Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06]

by Into the Dark

  On a deep breath, Dallas gripped the bottle. Rolled his shoulders. And finally drank.

  “Any particular reason you’re carrying?” Ethan walked into the living area of Dallas’ condo.

  Shit. He’d forgotten that he’d belted the HK. “Been a lot of unexpected traffic through here tonight,” he said evasively. For reasons he didn’t completely understand, he didn’t want to bring up Amy’s cryptic statement. Can’t let them find me here. “It has a tendency to make a man a little punchy.”

  Ethan frowned but didn’t press as he eased down into a chair upholstered in deep sand and terra-cotta. “Where do you suppose she’s been all this time?”

  Dallas reluctantly joined his older brother and sank down in a matching chair. It was a question he’d asked himself a hundred times. A question he intended to ask her. Later.

  He shrugged. “Who knows.”

  “It’s been, what? Six months since she split?”

  Dallas said nothing. Like he didn’t know exactly how long it had been since he’d last seen Amy. He’d thought of her each and every one of the six months and five days since she’d disappeared. Ethan didn’t need to know that Dallas had been counting. It was bad enough that Nolan knew.

  “Truth?” Ethan said with an arch of his brow when Dallas didn’t respond, “Never thought we’d see her again.”

  Yeah. Dallas had thought the same thing. And he’d tried to convince himself he was fine with it. But the way his pulse had spiked when he’d seen Amy standing in his doorway looking like a storm-beaten little bird proved he hadn’t been fine with it at all.

  Can’t let them find me here.

  He took another deep pull on the cold beer. Maybe he’d misunderstood her. Maybe she’d been delirious.

  And maybe he should trust his gut—which was usually spot-on right when it warned him about impending trouble.

  “What’s her story, do you think?” Ethan asked, as much to himself as to Dallas. “Other than being messed up by those bastards on Jolo.”

  “Like that’s not enough?”

  Ethan cocked his head, surprised by the bite in Dallas’ tone. He held up a hand in supplication. “Hey. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  Dallas let his head fall back against the chair cushion. Closed his eyes. “Sorry. It’s—she just…she just looked so messed up, you know?” And he felt helpless to make it better.

  “One of these days I’m going to learn not to second-guess my wife,” Ethan said after a long, thoughtful look.

  Dallas opened an eye. “What are you talking about?”

  “Darcy tried to tell me that you had a thing for Amy.”

  Christ. Dallas leaned forward, cupped the beer bottle between both hands and stared at it. Was he that transparent where Amy was concerned?

  “I don’t have a thing for her,” he finally lied because, hell, even if he did he wouldn’t—more to the point couldn’t—do anything about it. “She’s a friend. That’s all. And she’s been through enough, you know? I was hoping she’d found her footing again.”

  Ethan was still watching him with that “you can lie to yourself but you can’t lie to me” expression. “We can take her home with us if you want. She and Darcy got pretty close on Jolo. Maybe she’ll open up to Darcy.”

  Yeah. Dallas contemplated the label on the bottle. Amy and Darcy had gotten close. Both of them had been captives of Abu Sayyaf thugs who’d hidden behind the cloak of Islamic Jihad. Both had been starved and terrorized. But while Darcy’s ordeal, as bad as it had been, had totaled a daunting five days, Amy had been held for over five months before they’d gotten her off that island to safety. During those months, she’d been starved, beaten and raped.

  That was Amy Walker’s story—at least as much as his family knew. Unfortunately, Dallas knew there was more. While the motive for Darcy’s abduction was now clear—Darcy had been kidnapped at the orders of a corrupt U.S. ambassador to the Philippines while she was stationed at the embassy there—no one knew why Amy Walker had ended up in the hands of those bastards.

  No one but Amy. And in the few days after the rescue while she’d recovered with Nolan and Jillian here in West Palm, Amy hadn’t been talking.

  And then she just plain hadn’t been here.

  She’d left. No note. No explanation. No “so long, it’s been good to know you.”

  “Dallas—I said, do you want us to take her home with us?”

