The bathwater was soothingly hot on Zara’s tortured skin, and she just let Gino immerse her body in the heat with only a towel wrapped around her. Bellisia and Nonny washed her hair and rinsed it. When the water turned red from the dried blood, they pulled out the stopper, rinsed the tub and refilled it.
“I know why you’re so obsessed with water, Bellisia.” Zara offered her friend a tentative smile. She still wore the soaking wet towel, but it didn’t matter, it was coming off the moment Gino left the room. He wanted to make certain her bruised and aching buttocks could take sitting on the hard surface.
“Gino,” Nonny said, pouring authority into her voice. “Give us some privacy so we can get to work on this girl.”
Zara wanted to throw her arms around Nonny and hug her. For once, she didn’t want Gino close. She was desperate to talk to Bellisia. She would have to let Nonny do her swamp healing, and then she could talk freely.
“You okay with me leaving, princess?” Gino crouched down beside the tub. “Because if you’re not, I’ll risk the wrath of the women to stay with you.”
“It’s indecent,” Nonny said.
Something in her voice made Zara look up at her. Wyatt’s grandmother didn’t look shocked or at all uncomfortable with Gino in the bathroom while Zara was taking a bath. Her statement wasn’t her opinion, merely a ploy to allow her to get Gino out of the room. She seemed to know Bellisia wanted some time alone with Zara.
“Sorry, ma’am. You know I have the highest respect for you, but if Zara needs me, I’m not leaving.”
That made her feel good. Zara couldn’t help it. Something about Gino had her heart stuttering and butterflies winging their way through her stomach. There might have been more of a reaction other places, but she was ignoring that. She was naked in a bathtub, a towel wrapped around her for modesty, but it didn’t matter because he made her feel as if his entire focus was on her. He would stay, risking everyone’s wrath if she wanted him.
“I’ll have Bellisia or Nonny call you when I need to get out,” she assured. “Thank you, Gino. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And just so you know, I do trust you. One hundred percent.” That wasn’t about her heart, but her safety. She did trust him. How could she not? But Bellisia was her sister. It had always been Bellisia, Shylah and Zara. She had to talk her dilemma out with her first.
Gino leaned down and brushed a kiss across the top of her head. “Thank you, Zara, that means a lot to me.” He nodded toward Bellisia and Nonny. “Ladies.” He sauntered out.
Zara watched him go, appreciating the way his muscles rippled beneath the tight tee. When she turned her head, Bellisia was frowning at her. Nonny was all business, not giving her time to figure out why Bellisia had that particular look on her face. The older woman pinned Zara’s clean, wet hair up on top of her head and then poured a dark-colored liquid into the bath water.
“You’ll need to soak in that for a half an hour. Then you can rinse off and get out. I’ll make a paste for your feet and we’ll wrap them before you go to bed.”
Zara tried to wiggle her toes but stop when pain shot through her. She was uncertain she wanted paste and wraps on her feet while she slept, but she was willing to try anything in order to heal them. She wanted desperately to walk on her own so Gino wouldn’t think he had to carry her everywhere.
She’d never thought much about trying to attract a man. Whitney had made it clear before he sent her off to school that if she wasted her time looking at men, he’d pull her back to the compound fast. Leaving the compound made Bellisia and Shylah so proud of her, and she could contribute to the other women’s comfort with contraband and stories. It made her feel like a giving member of their group.
Nonny left the room after lighting an odd-smelling candle, leaving her with Bellisia. The two stared at each other and then both burst into tears, then laughter.
“Did you see Shylah before you left?” Bellisia asked.
Zara shook her head. “Whitney was very closemouthed about Shylah and what he had her doing, but I had a terrible feeling it had something to do with Cheng. He’s obsessed with the idea that Cheng was going to sell the GhostWalker program to other governments.”
Bellisia studied her face. “But you don’t think that.”
Zara drew her knees up and rested her chin on top of them. “No. I think Cheng wants his own army. We read about him in the files they compiled for us, but he’s far more than what’s in those reports. He’s far more ambitious. He reminds me a little of Whitney in that he believes he’s the smartest man in the room and that he can control lives. He wants that kind of power, just like Whitney does. Turning the GhostWalker program over to other governments doesn’t leave Cheng with the firepower he craves. He would want to keep it for himself, develop his own soldiers and send them out if others didn’t comply with whatever he wanted. He wants the world to fear him.”
