Her Hero After Dark

“Better?” she murmured as he sat down on the sofa opposite her.

“Indeed.”

He waited until she glanced up at him questioningly, debating with himself while he waited. Indirect subtlety or direct and straightforward? How to get Jennifer to order his drugs brought in? His gut told him to go the direct route, but habit told him to approach all women circuitously.

“What’s put that frown on your face?” she asked.

“I’m debating how to handle you,” he replied frankly.

She smiled sardonically. “How about you let me do the handling for now?”

That sent his right eyebrow sailing upward. Did she mean the sexual innuendo? Surely, it had been intentional. She was too smart to make a sophomoric slip of the tongue like that. Thought she could use sex to manipulate him, did she? If he weren’t in so much pain that he could hardly see straight, she would probably be right to think that. He’d played the field as hard as the next guy over the years. Maybe harder than most.

But since he’d met Dr. Gemma Jones, that had changed. The drugs had taken over his life. Now they were his one and only mistress.

“You didn’t answer my question before,” he announced. “How long does it take to get things shipped in here from wherever they get shipped in from?”

“Is there something specific you need in a certain time frame?” she retorted.

He glanced down at the shorts and T-shirt straining across his muscular body. “Some clothes that fit would be nice. Not that it would bother me to do without clothes altogether.”

Her eyes widened and went an even smokier shade of coffee brown. That’s right, honey. Two can play that game of sexual innuendo.

“I can have more clothes for you in the morning,” she mumbled.

Overnight, huh? That meant this island was reasonably close to civilization. And fairly substantial civilization at that. Clothing in his size didn’t come off the rack in just any old store. Back home, everything he wore was custom-tailored to fit his extreme physique.

He tried, “Is there a phone? I need to talk to my business partner. Not to mention my grandfather is no doubt waiting to hear from me.”

Jennifer shrugged. “He’ll have to wait a little longer. Until I finish debriefing you, no one speaks to you.”

“Sorry,” he replied lightly. “I’m not wearing any briefs.”

Her gaze dropped involuntarily to his lap and spots of pink erupted on her cheeks.

“So what does this debrief entail?” he asked.

She blinked up at him as if she was struggling to organize her thoughts. “Uh, for a start, I need to know what happened that led up to your capture. And I’ll need a full report of what happened to you while you were in the custody of the Ethiopians. And I need a satisfactory explanation of why you killed El Mari.”

“And if I refuse to answer your questions?”

“Then you’re not leaving this island any time soon.”

He glanced out the picture window over her shoulder at a spectacular sunset over the distant ocean. If this place was close to the classified facility that had set up his men, he was happy to stay right here. “I can live with that. Can you?”

She leaned forward, forcing direct eye contact with him. “You will never be allowed to go home, Mr. Winston. Ever.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t been able to go home for a long time. That’s nothing new.”

She leaned back, frowning. “Why not?”

“Long story—”

“We’ve got all the time in the world, apparently,” she replied dryly.

“—and I’m not sharing,” he snapped.

“I’m going to keep at you until I get my answers,” she warned him.

“Then you are doomed to intense frustration and the bitter taste of failure,” he replied grimly.

She studied him intently like she was measuring the truth of his words. Finally she asked reasonably, “Why? I’m not the enemy.”

He snorted. “From where I sit, that’s debatable.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

He studied her, as well. The temptation to confide in her, to tell someone the truth, to explain the real logic of his apparently inexplicable decisions, was strong. But he dared not. His secrets were far too explosive to share with anyone, particularly this woman who embodied the United States government.

“What did my grandfather say to you?” he asked.

She leaned back in her armchair. “I’ll answer that question if you’ll answer one of mine.”

Aah. Clever. “Depends on what your question is.”

“Why did you go to Ethiopia?”

Hmm. He could work with that. He nodded once, but immediately regretted the gesture. Daggers of pain shot down his spine and radiated out through his nervous system to every corner of his body. He groaned and fought down a wave of pain-induced nausea.

“Deal,” he gritted out.

“You first,” she retorted.

“Nope. You.”

