Tex's Revenge: Military Discipline, Book Two (11 page)

She sat down on the concrete block that served as a bed and put her head in her hands. 'Way to make a total fucking fool of yourself,' she lectured herself harshly. So this was what she'd come to, a pathetic woman so desperate for a man that she'd allow herself to be kidnapped and held prisoner simply for a chance to see him. Her love for Savage was a weakness, a weakness she had to purge. She had to harden her heart and forget about him. It was all about her now.

She stayed awake for the rest of the night, but there was no change in her situation until mid-morning. She'd been dozing a little against the wall when the sound of a door opening brought her out of her reverie. Slow footsteps approached her cell and she knew who it was even before he got there.

“Well that was interesting,” Tex said mildly. He looked stupidly handsome standing outside the bars with his hands in his suit pockets. The man spent every day dressed like he might at any moment be called to an Italian runway.

She made no reply.

“Kicked through a wall to get to a man you thought was Savage,” he said. “You must be very eager to see him.”

Zora made a hissing noise of annoyance, but otherwise said nothing at all.

“I apologize for the rough treatment, the fellow you hugged isn't the sort of man one wants to be distracted by a woman.” He didn't offer any further distraction and she didn't ask for one.

“He's not coming,” she said, wiping a hand over her eyes. “Just let me go.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't do that,” he said, pressing digits into the keypad that controlled the door to her cell. There was a dull buzz and the door swung open. “It's unfortunate this has dragged on so long.”

“It's unfortunate you wouldn't listen to me in the first place.”

Tex crooked his finger at her. “Come on out.”

She was more than glad to comply with that request. Cells were unpleasant places at the best of times, and times were never at their best when she was locked away. She came out warily, glancing at the locking mechanism as she went past. It was all shiny and high tech, looked a little bit like the number menu on a microwave.

They went to the usual spot for breakfast, but in spite of her hunger, Zora didn't eat. She had thought about many things during her brief nocturnal incarceration, once she'd cleared her mind of Savage and his coming or lack thereof, she'd had time to allow some common sense into her thought processes. When Tex pushed a cup of tea in her direction she picked the cup up and tossed the liquid contents onto the lawn.

“Don't be petulant,” he scolded her.

She put the tea cup back on the table carefully. “I'm not being petulant. You're drugging me.”

“I am not.”

“Yes you are. I haven't had a cigarette or a drink almost since I met you and I haven't wanted either. I should be curled up in a corner screaming now, but I'm not.  Ergo,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “You're drugging me.”

Tex's thin lips curled into a smirk. “Good detective work, but that's only to make your life easier.”

“How about you worry less about making my life easy with drugs and more about making it easy by letting me go,” she suggested.

“Why were you in Iron Horse?”

“Oh for god's sakes,” she rolled her eyes as they returned to the question he'd asked her dozens and dozens of times before. “I liked the climate.”

“You were in hiding. Why?”

“Because I'd been a bad girl,” she admitted. She was fast approaching the limit of giving any form of a fuck anymore. Maybe she'd just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe it didn't much matter what she did. Maybe that old bitch fate already had planned her life for her regardless.

“Do tell,” he smirked.

She opened her mouth and the words just fell out. “I used codes I found in the course of my work for the military and I used them to rob a private bank.”

He spluttered into his coffee. “You did not.”

“I did. You have very poor researchers,” Zora noted, picking up a piece of toast and nibbling at it. She didn't like the fact that it was probably laced with drugs, but she was actually quite hungry.

“No, you were very well hidden,” he explained. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to erase your records.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, there you go then.”

He nodded, his expression filled with interest. “What happened after you made your little heist?”

“A lot of bullets, then Iron Horse,” she said, giving him the edited version of the story.

 “So you have a great many people looking for you. This facility might be the best place for you.”

“Maybe,” Zora shrugged. “Or maybe I don't care anymore.”

“You don't care if you die?”