“Cheng? Or Zhu?” Bellisia asked.
“Both. They share the same vision.” She chewed at her lip for a moment. “Cheng wants that recognition, but Zhu doesn’t care about being recognized. He prefers to remain in the shadows. I think he would have wanted the enhancements for himself.” A delicate shudder passed through Zara’s body. She was afraid to close her eyes and sleep. She knew Zhu would be there looking at her. Reminding her he was coming for her—and he would, she had no doubt of that. “He’s incredibly evil.”
“You’re safe here,” Bellisia said, as if reading her thoughts.
She shook her head. “I’m not, and as long as I’m here, no one else is safe either.”
“Whitney will give up. He let me stay. At first, he made a try for me, but then he just let the team keep me. I think if I left the safety of them, he might come after me, but …”
“He isn’t going to stop, Bellisia, neither of them will,” Zara said. “Whitney will keep coming for me. If I’m dead, he’ll come after my body.”
Bellisia sank back on her heels. “You have something he wants.”
Zara nodded. “He told me to steal all of Cheng’s data. His files. He has secrets on terrorist cells, locations, movements, all that sort of thing. More, he’s got dirt on governments, on agents, on presidents and their families. It’s his business to know things. All of that was in his files, on his computers.”
“And you have it.”
“Yes. Whitney knows I have it. I destroyed Cheng’s network, deleted everything so it would be impossible to recover it. I wouldn’t have done that without first acquiring what was in the computers, and Whitney knows that. He had the GhostWalker file Violet gave him.”
“Turn the data over to the team and Whitney won’t care about reacquiring you,” Bellisia said.
“You aren’t thinking it through,” Zara said gently. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about what information I have and what damage it could do if it is in the wrong hands. We have allies, Bellisia. They have agents in the field just like we do. If Whitney gets his hands on this material, he could blackmail our own allies. You and I both know, when it comes to politics, everyone is willing to sell everyone else down the river, and Whitney always wants something.”
“Leave out the things you think are potentially a threat,” Bellisia said.
Zara took a breath and let it out. “You have no idea the scope of this. I can’t leave out things. I downloaded everything. Thousands of files, a lifetime of compiling dirt on governments and individuals. There’s no way I could go through the files to determine what is safe to pass on and what isn’t. Bellisia, I don’t even know if I can actually get them out of my head, which makes me a huge target for everyone the moment it gets out I have this information.”
Bellisia scooted back to the wall and drew up her own knees. When they were girls, they’d learned to sit like that and tap out code to one another. “What you’re telling me without saying it is that what you’ve got could potentially start World War Three.”
“That’s about it.”
“Can you destroy it?”
Zara shook her head. “I can’t even get it out by myself. Whitney planted what is essentially a storage unit in my brain. It’s really an integrated circuit for the sole purpose of storage. It’s made from PEEK-carbon so it’s virtually undetectable. I’m an industrial spy. Mostly, Whitney wanted to know about the experiments in medical research he was interested in. He sent me in, I downloaded files and got out. No one ever suspected. I didn’t touch their equipment so it was impossible to trace me. The companies I stole from didn’t even know their research was taken.”
“You came home and Whitney removed the information from your head.”
She shrugged. “Just that easy, but I don’t know how. Then suddenly Violet decides to sell Whitney’s prized GhostWalker program to Cheng, and Whitney can’t stand it. He sends me in, but he wants Cheng’s entire network wiped clean. When the alarms started to go off, I was the only stranger on the premises. Of course Cheng suspects me. How could he not?”
There was bitterness in her voice and she didn’t try to hide it from Bellisia. Whitney was the only father figure the girls had. He was cold and unfeeling. He made it clear to all of them that they were expendable and to Zara in particular.
“Does Cheng know you have his information?”
Zara shook her head. “Nope. He has no way of knowing that. I wasn’t anywhere near his computers.” She rubbed her chin on her knees. “I have to figure out what the GhostWalkers would do with the information before I say anything.”
“They’re soldiers, Zara. They would turn it over to their commanding officer.”
“And he would move it up along the chain of command, right? Whitney has a lot of friends higher up that chain. He’d get it.”
“Maybe,” Bellisia conceded.
“I don’t know who to trust.”
“Ezekiel,” Bellisia said immediately. “You can trust him.”
“Are you saying he wouldn’t go up the chain of command? He was running the rescue.”
