Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06]

by Into the Dark

  She sniffed under her armpit. Made a face.

  “How ’bout a change of clothes?” she yelled to some unseen, uncaring jailer who mumbled an annoyed, “Mujer americana loca.”

  “Loca? You think I’m crazy now? Just wait and see how crazy I get if I miss my pedicure, you macho gaucho jerk!”

  “Cállate!” he shouted.

  Quiet? He wanted her to be quiet? All she’d been was quiet—and it rubbed hard against every grain in her body. But she’d thought if she played the demure card, acted the innocent, she could appeal to his sense of gallantry.

  These yahoos were about as gallant as a herd of warthogs. And she done being quiet.

  “I demand to speak with someone at the American embassy!” she yelled, walking up to the bars. She gripped them in both hands—immediately thought better of it—and jerked her hands away from the filthy steel. “You can’t keep me here like this. I have rights.”

  The response was the creak of an old desk chair followed by heavy footsteps, followed by a slammed wooden door. The one that had been open between the small bank of cells and the outer office. The door that had provided the only influx of marginally fresh air in a cell that boasted a skinny cot with a mattress made of burlap and straw and alive with who knew what kind of vermin. One window—one foot by two feet—six feet off the floor provided the only source of natural light. A chipped porcelain pot in the corner of the cell was her toilet. A pitcher of stagnant water was her bath.

  “And the goat you rode in on,” she muttered, flipping a one-finger salute in the general direction of the outer office. Then she forced herself to settle down.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t tough. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been in tight spots before. At one time or another, on one assignment or another, she’d been to every hotspot on the globe—Mogadishu, Beirut, Gaza, Kabul, Tikrit—dozens of others. She’d been shot at, survived mortar rounds, RPGs, and irate mullahs. She’d covered dicey hostage situations stateside and the grim reality of genocide in Rwanda. She’d even been bartered for by a Saudi prince who had a fascination for her green eyes and red hair.

  She sank back down to her butt on the floor. Yeah, she’d been in some tight spots. But she’d never been locked up and alone, void of communication, cut off and uninformed. It was the uninformed part that got to her the most. Information was her life. She wasn’t kidding herself. She knew this had something to do with Amy Walker’s grandfather. And she’d known coming in what the man was capable of doing. When she thought about what Amy had gone through because of him—a shiver ripped through her body—well, she’d known she was dipping her spoon into a potentially poisonous stew.

  Only one thing kept her halfway calm. They hadn’t killed her. Had to be a good sign, right?

  “Right,” she muttered on a heavy sigh. They hadn’t killed her. Yet.

  She dragged her hair back from her face. Wondered if she’d ever see home again.

  That kind of thinking was going to get her nowhere. She needed answers. Who exactly were these people? Where was she being held? And the big question: What did they plan to do with her?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Same day, in flight to Atlanta

  The cabin was quiet. The passengers settled in. Beside Amy, wearing tan cargo pants and a form-fitting black t-shirt, Dallas waited patiently, his face hard, his eyes hooded.

  He smelled of clean and of man. Now that they were on their way to Buenos Aires and she had time to reflect, her thoughts kept wandering back to the not so very long ago, when the two of them had been naked and joined in his bed. It had been…incredible. Easy. Pure. Right.

  When she’d never thought that part of her life would be right again.

  He was such an amazing man. Such a beautiful man. All the requirements of a hero—which he’d already proven he was. The amazing body honed with the musculature of a seasoned warrior. The dark, thick hair, the bold, hard lines of his face, the full lips that softened when he smiled and knocked the severe edge right off all those rigid angles and shadowed planes. Gentle hands and amazing grace when he’d touched her, smiled at her and made her a believer again in miracles.

  He wasn’t smiling now. He sat beside her with the intensity of a warrior. With the strength of will to wait until she was ready to fill him in. With the determination of a man who would play this out to the end.

  And she’d kept him waiting long enough. He wanted to hear it all. And she needed to tell him.

  “This is going to be hard for you to buy.” She swallowed around a lump of apprehension that complicated her decision to give him what he wanted.

  “Just tell it like it is, okay?” He was a big man. They’d been lucky enough to get an exit row seat so he could stretch his long his legs out under the seat in front of him. He crossed his ankles, folded his arms over his chest and got as comfortable as he could.

  His eyes were dark and intent on hers, his expression one of encouragement and patience, when patience was probably the exact opposite of what he felt.

  “My mother,” she began, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t be overheard, “was a victim of mind control experimentation. Drug therapy, electric shock therapy, ELF waves, sensory deprivation…God knows what all they did to her.”

  “Jesus,” he said after a long, stunned silence. “You know this? For a fact?”

  She looked away, breathed deep. “There are documents. Documents written by my grandfather. And I have…memories,” she said finally, and chanced a glance at him again.

  “Memories?”

  She swallowed hard. “Memories. Dreams. Of them doing…things to her.”

  “Them?” he prompted after a long moment, his voice lethally calm.

  “My grandfather and his associates.” She watched his face, waited for her words to take root. She didn’t know if it was skepticism or flat out disbelief prompting his long silence.

