Hush (43 page)

S
urprised?” Jennifer asked, cocking her hip and readjusting her hold on an Uzi.

Zak stared at the woman's vaguely familiar face, which didn't go with the
very
familiar voice. She'd been the “guy” standing beside Piñero, the one who'd convinced the soldiers to drop their weapons. The only thing familiar about her was her voice.

“What?” Zak asked blankly, incapable of wrapping his mind around the fact that he was talking to a woman he thought he'd buried two years ago.

Dressed in camouflage pants and shirt, an Uzi strapped across her chest, a KA-BAR knife in an ankle holster—Jennifer just didn't fit. He was in another fucking dimension. Whereas once she'd been tall and slender, the sixty-plus pounds she'd packed on distorted her once-willowy frame. But it wasn't just the weight gain that had changed her features so as to be unrecognizable; it was also the drastic plastic surgery that had thrown him off. She was a grotesque, distorted Angelina Jolie impersonator.

Brows, nose, cheekbones. He tried to superimpose his beautiful and elegant Jen, with her small delicate features
and slender body, onto the bloated, altered woman before him. “I buried you.”

Jennifer's laughter was harsh. She tossed a long, greasy black braid over her shoulder. “Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, Zakary.”

No shit. “I went to bring your body home.” Zak's chest ached at the bitter memory. “We buried an empty casket because there wasn't enough of you to take home.” Two years of soul-eating guilt that he hadn't been able to save her, even from herself. Two fucking years of blaming himself for what had happened to her. Her death had colored his world.

“I must admit, faking my death in Haiti was a little complicated. But nothing a few thousand American couldn't expedite.”

Gunfire erupted beyond the trees, but Zak kept his entire attention on her. “Why?”

“I was bored, bored,
bored
, Zakary.” She took off her cap, keeping the weapon pointed at his chest. He didn't doubt for a second that she'd shoot him right there and not bat an eyelash. Despite the sultry heat, his skin felt cold and his gut twisted with impatience and revulsion.

“I thought you'd be much more exciting than you turned out to be. You told me no a lot. I don't like being dictated to. Marriage wasn't working. I think you knew that early on. But you're so fucking bullheaded, so sure you're always right, you kept on trying and trying and fucking
trying.
”

“We'd made a commitment.” Jesus. He had to get Gideon on that chopper—“I believed if we worked at
it, we could make it work. I did my best to make you happy.” And it had never been enough.

“Well it didn't, and I wasn't. You fell out of love with me before we even got married, didn't you? Yeah. I knew you did. But you were fool enough to hang on, flogging a dead horse, for six interminable years.” She started as a troupial erupted out of a nearby tree, but even though she flinched at the sound and movement, her weapon was steady as she insisted he backtrack. “It was time to move on. I had other things to do, other places to go.” She caressed her Uzi as if it were a pet.

He heard another series of rapid retorts of automatic gunfire beyond the trees, and the
whop-whop-whop
of the helicopter over the canopy. Sweat rolled down his temple. Gideon's thready pulse beat right over the bandage on his own bullet wound. He adjusted his brother's weight; the urge to turn his back on Jennifer and run like hell for the chopper was so powerful his muscles shook and his heart pounded. But an Uzi to the sternum, at such close range, was a strong deterrent. One bullet would kill Gideon with him.

A bone-deep ripple of revulsion swept through him. The loathing he saw in Jen's eyes was as unfamiliar as her appearance. He just wanted to get the hell back to the chopper. Jennifer and her fucking theatrics could go straight to hell.

“We could've divorced, as I suggested a few weeks before you went to Haiti,” he said tightly. “You cried and begged me to give us another chance—What happened to the baby?”

She laughed. “Get serious.”

“There was no baby.” Of course not. He'd been talking divorce. The ruse had worked. He'd wanted to work things out.

“A divorce would've been a lot simpler than all this.” And he could have gone on with his fucking life without all the guilt eating at him like a staph infection.