She frowned, thinking about that. Did she care if she died? She wasn't particularly keen on the idea admittedly, but with life being nothing but a long string of kidnaps and incarceration she wasn't sure her existence had much of a point either. With that simple question, Tex had unwittingly triggered the final flow of verbal madness. She was tired of lying, tired of her secrets being unknown. She was tired of caring what happened next. “Since my little trip to Bulgaria I don't really worry about that sort of thing anymore,” she said in carefree tones.

His ears almost pricked visibly. “Bulgaria?”

“Yes, terrorists with a nuke, nasty business, sure you know all about it,” she said. “Code was a bitch to break, took me all of a minute.”

“You?” He smirked in disbelief. “Pull the other one, Miss Matthews.”

She ignored him as she kept talking. “Old hardware though, eccentric security system. They'd be better off with modern sensors, not some cockamamie algorithm and current-free zone. Must be a bitch if someone forgets to take off their calculator wristwatch. It's almost like it's difficult to get good equipment in darkest Bulgaria. All that communist fallout and whatnot,” she said, taking another nibble of the toast.

“Why are you telling me this now?” He didn't sound quite as suspicious or surprised as she would have liked.

“Because,” she smiled sweetly “I don't care anymore. Congratulations, you win. Sorry it's not the prize you thought you were getting. No super secret agents here, just some lady with a bit of a talent for numbers.”

“And an almost total lack of social inhibition and nerves of steel,” Tex said, sounding quite complimentary. He was smiling broadly. “I knew there was something about you.”

“Yes, sure you did,” Zora said. “Here,” she reached for a napkin, picked up a pencil on the table and scribbled a few lines of numbers in it. “Run these through your system.”

He picked the napkin up and frowned at it. “What are they?”

“Could be proof, could be my way of giving you a nasty virus,” she grinned. “Your people can figure out which one it is, I don't much care what you do with it.”

Her generosity was rewarded with what she could only describe as a dark look. “I can only think that you need your handler,” Tex said. “There is no way any operative capable of doing the work you've done can behave the way you do.”

“You mean Savage? If I see him again, I'll kick his ass myself,” she said, a dark cloud passing over her usually light features. “He's dead to me.”

“Is he now?” A knowing, thoroughly patronizing look was on Tex's face.

“He is,” she declared vehemently.

“I don't think he'll be pleased to hear that.”

“I don't think he'll give a flying fuck.”

The next voice came from behind her in a low authoritarian drawl. “On the contrary, Matthews.”

She stood up so fast her chair fell over and whirled around to face the doorway. It was filled with 6'3 of the most powerful man she'd ever laid eyes on. Her face went sheet white as her eyes ran over familiar features. It was him, the same strong nose, the same scar, the same super scale build and most of all, the same dark eyes that held her in thrall like a charmer holds a snake.

She'd imagined their meeting many times before, what it would be like to rush into his arms and be held. Her dreams had been filled with how she would kiss him and hug him and never let him go. She would tell him how much she cared and beg him to never leave her side again, and he would promise to always be there for her and keep her safe.

What actually happened was quite different. She did not rush into his embrace, she folded her arms over her chest and glowered fiercely at him. Likewise, the first words out of her mouth were not soft words of love and they certainly weren't filled with tender sentiment.

“Where the FUCK have you been?”

Chapter Eight

 “What the FUCK is going on?” Zora followed her first expletive laden question up with a second. This time she was pretty sure it really was him, but earlier disappointment made her cautious so she examined the man who probably was Savage closely. He looked a little different than he had done when she last saw him, he looked a little older, a little more worn. Not that it made any difference to how attractive he was, the salt streaks in his dark pepper hair made him look distinguished and the additional weathering on his face only served to make him look even more thoroughly masculine.

He was wearing civilian clothing, dark pants that enhanced the appearance of his long, strong legs and a close fitting sweater that attempted to minimize his broad shoulders and well shaped torso but only drew attention to it. Savage was a man built for one thing: action and a lot of it. People quite often dismissed him as a grunt, but that was a mistake, as one look at his keen eyes would have told them had they been able to tear their own ocular devices away from his battle hardened body. An acute intellect lay behind the magnetic eyes topped with sharp black brows.