Bellisia’s gaze slid away. “I don’t know what he would do, but we have to tell him. I tell him everything. That’s the way it works between us. If I know it, then so does he.”
“Are you saying he tells you the covert missions he goes on?” Zara asked. She suspected that if she and Gino were together, in an actual relationship, he still wouldn’t be able to tell her when he went off on some missions.
“Well, no, but that’s different,” Bellisia hedged.
“So is this.” Zara didn’t know if she was still very hurt by Bellisia going to Ezekiel first or whether she was jealous because it was no longer Bellisia, Shylah and Zara. She only knew she was reluctant to tell Ezekiel, especially before she told Gino.
If she really was going into a relationship with Gino, if she trusted him with her heart, then she needed to trust him with this information. Still, she’d known Bellisia and trusted her all of her life. That didn’t mean that confidence extended to Ezekiel. Gino didn’t seem as if he was a by the book kind of soldier. Ezekiel did, even for a GhostWalker.
“No, it really isn’t,” Bellisia denied. “I wouldn’t be able to look my husband in the eye if I didn’t tell him about this.”
Zara’s heart jumped. It felt like a betrayal to her. She knew Bellisia, knew her well enough to know she’d never betray her, but it still felt that way. It wasn’t the three women any longer. It was Bellisia and Ezekiel first. Maybe that was the way relationships were between men and women. Zara didn’t know enough about them, but it felt as if she’d been abandoned and was alone. She didn’t know what she’d been looking for, but having Ezekiel be part of the equation wasn’t it.
“You just said Ezekiel wouldn’t tell you about a covert mission he was running. That’s what this is, Bellisia, my covert mission.”
“It’s not the same and you know it,” Bellisia denied. “You need help, and Zeke could help you. I have to tell him.”
She took a deep breath. “I think I have to tell Gino first, before I decide on anything else, including you telling your husband.”
There was a small silence. Zara lifted her gaze to her friend’s. She was frowning. “What’s up with you and Gino?”
Zara’s heart missed a beat. She shrugged.
“No, honey, you have to tell me. Gino is a cool guy. I can see the appeal for you. I really can. He’s hot as hell. Dangerous. Very protective. He certainly can look after you and make you feel safe, but he isn’t at all the kind of man you need.”
“Why do you say that? You have Ezekiel. He’s a soldier.”
“He’s a soldier who has evolved. Gino hasn’t, and he never will. No matter how much you want him to have moved into this century, he hasn’t. He will always feel his woman’s place is at home having his babies and sitting at his feet worshipping him. He’s intelligent, but he’s archaic. You’re off the charts intelligent and have so much to give to the world. You need to travel and give lectures, lead the way in artificial intelligence the way you’ve been doing. He wouldn’t want you to do that for one minute. He’s the type who would be possessive and probably jealous. He’d keep you under his thumb, and you’ve had that all your life.”
“You make him sound like he’d make a woman his prisoner.”
“He would, Zara. I know him. I know what he expects from his wife. He would never be happy with someone like you.”
Zara ducked her head to keep Bellisia from seeing that her assessment was shattering her. “You can’t know that.”
“I do know it. Absolutely I know it. This is your chance at freedom, and Gino would take that away from you as surely as if you were back in the compound. You might be happy for a year or two, but Zara, you’re made to set the world on fire and he won’t like it. You’d eventually fight him to get free. Men like Gino don’t give up their women.”
“He’s intelligent. I hate that you think I’m so much smarter, Bellisia. You’re selling him short.” There was a hint of belligerence in her voice, but she couldn’t get it out.
“That isn’t what I’m saying at all,” Bellisia corrected. “I’m saying he doesn’t want his woman out in the world. I can go out and fight with Ezekiel, and he believes in my abilities to help defend the triplets or Nonny. Gino would tuck you somewhere safe and expect you to hide with the triplets and Nonny.”
“Maybe that’s where I want to be.”
Bellisia shook her head. “I don’t think so, beautiful. You’re too smart to want only to be someone’s wife and the mother of his children. You want to make an impact on the world. That’s your true destiny, and everyone knows it but Whitney. He always wanted you to feel like you can’t make it on your own. You don’t want to trade him for Gino.”
“You’re not being very nice. Gino’s a good man.”
“That has nothing to do with it. You’ve got a great gift and you were born to change the world. You owe it to the world, but he won’t understand that. He would selfishly want to keep you to himself and make all your decisions for you as if you didn’t have a brain in your head. He’d insist you be his little submissive in the house and in the bedroom.”
