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the marijuana for her glaucoma.
Ah hell.  Why didn t she tell you?
 I don t know. Her thumb massaged back and forth over his wrist.  I never asked, and now she s in a
nursing home totally out it. I still feel guilty. I think maybe I was taking out an unreasonable anger at my
mother for dying on the one woman who was still around trying to give me a semblance of maternal
love.
He couldn t get away with a bullshit auto-response for this one.  You were just a kid. You deserve to cut
yourself some slack.
 Thanks for trying to let me off the hook, but . . .
 But forgiving yourself is tougher.
 You re perceptive for a card-carrying member of the testosterone club.
She squeezed his fingers, and damn, what a time to realize she hadn t been sketching absent patterns
over his hand. She d been tracing the thin ridge of scar tissue along his wrist from when it had been
stomped back in Afghanistan. And the marks on his back? Astute Chloe wouldn t have missed those
either, a fact echoed by the glint of tears in her green eyes. He may have managed a bit of Captain
Sensitive after all, but talking about his POW time, tonight, with the reality of having failed Chuck pouring
salt on unhealed parts of his soul . . . Forgiving himself wasn t on the agenda tonight.
His BlackBerry buzzed, the sound louder than normal from vibrating against the piano.
Jimmy shot up from his seat beside her and snagged the messaging device like a much-needed lifeline in
shark-infested waters.  Sorry. I have to check this.
Chloe s eyes damn near bored new holes in his back. Was he using work to avoid a confrontation? Hell,
yeah. He might be Hotwire when it came to bar fights and strapping his ass into a risky new piece of
equipment for the DOD, but when it came to the touchy-feely emotional stuff? His Hotwire ways
short-circuited.
Jimmy cupped the BlackBerry in a death grip and scrolled through Nunez s message, blinked to be
certain he d read it correctly.
Gage, your undercover work paid off. We were able to break Kutros. We know where they re
keeping Chuck Tanaka.
Why couldn t a woman locate a decent knife when she needed one?
Marta yanked open another kitchenette drawer and shoved the spoons and spatulas from side to side.
An idiot must have outfitted this efficiency apartment attached to the barn-turned-holding-cell. How many
ladles did a person need? When she found out which one of her employees set this place up, she would
toss him or her into the same deep pit where she planned to bury airman Chuck.
Today was day seven, the end of the extra week she d allowed for prying information from him.
Apparently she d taken a few hours too long, given what happened with Kutros. She should have
aborted this mess earlier.
Hopefully Kutros would bleed out in surgery before he could unload everything he knew in exchange for
a deal. That inept idiot had been sucked in by an undercover agent, a tidbit she d learned thanks to the
bug she d planted on Kutros, a bug now in some hospital laundry bin. To make matters worse, that
traitorous bitch Anya had been lusting after the very same agent.
Marta hip-slammed the drawer closed and slumped back against the counter, nothing but four dull dinner
knives to show for her search. Hardly worth the effort. Not that she needed a blade.
She rubbed her thighs together against the cool efficiency of the tiny pistol strapped high on the inside of
her leg. However, shooting offered a certain detachment, and she preferred contact with her victim.
Tonight she needed the rush of power brought by an up close and personal kill.
She also needed to clean up here fast and go to ground. Except hiding cost money. Her organization was
stretched thin financially with her expansion into Turkey. Given how the agent had planted a military
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member in her club, authorities were onto her scheme of kidnapping service people. She definitely
needed to do something about that  fake hostage and the woman he cared about, the one who d been
taken as well. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]