  “Are you saying that your grandfather experimented on his own daughter?”

  He stared, eyes narrowed, head cocked, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard, let alone grasp what she was implying.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. My grandfather was SS during World War II. And after…after he was one of the monsters responsible for destroying my mother’s mind. For damaging a sweet, gentle spirit and turning her into a catatonic shell of the warm, loving woman I remember as a child.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes as she waited for Dallas to absorb what she’d just told him. Angry for showing weakness, she blinked them away as he slouched back in the seat, his expression thoughtful before his eyes transitioned to that caring blue she’d so needed to see.

  He wiped a hand over his lower jaw. “His own daughter?” he repeated, still in disbelief.

  “That’s why I was in Manila.” Now that she’d finally taken the first step, it was a relief to tell him everything. “I’d tracked him there.”

  “Are you telling me that’s why you were abducted? Because you were asking questions about your grandfather?”

  “I was abducted,” she said, meeting the challenge in his eyes, “because I was asking questions about Aldrick Reimers, also known as Edward Walker, suspected Nazi war criminal. It was insignificant that he’s my grandfather.”

  Again, he grew silent.

  “You’ve heard of ODESSA?” She felt the need to backtrack a bit in order to fill in the whole picture.

  It was a rhetorical question. Dallas was ex-military. Ex-marine. Force Recon. He’d told her that and many other things in one of his monologues on Jolo when he was doing his damnedest to keep her from freaking out and folding in on herself. She seriously doubted there was a military officer—even an NCO, as he’d been—who hadn’t studied the history of World War II and the Nazi machine. But she clarified anyway.

  “ODESSA is a German acronym for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen. It’s an organization of former SS members—an international Nazi network set up toward the end of World War II by a group of SS office
rs and sympathizers.”

  “Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler supposedly among them,” he added, comfirming her assumption that he was well apprised of the organization.

  “Yes,” she said and swallowed hard. “Bormann, Himmler…many others. Including my grandfather.”

  She stopped talking when the pilot’s voice droned over the speakers telling them they were right on schedule and to relax and enjoy the rest of the short flight to Atlanta.

  “Okay,” Dallas said, turning slightly toward her in his seat when the pilot signed off. “I’m with you on the probability of your grandfather being a badass. But ODESSA? Amy. It’s never been proven that ODESSA actually exists. Common speculation is that a lot of dark dramatic stories have fueled the fire and kept the rumors going.”

  She understood his skeptisim. Many experts in the field believed ODESSA was a myth. A fictional organization fabricated by the post-war propaganda machine.

  “Tell that to my mother,” she said, unable to hide her anger. “Tell that to the people who—” She stopped abruptly, lowered her voice, not sure how to handle the rest of it.

  “Tell it to the people who what?” The edge crept back in his hushed tone.

  She looked up, found his eyes hard and intent on hers. Black, cobalt, even flecks of gold melded with the cerulean blue that seemed to look straight through to her soul.

  “The people who had me abducted by those animals.” She stopped herself, breathed deep to control the rapid escalation of her heart rate and dragged herself away from the nightmare of Jolo.

  “Tell it to the others who are victims, like my mother. Tell it to the hired muscle who found me two nights ago and ran my car off the road.”

  She unbuckled her seat belt, suddenly needing to move. Needing to do something to escape the memory of what she’d done that night.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Someone ran you off the road?” Dallas snagged her arm, held her in the seat. His eyes were wild when she faced him. “Ran you off the road?”

  Settling herself down, Amy nodded. “In New York. As I was leaving my mother’s facility. They’d found me there…no matter how carefully I’d covered my tracks.”

  She told him about how she’d been working there under an assumed identity so she could be close to her mother. About the Humvee, the plunge into the ravine. She didn’t tell him about killing the man who had come after her.

  Couldn’t tell anyone about it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “Anyway, I managed to get away. Started driving. And ended up at your door.”

  He covered her hand with his. Squeezed. “Which is exactly what you should have done.”

  “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “You saved my life once. And this is how I repay you. By dragging you back into my mess. Now you’re probably a target too.”

  Dallas scrubbed a hand across his jaw, wished he’d taken time to shave. It was just one of the regrets he had. One of the many mistakes he’d made in the past several hours.

  Among his biggest was giving in to a need so huge it had knocked him flat on his back with her on top of him. A close second was not clearing the air after they’d made love. Not apologizing, not clarifying…clarifying what?

  Hell. He didn’t know. He still felt like he’d been hit by an artillery round. What had happened between them in his bed—how could he clarify that for her when he didn’t have a firm handle on it himself?

  Sex—hell, yeah, he liked sex. With the right partner, with no strings, boundaries clear up front, sex was great. But sex with Amy…Jesus. Sex with Amy went beyond any boundaries he’d ever set, went beyond anything he’d ever experienced. It was…amazing. Wild. Out. Of. Control.

  And he’d damn well better get back in control if he was going to keep both of them alive.

  Not good. This was so not good. He had to keep his head in the game. They were on their way to Argentina, for God’s sake. She’d actually thought she could sneak off without him. He was still pissed about that. Pissed that she’d thought she could talk him out of coming along—after he’d given up trying to do the same thing with her.