“Bellisia, you can’t talk about him like that. There’s no way you know him that well.” Zara’s heart was dipping, skipping beats. Hurting. She didn’t want to owe the world her gift. She wanted her own little work space with no one around. She knew she was responsible for Bellisia thinking she wanted to set the world on fire. She’d lied since she’d first gone off to school. How could Bellisia and Shylah ever forgive her? She had wanted them to be proud of her, so she’d pretended to love what she did. Worse, she didn’t think having Gino make decisions when she didn’t want to sounded all that bad.
“Do you know that he comes from one of the wealthiest families in the world?” Bellisia leaned close to the tub. “I’m not talking millionaire here. Trap and Wyatt are wealthy, but they make strides in the medical world. They have patents. They contribute. What do you think he does with all that money? Absolutely nothing, Zara. It just grows and grows for him.”
Zara rubbed her temples. Her head was beginning to pound all over again. “You’re saying he has no interest in money. Is that so bad?”
“He has no interest in anything,” Bellisia countered.
Zara wanted to throw something. “When I was upset with you for not even seeing me when we came back, he defended you, Bellisia. You’re tearing him apart, and he defended you.”
Bellisia sighed. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you something different, but if I had to assess Gino’s character, I’d say he was more like Bolan Zhu than any of the GhostWalkers. I’m sorry if that hurts, but I need to be honest so you don’t make a very big mistake. I can see you’re already falling for him, but it’s just the fact that he rescued you. It could have been any of them.”
Zara knew that wasn’t the truth. She felt nothing when she was near any of the others. She hadn’t looked at them when they were trying to help Gino with her. She’d felt a connection with him right from the start and that connection had only grown the more time she spent with him, which was twenty-four seven.
“I need to get out of here. My butt is hurting right along with my head. I expect you to keep my confidence until I decide what to do. That means you can’t tell Ezekiel, Bellisia.”
“He’ll know I’m holding something back and this is big, Zara,” Bellisia said, reluctance in her voice and eyes. “I told you, I don’t hold things back from my husband.”
Panic welled up. “I would never have trusted you if I thought you’d betray me.” Zara caught at the edges of the tub as if she could haul herself out of the water. “We made a vow to one another. You. Me. Shylah.”
“I know, but if you trust me, you have to trust him. I can’t go to him and say I don’t trust him enough with this information. It’s too valuable and he knows me too well. He has a responsibility to his entire team and everyone who lives here, and so do I now.”
“What are you saying? You want me to leave because I bring a threat with me?” Her chest hurt and her lungs felt raw. She hadn’t thought anything could come between them. A man had. Would Gino come between Shylah and her if Shylah were to find her way to the Fontenot home? If that was the case, she didn’t want anything to do with men.
“No, of course not. I don’t know what I’m saying, only that I don’t like to keep things from my husband and this is huge.”
Zara caught at the plug in the tub, avoiding Bellisia’s eyes. All of a sudden, she felt very alone and lost. She thought when she got here, she would have Bellisia, but she didn’t. Bellisia’s loyalties had shifted to her husband and her husband’s team of GhostWalkers. She had to bide her time, get the virus capsules out of her and get gone fast.
“Zara,” Bellisia tried again.
Zara flashed her the fake smile she’d perfected over the years. The one she used when the girls gathered around her at night when she came back from one of her “freedom” trips. They always bought the smile because they wanted to believe. It made them happy to think that one of their own was out in the world, free and happy, when they were held prisoner back at the compound. At least one of them was free.
Bellisia took the wet towel and stood up to wring it out. Her gaze jumped to the lacerations all over her body. “Zara.” She breathed her name and went to her knees beside the tub. “Zeke told me, but I didn’t realize what they’d done to you.”
Zara took the clean towel and wrapped it around her body as best she could because she felt very exposed and vulnerable. She didn’t want Bellisia staring at her. Lifting her voice, she called out, hoping Gino was a man of his word and that he was in hearing distance. “Gino. I’m ready.” She had to end this with her friend before she started crying.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Bellisia said. “I swear, Zara, I’m only looking out for you.”
“I know. It’s my great mind everyone is always so concerned with, preserving it for the good of all mankind and all.” She went for humor, but it fell flat. She was very thankful the door to the bathroom opened and Gino stuck his head in.
“You called, princess?”
