“So you’re working with McDonald?”
Santos sat back, crossing one long leg over the other. “I worked for her father for a very long time. When it became obvious she was in trouble, I came to her aid.”
Theo frowned. “How did I help her? I’ve never met her.”
Santos’s lip curled up in a vicious grin. “The doc is still working on the right mixture for him. It’s a little different for everyone. He’s proven to be stubborn when it comes to bending to another’s will.”
“So you cut him up?” She wanted to reach out and grab Theo’s hand. He looked so much like Case. His face had been almost identical, but now there would be no one who would ever mistake them again. Another crime to lay at Hope McDonald’s feet.
How many more scars did he bear? Did he even know why they were there? Or did he wake every morning and simply accept what he saw in the mirror?
“I was angry at the time,” Santos allowed. “He had strict instructions. He tried to lie, tried to say his comm unit wasn’t working and the last thing he’d understood was a kill order. The kill order was for your boyfriend. I was very explicit in my instructions concerning you. You were to be brought back with the hacker and taken with us. Yeah, I think he was hoping we would be so busy getting the hell out of there that we wouldn’t notice. Sometimes it helps that the poor fucker can’t remember much past a day or two.”
“Why would I lie?” Theo asked, his eyes tight. “Why would I go against direct orders?”
“Stop trying to remember and it won’t hurt so much, buddy.” Santos put a hand on Theo’s shoulder as if they were friends. “You know you’re not very good at thinking. It’s not your talent.”
“It is,” Mia countered. “You’re quite good at it, Theo. When you were a Navy SEAL you weren’t a grunt. You had to think your way out of tight situations.”
His face went hard. “I was never in the military. This has always been my home. Excuse me. I’m going to check with the pilot. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. Fucking mercenaries. Why Mother didn’t allow Victor to fly us I have no idea.”
He stood and strode toward the front of the plane, his hand briefly going to his head.
“You can’t get him that way.” Santos regarded her with curious eyes. “He’s been trained to think of certain things when the memories start to surface. First there’s the headache and then his brain goes to its safe place. He’s always been here, always had his brothers around him.”
“His true brothers will find him someday and then you’ll get a real taste of his family.” Mia didn’t mention that the day might come sooner than they thought.
If this plane was going to land in Sierra Leone, then they had no idea Case had laid a trap. She wasn’t about to give up that piece of information. Her man would need every conceivable advantage he could get because he was going to flip his shit when he woke up.
If he woke up.
What if they’d killed him?
“You just went pale,” Santos observed. “Are you just now realizing how precarious your position is? You’re going to be in a foreign country with no one but me to protect you. My partner can be a bit unstable at times. Maybe it’s best if you stick close to me.”
Eww. “No, I wasn’t worried about myself and don’t expect me to play the wounded doe. If you come at me expect to get your balls handed to you because I’m not about to trade my body for protection. So let’s call it what it is. Rape. You going to get rapey on me, Santos? Because if you do, you better kill me afterward. I won’t keep quiet and my family might be so happy to have me back alive and whole that they concentrate on me, but if I’m damaged in any way, they won’t stop hunting your ass down. Do I make myself clear?”
“As crystal.” He shrugged it off as though it was no big deal. “No romance then. Tell me something—are you involved with both Taggart and Kent?”
“Kent?”
He waved a hand. “Sorry, I believe you know the man as Ezra Fain. He’s a CIA agent. I recognized him because I worked briefly with him on an operation in Indonesia. Kent preferred to work alone. Mostly because he’s one of those idiots who tends to feel a bit ashamed of his crimes. He shouldn’t. He’s an excellent killer. Clean and precise. He was an assassin for a while before the Agency decided to see if he was smart enough to turn into a real field agent. Smart man, but he couldn’t quite stop that conscience of his.”