She stared at him curiously. She wished. He would never, ever explain the source of his pain to her. Finally she commented, “Your grandfather said you were in Africa on a humanitarian aid mission. That you and a team of your co-workers went out of radio contact about three months ago and that he was worried about you. He said he had hired private investigators, and they found sources in the Ethiopian government who said you had been thrown in prison.”

She tapped a French-manicured nail on the wooden arm of her chair. “However, when we investigated through our sources, we found no evidence of a trial or even any charges being filed against you. For some reason, the Ethiopians ignored all of their own laws and simply locked you up and threw away the key. Why is that, Mr. Winston?”

“Jeff.”

“Why is that, Jeff?”

“Not the question I agreed to answer.” What sources was she referring to? Was it possible?

She huffed.

“I went to Ethiopia to solve world hunger.”

She stared at him expectantly. “And?”

“And that’s it.”

She surged up out of her chair. “Look, Jeff. This isn’t a joke. You murdered a man last night, and I have no compunction about returning you to the Ethiopian government to stand trial for your crime. You will be executed or worse. And believe me, in Africa, worse can be much worse than death.”

She was magnificent in her fury. Anger sparked off her like fireworks and her body literally vibrated with her passion. She’d be a hellcat in the sack, for sure. The thought startled him. Since when did he sit around lusting after a woman like this? It had been years since he’d been that libertine playboy punk.

He leaned forward matching her intensity. “I’m telling you the truth. I went to Africa to solve world hunger.”

She sank down into her chair. Watching her pull herself back in, containing her fiery energy was fascinating. In less time that he’d have imagined, she was able to ask him calmly, “And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Solve world hunger.”

He started to shrug but thought better of the unnecessary motion. “I have a good idea how to solve a substantial chunk of East Africa’s food shortage.”

“And how’s that?”

“I didn’t agree to answer that one.”

She glared at him, but was otherwise outwardly composed. “Don’t make this a war between us. I can make your life incredibly unpleasant.” Her voice softened just a touch. “And I’d hate to have to do that.”

He suspected he could make hers pretty unpleasant, too, but he refrained from mentioning it. He had no desire to antagonize her any more. After all, she really did seem to want to help him. Problem was, she had no idea how to do that. He’d asked for his drugs twice already, and she’d put him off both times. She didn’t understand. And he couldn’t explain it to her. But maybe he could talk around the edges of it.

He said in a conciliatory tone, “Look. I take certain medications, and I haven’t had them for far too long. I need to get in touch with my physician and order up new prescriptions as soon as possible.”

“Our doctors will have to review and approve anything you’re prescribed. It may take several days.”

Could Doc Jones disguise his meds so the government doctors wouldn’t recognize them? Or would they be suspicious enough to run independent tests on the serum? No, he dared not even chance letting the government get its hands on any of his highly experimental medications.

He settled for, “In the meantime, could your people at least fly out some antibiotics and pain pills to help me get over the worst effects of my captivity?”

“Are you ill?” she asked sharply.

“I’m about to be,” he replied soberly.

“Why?”

He shook his head. Nope. Not going there with her, either.

Thoughtfully, Jennifer watched Jeff retreat to his bedroom. He wasn’t much less incredible in those tight clothes than he was in a towel. What would it be like to be with a man in such extraordinary physical condition? She made a policy of never dating any of the special forces operatives who worked out of H.O.T. Watch, so she didn’t actually know.

The classified facility was home to a half-dozen Hunter Operations Teams. They did covert missions around the world with the help of the sophisticated satellite surveillance technology and intelligence analysts housed in the H.O.T. Watch headquarters. That facility was hidden on its own Caribbean island about twenty miles from here.

She added a few more details to what she knew about Jeff Winston. Beneath his rough exterior, he was highly intelligent. Cunning, even. And he was desperate to get his hands on some sort of prescription drugs that he was clearly in full-blown withdrawal from. That was the third time he’d mentioned getting medication sent to him.

She frowned. Was that why he’d been so wild and violent in Ethiopian custody? Had it been nothing more than the guy going through drug withdrawals? An odd sense of disappointment coursed through her. She’d hoped for better than that from him.