“I need to get out of here. My bum hurts.” She wished she could be more elegant and not mention her throbbing buttocks, but she really did hurt and it was all she could think of to get him to take her out of the situation.
Gino’s gaze jumped from her face to Bellisia’s, and then he shut down. His features were once again an expressionless mask. He was across the floor to her in two strides, crouching down to slide one arm under her knees and the other locking behind her back.
“Hold on, baby,” he whispered gently.
His voice turned her heart over. So caring. Not about her brain. Not about the storage unit in her brain either. Just her. She wrapped her hands around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder and let him lift her.
“Zara,” Bellisia said, her voice tight.
“She’s done,” Gino said before Zara could summon the will to answer, so she didn’t, grateful that he could see her, see that she couldn’t take one more moment of her best friend telling her what was good and right for her. Or telling her that her first priority was really her husband now. There was nothing wrong with those things, but they just weren’t helping when Zara felt so alone and in need of guidance. Not guidance about whether or not Gino Mazza was the man for her, but about the storage unit filled with data.
Gino carried her out of the bathroom and down the hall, Bellisia trailing after them. “Where are you taking her?” she asked.
“My room,” Gino said.
“That isn’t necessary, Gino. We’re no longer using Zeke’s room. Take her there.” There was a challenge to Bellisia’s voice and an authority Zara hadn’t given her permission to have.
That left Zara in a dilemma. Should she back her friend? If she didn’t, would Bellisia turn on her and tell Ezekiel even though she’d asked her not to? Her fingers dug into Gino’s shoulder and her teeth bit down on his neck. He didn’t slow down or break stride. He took her right into his bedroom and kicked the door closed behind him. There was a finality to the sound as the door slammed hard.
Zara lifted her head as he put her down in the center of his bed. Her eyes searched his. “She’s going to be very, very angry with you. She’ll tell Zeke you all but kidnapped me.”
“If that’s what it takes to stop the bullshit, I’m all for kidnapping. What in the hell was she saying that was upsetting you?”
She needed to get weight off her buttocks. She turned onto her side gingerly, still not taking her eyes from his face. “We were always so close. It was Shylah, Bellisia and me. We trusted one another implicitly, which believe me, where we were raised, that was huge to have. I guess I thought it would be the same here. I didn’t consider that it would be natural for her to include her husband.”
He didn’t blink. Those dark, intense eyes never left hers. “You mean you told her something in confidence and she indicated she would tell Zeke?”
Her heart did a strange stuttering that told her she was either afraid of him or very attracted—maybe both. His voice was strictly neutral, but she had the feeling he wasn’t happy.
“I’m just not as sure of her as I was.”
“Did you talk to her about Zhu?”
“A little.” She propped her head up on her hand. “Not about the things he did to me. She didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to talk about him. She wanted to know if I really thought Cheng and Zhu were brothers, and I do.”
“You need to talk about what he did, Zara.”
Now his voice was gentle and that got to her. She shook her head. “I want him to go away. Out of my mind. Just for a little while.”
“You going to tell me what you’re hiding from me?”
“I’m thinking about it. I’m afraid to. I don’t know the right thing to do.”
He sank down onto the mattress beside her. “You’re going to have to sit up for a few more minutes. I need to tame your hair. It’s going wild on us.”
She rolled over and sat up without thinking why it was so easy to do whatever he asked. Bellisia was so wrong about him. She couldn’t understand why Bellisia saw one thing and she saw something completely different in him.
He unpinned her hair, shifted around behind her and took the brush from the nightstand where he’d obviously put it waiting for her to get out of the bathtub. Bellisia didn’t see him—how thoughtful he was anticipating her needs. Zara scooted between his thighs, uncaring that she was only wearing a towel and her back was bare. His fingers skimmed over the stripes of bruises down her back.
“You’re healing fast,” he told her. “Nonny assures me that her concoction is going to facilitate healing even faster.”
“I hope so. I hate that you have to take care of me all the time, Gino. I’ll bet you weren’t aware of what you’d signed up for.”
“I knew exactly what I signed up for, Zara,” he contradicted. “Maybe I didn’t know the exact extent of what Zhu did, but I knew you were mine.”
The brush never stopped moving through her hair, and over her scalp. If he encountered a tangle, he patiently used a comb to smooth the knot before once again using the brush. She’d never had that kind of care before and it was almost too much. Almost. She kept quiet so he wouldn’t stop.
