He wanted a Nonny, but not the fighter. He half listened to Nonny engaging Draden in conversation while he stepped back out into the night, thinking of Zara Hightower and wondering what was happening to her. His gut knotted with dread. Reading the file on Cheng was like reading a man’s descent into paranoid madness. Cheng was rarely seen in public anymore, but if he was, he surrounded himself with bodyguards.
Gino didn’t quite understand men like Cheng. What was he doing it all for? Stockpiling a fortune he couldn’t take with him. Keeping to himself so he had no friends or family. Trading his government’s secrets as easily as he traded those from foreign countries. Loyal to no one, not even the country he was born and raised in. In the end, what was the point?
Zara was being tortured. He knew she was. Cheng would never lose that data and let a foreigner leave his country. After, he would have to kill her. Even if she never admitted she was spying for Whitney, or running a mission, Cheng would still have to kill her. How could he not? He couldn’t rely on her not talking about being detained and tortured. She might have the United States lodge a protest on her behalf. Cheng’s government would have no recourse but to investigate. No, he had to kill her.
How long did she have? He was suddenly anxious to get started. They were making one last night jump, and he wanted to get it over and get on the road. He was a doctor, a damn good surgeon, and he had a healing touch. That was always a shock to him because his hands killed. Not just killed outright either. Ciro had taught him that sometimes killing cleanly didn’t send the right message. If you wanted others to pay attention and fear you, killing cleanly didn’t get you what you wanted and you did it another, very ugly way.
He didn’t like inflicting pain on anyone, but he didn’t mind either. He could shut down. He had shut down when intruders had murdered his family one by one in front of him. When they shot him three times and left him for dead. Over money. It had all been over money. He detested that money more than anything else. They had broken in with the idea of taking Gino and ransoming him back to his parents. His parents and grandparents had refused to let him go. They wouldn’t step aside.
Gino remembered trying to push them aside and get around them, so no one would get hurt, but his father had quietly stopped him. He’d shaken his head and told the intruders very softly that he wasn’t giving up his son. That was a man taking care of his family. He hadn’t resisted, or tried to hurt the intruders, he’d simply said no.
Being nice didn’t work with some men. Being nice was equated with weakness. Gino had made certain he would never be equated with weak. Like Ciro, he learned to be strong and feared. He wanted to be feared so no one would touch the people he loved. So no one would ever try to do to his child what had been done to him. Money cost him his parents and he’d turned his back on it. That was ironic, because now he was far wealthier than his parents had ever been. What was more ironic was the fact that he’d shaped himself into a man to be feared so no one would touch those he loved—but he was so cold and dark no woman would ever love him for himself.
The sky was clear tonight, and the moon shone over the water. A light fog moved through the forest, giving the interior an eerie glow when the sky and water were both so clear. He stared into the trees, looking at those fingers of fog pointing toward him. He didn’t believe in signs or fate the way Nonny did. She saw signs in everything from rings around the moon to horny toads jumping across the road.
“We’re coming for you, princess,” he whispered to the night and hoped she heard him. Hoped she could hold on. “I’m coming for you and nothing will stop me. Not heaven. Not hell. I’m not leaving you in that place.” He’d already made up his mind she wasn’t working with Whitney, and that was plain stupidity. He wasn’t a stupid man. It didn’t matter. “I’m coming, baby, just hold on a little longer.”
That was another thing he had to consider as he made his way back to the small airfield where they’d go through the jump one more time before they packed their gear for the night. Zara Hightower was smart. Way the hell smart. Like Trap smart. She was used to being in the spotlight, and he didn’t want that life. He didn’t want any one of his family members to ever set themselves up as targets. That wouldn’t happen. She traveled the world, giving her talks. She might need that. Still …
“Won’t make a difference, princess,” he whispered again. “I’m coming for you. Just hang on.”
The jump went far smoother than he expected. They knew the feel of the power paragliders as they steered their chutes down to the rooftop. Each knew where he had to come down to avoid hitting the others. They were out of their gear and into formation in minutes, cameras disrupted, and then they went through the entire routine of finding the prisoner. Every movement was planned in advance including what to do if she wasn’t able to walk.
“Good job, everyone,” Ezekiel said. “Okay, everything is set with getting out of here and joining the work crew. We leave at twenty-four hundred hours. You have two and half hours to get everything ready and reset. Adjust your gear, get your chute repacked, do whatever you’re going to do, but be back here on time ready to kick ass and get our girl back. You can sleep on the plane, it’s a long journey. And remember, the minute you leave here, you are no longer soldiers, you’re construction workers.”
Gino inclined his head and went to work. He knew exactly what he was—and he was neither.
4
A
lready three days had gone by and no one had come looking for her, or if they had, Cheng had given a plausible explanation for her disappearance. Zara knew she was going to die in this hellhole. If Cheng didn’t have her killed, she wasn’t going to escape in time and the virus Whitney had planted in her would begin to make her sick. It wouldn’t be an easy death. Whitney had made that clear. She would die screaming, writhing in pain. She knew she wasn’t a good spy. She wasn’t stoic like some of the girls. She hated pain.
Whitney detested her. He had the moment he realized she was useless for his purposes. She’d been two years old the first time she was really hurt and screaming in pain. She saw the disgust on his face, and after that, he introduced her to pain, trying to build her tolerance. The other girls tried to shield her, but he was insistent. None of his attempts worked—and over the years there had been many. This was going to be bad.
Zhu had questioned her multiple times that first day. She had been pushed around a little, and that horrible little toad Heng Zhang had stared at her several times with an ugly grin that promised he was going to personally administer pain to her. There was no confessing. That would earn her a death sentence. She’d have to brace herself for more torture. The very idea made her sick.
They’d used chemicals on her the second day and her insides still were raw and shaky. The chemicals had raged through her body, blistering and burning with horrific consequences. She writhed in pain, screaming, trying to outrun her insides as they twisted and burned as if a blowtorch were cutting a wide path through her. Zhu had restrained her to keep her from hurting herself, and twice he’d wiped the sweat from her face with a cool cloth that only added to her misery because the moment he took it away, the flames felt hotter on her skin.
He’d stripped her clothing away, leaving her bare and vulnerable, afraid of being raped. Of being humiliated on top of being tortured. It was the longest day of her life, the questions coming at her until she was so confused she could barely hear him above the noise in her head. The drugs messed with her mind, so sometimes she didn’t know her own name.