WAR: Opposition: (WAR Book 3) (15 page)

“However,” he continued, “we agreed to let local forces dictate the pace. The rebels have splintered into a number of groups, forcing me to pick and choose which leaders to throw our support behind. I have done my best to choose those who showed promise, but there are few men who are skilled at both human resources management and strategic planning.” He paused. “If you wish for an accelerated timeline, then I will require more funds.” He had carefully managed his budget so that his fellow members would not realize that he’d siphoned off several hundred thousand dollars for his own profit. While the main reason for destabilizing the world was to profit from the resulting arms sales, he had no intention of sharing all of his region’s ill-gotten gains with his colleagues.

“We can’t have West Africa falling too far behind schedule,” Northern Asia commented. “We need the region to collapse so that we can start launching the scheduled attacks against the rest of the world.”

“He is correct,” South America said. “I vote that we send more funds in order to hasten the region’s collapse.”

Africa listened impassively as the others debated whether or not to authorize the increased budget. But in the end, the goal they’d set of turning West Africa into a wasteland, then using it to launch attacks against the rest of the world, was deemed too urgent to continue leaving in the hands of rebels who couldn’t follow up on the few successes they’d had.

“We must also see that WAR is unearthed and destroyed,” Middle East said.

“I am working on that,” Africa said smoothly, hiding his annoyance beneath false confidence. Finding informants to keep him apprised of WAR’s activities had proved nearly impossible. He’d finally found one such man he thought he could turn, but the man had kept silent even under torture. The man had died without revealing anything.

“If we do not see progress within the next several weeks, we will have to consider replacing you,” Europe said. He’d elected himself leader, but Africa refused to treat him as such. The man had yet to prove that he was worth Africa’s loyalty or trust.

“I have plans in place,” Africa stated. “It would help if others would refrain from interfering in my business. Such as this matter with the assassin.”

“No. If we call him off now, when he has failed to take out his target, then people will begin to question our commitment,” Southeast Asia stated. “You will simply have to adjust your plans.”

“If that is so,” Africa said with exaggerated politeness, “then I expect that my timeline will be adjusted accordingly?”

“No,” Europe and Middle East said at the same time.

“This is an acceptable test of your capabilities,” Middle East said. “Prove to us that you are capable of achieving our goals despite this complication.”

Africa ground his teeth. “Very well. If there is nothing more?”

After a few more suggestions on how he could manage his region, the call ended. Africa stared at the folders on his desk. In addition to resolving the conflict over Seth Jarrod, he needed to redouble his efforts to bring down WAR. He opened the folder that contained all reports to date on the clandestine organization.

Previously keeping strictly to the shadows, WAR had been less secretive lately. In the past few months, foreigners alleged to be soldiers with WAR had been spotted in public. Africa had a list of those names. With a little pressure, those men would either cave to Africa’s demands and become informants, or they would be lured out and killed, thus destroying the morale of their teammates.

One way or another, he intended to see WAR fall before the year was over.

“
T
hat’s right
, Kirra,” Seth snapped. “I’m the one with an assassin on his tail. Don’t ever forget it.”

Kirra hated the bitterness that had crept into Seth’s voice, because she understood it all too well. It came from being so low that you thought you deserved the worst in life. “Seth, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as a judgment.”

His fingers tightened on the wheel. A muscle pulsed along his jaw. Then he turned his head and threw her an undecipherable look. “Your instinct was to run when you first saw me in the bar.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t feel that way any more, but he pointed a finger at her. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I’m not some white knight, Kirra. Don’t go thinking I’m some roaming do-gooder. I’m not. I promised that I’d keep you safe until you got to the concert, and I meant it. But I’m not someone a nice girl like you should be associating with.”

Her temper spiked. She glared at him. “Wow. You sure have built up a whole lot of assumptions about me, haven’t you?” She punched him in the shoulder. Hard. “Don’t you dare go telling me what I should or should not do. Don’t you dare go selling yourself short, either. Maybe, as you’ve so unsubtly hinted, you operate in the gray areas of the law, but if I want to trust you, I bloody well will. Since you’re not the one who’s been shooting at me or chasing me, I think—”

“I flew those exploding MP3 players to the man who distributed them to the festival day crowd!” Seth shouted. Then he grimaced and reined in his temper, switching his expression from self-directed fury to detachment so quickly that it chilled Kirra. Because she recognized it as a coping mechanism.

“The blood of everyone who died there—men, women, children—is on my hands,” Seth added quietly.

It hurt to hear the pain and guilt in Seth’s voice. Kirra slowly turned in her seat so she could see his expression better. “Did you know that you were bringing in weapons?”

His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. “Don’t try to make me out to be a good guy, Kirra. I’m not.”

“Really? Then why do I hear regret in your voice instead of satisfaction?”

He shot her a derisive glance. “What does a soft, privileged girl like you know about regret? Or about the real world, where hard-working people die just for showing up at a festival?”