“I was still making
plans
for this.” She swept her arm out to encompass their surroundings. “I wasn't going to walk away with a paltry five million when I could have it all.” She'd been unpredictable and theatrical before, but Zak had no idea how to handle this Jennifer. Was this where she'd been heading, all those times before? What he'd thought of as moody … Christ.

“How did you know about the safe house?” Acadia could have died in the explosion. Fuckit. She could still die if a bullet hit the chopper.

“Your girlfriend made a call to the States.” With the barrel of the Uzi, Jennifer motioned for him to step back. Back to the shack where she'd held Gideon. Back, away from the helicopter, rotors throbbing overhead. “With the help of the local police, I was tracking your cell phones within half an hour of you buying them. Almost got her that time. But it doesn't matter. It's not legal. You're already married.”

“Why the car bomb at the hotel?” he demanded without responding to her jeer.

“To smoke you out. Jesus, Zakary. Follow the bouncing ball here, would you?”

He didn't give a shit why she'd done the bat-shit crazy things she'd done. Not anymore. And sure as hell not now. He tried for logic. “Gideon needs medical attention.”

“I don't give a flying fuck,” she shot back, voice cold, the fury in her eyes flickering like a blue flame. “I want him to die. Your precious brother's death will hurt you more than anything I could do to you. You've caused me a lot of trouble, Zak. I invested a fortune to pull off that kidnapping and to hire all those cops … I wasted a fucking
fortune
buying weapons and C-4, damn it!” The Uzi snapped up to his face, and he stared down the black barrel. “You two were supposed to be waiting when I got here.
Gideon
was supposed to die a week ago while you watched and begged me to save him. That woman you were fucking was supposed to be blown to hell on the company plane. You've never been predictable, Zakary.”

“Then why tell your pal Piñero to keep one of us alive?”

“I
didn't.
I instructed that stupid bitch to keep
you
alive, my darling. I didn't give a shit about your brother once I discovered you were gone. He's been nothing but a pain in my ass for years.” She smiled, a travesty full of taunting cruelty. “He served his purpose, I suppose. I knew you'd come and look for him. It was always you and your brother.” She twisted two fingers together, then turned it into a shaking fist that punched her thigh.

Gideon's breaths came more slowly. Zak's sped up.

“Gideon this,” she mimicked in falsetto, “Gideon that. I've been planning this for
years
.” She gave him a hostile
look. “I was building a nice little settlement back there. I wanted to come and visit you in your small, airless cell. I wanted to see your face when you first saw your dead wife come back to life. You think I want a piss-willy little five mil, when you're worth a hundred times that? Hell no. I want it all. You cheated me out of hundreds of millions I should have made as partner of your stupid fucking ZAG Search. And now I'm going to collect.”

Bats darted low, directly over their heads. She didn't seem to notice. He didn't even try to make sense of what she was babbling. “You had a beautiful service, Jen. All your friends were there to pay tribute,” he told her, keeping his tone moderate, though he felt anything but. “We all loved you. Your life was celebrated and you were mourned by everyone who cared about you.” Zak, Gideon, Buck, and Nikki. Those were the mourners. And Buck and Gideon hadn't ever liked her, although they'd tolerated her for his sake. Clearly they'd never been blinded by her sex appeal and high IQ.

She gave him a cold look. “I'm not the wife you
pretended
to love. But I am the woman who's going to watch you die, by small, small increments. I won't be cheated out of that. I worked for it. I want it, and you can't tell me no, Zakary Stark. You will
not
tell me I can't have what I want. Ever. Again.”

There was no reasoning with her. “Fine,” he said, his voice flat. Sweat ran down his temples, small gnats swarmed around his face, and Gideon was starting to shift on his shoulder. His brother's body blocked Zak's access to the gun tucked in his belt in the small of his
back. Could he shoot Jennifer?
Hell, yeah
, Zak thought savagely as she stood blocking his way to getting Gideon to safety. “Let's fucking do that. But first, let me get Gideon on board the chopper. Let him get the help he needs before you start hacking me limb from limb.”

“Hell no. That'll impact what I get as your widow. I want it all, every last damned dime you have.”

