HardWind (19 page)

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.

97

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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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“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
HardWind
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