Authors: Charlotte Boyett-Compo
lips puckered for a moment then smoothed out as though she’d blown him a kiss.
“Oh man,” Dáire said. He felt like he’d been slammed in the gut with a ball-peen
hammer. His legs were rubbery and he moved back, slumped into the seat of the
wheelchair and stared at the slumbering face of his child, his hands tight on the chair
arms. The tears that had formed were now trickling down his face.
She looked like a little angel lying there, he thought. He was suddenly filled with an
overpowering amount of protectiveness and a soul-scorching love that blindsided him
out of nowhere. His heart actually ached as he looked at her.
“Ready to go back now?” Melissa asked from the doorway.
“Just a bit longer,” he pleaded. He was trying to memorize her face, caught up in
just watching her breathe, her small hands bracketing her face, little fingers curled
toward her palm. He wanted desperately to pick her up, hold her and have her smile
once more.
He stared at her for a few minutes more then told Melissa he was ready. As she
rolled him out of the room, he put a hand to his face—covering his eyes—and gave in to
the overwhelming emotions rocketing through him.
It was Melissa’s lagging footsteps that warned him something was wrong. He
lowered his hand, raised his head and saw the two steely-eyed men coming toward
them down the corridor.
“May I help you?” Melissa asked. She had stopped pushing the wheelchair.
“We’ll take him from here,” one of the men—dressed in a black suit with a
suspicious bulge beneath his left arm—told her.
“What?” Melissa managed to say before the men converged on her. She gasped,
stumbling back from the wheelchair.
“Don’t hurt her!” Dáire warned.
The tallest of the two men had reached Melissa and his hand shot toward her. She
backed up again but the needle he carried jammed into her shoulder and she went
down without another sound.
Dáire started to get up but fiery pain was driven into his neck. He slapped his hand
over the sting as the lights overhead dimmed and went out and he sagged forward
unconscious.
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Chapter Eleven
He was swimming up through layers of white fog that clouded his mind and left a
taste of burnt sugar in his mouth. It was all he could do to force his eyes open, and
when he finally accomplished that feat, he had no idea where he was. Turning his head
took a tremendous amount of energy and as he took in the open window—white lace
curtains billowing inward on a soft breeze—he got a whiff of honeysuckle wafting into
the room from beyond the casement window. Bright sunbeams cascaded in on a wide
shaft of light upon which tiny dust motes floated.
His head was hurting again and he tried to lift his hand to his temple but his arm
wouldn’t move. He felt something cold around his wrist, hindering movement. Lifting
his head almost cost him his consciousness, but in that brief moment, he’d seen the
handcuff circling his wrist and knew his other wrist was restrained in the same way—
locked to the raised railing of the hospital bed in which he was confined. He was lying
on his back, handcuffed to a bed, and fury was building in his heart but he would not
give Gentry—and he knew damned well it was her—the satisfaction of yelling, of
yanking against his bonds, of venting his rage. He lay there quietly with the supreme
assurance that he was being watched on a closed-circuit monitor and the bitch knew he
was awake.
The nurse who came in half an hour later was middle-aged and pleasingly plump.
Her graying brown hair was wispy fine, her eyes a deep charcoal gray and her
expressionless face devoid of any makeup. She glanced briefly at him before turning her
full attention to his left arm. Her hands were cool as she touched the underside of his
forearm and he realized there was an IV catheter in that arm when she put a hand in
her pocket and produced a syringe.
“What the hell are you giving me?” he demanded.
“I’m flushing your catheter, Mr. Cronin.” She injected the saline solution into the
cannula then put the empty syringe in her pocket.
He knew damned well she was preparing to give him some form of medication, but
he refused to ask again for he knew his question wouldn’t be answered. When she
withdrew a second syringe from her pocket, he turned his head away from her, staring
up at the ceiling. Whatever she injected into the underside of his arm hurt like hell but
he lay there unflinching, a muscle working in his jaw. She must have known the drug
was painful for she went slowly, easing the med into his vein. As the drug spread up
his arm, he felt a lassitude that completely took him over.
“If you need anything, all you have to do is ask,” she said as she pocketed the
second syringe. “Someone will come in to check on you.”
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As quietly as she had entered his room, she left just as silently. He watched her go
with the room undulating around him as though he were beneath the water in a deep
pool. His hip still hurt as though he’d taken a hard fall and he was tired, but it was the
waves distorting his vision that worried him more than the minor pain and weakness
that came from the bone marrow donation.
He thought he could taste sour cherries and there was a slight burning along the
soft tissue of his mouth. The room was canting off to one side—playing hell with his
equilibrium—so he closed his eyelids and lay there feeling the world whirling around
and around him, bright streaks of light spiraling across his closed lids.
He must have slept, for when he next opened his eyes, his room was dark. The
window was still open but a cooler breeze was flowing from the casement and bringing
with it the hint of softly falling rain. The honeysuckle scent was even more pronounced
with the dampness. Beyond the windows, he could hear night insects chirping to one
another. He also thought he heard the soft wash of water to shore but there was a faint
buzzing in his ears so he couldn’t be sure.
Drawing his knees up, he managed to kick off the covers and was a bit surprised to
see he was wearing cotton pajama bottoms to go with the soft T-shirt stretched across
his chest. The material of the top and bottoms looked white in the faint sky glow
coming in from the window. Lying there with his knees crooked—unable to do
anything more than shift his aching rump against the cool sheets—he pulled uselessly
against his restraints. There was little give and he sighed.