“Whatever it is you’re worried about, princess, I’m on your side. If you need me to take that off you, give it to me and let me figure it out.”
It was an offer, not an order. Gino might have been hurt earlier thinking she didn’t trust him, but once she’d said she did, he’d gotten over it fast. She wanted to let him decide what to do with the information she had. She couldn’t protect the world from Whitney. If he ended up with the information after what she was doing to try to keep it from him, that wouldn’t be on her.
“It would be so easy to hand the responsibility off to you, but I’m not certain it’s right. I haven’t lived outside the compound ever. I was allowed out to go to school, but I always knew I was watched. There was no real freedom. I didn’t make decisions for myself and certainly not moral ones. I followed Whitney’s dictates. If he said I had to steal information, I did it.”
She tried to tell him without stating it. She was a thief. She stole data and took it back to Whitney so he could leap out in front of everyone and be the best at everything.
“Zara, I asked for the responsibility. There’s a difference. You’re not handing me something I didn’t want. I’m just saying, if you don’t know who you can trust, take a look at the man standing with you. I promised you I wasn’t going anywhere and I haven’t. I’m with you for as long as you want me.”
He braided her hair and secured it with a small tie and then pulled her back until she was resting against his chest. His arms slid around her and held her to him. She rested her head on him, feeling secure. That was something no one else had ever given her.
“If I tell you something important, do you have to share it with the other GhostWalkers? Or take it up the chain of command?”
He nuzzled the top of her head. “I’m supposed to, but I don’t always do everything I’m supposed to do.”
“Could you give me your word of honor you just wouldn’t tell everyone without my permission?”
“I’d like to tell you yes, but honestly, princess? I tend to make up my own mind. I would tell you first what I’m going to do. I’d talk it over with you. I wouldn’t do anything until you understood I had your best interests in mind, but I can’t promise to get your permission.”
She sighed and rubbed her chin on her drawn-up knees. “That doesn’t help.”
“Would it help if I swore to you that I’d only do something if it was in your best interests? Any decision I make is to make your life easier. I can definitely promise you that. It won’t be to further my career or blindly follow the chain of command. I’m not that man, and just so you know, neither is Zeke.”
Zara looked over her shoulder at him. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What does your gut say? You have good instincts.”
She was terrified that Bellisia would tell Ezekiel before she told Gino. Gino was her choice. In her heart, she knew she’d already made up her mind about him. She might lie to herself and say she didn’t want a man, but she wanted him. For herself. She never felt alone when she was with him and she hated letting him down.
“It’s in my head.” She blurted it out. Her secret. “Whitney planted a carbon nanotube SSD in my brain. The storage unit is made of PEEK-carbon so it can’t be seen with X-ray, MRI or CT scans.”
“You downloaded all of Cheng’s files into that storage unit?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. Her eyes met his. He gave nothing away, his face a mask of indifference. She nodded.
“You’d need a battery. Power.”
She turned back so she could rest her head again, thankful he wasn’t jumping around the room at the disclosure, excited to know what she had in her head. “Movements of the body power it. Like some pacemakers.”
“What about a generator? You’d need something to send the power to the storage unit.”
She nodded. “From what I understand, it’s made of the PEEK-carbon as well and sits on a flat piece of PEEK-carbon right next to the storage unit so it’s undetectable as well.”
“Of course. Whitney is a master at coming up with technology that he needs.”
“He is,” she agreed. “Because he piggybacks on others’ technology. That’s why he always sent me out to those businesses involving research. He wanted what they had. Cheng collects information on people, really nasty information that allows him to blackmail them. If Whitney gets that material, he would use it for his own gain. If I could get it out of my head, I’d like to just destroy it all, but there’s also information on various terrorist cells, things that could save lives. If I give it to the government, all of the data would most likely will fall back into Whitney’s hands anyway and I haven’t saved anyone.”
“You can upload it, can you download it yourself?”
“I should be able to, I can always talk to machines, but he’s done something to block me once the information is in the unit. That prevents me from turning it over to someone else.”
“How does he get the information out?”
“I don’t know. I’m always asleep when he takes it out.”
“Under anesthesia?”
She shook her head. “He gives me an injection, I go to sleep fast and wake up to him telling me we’re done.”
“That’s why the soldier kept his gun pointed to a specific part of your brain. He was going to destroy the unit if they had to kill you, rather than letting the intelligence you’d gather fall into someone else’s hands.”
