut out with a fucking blunt hunting knife just looking at her.
He wanted to pick her up, carry her back to the aft cabin, and make love to her again. And again. "We'll be landing in a couple of hours," Daklin told her as Ram poured her a steaming mug of fragrant coffee. Mike, a crewmember and medic, brought her a plate of eggs, toast, a fat, juicy steak, and crisp bacon. They all ate without conversation. When one never knew when the next meal would be available, one didn't waste chow time.
"Thought you'd like to know," Mike addressed River directly as they finished their meals. "Dr. Sullivan is resting peacefully. I'll wake him before we land."
River smiled up at him, and Mike almost dropped the fresh coffee pot he was holding. Yeah, River's smile could knock a man off his feet and make him stupid between one breath and the next. "I saw him sleeping back there, thank you. Did he tell you what you needed to know?"
Daklin had seen her pause as she passed her sleeping brother. He was stretched out in a drugged sleep. She'd hesitated long enough to gently touch his hair, then walked resolutely between the seats, visibly relaxing her shoulders as she made her way to the front of the plane. "In his own fashion. The info he gave us might be bullshit. Certainly, it's illogical. Unfortunately, we don't have any Nuts at our Montana location to test his theory of disposal." Mike smiled, showing a chipped front tooth, and too much fucking enthusiasm. "Your brother has ba-- Excuse me, he has a strong will, ma'am."
"A family trait, I'm afraid."
Dr. Sullivan's information had been relayed to T-FLAC operatives in each of the location he had identified, in real time, and teams of bomb disposal specialists dispatched. Having the formula and method to disable the Nuts would save countless lives. Daklin had learned about the progress they’d made when he'd emerged from the aft cabin a few hours after River had fallen asleep on top of him like a sweet, supple blanket.