“You can have every last damn dime,” Zak told her tightly. “Give me something to write on and I'll sign off,
after
we get Gideon to a hospital.”

“When he dies, I'll have more.”

“Not the way the partnership agreement works,” Zak lied. “If Gideon dies, his shares, all of his money, goes to a distant aunt in Kansas City.” The scrolling numbers, so bright in the chopper, were fading as if the dimmer switch were being lowered. He tightened his arm across the back of Gideon's knees.
Hang in there.

“Fine.” She waved a filthy hand airily. Her nails were chewed to the quick, and he saw part of a tattoo disappearing from her wrist and under her sleeve. “I'll have yours and Buck's.”

“Buck will have something to say about that. But mine—”

“Buck had an unfortunate accident this morning soon after chatting with you, I believe. Home invasion. Knives were involved.”

“Jesus! You had
Buck
killed?”

“I had to
delegate
, Zakary,” she bitched, as if he'd asked her to take the garbage out and empty the dishwasher at the same time. “I couldn't
be
in two places at once!”

Jesus. It hadn't been Buck at all. It had been Jennifer all along. “Who did you delegate to?”

“Nikki, of course. She's at a lovely spa outside Los Angeles, having her facial reconstruction done, by Adam. You remember Nik's brother, don't you? Someone else you screwed on your way to the top? A great alibi. We got a twofer on that one.” She aimed the Uzi at his heart, holding the barrel five inches from his chest, and smiled slowly, her dirt-smeared cheeks crinkling. “And before I let you die,
darling”
—she said it like a curse—“I'll be sure to blow up your fucking
new
wife once and for all.
After
I tell her that you already
have
a wife.”

He
had
to get on that chopper. But there was no way she was going to miss him if she fired. “Nikki had her own husband killed?”

“We have that in common.” She ran the tail end of her braid across her cheek. “We've loved each other for years, you know.”

“You and Buck?”

“You're an egotistical idiot, Zakary, do you know that? Why does everything have to be about you and your goddamn dick? Drop that lump of patheticness, and get back into your cell where you belong. When the others get back, we'll take care of your homophobia.”

How the fuck had they gone from murder to homo—“You and
Nikki?
”

“She's always been my soul mate.” Zak's knees almost buckled as he took in the betrayal of his married life, of Buck's married life, of Buck's death. Christ. He couldn't take it personally, not right now. “Then I wish you both
well,” he told her calmly. “I'll set the two of you up forever and we can all live happily ever after.”

“You don't get to live happily ever after! You”—prodding him with the Uzi so he had to take a step back—“you get to live
miserably, painfully, unhappily
ever after, and not for long.”

Gideon was slipping off his shoulder. His brother's entire body shifted as Zak moved backward at every prod from Jennifer's weapon. Zak tightened his hold around his brother's knees, but Gideon kept sliding and twisting.

Suddenly Gideon dug his elbows in, grabbing the handgun from the strapped holder in the small of Zak's back. He twisted just enough to fire a shot that hit Jennifer at close range, square in the face. Her head exploded like a watermelon, spraying Zak and Gideon with gray matter and blood.

“Wel-come,” Gideon slurred, dropping his head down to bounce against Zak's back. The pistol fell from his nerveless fingers into the grass.

“Christ!” The numbers in Zak's mind winked out. “No, Gid—Damn it! No!” Zak tried to will them back. Nothing. He tipped Gideon off his shoulder, laid him in the grass, pounded his chest with both hands. His brother's slack face wavered and blurred.
“Breathe,
damn you. Breathe!”

The rotors overhead whipped the treetops, and the burst of gunshots muted to background noise as Zak struggled to breathe for his brother. He tried mouth-to-mouth. He pounded on Gideon's chest, trying not
to think about his possibly broken ribs. “Don't do this, Gid. We're going home now. Please. Don't. Die. On. Me.”

He pressed two fingers beneath his brother's jaw. Nothing. Zak's head dropped to Gideon's still chest. “Damn it, Gid!”

“Stark?” It was Reith, out of sight. “Get your ass in gear. We gotta go. Now!”