“He might still kill me.”
“I’m not okay with that, so between the two of us, we’ll figure it out. I’m not turning you over to anyone. I’ll see what I can come up with. I have to remove the capsules, maybe I can remove the storage unit at the same time.”
She shook her head. “He said that was permanent and even he couldn’t remove it without damaging my brain. I believed him. I can usually tell his lies from the truth. Most of us can because we’re heard them so often.”
“So, if that’s true, then we know he has a way to download the material without removing the SSD. If he can do it, so can we.”
“What are we going to do with the information if we extract it?”
“Not if. We have to extract it. As long as you have that information in your head, Whitney will keep coming after you. If anyone else finds out, and if Whitney can’t reacquire you, he’ll tell someone higher up to get the information from you, then we’ll have another huge problem on our hands. We can run, but eventually, they’ll catch up with us. We have to remove it, sooner rather than later.”
That made sense. The idea that Zhu might find out sent a tremor running through her body. “He’s going to come after me no matter what,” she whispered.
Gino was silent but his arms tightened around her. His chin nuzzled her head. “You’re thinking about Zhu not Whitney.”
She nodded. “He won’t let me go.”
“Maybe not, maybe he’s stupid or arrogant enough to think he can come to our home turf and steal you away from me, but he can’t. It isn’t going to happen, princess. I’m not leaving your side.”
“You’ll have to eventually. They’ll send you out on another rescue and then he’ll come. I know he will.” Her voice had begun to swing out of control, just like the rapid beating of her heart. She shoved her fist in her mouth and bit down hard.
“Zara, you’re getting worked up for nothing,” he objected, his voice a soothing sound that seemed to penetrate her worst nightmare and make her believe he could stop Zhu when no one else could. “We’ll take this one step at a time. Zhu is far down the list. I’ve got eyes on him. He leaves Shanghai, we’ll know it. In the meantime, let’s worry about removing the virus capsules. We’ll do that tomorrow.”
He sounded so utterly calm, so completely in control, that Zara was able to breathe deep and feel safe again. He would take care of things. More, he could be counted on. Step one sounded good to her.
“Are you certain there are two virus capsules? No more?”
“I don’t believe he put more than two in you, but we plan to study the virus and come up with an antidote. Bellisia said each virus is specific to the person Whitney implants it in, but we’ll compare the one he put in you to the one he put in her and see if they’re the same or close. That way, if another woman comes this way, we can inject her immediately with an antidote.”
She liked that. She liked to think that they were already thinking ahead to saving more of the women Whitney held prisoner. She nodded her head. “Thank you, Gino.”
“For what, beautiful? I haven’t done much.”
“You make me feel safe.” It was so much more than that. She took a breath and tried to tell him. He deserved that much from her. “You seem to see when no one else can get past my brain. Sometimes I hate the fact that I’m supposed to be so intelligent. Whitney made certain to point out how worthless to him I was, that my brain wasn’t all that …”
“Everyone knows Whitney is a self-centered ass, Zara,” Gino said.
She couldn’t help smiling. He was a self-centered ass. “An egotistical maniac, maybe, as well, but that’s not the point. While he was telling me how stupid and worthless I was, everyone else was telling me that I owed it to the world to get my brain out there and do something enormous.” She turned her head so she could look at him over her shoulder. “I’m not just a brain to you. I’m a person. So, thank you for seeing me.”
His smile was slow in coming, but when it did, her heart gave a funny flip, her stomach somersaulted and deep inside, her womb quivered. God, he was gorgeous when he smiled. When he wasn’t smiling he was compelling, hot, and intense, but when he smiled, there was never going to be a way she could say no to him.
“You’re welcome, Zara.” His hand cupped her chin, his thumb sliding over her bare skin. All the while his eyes looked into hers. “There’s never going to be a time when I won’t be able to see you. Remember that for me, will you?”
She nodded. “Kiss me.” She blurted her request out before she could stop herself, before she knew what she was going to ask, but it seemed to be something she was asking of him on a nightly basis now.
He didn’t hesitate, but then he never did. Gino was always decisive. He leaned down and took her mouth. He didn’t seem to care that her face was swollen and bruised, he looked right past that in just the same way he looked past her intellect that was supposed to be so superior but only added to her isolation.
