Cindy Dees - Her Hero After Dark

Unaccountably, the prisoner beside Jennifer laughed. It was a deep, full-throated thing that resonated with cruelty.

“It’s not funny,” Jennifer hissed. “How would you like it if we’d done that to you?”

He scowled over at her. “I am not crazy son-of-bitch.” He lifted his chin toward his American counterpart and muttered in disgust, “Mwac arämamäd.”

The hired guns around her surreptitiously held up their hands, making tribal warning signs against evil. Mwac arämamäd? Dead Man Walking? Her Amharic was rudimentary at best, but she was fairly sure that was what it meant. She glanced back at Rich Boy as one of his guards warily unshackled his ankles. Greasy strings of hair obscured his face as he staggered forward. He did look pretty close to dead at the moment. Or at least pretty savage. Nothing that a shower and a shave wouldn’t correct, though. No one had told her Jefferson Winston was that huge and strong. The guy was over six feet tall and looked like a walking muscle. Alarm skittered across her skin. Was she taking custody of some sort of violent psychopath?

“Let’s go,” she ordered her prisoner.

She walked forward slowly with El Mari beside her. The closer they got to the American prisoner, the more appalled she was by his condition. His eyes were unfocused, and his lips drew back from his teeth in a feral snarl. Even the man beside her seemed to cringe a little at the sight of Rich Boy. Dead Man Walking, indeed.

The cluster of soldiers around Jefferson Winston stopped not quite halfway between the two vehicles. At a nod from the Ethiopian Army officer who appeared to be in charge of his side of the swap, she turned to her prisoner. El Mari held out his wrists and she unlocked his handcuffs. They fell away and she stuffed them in her pocket. Oddly, though, the Ethiopians didn’t turn Rich Boy loose. Rather they gestured for her men to come and take positions on the collar poles.

Her men moved forward hesitantly.

Not interested in waiting for the handoff of the wild American, El Mari strode toward his own people, passing up her hired mercenaries and sneering at the American prisoner.

As the warlord drew even with the American, all hell broke loose. Rich Boy yanked his fists sharply and the chain around his waist snapped. With a single, violent twist of his torso, he wrenched the poles free from all four guards, leaped forward and pounced on El Mari. His attack was vicious and efficient. In a single shockingly swift move, he knocked the Ethiopian man to the ground and broke his target’s neck with his bare hands, all but tearing the warlord’s head off. There was no question that El Mari was dead as his body fell at a grotesquely unnatural angle.

Jennifer watched in stunned horror, uncharacteristically frozen in place as the crouching American unclipped the poles from his collar and flung them away. His limbs bunched. He sprang, charging her in a half crouch like a raging silverback gorilla.

He shouted something incoherent and took a flying leap at her, slamming into her just as a barrage of gunfire erupted. He barely knocked her out of the way of the flying bullets in time. Had he intentionally saved her life, or had that just been luck? The American was unbelievably heavy and smashed her flat, his large body completely covering hers. No air could enter her lungs, squashed as she was by his massive weight.

He pressed up and away from her into a bestial hunch. Galvanized into motion, she snatched her pistol out of its holster. Rich Boy’s eyes flashed in chagrin as she scrambled to her knees and pointed the weapon at him.

But then she yanked his shoulder down with her free hand and fired past him at his captors, emptying her clip rapidly, and providing much-needed return fire for her men to reload their weapons and resume, effectively if not intentionally, covering their retreat.

The dismay in Winston’s eyes turned to gratitude. She shrugged. One good turn deserved another, right?

He nodded briefly in thanks and then growled hoarsely, “Let’s go.”

“Right.” So. There was a man inside the beast.

They sprinted for the Land Rover. A quick glance behind her revealed wholesale carnage on both sides of the firefight. The American shoved her at the passenger door and raced around to the driver’s side. They jumped in simultaneously, and he slammed the car into gear without bothering to close his door. Gunfire aimed at them erupted. She ducked as the rear window shattered. The tires spun on the gravel as the Land Rover did a fish-tailing one-eighty and peeled out.

“My men!” she shouted at him.

“Paid to die,” he retorted as he horsed the Land Rover around the first bend. The vehicle careened forward wildly for several miles before he finally eased his foot off the accelerator a little.

Terrified, she risked a look at the killer beside her. He truly did look more beast than man with hair hanging in his eyes and most of his face obscured by a heavy beard. What skin was visible was filthy, which only lent to the whole ape-man look. She rapidly rethought her childhood attraction to Tarzan. Jane could have him.

“Where’s your plane?” His voice was guttural. Frightening, frankly. She ought to be terrified of him, but that brief glimpse of humanity in his eyes back on the road had reassured her just enough that she didn’t bail out of the moving vehicle. Maybe she was stupid to trust him based on a single look, but her gut instinct was rarely wrong about people.

“Akimbe Airport,” she replied, her mind racing. How much trouble was the United States in for letting El Mari be killed? What would the diplomatic ramifications be? And what on God’s green earth was she supposed to do with Rich Boy now?

He drove on grimly. Since he didn’t ask her for directions, she gathered he was familiar with the local area. The intelligence analyst within her duly noted it.

The Land Rover pulled up next to a sleek, unmarked business jet on the tarmac at Akimbe. Hmm, interesting. He knew which plane was the U.S. government bird without being told.

“Get on,” he ordered, pointing at the plane.

Was she his prisoner? Was he planning to use her as a hostage to assure landing permission somewhere? Did he plan to kill her when they got wherever he was going? The trick in playing a game of cat and mouse was to make the other guy think he was the cat when he was the mouse all along. But she sensed this man was going to be very tricky, indeed, to manipulate. Where did a savage murderer flee to, anyway?

Jeff scowled as the beautiful, raven-haired CIA officer huddled in her airplane seat, hugging herself. He poked his head into the cockpit long enough to snarl a destination at the pilots, and then he fell into the seat across the aisle from his rescuer.

He couldn’t believe she’d shot at the Ethiopian Army on his behalf. He’d been sure when she’d pulled out her gun it was with the intent to kill him. He would never forget grim determination in her eyes as she had shoved him out of harm’s way. As if she could actually protect him from anything. It was laughable, really. But her impulse sent a ripple of warmth through his gut, nonetheless.

Bad idea to think about his gut. He became aware of the pain ripping through it until he was nearly crazed with the hellish agony consuming him. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to scream aloud.

“Buckle up,” he gritted out at the woman.

Her hands shaking so badly she could barely follow his command, she managed to get the seat belt fastened around her lap. He followed suit, although he highly doubted it was necessary in his case. Probably not worth finding out the hard way, though.

He threw his head back, closed his eyes and gave himself up to the ever lurking, ever patient pain. Just a little while longer. He’d almost made it home. Soon. Soon he’d be able to give his body what it so desperately craved—what every last cell was begging for, and would keep begging for, until the pain drove him mad … or killed him.