Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) (35 page)

Ryker paused, and Niko had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what he heard next.

“Jenna doesn’t know this, but I also saw Kai outside the house that night. He looked furious. Deadly cold.”

Niko swore.

“He’d left me a threatening message a few days before. He cursed me for sending assassins after him, then promised that if I did the same to his family, he’d make sure I didn’t survive. I have no idea what he was talking about. Someone had deleted the message from my phone. I came across it by accident while trying to retrieve another message, and immediately warned her father to get the family out. But it was too late.”

“Does she know it was Alvarez’s assassins who initiated the attack?” Rafe asked.

“Yes,” Ryker answered. “But she never showed the anger toward him that she did toward her brother. Still, she stopped mentioning Kai after the second session with the psychiatrist. I hoped she’d put her anger aside and was just after the truth, not vengeance.”

Niko shook his head and bent down to pick up the contents of Jenna’s toiletry kit. “You fucking misread that one, boss.” When he went to transfer the spilled items into the kit, he saw that the bottom of the kit had shifted, revealing a hidden compartment.

Niko lifted the fake bottom away. Inside was a small, rectangular plastic case. He thumbed open the clasp and shook out the contents.

Fuck.

He put his hand to his chest. He couldn’t breathe. It felt as if he’d just been stomped on by a pair of size fourteen boots.

Rafe glanced down at the two small objects on Niko’s palm and exhaled sharply. At first glance, a person might mistake the round wax caps for ear plugs, but these devices were meant to fit over a person’s back teeth.

Because they were fucking old-fashioned cyanide tablets. Also known as suicide pills. Bite down hard on them during interrogation, and you died before giving up your secrets.

There were two empty spaces in the container, meaning Jenna’s mouth was loaded.

“Ryker…do you have any reason to believe Jenna might not want to survive?” No wonder her “I love you” at the ravine had seemed more like good-bye. She’d let Alvarez’s men take her not just knowing she might not survive, but fucking
planning
on dying.

Ryker’s sigh sounded weary. “I don’t know. She appears to have adjusted well. Maybe a bit too focused and solitary, but she’s not the only operator like that.”

Rafe’s hand grabbed Niko’s wrist. Only then did Niko realize his fingers had closed around the caps like he would crush them.

“The psychiatrists give a high probability that she’ll have some sort of emotional breakdown in the future,” Ryker added. “But they can’t predict when. Is she bent on murder? On suicide? I can’t say. Why?”

Niko slowly let his hand open. “Because I just found a pair of cyanide tooth caps in her toiletry kit.”

The silence on the other end was frightening. Niko wondered if Ryker felt the same sense of betrayal. Of fury. Of crushing pain in his chest, like someone had performed open heart surgery on him without anesthesia.

But Ryker’s voice gave nothing away. “Whatever her intentions, it doesn’t change your mission. We need the chip and we need to know the truth. Get both Kai and Jenna out of there alive.”

“About that,” Rafe began. He looked a question at his brother and at Niko’s answering nod, took the call off speakerphone and walked back toward the bedroom.

Niko trusted Rafe to take care of what they needed to stage a rescue. His job was to get this damn leg ready to carry his full weight, at a run if he had to. He’d figure out how to deal with Jenna once she was safe.

#

Wednesday, Night

Alvarez’s Fortress, Ixtapa, Mexico

Jenna’s guard halted in front of a thick wooden door with heavy iron hinges. Torches in sconces to either side of the frame provided smokey light. For a moment Jenna wondered if they’d somehow traveled back to a medieval castle.

The man pulled a thick iron skeleton key out of his pocket, inserted it into the lock and threw his whole weight backward in order to pull open the door. With a swift motion he drew his knife from its sheath and sliced away her flexicuffs.

He could have just slit the connecting piece and left the bracelets on her wrists, but no, he hacked away the bracelets too, leaving her skin peppered with cuts.

Then he shoved her into the dark, foul-smelling room. She fell onto her stomach, her canteen digging painfully into her hip. The man placed one of the torches in a sconce inside the cell. “Enjoy your brother while he’s still alive,” he said in Spanish.