  “No,” he said quickly. Too quickly, he realized when Ethan slanted him a tight grin. He settled himself down. “She’s fine here. Until she wakes up at least. Then yeah, if she needs a place to stay, she’s all yours.”

  Or not, Dallas thought, ignoring his brother’s considering look. Until he found out what had brought Amy back to West Palm, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Friends did that for friends, and it didn’t have to mean there was anything more to it.

  He glanced toward the bedroom again, absently working his thumbnail over the label on the sweating beer bottle, remembering the hollowness he’d felt in his gut six months ago when he’d realized she’d left. Reliving the edgy expectancy he’d been feeling ever since, wondering if he’d ever see her again. Kicking himself for his inability to shake it off and just get on with his life.

  Now she was back. And he was royally pissed with himself over the way he felt about it.

  Too much relief.

  Too much concern.

  Too much emotion all the way around.

  Restless, he pushed off the chair, set the bottle on an end table. Ignoring his brother’s contemplative look, he walked quietly into the bedroom, glanced at his sister-in-law, then focused on Amy, sleeping the sleep of the dead.

  There were changes in her. Good changes.

  She was no longer emaciated. No longer beaten down and bruised. Her skin was clear, healthy, dusted lightly with the freckles that lent a youthful innocence and all-American-girl glow to a classically beautiful face. A face he’d missed far too much.

  Only the scars remained of her ordeal. Scars from the rope burns on her wrists and ankles where they’d festered and become infected. From the knife-sharp leaves and vines that had sliced her arms and legs on forced marches through the jungle. A small crescent-shaped scar hooked at the point of her brow where it met her temple. He didn’t even want to think about how it had gotten there—and yet he figured he knew. A hard blow from a big man.

  He backed away from the rage that knowledge still bred, concentrated on the here. The now. She’d healed. She’d survived. And except for the fatigue, she appeared healthy now. Her muscles were toned and she had meat on her bones. She was round and lush in all the right places—there’d been no mistaking that when he’d found his arms full of her. Her pale skin was soft and sweet smelling. No mistaking that either.

  But her eyes. In that moment before she’d passed out, those beautiful eyes had revealed the secrets and the sorrow and the burden she would carry for the rest of her life.

  Can’t let them find me here.

  The hair on the back of his neck tingled every time he replayed those words. Who couldn’t find her? Who was she hiding from?

  Something told him he didn’t want to know. Something else told him that whatever had driven her to his door might be big. Real big.

  And, he suspected, real bad.

  He glanced at Darcy, asked in a quiet voice, “Has she said anything?”

  A frown turned down one corner of the pretty redhead’s mouth. “She mumbled something about her backpack.” She glanced up at him. “Did she have one with her?”

  Dallas shook his head. “Nope. Just her.”

  Darcy shrugged. “Well, other than that—oh, and apologizing for passing out on you—no. She hasn’t said a word. She’s been out cold. But she’s fine, Dallas. Trust Doc Hammond. She’s just sleep deprived.”

  Dallas made a note to thank Nolan for sending over Jillian’s doctor when Dallas had called him. Hammond was the same doc who had provided expert and discreet medical care for Etha
n when he’d returned to the States sporting a gunshot wound he’d taken on Jolo. No way could they have taken Ethan to a hospital. Bullet wounds had a tendency to draw law enforcement; there would have been questions they wouldn’t have been able to answer. Since their operation in the Philippines hadn’t been sanctioned by anyone—specifically the U.S. military—they’d had to avoid those questions at all costs. Hammond had helped make that happen. And just in case there were “issues” with Amy, the doc had agreed to help again.

  Dallas averted his attention back to Amy. Odds were, she had more issues than the military had boots. He didn’t know what had happened to land her in that terrorist camp, but he had a sick feeling that it hadn’t been an accident of fate. Hadn’t been a “wrong place, wrong time” event as she had claimed back then.

  No, there’d been a reason she’d ended up in the hands of those jackals. A reason she’d gone to the Philippines in the first place. A reason that had compelled her to risk her life.

