Cindy Dees - Her Hero After Dark

Doc Jones would fix him up, though. He’d finally get some relief from the beast consuming him from within. And then maybe the beautiful woman beside him would quit looking at him like he was some kind of monster.

A groan escaped his throat.

Jennifer watched surreptitiously as the man across from her moaned in what sounded like tortured agony. He thrashed about, and she prayed he didn’t accidentally stick his fist through the window beside him. He looked strong enough to do it.

Under normal circumstances, she might try to assist him. To hold his limbs down gently so he didn’t hurt himself in his apparent delirium. But the idea of laying her hands on the monster across the aisle was repellent, not to mention terrifying. She had no intention of coming within arm’s length of him. At least not without a taser on its highest setting in her hand.

She eased her cell phone out of her pants pocket and dialed a phone number quickly. She spoke in a bare murmur, “I have the American prisoner, but El Mari is dead.”

Navy Commander Brady Hathaway—he supervised military operations run out of H.O.T. Watch while she was in charge of all civilian intelligence operations in the surveillance facility—exclaimed in surprise. “What the hell happened?”

“Rich Boy got away from his guards and all but tore the Ethiopian’s head off with his bare hands. Who is this guy?”

A shocked pause was her only answer. Then Hathaway replied, “I have the same file on Winston that you do. Private prep schools. Harvard math undergrad. Master’s in microbiology from MIT. Jet-set lifestyle since college—beaches in Monaco, skiing in St. Moritz, fast cars, yachts, beautiful women. Classic spoiled, rich kid.”

“He violently murdered a man tonight. What the heck am I supposed to do with him now?”

“I wouldn’t bring him back to the States. Our extradition treaty with Ethiopia will get him sent right back there to face murder charges, and I don’t think that would make Leland Winston very happy. Go ahead and take him to Paradise Island for debriefing like we planned. Meanwhile the powers that be can sort this mess out.”

Paradise Island also had the advantage of being close to the volcanic island in the Caribbean that housed the H.O.T. Watch facility. Normally, Paradise was a private getaway for H.O.T. Watch’s staff when they needed a break from their high-stress jobs, but it occasionally doubled as a debriefing site.

Brady spoke again. “I’ll do some more digging and see what I can find on your prisoner.”

She caught a flutter of the American’s eyelids. Awake, was he? Well, then. She murmured aloud in a theatrical whisper, “News flash. I think I may be the prisoner.”

“What?” Brady squawked.

A quick movement made her look up sharply. It was the American. Holding out his hand expectantly, calloused palm up. The veins in his wrist were big and prominent. But then she already knew the guy was incredibly strong. It took tremendous strength to break a man’s neck the way he had.

Without answering her colleague, she laid her cell phone in Winston’s outstretched palm. She stared in shock as he crushed the thing in his fist, the plastic case shattering and the metal motherboard nearly folding in half.

No doubt about it. He thought she was the prisoner.

She forced herself to look him in the eye. She expected to see the same wildness from the road, the same murderous madness. But the blue eyes that stared back at her looked reasonably sane. At least for now. Was the guy schizophrenic or something?

“Why did you kill El Mari? ” she ventured to ask.

“He was an animal. A butcher.”

That was almost comical coming from him. She thought back frantically to her hostage training. Her best bet to stay alive was to get on this man’s good side. Convince him she was a person with thoughts and feelings, and not some object to be crushed like her phone and cast aside.

“Would you like me to get that collar off of you?” she asked.

Surprise flickered momentarily in his cobalt gaze. Maybe even a hint of warmth shone there. The American was becoming more human by the second.

He slid out of his seat and knelt in the aisle beside her, offering her the back of his neck. Temptation surged to clobber him as hard as she could across the base of his skull. Except she wasn’t at all sure she could hit him hard enough to knock him out. And if she failed, he’d do the same to her that he’d done to El Mari. Or worse. Memory of his ridiculously muscular body smashing hers flat flashed through her mind. She shuddered.

Nope, her best bet was to befriend this psychopath for now.

She laid her hands on the buckle, but jerked them back when the American groaned in what sounded like intense pain.

“Continue,” he ground out.

What had the Ethiopians done to him? They must have tortured him brutally for even her lightest touch to hurt so badly. “I’ll try to be gentle,” she murmured, “but this buckle is really stiff.”

The thick leather was almost too rigid for her to undo. But finally, the tail of the buckle gave way and slid free of the metal. The collar fell away from him. She kicked it toward the back of the plane in disgust. No matter how crazy this guy was, nobody deserved to be treated like an animal. His neck was raw and bloody where the collar had been.

“Let me get the first aid kit and clean up your neck. That must hurt.”

One corner of his mouth turned up sardonically. She wouldn’t exactly call it a smile. The distant relative of one, maybe. It was a start, though. As gently as she could manage, she swabbed the raw flesh ringing his neck. As the filth surrendered to her gauze pads and peroxide, his dirt blackened skin took on a pink and mostly human hue. She worked her way around to his heavy, dark growth of beard. She estimated he hadn’t shaved in several months.

“How long were you in Ethiopia?” she asked.

He shrugged. Not the talkative type. Or maybe he’d just gotten out of the habit. If he’d been in solitary confinement for a while, he might not have had much opportunity for conversation with other humans. In her experience, once freed, such prisoners either wouldn’t shut up at all, or they became intensely taciturn like this man.

Jefferson Randall Stanley Winston. The name didn’t fit him at all. He ought to be called something like Gorilla Man. Or Jungle Giant. She snorted. Or Sasquatch.

Aloud, she asked, “Did the Ethiopians hurt you?”

He frowned as if he wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that.

She rephrased, “Did they torture you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

What the heck did that mean? “Care to elaborate?”

“Nope.”

She tried a different tack. “Your grandfather arranged for your release. He’s been very worried about you.”

That elicited a completely indecipherable grunt from him. Could be disgust, could be gratitude. No way to tell. Sheesh, talking to this guy was like conversing with a brick wall. Okay, Plan C. “Where did you tell the pilots to take us?”

He didn’t even bother to acknowledge that one.

Ohh-kay. “Do you have any other injuries that need tending?” she tried.

He made a noise that might almost be a snort of humor.

She gave up. If he wanted to talk, he would clearly do it in his own time and on his own terms. Normally, she would get a man like this a good meal, let him take a shower and sleep a little, and then she’d sit him down and debrief him on what exactly had happened to him. But how she was going to get this guy to talk was a mystery to her.

She watched him through slitted eyes as he leaned back in his seat once more and seemed to all but pass out. Exhaustion, maybe? Except it looked more like he was bearing incredible pain in stoic silence. What was up with that?