His laugh echoed in the room before the door slammed shut with a solid thud.

Jenna pushed to her hands and knees, unbuckled the canteen and let it fall away.

About two feet away, a man lay on the floor, wrapped in a thin, heavily stained blanket. Seeing him, something dark and ugly broke loose inside her.

“Kai, you bastard,” she screamed. She flew across the small space separating them and began pummeling his head and shoulders with her fists.

“Why?” Smack. “Why did you kill them? What did they ever do to you?” Smack, smack. “How could you do that to them? How?” Her voice broke on a sob and her hands dropped to her sides. “How could you betray us like that?” she whispered.

Kai groaned, a long, agonized sound of pain that reminded her too much of the attack. Part of her wanted to put her hands over her ears and block out the sound, but the wounded animal inside her said to enjoy Kai’s pain.

“Jen-shine?” he mumbled. The hoarse endearment was distorted, as if Kai’s lips couldn’t properly form the words.

“You don’t get to call me that!” she snarled.

“Am I dead?”

“Not yet, you bastard.” She fumbled with her belt buckle, releasing the hidden knife. The feel of the thin steel in her hand gave her courage. “Turn around.”

When all she got was another low moan from Kai, she moved around until she faced him, knife at the ready. “Why, Kai? Why did you tell the assassins to kill us?”

He looked up at her with amber eyes cloudy with pain. His face was so swollen and bloody she barely recognized him. “Jen-na. Sorry. So sorry. Didn’t mean…”

His eyes closed.

“You didn’t mean it?” she screamed. “They died because of you!” She pushed Kai over onto his back and raised the knife. With a howl of fury, she drove her hand toward his heart.

Her hand spasmed. The knife plunged into the dirt floor, sending a shockwave of pain reverberating through the bones in her arm.

Jenna released the knife and cradled her aching arm against her chest. She stared at Kai’s battered body. At the broad target of his chest. How had she missed?

Furious at herself, she yanked the knife out of the ground and raised it again.

Kai opened his eyes.

He stared at her knife and she swore the torn corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile. “I knew it. You’re an angel.” Calm acceptance shone through his pain. “Kill me, angel. Make the pain go away. Please. I’m so tired of hurting.”

Jenna shivered.

Don’t cry, Jen-shine. It was just a bad dream…

I won’t let those boys hurt you again…

That’s it. Keep pedaling. I’m so proud of you!

Kill them. Kill them all.

“No!” She drove the knife toward Kai’s heart again.

Her hand spasmed again. Only this time the knife fell from her numb fingers.

She skittered away from Kai until her back pressed against the wall. Stared at him in horror as her soul tore open.

Oh, God. She couldn’t kill him. He was her brother. No matter what he’d done, there’d been too many deaths. Too much pain. Her body began to shake with such violence, she thought she’d fly apart. She wrapped her arms around her torso, trying to hold herself together. But a fierce convulsion bowed her back and she collapsed forward, her forehead almost touching the floor.

She’d been lying to herself since the attack. Deep down inside, she still loved him.

“Mom, dad, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I can’t kill him. Can’t. C-can’t.”

Her tears soaked her cheeks, ran into her open mouth and into her throat, choking her. Her grief poured out of her in a long series of ululations that echoed in the tiny cell. She cried until the dirt underneath her face turned to mud. Until she was so lightheaded, all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep for weeks.

Until eventually her voice choked off.

In the ensuing silence, she heard the thud of boots hitting the corridor floor. Then shouting, muffled by the thick door.

No!
She jumped to her feet. Glanced at Kai. His expression was one of stark terror. He feared Alvarez’s men but not death by her hand? Why?

The key turned in the lock.
No time!

She stood to the left of the door, raised her knife, and waited.

Chapter 27

The door was flung open. Someone dove low into the room, catching Jenna off guard. Hands grabbed her around the knees and toppled her to the floor. Something hard slammed into the back of her head and she blacked out.

When she came to, she was hanging in the center of a small, dimly lit stone room. Her hands were chained above her head to an iron bar that was anchored by posts on either side of her. Her feet skimmed over a fist-sized drain in the floor.