  Long after Ethan and Darcy left, Dallas sat by the bed and watched Amy sleep. Studied the smudges of blue beneath her eyes where her thick lashes lay on her cheeks. And wondered why she was here. Wondered if it was because she had been foolish enough to risk her life again.

  “You been poking around in something that just might get you killed this time?” he speculated aloud.

  Unfortunately, he had more than a hunch that he might have a vague, “big picture” idea about what that something could be. He rubbed his index finger over his upper lip, a niggling suspicion building to an acid burn in his belly. He’d done some digging on the Web. Run a search on Amy Walker even before she’d turned up gone. And what he’d found had made more than his short hairs curl.

  She stirred slightly in her sleep. A reaction to his presence in the dark? Or to a nightmare that was far too real?

  Night shadows fell across the bed as he searched her sleeping face. Nausea rolled through his gut in thick, oily swells. If his suspicions were even close to right, the hell she’d left behind on Jolo would be nothing compared to the hell that lay ahead of her.

  When she settled, he left her alone. Left her to sleep. And to try to get a little sleep himself.

  She was dreaming. Amy knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t wake up.

  Hard hands tied her down. Hurting hands. And yet…something was different. It wasn’t sunlight burning into her eyes through a thick rain forest canopy. Instead, the light was ice white and blinding, like one of those huge round orbs that surgeons used to illuminate an operating room. And the hands, oh God, the hands that bruised her weren’t bare and filthy but gloved in sterile latex.

  But the faces were the same. Ugly, mean, a little wild, but all she could see were their eyes above snug surgical masks.

  “Don’t, don’t, please, don’t,” she whimpered as the scent of antiseptic confused her even more.

  It should be earth scents assaulting her senses. Jungle scents of rot and green and loam, of filthy men and rotted teeth. She should hear the sporadic tattoo of automatic rifle fire break the silence; instead the beep, beep, beep of life-support monitors and the whoosh of a blood pressure cuff echoed in the background.

  “Please, please, please.” Her voice sounded hoarse from screaming, weak from exhaustion, and riddled with stark, relentless terror.

  Even more terrifying, as she suddenly left the body on the cold metal table and floated above the operating room, it wasn’t her face she saw staring back at her from below. It was her mother’s.

  “Mom. Oh, God. Mom. What are they doing to you?”

  Tears spilled, landed in soft, soundless pools on the pristine white sheet covering her mother’s torso and legs. Lying stark and deathly still, her mother’s eyes were fixed and wide open—polarized with fear as one of the hunched, masked physicians attached electrodes to her temples and meticulously shaved areas within her hairline.

  “Leave her alone! Leave my mother alone!” Amy screamed as she hovered above it all, helpless to stop the monsters as they tended to their hideous task.

  “Don’t hurt her. Please! Don’t hurt my mother!” She screamed so loud it hurt her own ears. But no one heard her.

  No one but her mother.

  Tears filled the beautiful gray eyes that had once glittered with love and soft smiles when she sang Amy to sleep at night. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird—”

  “Don’t cry, Momma. I’ll help you. I’ll make them stop.”

  But it was too late to help. And nothing would make them stop.

  A white-coated doctor affixed the final electrode and, with a nod to his colleague, told him to flip a switch. Her mother’s body jerked, arched, then spasmed.

  Pain, sharp as a blade, hard as a fist jolted through Amy’s body and suddenly she was on her back again. Not on an operating room table. Not beneath a sterile white light.

  She was in the jungle again. Back on Jolo Island in the Philippines and the terrorists who had kidnapped her were having their evening fun.

  Harsh hands dragged at her clothes, shoved her legs apart, hurt her.

  Hurt her.

  Hurt her so bad she went away. At least in her mind. And she stayed away until it was over.

  Please God, make it be over.…

  “Amy?”

  Amy flinched instinctively when a gentle hand touched her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes.

  To a strange room.

  Dim light.

  The shadow of a big man looming over her.

