Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,86

she believed in him; he could read it in her eyes. Yet he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. She knew he’d lied, yet she wasn’t angry? That alone didn’t compute. Most women, like What’s-Her-Name, his ex, would’ve been hysterical drama queens if they’d awakened to find the guy beside them was gone.

But Persia had been sensible and firm. She’d read his trial transcript, too. Why? Who the hell was she? On the surface, it was one twisted, ugly story of cold-blooded murder. But most of it had been fiction invented by NCIS and the Navy JAG. So why was she here saving his sorry ass, especially after the way he’d treated her? When even the FBI was after him? And now the damned International Criminal Court…

Yet she’d called him sugar, like she actually liked him or something. Him. The man the Navy had condemned to prison, then disavowed instead of making sure he served time behind bars. Did she care that no one wanted him, not even the country he’d given his soul for? And if she knew all that, why didn’t it matter to her? Or was this all too good to be true? It did feel like a dream, him being here instead of back there.

In the long run, he was too weak to do anything that would change his ever-growing legal nightmare. More than anything, well, except for Persia, he needed enough downtime to recoup his energy. Then he needed to find his damned bag with his ammo and his cash. His pistols and his yacht. Man, he’d lost everything.

“Hey,” she murmured from where she was standing at the half-open door with a bottled sports drink in her hand. “Soup’s ready, but I thought you’d like something to drink first. You’ll need it to take these pills, a good strong antibiotic and four ibuprofens. You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

“Nope.” He had to know. “Why are you doing this?”

That question drew her into the room. Closing the door, she sat at the edge of the white, plastic shower chair and handed him the drink. “Take these first, then we’ll talk,” she ordered sweetly, her other palm extended with several pills in the center of it.

His arm felt heavy when he reached for the pills and the bottle, but, oh well. Tilting his head back, Walker tossed the meds down his throat, then emptied the sports drink. It was ice cold and felt good going down. When he finished, he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and asked, “Why do you still call me Hotrod?”

“Would you rather I call you Walker?”

“That’s my name.”

“Okay then. Walker Judge. Why were you incarcerated at the ICC? How’d you get here to the Netherlands all the way from Florida? You mentioned a yacht, where is it?”

He stretched, needing to see more of her. “I have no idea. But one thing at a time. For starters, I was in Minas Gerais the same time you were, and Agent Juarez is a damned good friend of mine. Our helo went down off the northern coast of Brazil, where he and I took out a dozen or so Matryoshka Dolls. You know, those blood thirsty Russian assassins. But when the Army Night Stalkers came to rescue us, I split.”

He let that settle. As he expected, she blinked those beautiful browns, while absorbing the minute intricacies behind his revelation. That was one of her tells, blinking. “I wasn’t aware the Dolls were active in Brazil.”

“They weren’t until Orlando Zapata decided to trade one of his gold mines for three Russian ICBMs. That’s why the Dolls showed. They must’ve known about the transaction, then tried to sabotage the deal. But Agent Juarez got to Oz and the Russians first. By the time the Dolls arrived, everyone was dead, and the missiles were leaking radiation. The Dolls set explosive charges to detonate the nukes, but Agent Juarez took the Dolls out before they could blow Minas Gerais off the map.”

“They would’ve killed thousands if they’d detonated those ICBMs,” Persia breathed.

It was good knowing she was up to speed on the latest terrorist threat out of old Mother Russia. The Matryoshka Dolls, so named because so many double and triple agents comprised their ranks, were one of the cruelest mobs on the planet today.

Planting her elbows on her knees, she cupped her chin in her palm. “I know Agent Juarez. I was there when he ended Domingo Zapata. He’s a good man. I watched