Oh hell no, he didn’t get to claim the field of self-pity. “What do I know about the real world?” She shoved up her sleeve and thrust her forearm under his nose so he couldn’t miss seeing the cobweb of white scars against her light tan. “How’s this for the real world? Three hundred knife wounds. Seventeen broken bones. A ruptured—”

Seth swerved the vehicle off the road and into a patch of Guinea grass.

The sudden motion threw Kirra back into her seat. As she righted herself, Seth shut off the engine, then picked up her arm.

“Jesus, Kirra.” He traced one of the scars gently and the scratch of his rough skin sent shivers down her spine. “What happened?”

There wasn’t enough air in the vehicle. She pulled her arm away, shoved open the door, and jumped out.

“Kirra?”

She hurried into the head-high grass until she couldn’t see Seth or the vehicle. Then she stopped and visualized each note of the first song she’d learned on the guitar as it would appear on the printed page. As the notes took shape in her mind, her breath slowly deepened. She became fully aware of the sunlight, the breeze stirring the grass, and the call of unfamiliar birds. Shoving her hand into her pocket, she used the pressure of the guitar pick against her right hand to ground her, and returned to the vehicle.

Seth was leaning back against the closed passenger door. When he spotted her, he stood up and gave her a worried frown. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to set you off.”

She managed the ghost of a smile. “It’s my fault for showing you my scars.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Kirra.”

It was tempting to climb into the vehicle and tell him to keep driving. She’d only told the full story, at least those parts she remembered, to the police and her therapist. Most people only got the short version.

Yet instinct told her that of all people, Seth would understand. “I want you to know.”

His eyes searched hers.

She tightened her grip on her guitar pick. Delaying would only make it harder to start, giving dread time to build up. “To fully understand what happened, I need to explain a little bit about my childhood.” She moved away from Seth to stand facing the wall of grass.

“My parents were teachers and social activists. They were prominent in the local anti-apartheid movement and often opened their home up to strangers who were escaping the violence. They were very generous people who were passionately committed to peace and freedom.”

Except they’d never figured out that children sometimes needed guidance and boundaries. “They had three children. My brother, Dev, followed by me and my twin, Kyle.” Her throat tightened. Tears stung her eyes.

“Kyle was my heart. My soul. My confidant. He was the only one who understood me. He was the only one who could rein me in when I got too wild.” She crossed her arms over her chest to hold the ache in. “My parents never knew how to handle me and pretty much left me alone except for the occasional lecture on responsibility and respect for the rules.”

Seth made a sound as if he’d bitten back a comment.

“Kyle and his girlfriend were hit head-on by a drunk driver when we were seventeen. His girlfriend was eighteen and behind the wheel.” Kirra inhaled sharply, the pain as sharp now as it had been nine years ago. “They were killed instantly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t begin to describe the pain. The aching, yawning emptiness inside me. And the anger that he’d been taken from me.” She tightened her arms over her chest. “I had no one to hold on to. No one to comfort me, because Kyle was gone and that had always been his role.”

“What about your parents?” The protective concern in Seth’s voice was so unexpected, and so welcome, it helped anchor her to the present.

“My parents had lost their baby,” Kirra said. “Their precious son who had been all set to join them in their ongoing crusade for social justice.” She shook her head. “They were too wrapped up in their own grief to realize how badly I was hurting. Or to realize how often they would glance at me as they said how they wished they had him back. I—”

She bit her lip, then whispered. “I knew they wished I’d died in his place.”

“No. I’m sure that wasn’t true.”

“Yeah, it was. They’d always made it clear that I was a huge disappointment to them. That Kyle was the perfect one. If I hadn’t loved him so much, I would have hated him for taking away our parents’ love.”

“And your other brother?” Seth growled right behind her. “What about him?”

As Seth’s arms came around her waist, Kirra startled. She took a step forward, intending to break away. But his hold was so loose, so gentle, and so warm that she hesitantly backed up until her back pressed against his chest. The feel of his solid body behind her served as another anchor. In a moment she was going to need all the anchors she could get.

“Dev took leave from the military, but he’d never known what to do with me. I’d always been the emotional child, the one prone to tantrums.” She shrugged. “Dev doesn’t deal well with emotions. He gave me a few hugs, said how sorry he was, then he returned to saving the world.”

“He should have stayed with you. Or at the very least, forced your parents to wake up and remember that they had a daughter who needed them.”

She liked the feel of Seth’s cheek against her hair. Liked the way his voice vibrated in outrage on her behalf. It reminded her that she’d survived. That her body and spirit were strong again. She hoped he wouldn’t step away as she dove deeper into the story.

“In an attempt to drown my grief and loneliness, I fell in with a bad crowd at school. I barely graduated because I was too busy partying, often stumbling home drunk just hours before I had to leave for school.”

“Understandable,” Seth murmured.

“I had been accepted into university, but after I finished secondary school, my boyfriend Franz suggested that we head to Cape Town because there was lots of money to be had there for little work. I didn’t care where we went, I just didn’t want to be alone.”