Zora felt herself tremble as Savage's intense gaze settled on her. He did not seem pleased, his usually sensual mouth was set very hard and his brow was furrowed. She felt mildly guilty, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why. He couldn't blame her for being out of sorts, what had he expected, coming up on her like that? A damn parade?

Tex fielded her question before Savage could speak. “We er, extracted, Captain Savage a month ago. He was the one who advised me on your handling and care,” he said, speaking as if she were some kind of exotic rodent. “He has been shadowing us most of the way from Iron Horse.”

Zora opened her mouth to ask why the bloody hell they'd been toying with her when a simple 'hello, how do you do' would have sufficed, but Tex answered the question before she could ask it. “Your stay here has been an assessment of sorts. I needed time to get acquainted with you without interference, and without you knowing what was going on. Captain Savage made some extraordinary claims about your temperament and abilities that required extraordinary proof.”

She looked from one man to the other. “You two are the biggest assholes on the planet.”

“I understand your anger,” Tex said placatingly. “But it was for the best. I now know who I am dealing with.”

“Oh fuck you both so fucking hard.”

Savage had remained quiet whilst Tex spoke, but there was a tic in his strong square jaw, a tic she didn't pay nearly enough attention to. “Settle down, Matthews,” he growled suddenly.

She rolled her eyes, not even deigning to look at him. “Oh fuck off...OWWWW!”

His hand came down with enough force to propel her forwards, almost off her feet. The slap felt like a TNT explosion in her rear, short, sharp, and big enough to make her howl. Clutching at her bottom, she turned around, ready to scream at him, but he was already moving forward and he looked mad. “That's enough out of you Matthews,” he ordered curtly, backing her up against the wall and towering over her. “One more curse word and you'll be very sore.”

“Okay okay,” Zora abandoned her ass and held her hands up in surrender, her own anger disappating under his forcefulness. “So much for cuddles and kisses.”

“Open your ears and shut your mouth,” he snapped, his mouth set in a thin line. He wasn't treating her like a long lost lover, he was treating her like some badly behaved recruit on the verge of embarrassing him.

She gave him an incredulous look. She'd been pining away for months for this? He was an overbearing bully, a mean, inconsiderate, completely heartless excuse for a man. She scowled as he took a step away, turned for just a second so his back was to Tex and flickered an unexpected conspiratorial wink at her. Her tummy quivered as she was filled with a quick current of desire, his snappishness instantly forgiven.

He turned back and his expression became severe and authoritarian once more. What precisely was he playing at? She glanced at him often as Tex spoke, making noises about how necessary it had been to lie to her and put her through 'stress situations' to see how she reacted. In spite of Savage's orders she wasn't listening to Tex, not really. She couldn't take her mind off him Had he always been that big? That ruggedly handsome? She supposed he must have been.

“Miss Matthews?”

“Huh?”

Tex stopped speaking and both he and Savage looked at her as if she was supposed to have some sort of response to whatever it was he'd been saying. She hurried to fill the empty space with words to hide the fact she hadn't been listening at all. “So what now? Now we go and live happily ever after?”

“Now we work,” Savage said.

“Work?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don't much like the sound of that.”

There was definite censure in his voice as he leaned towards her. “That's because you haven't done any of it in a long time.”

“Hey, it's not my fault...” Her argument trailed off under his scowl.

“It is very much your fault that you decided to drink yourself halfway into oblivion and eat a diet that would make a dog sick.”

It had never occurred to her that he would know or care what she'd gotten up to in Iron Horse. He hadn't told her what to do after all, he'd just said to hide, and she had hidden. She crossed her arms over her chest defensively and tried to change the subject. “So we work for the government now?”

It was Tex who smiled slowly. “I'm not exactly affiliated with the government.”

She turned away from Savage and gave Tex her attention. “Who the hell are you then?”