  He’d called Ethan on the way to the airport. Told him he was taking Amy to visit her family—it was partly true—and they’d caught the first flight to Buenos Aires.

  Where it was quite possible there were bad guys laying in wait. Or, quite possible that she was leading him on a wild goose chase.

  “So that’s what those fake IDs are about,” he said abruptly, getting back on track with a much more pressing issue. He’d sort out the physical stuff later. And the other stuff. The stuff that had him reevaluating everything he’d ever thought he’d known about what he’d wanted long term in a woman. “The disguise. The Glock with the elephant loads. You’ve been hiding out.”

  The cornered look on Amy’s face was all the answer he needed. Now it made sense. At least one piece of this puzzle anyway.

  Can’t let them find me here.

  She’d been on the run. Always looking over her shoulder. No wonder she was exhausted. She was in danger.

  At least she thought she was.

  And another issue rose front and center to play hell with his equilibrium. He didn’t like himself much for what he was thinking. But hell. Her story was all so out there. He glanced down at the scars on her wrists, thought about the ones on her ankles. And wondered at the scars he couldn’t see—the ones on her psyche. Wondered if those bastards on Jolo had succeeded in pushing her into the deep end. Wondered if during the past six months she hadn’t lost a little more of herself than had been taken from her in the jungle.

  ODESSA. Mind-control experiments. It was all so wild. And yet—Edward Walker was linked up to sites pointing in that very direction.

  Still…his own daughter? Maybe…hell. He didn’t know. Maybe Walker had simply been trying to stabilize Amy’s mother all those years, treat a long-term mental condition and experimenting with cures, not creating her illness.

  Maybe the problems that had landed Amy’s mother in a mental institution had nothing to do with something as diabolical as mind-control experimentation. What if she’d always been ill?

  And what, he thought reluctantly, if Amy’s mother’s condition was hereditary?

  “You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?”

  Her gaze was sharp on his as the “fasten seatbelt” sign blinked on.

  He didn’t want to think it. God, he didn’t want to. But Amy had been through hell on Jolo. Her experience could drive the most anchored individual over the edge. Man—and afterwards…she’d just disappeared. No word. For six long months, not a word. And now this. Showing up in the dead of night soaking wet, flying off to Argentina.

  “Amy—”

  She shook her head, disgusted, disappointed.

  And pissed. She was good and pissed. Her integrity had been questioned—by the one person she had trusted enough to approach. To share her story with. A story he had bullied out of her. A story that he had just implied, he found suspect.

  A story he did find suspect—at least parts of it.

  “Look. I’m sorry, okay?” he conceded, attempting to settle her down. “And I don’t think you’ve lost it.”

  She shot him a challenging look.

  Okay. So she read his mind.

  “Give me a break here. I’m still dealing with the fact that you’re back. Six months,” he pointed out with a lift of his hand. “For six months you’re a no-show. And then, bam. Here you are—dead on your feet, on the run and toting a pocket full of forged IDs, a shitload of cash, a disguise and a goddamn cannon. I haven’t got a firm handle on that yet. Give me a minute to absorb the rest of this, okay?”

  He dragged a hand through his hair, met her eyes again and saw the same kind of frustration he was feeling. Saw, also, the woman—the flesh-and-blood woman—he’d lost sleep over, lost a measure of control over, lost the better part of his peace of mind over. The woman who had played hell with his hero complex on Jolo. And damn if she hadn’t cranked it into high gear agai
n.

  On Jolo, she’d been a victim. Filthy, starved, bruised and battered. She might now be physically healed and free, but she was still a victim. Whether she was victimized by her own mind playing tricks on her or by a real and present danger, he didn’t yet know.

  He knew only one thing. From the moment he’d seen her standing in his doorway, he’d felt the weight of a thousand regrets lift from his chest.

  Another chance. He had another chance. To see what the hell it was about her that made her so compelling. To find out what it was about her that made him want to step out of his comfort zone in the form of a major change of plans.

  And the fact was, she wasn’t the only one on the edge or on the run. He’d been ready to run too—from his family, from his career, from his own demons. He hadn’t known where he was going, hadn’t cared.

  Now he had something to care about. Bold truth: He cared about her. Stupid. Pointless. Without future.

  But still, he wasn’t running anywhere until he figured out what was going on with her.

  “We’ll be landing in Atlanta in less than thirty minutes,” he said checking his Rolex Submariner. “Before we catch our connecting flight, I want you to start from the beginning. Tell me everything. Don’t leave out one piece of information.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  My grandfather’s real name is Aldrick Reimers,” Amy said after a deep breath. “He was a German-born physician who worked in mental institutions in and around Berlin before World War II. His primary duty was to evaluate and decide whether mentally deficient children should be sterilized or killed. If the child proved to be good subject matter, at his suggestion, they were sometimes allowed to live and then were subjected to any number of inhuman experiments under order of the state.”

  Dallas pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed eyes made gritty from lack of sleep and swallowed back his disgust.