Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

“Even decorated officers can go bad when they feel they’ve been wronged.” Damon seemed to be the bad copper in this scenario, but the good news was he was perfectly comfortable with the role. “Did you decide to help with the attack after you realized your military career was over?”

“I’m not helping with any bloody attack,” Carter shot back.

Penelope reached out, putting a hand on his knee. “Could you please tell me what’s really going on? Because I don’t believe for a second that you would hurt innocent people. You couldn’t hurt me and I was attacking you.”

“I can hurt people. You have no idea how I’ve hurt people in the past, luv. I’ve killed more than my share. I just don’t like hurting women. It makes me sick, to tell you the truth. But your boy there is wrong about Walt. He isn’t bad. He’s trying to do the right thing, but none of us really knows how to do that anymore.” He got quiet for a moment. “Is that bloke there really Ian Taggart?”

He knew Tag?

Ian stepped up. “I’m Taggart. I run a firm called McKay-Taggart.”

Carter stared at him. “You used to be a Green Beret. You knew an SASR officer named Harrison Craig?”

Tag nodded, his lips curling up with humor. “Hell, yeah. I know Harry. He gave us ground support on a couple of NATO missions. How the hell is he?”

“He was my half brother and he died a while back, but he always told me if I got in trouble that I should trust you. Fuck a duck, mate. I tried calling your offices but they said you were out of the country.”

Ian put a hand on the big guy’s shoulder. “Your brother was a good man and an excellent soldier. I’m sorry to hear he passed. Harry told you to trust me so I need you to listen to me. Damon’s a good man. You haven’t heard of him because most of his military time was classified. He’s going to take care of you.”

Carter shook his head. “I can’t trust anyone but you. And if you’re working for the government, I won’t even trust you. I want to hire you. Outside of the CIA. What Walt has, no government should own. Fuck, mate, no one should have it.”

Instinct started to pulse through his system. Something was wrong and it always had been. The Collective wasn’t working with them. If they really had the trouble they said they had, why wouldn’t they be working with the agencies?

Baz wanted whatever Walter Bennett had back.

Nature’s Core had always been peaceful.

Candice was an idiot and no terrorist in his right mind would use her.

But a dumbass scientist who thought he was saving the world just might.

“What was Agro developing? What was so dangerous that Bennett thought he had to risk his life to steal it and expose it to the world?”

It was the only thing that made sense. Bennett had zero ties to any terrorist organization.

Carter’s face froze.

“Please, tell us,” Penelope pleaded. “We want to help.”

Carter’s eyes went to Taggart.

“I promise I’ll do whatever I can to protect you and Bennett, if you deserve it,” Taggart replied.

Carter’s eyes closed briefly and for a moment Damon was certain he would spout some crazy Aussie curses and be done with all of them. But finally he looked straight at Damon. “All right then. It was too much to hope for anyway. Walt’s been working for Agro on a system that helps identify the DNA of a virus. I’m not smart like him but apparently it’s important to get the DNA of emergent viruses. He’s been working in the real tight labs. And that was when he found it.”

“Found what?” Damon asked.

“Apparently even when we eradicate a virus, it never really goes away. The way he explained it, we just made it so it’s hidden. Like it’s behind a barrier because we immunized whole generations and now it’s behind that wall.”

Cold fear ran up his spine because he had an idea of what Carter was talking about. “And they want the wall to come down?”

“No one immunizes for it anymore. Not since 1972. And the immunization thing….it don’t last forever it seems. Everyone is vulnerable now.”

Fuck. Smallpox. Mandatory vaccines had ended in the seventies and the medical community considered it eradicated. But a dirty company like Agro could come up with a million ways to make a buck off something like that. “You’re talking about smallpox.”

Carter nodded.

Taggart shook his head. “The CDC has enough vaccine stored to immunize everyone in the States against smallpox if we have to.”

“This isn’t the same virus you’ve read about,” Carter explained. “Agro made it stronger. Smarter. More resilient. They figured out a way to weaponize it. And only they have the vaccine. They’re going to take out large swaths of the Third World. They plan to scare the crap out of the rest of us and then charge us through the nose to save the world. Millions will die so they can make a buck. Do you understand?”