He didn’t seem to mind that she was inexperienced in the kissing department. He took command instantly. She was fairly certain her entire body ignited at his touch. His lips were firm and cool and warmed hers until she was nearly liquid. His mouth was paradise and she let herself get lost there. He kissed like he did everything else—with absolute confidence.
Excitement coursed through her. She tried to follow his lead and then just didn’t care, letting him take her over because whenever she gave herself to him, however she did it, she always got more from him. His kisses were no different. He led her from gentle to rough. From tender to devouring her. She wanted to be devoured. It felt like worship and desire. And then it felt like passion and sin. She wanted that as well. She wanted everything he would give her.
He was the one who stopped first. He lifted his head a scant an inch from hers, his dark eyes searching hers. “We’re getting out of hand, princess. A little more and I’m going to have you straddling me. You’re not ready for that.”
“I am.” She was certain she was.
His smile was slow in coming again, but when it did, everything in her responded. “No, baby, I wish you were, but when you come to me, it isn’t going to be because you’re grateful or afraid. You’re going to want me for me. That means you have to get to know me. I’ve told you, I’m not a good man, and you’ll have to be able to live with that because once I take you, I’m not letting you go.”
His warning should have made her leery. He was echoing the things Bellisia had said to her, but instead, Zara liked him all the more for giving her a warning. She especially liked that if she was with him, he wanted her for all time. She couldn’t imagine having Gino for her own. She wasn’t gifted in the way Bellisia or Cayenne was. She would never be a soldier, and he was a first-class warrior.
“I can’t fight.” Again, she just blurted it out without thinking. “I mean I can, but I’m not really any good, not like Bellisia or any of the other women. If I had to defend someone, I could do it, but …” Now she was just babbling.
His hand swept over her head and down her back, following her thick braid. His touch was exquisitely gentle. “Zara, I don’t want a woman to fight by my side. I’m better out there in the dark, alone. I fight alone. It’s what I do best. If I had to worry that my woman was somewhere fighting off an army of men, I’d lose my fucking mind. That’s the truth. I’m not made the way some of the other men are.”
She knew that was what Bellisia had tried to warn her about. Bellisia wouldn’t be able to stand it if Ezekiel wanted her stashed somewhere safe while he went out to fight. Zara wasn’t Bellisia and she never would be. Whitney had detested her, calling her a coward, but she’d gone out each time he’d asked and stolen the data he needed. Bellisia and Shylah had pointed out to her over and over that she did everything Whitney required her to do, and he still called her a coward. She needed to know if her sisters had told her that out of love, or if it was the truth.
“Am I a coward because I hate pain and violence so much I don’t want to fight? I want a real answer, Gino, not a platitude.”
“No, of course not, Zara. I realize the world has changed into a place where everyone judges everyone else and holds them up to impossible standards. No one takes into account different personalities or things that happened in one’s past. If you need someone to take the brunt of the world for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some men prefer that trait in a woman.”
He wrapped her braid around his fist and stared down at the thick mass. “Sometimes, princess, people are cruel when they don’t mean to be. You’re not a coward. If you were a coward, you wouldn’t have gone out time after time and stole the information Whitney required. You certainly would have told Zhu about the SSD in your head. You would have given up Whitney and even the GhostWalkers. You didn’t, in spite of being terrified of pain. He inflicted the worst kind of pain on someone like you. Not just physical, but psychological as well. You didn’t break.”
She wanted to kiss him again, but before she could act on the impulse, a knock on the door prevented her from saying anything. She reached down and tugged at the blanket she should have been covering up with all along.
Wyatt’s grandmother stuck her head into the room. “I brought the poultices for her feet, Gino.”
“I’ll take them, Nonny.” Gino stirred behind her, gently moving her forward so he could get out from behind her.
“And you might put one of your shirts on her. Tomorrow, I’ll have the girls go into town and buy her a few thin’s. I’m the only one tall enough to give her clothes, and I’m pretty certain she doesn’t want my old lady clothes.” Nonny chuckled at her own joke.
“I thought her skin would heal faster without anything between it and the air.”
Nonny frowned and then nodded slowly. “If she doesn’t mind, it would be best.”
“I’ll keep everyone out.”
“You behave yourself, Gino,” Nonny cautioned. “That girl is an innocent.”
“I’ll protect her. Even from myself.”
“I believe you.” Nonny handed over the poultices, patted Zara on the head and went out, leaving them alone, the way Zara preferred.
Zara couldn’t help but think Nonny thought Gino was a good man.