She opened her laptop computer and connected to the island’s private wireless network to fire off a message to Brady Hathaway.

Please investigate possible drug addiction by Jeff Winston. And send out some giant clothes. Think NFL lineman … on steroids … and you’ll have the dimensions about right.

Hathaway’s response was swift.

Drug addiction?!!!

Correct. He appears to be experiencing some sort of drug withdrawal symptoms.

Do you need us to send out a team of doctors and relieve you from this debriefing?

She considered that one for a minute. In spite of her revulsion at Jeff’s beastly appearance and behavior, there was something … fascinating … about him. He inspired a twisted compulsion in her to figure out what made this strange man tick. It had nothing at all to do with the unwilling attraction she bizarrely seemed to feel for him, of course.

Common sense told her this guy was a complete nut job. Definitely a candidate for a padded cell and a psychiatric team to pick his brains apart. Except, he’d been perfectly lucid through the meal and their recent conversation. He might be driven half-mad by the pain of his drug withdrawal, but that didn’t make him crazy.

Was she seriously talking herself into turning down Hathaway’s offer of a medical team to replace her? Apparently. Because the next words she typed were,

I’d like a few days to work on this guy. I’ve established the beginnings of trust with him. I think he’ll talk to me given a little more time. I highly doubt he’d cooperate with a psych team.

Your call, Jenn. But be careful.

Right. Careful. There was nothing at all careful about being alone on this island with Jefferson Winston.

One thing he hadn’t lacked for in prison was sleep. There’d been nothing else to do to while away the endless days, and sleep had been his only relief from the creeping advance of his pain.

Jeff dozed in his room for a few hours after he heard Jennifer’s bedroom door close across the hall at about midnight. When he judged she’d had plenty of time to fall into a deep sleep, he eased out of bed and opened his door. He glided stealthily down the hall to the living room.

Triumph surged through him. Jennifer had left her laptop computer sitting on the coffee table. Now he could only pray it wasn’t password protected. He turned it on and waited anxiously for it to boot up. Bingo. A welcome screen popped right up.

It took him a few missteps, but he figured out quickly enough how to connect to the island’s wi-fi network. An internet connection opened automatically. He opened an anonymous public mail server and typed fast.

G., I’m somewhere in the Caribbean, and I’m a mess. Don’t know how much longer I can hold on. You know that pain you predicted if I ever went off my health regimen? You have no idea how right you were. Have L. pull strings to find me and get me what I need ASAP. Hurry. J.

He hit the send button and leaned back, sighing in relief. He poked around her files for any hint of an association with the classified surveillance facility he sought, but found nothing. He’d be relieved if he didn’t think she was too smart to leave that sort of evidence laying around. Quietly, he emptied the computer’s cache and deleted all internet cookies and browsing history before shutting down the system. He crept back to bed and prayed for sleep to relieve him temporarily from his living hell.

Jennifer leaned back against her pillows thoughtfully, staring at the twin computer to the laptop she’d left out in the living room as bait. Who was G.? L. obviously referred to Jeff’s grandfather, Leland. The regimen in the note no doubt was an oblique reference to whatever drugs the guy was addicted to, and his exhortation to hurry meant she was right. The guy was experiencing heavy withdrawal.

She forwarded the entire keystroke sequence from the time Jeff turned on the laptop until he turned it off to the computer guys at H.O.T. Watch. Her technicians should be able to track down this G. person with ease through his or her internet service provider. Her men’s expertise, combined with the legal authority of the federal government, should unravel the mystery in a few hours. Probably by the time she woke up in the morning, they’d know who Jeff’s drug supplier was and what drug he was hooked on.

She shook her head. No way was she letting Jeff get a fresh supply of his drugs. He’d been off them for a couple months already in jail in Ethiopia. He had to be pretty close to busting his addiction for good after so much time had passed. If he could just tough it out a few more days or weeks, he’d be clean. And then he could make a rational decision about his health. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who actually enjoyed being dependent on drugs.