Penelope gasped a little. “He was trying to warn us?”

“He still is. It’s why I took the job. Walter Bennett isn’t the enemy. Agro is. Walt got out with all the research. He wiped the drives. He took the samples and destroyed them. He wrecked his entire career because he couldn’t stand the thought of all those people dying for corporate profits. He took an oath, you see.”

Bennett was a virologist, but he was a doctor, too. He’d had to make a Hippocratic Oath, and it looked like he took it seriously.

And Damon had another mission.

He was going to save Walter Bennett. Penelope looked up at him, her eyes shining like he was some kind of hero.

He was going to save the whole bloody world if he had to.

Penelope shivered while she waited for Damon to return. He’d taken Carter to an empty cabin Jesse had procured and that Chelsea was securing from the cameras’ view. After a long discussion about what was going to happen next, they had decided to call it a night.

Carter and Walter had another meeting set up. According to Carter, he was supposed to vet the reporter in Finland. If she checked out, Carter would give them the meet spot in Berlin and travel there himself. Carter was supposed to meet Bennett and Candice at the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin, and they would have gotten Bennett on the boat from there.

They wouldn’t be getting back on the boat for the last leg to Amsterdam. They would be headed straight for the British Embassy.

In two days’ time, this mission would be over and her relationship with Damon could come to an end if she chose.

She didn’t choose. Not at all.

She’d been wrong. Wrong about everything. When he’d said he would let every Dom in the room have a turn at her, he’d meant a spanking not a massive gang bang. She’d been stupid.

The trouble with translating foreign languages was sometimes the person interpreting had to make a judgment call, and all too often it involved the translator’s own cultural prejudices.

Damon spoke a different language. Oh, he used all the same words, but it was different because he had no idea how to talk about what he felt. She had to look past his words to find what he truly meant. She’d been doing it since the moment she began her relationship with him. For the most part, she’d done a good job, but when she screwed up, she really screwed up. She’d made a call and it had everything to do with her insecurities. She’d allowed them to lead her to a place where she’d shut Damon out and he’d had no idea what to do with the behavior. Now that she looked back, she realized he’d actually done his best. He’d asked her about the problem.

It was more than he would usually do. She knew Damon and he would simply walk away from situations he didn’t necessarily understand on an emotional level. He’d done his best. He’d come to her and tried to talk about it. Yes, he’d put it in sexual terms but that was Damon Knight’s language.

He’d asked her in his low, careful voice why she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore. It was tantamount to asking her why she didn’t love him now.

She’d left him alone. She’d done what everyone else in his life had done, and she had to make up for it.

Penny pulled off the sweater she was wearing and wrestled her bra off. She’d made the mistake of putting her own insecurities over his words instead of really looking at the situation and evaluating how to translate him.

He was a man who was always in control, but he’d allowed her to manipulate him. Every step along the way, he’d backed down. Now that she looked at it with a wiser eye, she could see that he’d tried to rein her in, but when she bucked against the restrictions, he’d allowed her to have her way. Yes, he’d spanked her, but he hadn’t done what she would expect him to do. He hadn’t locked her away or shut her out. He’d made love to her. He might call it sex or discipline but it was how he expressed his caring. He treated her like she was precious, like she was everything he needed to breathe, to live.

She’d ignored what he did in preference to what he said. She’d heard the words and not questioned the meaning of them. It was a fatal flaw for a translator.

Every step of the way, every dumb word that had come from his mouth led her to one thing.

Damon Knight loved her, and he had no idea how to say it.

He knew one language though. He understood the language of submission. It was a gift she could give him.

She shimmied out of her slacks, tossing them to the side, and took a long breath.

Had she ruined it? Had she driven him away?

They were in the middle of a crisis but all she could think about was getting Damon back. She’d vowed that she would walk away if she couldn’t win him by the time they got back to England. She’d promised that she would let him go, that she would salvage her pride.