And she was naked.

She struggled with a strength fueled by wild fear. But all her twisting and turning accomplished was scraped wrists and aching shoulders.

Her head sank onto her chest and she gulped in frantic lungfuls of air. She was going to die. She’d never get to hear Kai explain why he’d betrayed her family. She was never going to see Niko again.

Tears dripped onto the floor. For the first time in two years, she didn’t embrace her death as a reward for her hard journey.

How was she to know she’d been fooling herself? This love she still felt for Kai had been buried so deeply under her anger and grief it had been undetectable.

But somehow Niko had sensed the truth. He’d tried to turn her away from this path, but she wouldn’t listen.

Now she was trapped. Unable to hurt Kai. Unable to help him thanks to this latest in a long string of impetuous moves. Niko had been right. She didn’t have the head for this dangerous shadow world. When push came to shove, her emotions drove her.

And now her family might never be avenged.

The depth of her failure shattered her. Destroyed the last remnants of the tough, cold-hearted Jenna. Leaving her scared and drowning in remorse. And unsure who or what she was anymore.

She watched more tears disappear down the drain.

Somewhere behind her a key clicked in a lock. The door opened, letting in a breeze that chilled her skin. When the door closed, it sealed the fresh air outside, leaving her alone with an oppressive silence.

She sensed someone standing behind her, knew who it had to be, and wondered how long Alvarez intended to let the silence build.

It took every ounce of self control not to let her breathing speed up in fear. She rolled her bottom lip in and bit down on it to keep from whimpering. With each beat of her heart her nerves stretched tauter as she waited to feel a blow.

Yet the weapon Alvarez chose was speech.

“You have displeased me most deeply.” Alvarez’s voice thrummed with anger. “I need your brother alive, yet you attempted to kill him. What type of sisterly love is that?”

Jenna bit her tongue so she wouldn’t stammer out an apology.

There was an odd whistle of air, then a sharp sting of a whip against the bare flesh of her thighs.

Jenna’s hand convulsed on the chains overhead as her body arched away from the blow.

“Talk to me. Explain yourself. That room was monitored, so I know you are not mute.”

The whip sliced across her buttocks. More tears leaked out from between her tightly closed eyelids.

No. Push them away.
She would
not
show Alvarez any weakness.

“You were meant to be incentive to get your brother to talk. But if there’s bad blood between you, then you are useless. Give me a reason to spare your life. Tell me why you tried to kill your brother.”

Another whistle and the whip bit into her back with enough force that she tasted blood where her teeth had cut into her tongue. There wasn’t any reason not to tell the truth, so she gasped, “Because he was there that night. I heard him order your assassins to kill my family.”

Silence.

Then Alvarez laughed. Quietly at first, then with such great whoops, she imagined him slapping his knees in mirth.

Memories of that night still had the power to cut more deeply than this man’s whip, yet he found it funny? Her eyes popped open and she stood as upright as her chains allowed. She turned her head to glare at him over her right shoulder.

His face was alight with glee.

“Oh,” he choked out between chuckles, “this is a gift I never expected. The divine perfection of it!”

His mirth made her want to throttle him.

He sucked in a breath, then exhaled gustily. When he spoke, his words were pregnant with humor and his eyes as they met hers actually twinkled. “Your brother was not in the house that night,
chica
.”

She shook her head. “Yes, he was. I heard him. He said ‘Kill them.’ Then he laughed. And I saw him leave the house.” She bowed her head, barely able to swallow past the lump in her throat. Anguish sank its teeth into her heart, as sharp now as it had been two years ago.

Kai had betrayed them, yet she’d failed to kill him. What did that make her?

Failure. Coward.

She closed her eyes against a wave of self-loathing.

“No,
señorita
, that was a recording you heard. My men put it together from telephone conversations with your brother. I do not know who you saw sneaking away, but I assure you, he wasn’t there that night. He had already disappeared with the chip. My men hoped the recording would encourage your father to tell us where your brother was hiding. But your
padre
, he didn’t believe it was really your brother saying those things. He died without revealing where your brother had fled. He trusted your brother completely. Unlike you.”