Something about him suggested a sense of decency, honor even, under that uncivilized facade. And she was just the woman to help him rediscover that side of himself.

The State Department could probably spin the attack on El Mari as an unfortunate manifestation of his drug withdrawals. Temporary insanity.

But first, she had to get the real Jeff Winston back. For as sure as she was sitting here, the animal across the hall was not the man she’d read about in her dossier.

Chapter 4

“Wake up!” Something sharp slapped him across the face and Jeff howled in pain. He was being slow roasted in a giant oven and any second his entire body was going to burst into flames. Ye Gods, what a horrible way to die.

“Wake. Up.”

Was that insistent voice aimed at him? Surely not. He’d died and gone to Hell.

“I’m not kidding. I’ll dump a bucket of ice water on you if you don’t open your eyes and tell me what on God’s green earth is going on, Jeff Winston.”

The demon knew his name. And frankly, a bucket of ice water sounded like bliss. A fresh wave of agony ran over him like a ten-ton steamroller and he succumbed to white pain that blanked out everything else.

And then something else dawned on him. That was a female voice. “Gemma?” he mumbled. “Quit hitting me.”

“Then wake up and tell me what’s wrong with you!”

It was an enormous battle, but he managed to peel open one eyelid. His vision swam fuzzily as the vise crushing his skull tightened. God almighty, he was tough, but even he couldn’t stand this. He whimpered, half in pain and half in terror. How much worse was it going to get before he lost his mind or his heart simply gave out and he kicked off?

The tone of the dark blob softened. “Where does it hurt?”

Everywhere. Dark blob? Gemma was fair and blond. Everything about her was pale, even the light blue of her eyes. He squinted at this woman. Memory hovered close by. He was not in Ethiopia. And this woman wanted something from him ….

The pain receded just enough to allow him a moment of lucidity. Jennifer, not Gemma. His captor. Although she was calling herself something nicer than that. Debriefer. Yeah, that was it. And she wouldn’t let him have something—

She laid a hand on his shoulder, and the joint felt like it had literally exploded.

It was as if everything he’d suffered so far was a bare shadow of the pain that slammed into him now. As much as he hated himself for doing it, he screamed. And once he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop.

Jennifer reeled back from the man thrashing on the bed before her. A high-pitched keening tore from his throat, shocking her to her core. She didn’t do anything! She just touched his shoulder. And he acted like she’d gouged out his eyes with hot pokers.

He barely looked human. He was hairy, huge and bathed in sweat. As if she’d landed in a really bad rendition of Beauty and the Beast. Where was the man from her dossier? Jefferson Winston was suave. Elegant. Sophisticated. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to this man.

Sheesh. If ever there’d been a better advertisement for the evils of drug addiction, she’d never seen it. The man had become little better than a wild animal. It would be a tragedy if it weren’t his own darned fault. She flinched as he let loose another bloodcurdling scream. And this time he didn’t stop.

Freaked out, she retreated to the living room and turned on her laptop. She initiated a voice over internet protocol and called H.O.T. Watch headquarters on the Red line. It was reserved for life and death emergencies.

The duty controller answered with a terse, “Go.” Most callers on this line had no time to fool around with the niceties.

“It’s Jennifer Blackfoot. I need to speak with a physician who specializes in drug addiction recovery right now. I’ll stay on the line.”

“Roger.” The controller’s voice came back in a few seconds. “I’m patching you through to the substance abuse team at Wilford Hall Medical Center, ma’am,” the controller announced.

A male voice came on the line. “This is Dr. Kinchon.”

“Hi, sir. Jennifer Blackfoot. CIA. I’m debriefing a man who appears to be suffering from severe drug withdrawal symptoms. I need to know what to do to alleviate his reaction.”

“What substance is he withdrawing from?”

“I have no idea.”

“I need to know what he’s coming down off of if I’m going to suggest a treatment. It could be dangerous in the extreme to respond incorrectly.”

“Sorry, sir. He just came into my custody yesterday.”

“What are his symptoms?”

She frowned. “Extreme pain. Delirium associated with his more extreme pain episodes.”