She’d long ago forgiven that lost, scared girl for hooking up with Franz. But she would never forgive Franz for taking advantage of her. “For those first few months we didn’t have much money. Remember that comment I made about urine and vomit? That’s because more times than I care to remember I woke up on a stained mattress in some filthy, abandoned building. Usually we’d be in the middle of a group of his friends who’d also passed out.” Kirra had never liked his friends, but had been too afraid of Franz dumping her and leaving her alone to tell him how she felt.

Not that it would have made a difference.

“It turned out that Franz didn’t have any job skills except persuasion and thieving. So he taught me how to pick pockets and break into cars and other ways to steal items that we could sell to buy food. Still, sometimes we had nowhere else to sleep but the beach or the park.”

“Dangerous,” Seth commented.

“I know. We quickly learned how to run from the predators.”

“Did you ever get picked up by the police?”

“Yeah. Once. For vagrancy. We spent the night in jail, and that was it.” She shrugged. “I had a couple of close calls when I was learning how to pickpocket, but I never got caught.”

She watched as the wind riffled through the grasses, causing the tall strands to reach toward her like fingers. Shuddering, she eased sideways out of Seth’s arms, then backed away.

“One day we attempted to rob a tourist bungalow and found a theft already in progress. Long story short, the other thieves belonged to a gang of highly-trained, well-organized thieves. After a few trials, Franz and I were allowed in. He tried to get his other friends in, but only two of them made the cut.

“Under the tutelage of the older members of the gang, particularly their leader, I thrived. The skills they taught me slowly brought me out of my grief. Before long I graduated out of the pickpocketing and petty thievery class and into the big leagues of jewels and collectibles.”

Seth turned her to face him. “Wait. You were a jewel thief?” His brows rose up near his hairline.

The corner of her lips lifted slightly at his disbelief. “Yes. A good one, too. I loved pitting my wits against the high and mighty. The other thieves came to respect me and treated me as an equal. Some of them even began to look up to me and to come to me for advice. I felt as if I’d finally found a place where I belonged. Plus, with the money I made I was able to move into a flat of my own.” She’d finally received the validation she’d been searching for. She’d finally felt as if she had value.

“And Franz?”

She closed her eyes a moment. “We drifted apart. I moved up the ranks faster than him and I think he was jealous. I broke up with him, but he was one of those silver-tongued devils who managed to turn my words around. More often than I care to admit, he ended up spending the night on my sofa.”

“So what went wrong?”

Kirra turned so once again her back was to Seth’s front. She wouldn’t be able to continue if she saw his face. To prepare herself for what was coming, she filled her mind with musical notes. “One night Franz came to me and asked for a favor. He’d made a deal outside of the gang’s usual job allocation but couldn’t pull the heist off without me. It wasn’t unheard of for people to freelance, so I didn’t think anything of it. After weeks of planning and intelligence gathering, the night of the heist arrived. Our target was a heavily fortified mansion. My job was to remove a small ancient statue.” Her whole body tensed instinctively, even though she still didn’t remember most of what happened.

Focus on the music. The music. The music.

“Unfortunately, on my way out, one of the guards came charging out of the guardhouse, firing his weapon. Franz was supposed to have knocked him out and tied him up. I fled, but I got shot in the arm.”

Seth squeezed her and she leaned into his embrace. “It’s weird. I hardly noticed the pain, yet suddenly my arm didn’t work right. I leapt onto the wall and hauled myself up. At the top, I lost my grip on the bag holding the statue. It fell back onto the lawn. I jumped down and ran away.”

She felt Seth go very still behind her. “Asshole boyfriend took it out on you?”

“Yes.” She gripped the guitar pick painfully hard and focused on the scratch of the fabric of her pocket against the skin at the back of her hand. While she watched the wind ruffle the grass, she repeated silently, “I am safe. I am in control
.
”

Still, all the moisture in her mouth had dried up and she had trouble forcing out the next words. “We met up at an old, abandoned warehouse. Music blasted from a party in the other room. When Franz discovered that I’d lost his package, he went ballistic. He’d been trying to move into a drug organization. The theft had been his initiation fee and he told me that the house I’d broken into belonged to a rival drug leader. Franz was terrified that because of my failure he would be tortured and killed by whichever drug lord found him first. He said that the only way to protect himself was to offer them my dead body.” Her voice cracked. “Then he hit me hard enough to drive me to my knees.”

Seth arms tightened on her.

“I don’t actually remember the rest of the attack, except in occasional flashbacks and nightmares. What I know is from witnesses. A late partygoer saw Franz and me fighting. Reported that to Franz’s buddies.” Her breath came in short, fast bursts. “His friends came running, but not to help. One of them pinned my wrists to the floor over my head while Franz and the others vented their anger on me.”

Her vision tunneled. She focused on each curve of the musical notes in her head, imagining them crisp against the white sheet music until the darkness receded.

“That’s why you can’t stand pressure against your wrists.”

“Right.” Pain exploded behind her eyes, making her gasp.