  Instant, reflexive, involuntary terror gripped her like a vice. She scuttled backward until she felt a solid wall at her back. Instinctively lifted her arms to protect her face.

  No room. No room. She’d run out of room.

  “Amy. Sweetheart. It’s okay.”

  Sweetheart.

  She knew that voice. Had ached to hear that voice a hundred times since the man it belonged to had found her in that terrorist camp and taken her away from the pain.

  It was too much to hope for. And yet…she forced her eyes to focus in the semidarkness. Forced her mind to clear.

  There he was.

  “Dallas?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.” His voice sounded raw, choked with concern. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You were having a nightmare.”

  She heard a high, keening sound. Wasn’t aware it was coming from her until Dallas swore, then turned on a lamp by the bed and flooded the room with soft light. He tentatively touched a hand to the back of hers.

  “Come on, Amy. You’re okay now. You know you’re okay now, don’t you? That’s why you’re here, right? That’s why you came looking for me?”

  She huddled into herself. Made herself think. Focus.

  Not Jolo. Not New York. Not twenty years ago.

  Not a dream.

  Dallas.

  Real.

  Safe.

  Yes. That’s why she’d come to him. She’d needed to rest. Needed a safe place.

  Dallas was safe. And she was tired. She was so tired. Tired of running. Tired of being tired.

  She let her eyes drift shut again.

  “Amy? Stay with me now. Come on,” his wonderful voice coaxed. “It’s raining buckets outside. You were soaked to the skin. Darcy…Darcy took care of you, remember? You’re warm and dry now.”

  Darcy. Right. Darcy had been here.

  And now she was warm and dry.

  And wearing a man’s t-shirt, she realized with a quick check beneath the sheets.

  She was in a bed. Clean. Fresh smelling. Like Dallas.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” he said in that wonderful sheltering voice. “You know you can trust me. You know that, don’t you?”

  She did know it. She did.

  Forcing herself fully awake, she blinked up into a pair of ocean-blue eyes set in a beautiful male face drawn into a frown of concern.

  “Yes,” she said and, for the first time in forty-eight hours, let herself relax. “Yes. I know.”
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  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dallas found a pair of navy blue boxers along with one of his gray t-shirts for Amy to wear. Both hung on her. She sat on a tall chrome stool, her elbows propped on the black granite island countertop separating his kitchen from the living area. Her bare feet balanced on a rung of the stool.

  It was closing in on three A.M. She’d slept for around five hours. He hadn’t slept at all.

  “If you hadn’t caught us on the road,” Darcy had said when she and Ethan sailed into his condo around nine last night after Dallas had called Ethan’s cell, “I’d have brought her something of mine to wear.”

  Dallas had no doubt Darcy would be over sometime later this morning with the makings of a wardrobe for Amy. Just like he had no doubt that, unlike six months ago, Amy’s soft, healthy curves could fill out Darcy’s clothes now. Amy may be exhausted, but she was far from the emaciated woman they’d dragged out of the jungle and smuggled back to the States.

  And, he realized, as he poured himself a cup of strong coffee and watched her from the corner of his eye, now that she was awake and acclimated to his condo, it was apparent that she was a far cry from the physically and emotionally bruised woman she’d been then, as well.

  Despite her fatigue, there was a…hell, he didn’t know. Kind of a combative edge to the way she squared her shoulders as she sat there. A self-assurance to the way she held her head. An almost militant determination to show him she was strong, composed and in control. As strong and in control as a woman who had a tendency to keep glancing toward the door and tense at the slightest sound could be.

  She’d always been tough—she’d had to be to survive the hell she’d gone through—but she’d been far from strong when he’d seen her last. Fragile. Crushable. Those words had applied to her then. Not strong.

  Now that she was awake and lucid, he was seeing a different woman. Tough. Determined. Self-possessed. And though he had no ownership over the emotion, he felt a swell of pride in her for the strength of character it had taken to bring her back this far.

  “More?” Wearing a white t-shirt and worn jeans, he shuffled barefoot across the kitchen’s cool terra-cotta tile floor, a coffee carafe in hand.