Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,48

he’d failed at his own release. She’d known he was having performance issues, but her release had left her glowing. And knowing he’d put that pretty smile on her face had to be enough. Because Walker’s life was full of more goodbyes than he cared to remember, now one that hurt the most. A brown-eyed beauty named Persia Coltrane.

But she would survive; she was tough. Yet she wasn’t as tough as she’d wanted him to believe. Walker was sure he’d detected a shaky vulnerability to the hard edges she’d always led with. When she’d mentioned the Zapata brothers, he’d been more alarmed that she already knew about him and who he was.

But now that he’d had time to think, Walker worried what she’d suffered working alongside a depraved pig like Domingo Zapata. What had she said, that she’d infiltrated his lair, that desecrated patch of deep, dark woods north of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, from which no tender, living soul had ever returned?

That info-byte alone set Persia apart from most male operators Walker had worked with. But her infiltration into Brazil had to have happened more than two years ago. Hotrod knew that for sure. Domingo’s crime spree in America had been intercepted during the infamous Portland, Oregon, debacle. In Montana, if Walker remembered correctly. Hell, he even knew the former SEAL brothers who’d brought the rat bastard down and sent him to the federal Arctic prison. Chase, Kruze, and Pagan Sinclair. The Sin Boys. Also Sullivan’s men.

Not like their alliance with Sullivan was common knowledge. It wasn’t. Walker just happened to know the Sinclairs from his Navy time. The man they’d ended up working for, Senator McQueen Sullivan, had also worked a miracle by hooking Walker up with the Army’s Night Stalkers out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Senator from Texas was a straight-up, gun-slinging, shit-kicking cowboy. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and he knew people in all the right, low places.

But infiltrating Zapata’s lair had to have been a dirty, risky business, depending on what Persia had witnessed or done to maintain her cover. For sure, she’d said there’d been kids involved. Too many kids. She’d hated when they were hurt, which meant Domingo did the hurting. Yet Persia had held fast long enough to provide solid intel back to her CIA handler, which eventually, brought Domingo down.

Walker wondered how long that was. How many hours, days, months? What had she seen? What had she heard? Shit! What had her CIA handler been thinking—or sniffing—when he’d sent Persia into Brazil to do that job? Male and female gender roles aside, infiltrating Domingo was no work for a woman. Walker understood where that ache in his chest came from now. From Persia! From the suffering still bound up inside her. His soul had heard what his ears hadn’t been smart enough to detect. She was still hurting and… He should’ve known!

What an ass!

Pissed for having been more worried about himself than for what she’d endured, Walker rolled over in the water and stared at the shimmering blue below. Damn it, he’d missed what she’d been trying to tell him. She’d said she’d wished she could’ve killed Zapata—which he now knew meant she’d been angry or frightened enough to have considered jeopardizing her mission. But why? What specifically had made her desperate?

Of course, she’d also claimed she loved Julio Juarez, and Walker couldn’t blame her. Julio was one of those rare guys who never thought twice about dying for honor or country. But Orlando and Domingo were godless vampires who’d sucked the life out of their victims and their country.

Persia’s remorse-filled words rolled over Walker with every lap of what had been, until now, soothing ocean waves. ‘Still messes with my head. Makes it hard to remember why I was really there. You know. Part of me turns into a raging beast thinking about it. I wanted to kill anyone who touched them and save every last child. Only I couldn’t. I didn’t.’

“Shit,” Walker hissed, needing to call Persia, if only to hear her voice and tell her he was listening now. That he’d finally heard what she’d been trying to tell him,. That he knew the kind of pain she was in. That he was the biggest, dumbest ass on the planet for leaving her like he had, and that he was so damned sorry for not appreciating all she’d lived through. All she’d sacrificed for her country.

“You had enough?” Brimley’s question jerked Walker out of