“Is he scratching at himself? Hallucinating? Sweating profusely?”

“Yes, he is sweating!” she exclaimed, relieved.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since his last fix?”

She had yet to hear back from Brady on what his off-the-record conversation with the Ethiopians had revealed. She pictured his thick growth of beard and guessed, “At least two months. Possibly several.”

“Months?” the doctor exclaimed. “That’s not possible. He would be long past any delirium tremens if that was the case. He must have taken something within the past few days.”

At that moment, Jeff let out a scream that echoed through the house and sent an involuntary shiver down her spine. He sounded like he was dying.

“Please, Doctor. He’s in terrible pain. Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“You can try hot or cold compresses.”

“He screams any time I touch him.”

“Aah. Extreme tactile hypersensitivity. Don’t touch him, then. Even the slightest contact may very well feel like a knife stabbing him. You might consider restraining him for his own safety.”

Lovely. Just what she wanted to do. Torture the poor man. Not to mention she doubted any of the rope in the house would hold him down. “Please, Doctor. There has to be something more I can do to help him.”

“Find out as quickly as possible exactly what he’s been taking and when the last time he had it was.”

“Done.” She wasn’t sure how she was going to track down G. and bully the information out of the guy, but by golly, she’d make it happen if she had to show up on this G.’s front porch herself and beat it out of him.

Abruptly, silence fell over the house. Jennifer disconnected the call and raced for Jeff’s room. Funny how the silence scared her even worse than his screams. At least when he was screaming she knew he was still alive.

He was alive when she got there, but he didn’t look good. His skin was a ghastly shade of gray and his eyes were rolled back into his head. She risked touching him in his unconscious state and he was burning up. She’d never felt a fever burn so hot on a person’s skin before.

A flash of her grandfather, who’d been a traditional medicine man, came to mind. What would he do with a patient like this? She recalled his whispery voice murmuring, “Heat a cold man, cool a hot man, child.”

She sprinted for the linen closet and yanked out a bed sheet. She threw it in her bathtub, soaked it with cold water, and carried the sodden mass into Jeff’s room. She spread it over him, settling the cloth against his body as gently as she possibly could.

His thrashing diminished slightly. But as soon as the sheet warmed to his body temperature, his whimpering increased in intensity. Damn. She fetched her laptop and called H.O.T. Watch again.

When the call went through, she demanded, “Who’s G.?”

“Standby one.”

She waited in an agony of impatience.

“No idea. G. has a dummy internet server. From it, your guy’s message was routed all over the world. Assuming we can track it at all, it’s going to take a while to follow the trail back to the target.”

“Define a while,” she demanded tersely as Jeff moaned beside her.

“Two, maybe three, days, ma’am.”

“I don’t have that long.” She thought fast. “Put me through to Leland Winston.”

“Uhh, it’s four o’clock in the morning in New York.”

“Tell him his grandson is dying and I need his help. He’ll take my call.”

She wasn’t wrong. The billionaire’s gravelly voice came on the line in under a minute. “Who is this? And what’s this about Jeff dying?” he demanded.

“Agent Jennifer Blackfoot. Your grandson’s CIA debriefer. He’s in horrendous pain. Appears to be withdrawing from some sort of drug. We need to find out what it is and when he last had it.”

Strangely, Leland devolved into a bout of cursing fit to embarrass a sailor. Now why on earth would he react like that? Was this drug use an old problem of Jeff’s that had resurfaced, maybe?

In an effort to break the old man’s tirade, she interrupted. “Do you know someone with the initial G.? A friend or associate who might be supplying drugs to Jeff?”

Even more strangely, Leland abruptly went dead silent. So. He did know who G. was.

“Where’s my grandson?”

“I’m sorry, sir. That information is classified—”

“Classified, my ass!” he bellowed. “Tell me where my boy is!”

“I can’t, sir.”

“Agent Blackfoot. That’s your name, right? I’m about to roll a crap pile downhill onto your head like you’ve never seen before. Tell me where Jeff is, or I swear, I’ll bury you.”