“What aren’t you wanting to tell me, Jordan?” The fear was gone. There was an edge of steel in her voice now, a determination he didn’t particularly want to hear.
“Just lie here with me for a while, Tey,” he sighed. “Let me just hold you for a minute.”
He didn’t want to do this to her. Telling her Ascarti was still alive would be nearly as bad as telling her Sorrel himself had risen from the grave.
“Senator Stanton has been on the phone with Elite Ops Command,” she said, her voice quiet as she spoke of the shadowed group that governed the private multinational group they had been a part of. “He’s trying to get a team out here to back you.”
Jordan shook his head. “We have the backup team, Tehya. I don’t need, nor do I want an Elite Ops team on this.”
Hell, this was just what he needed, having his plans hijacked by a team that would do nothing more than clutter up the protection he’d placed around Tehya.
“Perhaps you should talk to him then,” she suggested, the noncommittal tone of her voice causing him to wince.
That was the tone she adopted when she knew he wasn’t telling her everything. When she knew he had one of his backup plans in progress and hadn’t told her or the team.
“Perhaps,” he answered as he frowned up at the ceiling. “The thing about the senator is that if I tell him to pull back, then, like you, he’s going to know there’s more going on than he’s aware of. And the senator being the senator, he is going to apprise the committee. Then they’re going to get their heads together and attempt to lay insurance that their ass is covered, forgetting in the process that I’m rather good at covering all our asses.”
She was silent for long moments before he felt her breath whisper over his chest.
“Tell me who you saw, Jordan.”
Keeping it from her wasn’t fair. She deserved to know, but hell if he wanted to see the shadows in her eyes after he told her.
“Jordan?” Tension filled the room, as did the memory of the girl he had met eight years before.
Eyes too big for her pale face. Hair that had been darkened from its natural color. And in those eyes, he had seen the fear, the courage, and the hopelessness she had begun feeling.
“It was Ascarti, Tehya. It was Gregor Ascarti.”
CHAPTER 18
Gregor Ascarti.
He was a child’s bogeyman. He was the voice from the dark whispering her name with vicious amusement.
Come out, come out wherever you are, little girl. Daddy’s waiting. But first Uncle Gregor gets a sweet taste of you … and then laughter. That evil, demonic sound that she remembered echoing through her head as Boyd covered her mouth with his large hand, covered her young body with his own, and fought to protect her the only way he knew how.
The night they had been forced to run, they had nearly been caught. Tehya had been only twelve, gangly, always nervous, always certain the bogeyman was going to catch up with her.
That night, he had caught up with her, but Boyd had protected her. Less than three months later, Boyd had been dead, too.
Gregor was supposed to be dead.
For too long she had lived under the illusion of safety. And she was tired of the illusion. The weariness clawed at her, dragging her down, and reminding her, always reminding her like a sadistic whisper of evil in her head, that it would never be over. That she would never be free. That loving Jordan was the same as signing his death warrant.
She’d felt this in Aruba. That heavy, panicked uncertainty. The knowledge that either freedom or death was just a heartbeat away.
“Answers aren’t going to pop out of the shrubbery.” Jordan stepped into the bedroom, his expression a dark mix of both hunger and chilling danger.
He was a hunter, and he’d perfected the hunt. He was waiting, patient, composed, giving his prey the perfect opportunity and the time needed to make their move.
But the prey was cunning, it was evil, and it had taken the lives of other strong men, men born to the hunt. Men who had thought they could protect her.
Slowly, the sage green coverings slid over the windows, enclosing them in a dimmer, sun-dappled room rather than the previous heated warmth that had spilled in.
“Have you learned anything?” She knew the others, Noah, Micah, Travis, John, and Nik were out plotting Gregor Ascarti’s downfall.