It was her perfume that alerted him to her presence in the room with him even
though he hadn’t heard her enter or could not make out her form in the darkness. She
always seemed to bathe in the musky scent and the overpowering strength of it added
to the misery of his throbbing head.
“Somebody ought to buy you a perfume that doesn’t reek,” he said. “You stink.”
She moved into sight and he flinched, not realizing she was as close to him as the
side of his bed. Leaning her elbows on the bed railing, she stared down at him. “I don’t
believe you are in any position to anger me, Dáire,” she said softly. “I hold the lives of
those you love in the palm of my hand.” He saw the whiteness of her smile. “It would
be a pity if I opened that hand and let the ones you care about drop through the cracks,
now wouldn’t it?”
The threat was there and he recognized it for what it was. He would have to tread
carefully with her, for when her voice took on that soft, gentle tone it was then when
she was the most lethal.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“In the Caribbean,” she replied. “You don’t need to know exactly where. I doubt
you’ll be returning for a second visit.”
Her words chilled him. He could feel her fury lashing out at him from the depths of
her black soul. He was at her mercy and she was a woman to whom mercy meant little.
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“I allowed you to do your fatherly duty and now it is time you returned to the
fold,” she said in a conversational tone. “I am told it will be at least a couple of weeks
before you can safely and comfortably take on a new assignment so until then, you’ll be
my guest here at Sinavar.”
The name drove through him like a sharp spear. The compound was well-known
throughout The Cumberland Group. It was a place you didn’t want to be remanded
and from which few operatives ever returned intact. It was an exacting punishment for
men who had screwed up or whose loyalty had been questioned. He should have
known that would be where she would take him.
“How’s your headache?” she asked.
“It’s all right,” he muttered.
“You’re lying,” she stated and pushed away from the bed. “Waverly?”
The nurse who had administered his meds earlier came silently into the room. “Yes,
Miss Gentry?”
“How close is he to his next dosage?”
“I administered an injection almost four hours ago while he slept. He’s due for one
shortly.”
The hair stood up on Dáire’s arms. He had no idea what kind of medication he’d
been given, but just knowing it had been pumped into his veins as he slept sent tremors
through him.
“Why don’t you go on ahead and prepare his next injection,” Gentry said. “I don’t
like the thought of him suffering.”
He frowned. “Is that what you’re giving me? A painkiller?”
“A very potent painkiller,” his boss agreed. “It’s called tenerse.”
He’d never heard of the drug. “I don’t need—”
“And it is highly addictive.”
She let the words drop like a sledgehammer to concrete and the vibrations of them
speared through Dáire’s brain. He stared at her—her intention clear in the dark gray
eyes aimed at him—and he lost his ability to speak. He simply stared at her, his heart
pounding in his ears.
“You surprise me, Cronin,” she said, folding her arms over the breast of her
expensive gray suit. “Aren’t you going to curse me? At the very least I expected a wild
attempt to break free of your fetters so you could get your hands around my throat.”
“Why are you doing this?” he heard himself ask, and winced at the tone of hurt that
invaded his words.
“I shouldn’t have to explain it to you, Dáire,” she replied. “You are being
punished.” A frosty smile tugged at her bright red lips. “Perhaps next time I call, you
won’t rip the phone out of the wall and you’ll think twice about throwing your cell
phone into the toilet.” Her smile became deadly. “And just so you know? My people
were aware of where you were every minute of every day you were in Pensacola. You
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might have been aware of any cars behind you, but did you think to look above you?
It’s so much easier to follow a target from the cockpit of a Bell Jet Ranger.”
Dáire closed his eyes and turned his head away from the brittle glare that had
fashioned itself on Gentry’s carefully made-up face.
She unfolded her arms and reached down to smooth a lock of hair from his
forehead. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “Waverly will be in every four
hours to give you the tenerse. In the meantime, she’ll also be in a bit later to hang an IV
so we can give you nourishment. At that time, she’ll also catheterize you. We wouldn’t
want you to piss on the bed. Whether or not you will eventually require a feeding tube
depends on how well you behave.”
“You’re going to make this as hard for me as you can, aren’t you?” he asked softly.
“Yes, I am,” Gentry answered. “I’m going to teach you a lesson I don’t believe you
will ever forget.”
He could not look at her. He didn’t want to see the gloating look on her face and he
wasn’t about to plead with her not to do what she had already set into motion. She
intended for him to suffer because he had dared to defy her. It went deeper than not
answering a phone or pitching one into the commode.
Waverly returned and Dáire could feel her attaching tubing to the cannula in his
arm. He opened his eyes and stared at the wall.
“Tenerse is an interesting drug our group discovered about four years ago,” Gentry
said. “Mixed with other liquids, it takes on different properties. Added to water—as the
solution you are about to receive has been—it can be a very powerful and potent
sedative as well as a hangover cure if administered in a very small amount. If you slip a
few milligrams into a glass of ale, for instance, it causes severe and irrational anger in
the recipient. Mixed in wine, it produces stupor, hallucinations with a very unpleasant
ringing in the ears, I’m told. Added to mead in large quantities, it has been known to
cause madness. By itself, it is a strong soporific that induces deep sleep.”
The brutal stinging he’d experienced before spread up his forearm and into his
shoulder, but almost immediately he felt the lassitude, the velvet softness that a strong
narcotic could bring.
“That cherry taste you have in your mouth now is normal,” Gentry continued. “The
only time you won’t experience that taste is if the tenerse is mixed with milk. Do you
remember that night on the
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when we shared such a savage encounter?”
He turned his head so he could look at her.
Gentry smiled. “Milk laced with tenerse produces the most devastating effect on a