Her Hero After Dark

She didn’t doubt for a second he could make good on his threat. Men like him didn’t have to bother with empty threats. She sighed. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to pull your strings, sir. I have rules to follow and it’s above my pay grade to deviate from them.”

Leland’s cursing grew so imaginative that, in spite of herself, she was a little impressed. She’d have to remember a few of his choicest phrases for the next time a Spec Ops guy stepped out of line and was due for a butt chewing from her.

He wound down soon enough, though. Into the heavy silence, she said merely, “And Mr. Winston?”

“What?” he snapped irritably.

“Hurry, sir.”

Time ceased to have any meaning for Jeff. He was aware only of varying degrees of pain. Once his formidable self-control cracked, there was no putting that genie back in the bottle. The pain had gotten the best of him and no amount of self-discipline could give him the upper hand again. His bones felt as if they were being bent by degrees in vises. Which, in a more lucid moment, he wryly noted wasn’t that far from the truth.

He’d known from the first that this outcome was a possibility. But he hadn’t counted on the ambush in Ethiopia, nor upon being captured and thrown in prison for months before anyone found out he was even alive, let alone freed him.

The next time Gemma Jones said something might become a little uncomfortable, he was going to run away from the woman as fast and as far as he could and never look back.

With daylight came an apparent lessening of Jeff’s pain. Jennifer offered him a glass of water with a straw to sip on. He’d been sweating like crazy for hours; he had to be badly dehydrated by now. She dozed in a chair beside his bed for a while, but woke immediately when he moaned. Her eyes popped open in alarm as she braced for the screaming to resume.

“What’re you doing here?” he rasped.

“You had a rough night. I was trying to help. Although there’s precious little I can do without knowing what you’ve been taking.”

He frowned like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Your drug addiction,” she said impatiently. “I need to know what you were on so the doctors can tell me how to ease your symptoms.”

“Need my doc,” he muttered.

“Give me a full name and I’ll get him for you right now.”

Sharp intelligence abruptly shone from Jeff’s blue-on-blue gaze. “Not nice to take advantage of the sick guy.”

She frowned. “I’m not trying to trick you. I really need to know your supplier’s name. You might die if we don’t find out what you’re hooked on and help you come down off of it safely.”

He made a growling noise that might be a snort in a less torn-up throat. “Not. An addict.” His teeth clenched as a wave of pain clearly assaulted him. “Call Leland.”

“Stay with me, Jeff. I need more information.”

His eyes started to fog over. “You stay. With me. Please …”

Her heart broke a little at the entreaty in his voice. He sounded so utterly lonely. She lashed out in sudden, irrational anger. “Look at you. You’re a mess! You are an addict.”

“Got that wrong …” he gasped before his voice broke and the screaming began again.

It was midmorning when a motorboat pulled up at the dock visible from the house. Jeff was unconscious for the moment, and she happened to be in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee when she spotted the boat. Thank God. She’d asked for the strongest pain killers and sedatives in H.O.T. Watch’s infirmary to be sent over here immediately.

She was startled to recognize the tall form jumping to the dock. What was Brady Hathaway doing here in person? She didn’t have long to wait to find out. He strode through the front door, a backpack slung over one shoulder, a few minutes later. He’d made good time up the mountain. She was gratified to seeing him huffing.

“What’s up, Jenn?” he demanded.

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Where’s the wild man?”

“Asleep right now. And for God’s sake, keep your voice down. At all cost we don’t want to wake him up.”

“Gonna have to if Rich Boy wants the painkillers and sedatives I’ve got in my bag.”

She leaped for the backpack eagerly.

“Whoa there, sister. You should use them as a bribe to get him to cooperate in your debriefing.”

She laughed without humor. “Trust me. He’s in no condition to answer questions.”

“What are you talking—”

Jeff chose that moment to wake up, which meant he let out a banshee wail that sent Brady a foot straight up into the air. She was too exhausted to appreciate the humor of it. His face showing minor shock, Brady handed over the backpack. She rummaged in it frantically, as if she was the addict herself.

Meanwhile, he detailed, “My Ethiopian contact got back to me just before I left to come see you. Interesting report. He swears they did nothing to your boy. A guard tried to rough him up the night he arrived at the prison and Rich Boy supposedly killed him. But there are glaring discrepancies in that story. For example, the guard was garroted, but no murder weapon was anywhere in the room when the police arrived. And the prisoner was still handcuffed by one wrist to the table.”

She demanded, “How do you strangle someone with a table dangling from your wrist?”

“Good question,” Brady replied. “Apparently, the prison guards wouldn’t get near him after that. His first day with the other prisoners, Winston beat the crap out of a bunch of them, then refused to come out of his cell again the whole time he was in jail. My guy is adamant that no one tortured him. Says your boy gradually went from crazy to really crazy. My contact sounded genuinely relieved to have gotten rid of him.”

She poured out a handful of pills. Given his body mass, she figured she’d start with double the recommended dosage of both the sedatives and painkillers and see what those did for Jeff. She headed down the hall and Brady followed curiously.

Jeff had gone completely rigid in his bed, his body unnaturally arched off the mattress and statue-still. She rushed forward. “Jeff! Are you all right?” She knew it was a stupid question. But it was the first thing that popped out of her mouth in her panic.

He managed to open his eyes and seemed to struggle to focus on her voice. She spoke encouragingly as she picked up his water glass. “I’ve got painkillers for you, Jeff. I need you to swallow them. Can you do that for me?”

His entire body trembled with the effort, but he lifted his head off his pillow.

Brady jumped forward to support Jeff’s shoulders while she fed the pills to her patient. He swallowed the last one convulsively and she caught herself sagging in relief.

Frowning, Brady eased Jeff back to the mattress. “Man. He’s really dense.”

“As in stupid to have done this to himself?”

“No. As in unnaturally heavy. The guy weighs a ton.”

“Look at his arms and shoulders. His whole body’s that muscular. Of course he’s heavy.”

Brady shook his head. “I’ve carried my fair share of injured Spec Ops guys across my back before. I know how much muscular, fit men weigh. And I’m telling you something’s weird about this guy. He’s really, really heavy.”

She recalled Jeff landing on her during the gunfight. And the way the golf cart had groaned under his weight. Maybe there was something to what Brady was saying. “Well, I can tell you he’s the strongest guy I’ve ever seen. He ripped the combination lock right off the side of the garage down by the airfield.”

Brady glanced down at her patient. “Who is this guy?”

She threw up her hands. “That’s what I’ve been asking. Now you know why I’ve been so hot and bothered for you guys to dig up everything on his past few years. How did he go from Ivy League, spoiled rich kid to this?”

She stared down at the man in the bed. Sympathy for his plight shuddered through her. No matter what transgressions lurked in his past, no human being deserved to suffer like this.

She and Brady spent the rest of the morning on their respective phones and computers, pushing their staffs mercilessly for any and every thing they could find on one Jefferson Winston.

A little new information was forthcoming. Jeff had apparently experienced some sort of political awakening after graduate school. He worked on the campaign staffs of several politicians who were generally social liberals and foreign policy conservatives.

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