Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(118)
They had long since made their way out of the gardens, winding their way up one of the mountainous paths that led into the secluded north end of the estate. A black-and-yellow bird darted through the branches high above, its high-pitched keen giving testimony to its annoyance at the disturbance on the trail below.
Eduardo stopped and turned to look directly into Jorge Espe?osa’s dark brown eyes.
“So you want to know what I think of her?”
“I do.”
Eduardo paused. “You know me and my first impressions.”
“Never wrong.”
El Chupacabra smiled. “I hold my own.”
“And your impression of the girl?” The tension in Jorge Espe?osa’s voice was palpable.
“As I said, I like her. And yes, I’d like to f*ck her. But we can’t always get what we want.”
Don Espe?osa laughed, a little too hard, as if any other assessment from Eduardo would have been too horrible to bear.
“I would, however, like to do some double-checking. Do you mind if I do some of my own digging into her background?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll want to search her things.”
“My people have already done that.”
“That’s them, not me.”
Stepping back slightly, Don Espe?osa studied Eduardo’s face. After a couple of seconds, he shrugged. “Do whatever you want, so long as it doesn’t involve laying a finger, or any other body part, on the girl. Like I said, she’s mine.”
Eduardo smiled his most disarming smile. “Agreed.”
The don turned and began leading him back down the trail toward the main part of the estate. High in the trees, El Chupacabra spotted, for the third time, two riflemen with sniper scopes.
Would the don have been so foolish as to try to give a signal to his snipers if Eduardo had pronounced the girl unworthy? What kind of hold had this strange girl established over the drug lord?
One thing was certain. He very much looked forward to finding out.
126
The gentle breeze kissed Jennifer’s cheek softly enough to nudge her toward wakefulness without startling her. She had almost forgotten how good it felt to wake up slowly.
Carried up on the breeze, the thick fragrance of Don Espe?osa’s gardens brought her back to the present. With a start, Jennifer sat bolt upright in the bed. What had happened? How had she gotten here?
She’d been at breakfast. Don Espe?osa had been there, introducing her to…to…
A shudder started at the base of her neck and amplified until she had to clench her fists to stop the shaking in her hands. Eduardo Montenegro. She’d barely touched his mind, not nearly as deeply as she’d linked with the many others on which she’d used her special ability, but what she’d felt there had been so horrible it had almost caused her to lose her way back. The memory was so intense she felt the bile rise up in her throat and would have vomited if she hadn’t shifted her thoughts.
Jennifer had delved into many minds, not the least of which was Don Espe?osa, the boss of the most violent and largest of the South American cartels. Although she had found it filled with cruelty, greed, and paranoia, there were parts of his mind that loved beauty, that longed for basic human affection, and in those parts Jennifer had comfortably roamed. Even playing on his greed and paranoia had presented little challenge to her abilities.
But touching Eduardo’s mind terrified her beyond words. It was a blackness in which unthinkable thoughts and feelings squirmed and wriggled, each tendril seeking to pull her deeper into the abyss. In that mind she had felt no hint of light.
Once again the memory overwhelmed her. This time she failed to shift her thoughts in time, the heaves emptying her partially digested breakfast onto the sheets spread across her legs.
“Perfect!” Jennifer muttered as she tossed the sheets into a pile, then headed for the bathroom to wash the acrid taste from her mouth and the filth from her body.
Under the splash of water hot enough to send waves of steam rising from her skin, Jennifer tried to calm herself. But this time her concentration failed her. She’d heard of people so deep in shock that they couldn’t stop shivering, but until now she’d only imagined what that was like. Now, standing in Turkish sauna-style steam, she found herself shaking like the last leaf on a maple tree, the cold autumn wind tugging and twisting at the tiny stem that connected her to reality.
In Arizona, on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the Hualapai Indians had built a stunning new attraction called The Skywalk. Balanced a mile above the Colorado River, tourists could walk across the massive glass walkway extending a full seventy feet beyond the canyon rim. Jennifer had never had the chance to visit it, to walk away from the edge with only a transparent layer between her small body and the canyon bottom a mile below. Now she felt as if she stood at its very center, not wanting to look, but with eyes drawn irresistibly toward the abyss.
Jennifer turned off the water, walked out of the snail shower, and wrapped herself in a thick white towel. If anything, she felt colder now than when she had stepped in to warm up, the tremors in her hands having migrated into her core. She considered climbing back into bed, piling the covers atop herself as she curled into a fetal ball. But the thought of the mess in the sheets killed that idea.
What she needed was something only the Second Ship could provide, that sweet sense of well-being she had experienced on the alien couch. Only now she’d gotten herself into a state where any memory threatened to pull the wrong one. She couldn’t bear that again. Not now. Not ever.