Page 24 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

Sophie had somehow snuggled closer to him, closer than when she’d been weeping.

A hand lay on his chest, right over his heart.

It was crazy, but it felt like her hand emanated heat, reaching deep through bone and muscle to reach the frozen bits of himself.

Catherine’s touch had been like that, too.

Warm and soothing. Sophie’s touch was that, but also—though that was crazy—somehow healing.

The scenes came to him in dreams. Nightmares.

He’d wake up sweating and panicked, breath coming harshly, heart pounding.

For a moment after he woke up, he’d be back there, in the filthy hovel he shared with his parents, small and weak and utter prey.

For a second, he was nine years old and his parents were selling him to a man who terrified him.

For the first time, he could see the scene as a man, not a terrified child.

The images still disgusted him, but they didn’t frighten him.

The man who at the time had seemed like a powerful, malevolent giant, wasn’t a giant any more.

Jon was bigger, faster, stronger. Perfectly capable of defending himself.

No scum bag like the pedophile pimp who’d bought him could ever hurt him again.

He only wished he could travel back in time and kill the fucker.

“A man came to our house. I had just turned nine, though of course no one celebrated my birthday. The man who came to the house was tall, large. He—” Jon’s nose wrinkled.

“He smelled. He had some kind of heavy cologne. Men’s colognes still nauseate me.

Good thing I joined the military and didn’t go into, say, advertising.

I’d have spent all my time embracing the porcelain god. ”

To this day, he had to swallow bile if he stood next to a man wearing cologne. Women’s perfumes didn’t have the same effect at all.

She was watching his eyes carefully. She’d smiled a little when he mentioned barfing. Good.

For some godawful unfathomable reason his subconscious had started him on this trip at the wrongest possible time. He didn’t want to spook her or bring her lower than she already was. But he was helpless to stop. The words were coming out and there seemed to be no way to block them.

“But beneath the cologne was something else, something horrifying. Some sick smell we recognize at the animal level. Something that signals there’s something horribly wrong with the person.”

“I’ve had that sensation a couple of times,” Sophie said quietly. “It is a smell and it’s hormonal. And it probably evolved as a biomarker for the tribe to detect and control psychopaths.”

“I wish we still lived in tribes, then,” he said quietly.

Fuck yeah. If he’d lived in a tribe, the members of the tribe would have looked after their young.

A Harlan Popper would never have been allowed to stay in the tribe.

He’d have been quietly taken away to some secluded spot and clubbed to death by the village elders.

Civilization was overrated.

“My parents had been very agitated the past few days. With hindsight, they’d run through their money, sold everything that could be sold, including my mother’s sexual favors, and they were entering cold turkey. They had one more thing to sell.”

“You,” she said softly.

“Me.”

Sophie was listening to him with every sense she had, it seemed. Through her eyes and her hand on his chest, as if she could soak up every nuance of the sorry story through her skin.

Her hand was very warm, soothing. He could feel the warmth soaking deep into his muscles.

He needed every bit of that warmth now. “It was clear who the guy was. Certainly it would have been clear to an adult. I looked him up…later.” When he’d been far away, in time and space.

“He had a rap sheet that went on forever. He was a sex predator down to his bones but since he ran one of the largest pedophile rings in the world, he always had the money to buy the best lawyers in the business. Something like ten thousand kids passed through his hands but he never did a day of time.”

Sophie’s face tightened, turned fierce. “Someone should have shot him.”

Oh yeah. Someone should have shot him. Jon had thought of it himself, when he’d first looked Popper up.

By that time he’d been trained in the fine art of shooting people.

When scrolling through the darknet for news of Popper, he’d started making travel arrangements in his head, asking for a few days off, deciding which weapon he’d use.

And then he found the last bit of news. The fucker had gone ahead and died without him.

From a pointed object being skewered through his heart.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

“I was nine but I was undernourished so I looked even younger. I was a small kid?—”

She glanced up into his eyes, dropped her glance to his chest and shook her head.

Yeah, he wasn’t small any more. He made sure he became strong and stayed strong.

“I’m not small now. And I know how to fight.

The military taught me to use every single weapon, including hands and feet, really well.

But then—then I think I must have had ‘prey’ tattooed in invisible ink on my forehead.

I think when Popper saw me he actually smacked his lips. ”

Though he’d never told the story to a living soul—even if he relived it often in his nightmares, waking up shaking and sweaty—he found it easy to tell her.

For the first time, he felt a distance from this.

Sophie was like a human buffer, providing a safe space, as if he were recounting something that had happened to someone else.

Telling Sophie felt right. Felt even…healing. Crazy as that sounded. He would have cut his own tongue off rather than spill the sorry story to the military shrink but Sophie? A woman he’d known for less than 24 hours? It felt right, crazy as that sounded.

“I even remember the amount Popper paid. $10,000 dollars. To my parents, at that time, broke and strung out, it must have seemed like Christmas and their birthdays and the fourth of July all at once. They could stay high for a long time on that kind of money. I remember Popper handing over an envelope and my dad scrambling to open it and count the money. Popper led me away before my Dad could finish counting. I was screaming at him, screaming at Popper, wriggling and kicking. My Dad looked up from the money and stared straight at Popper. I remember that so clearly. He didn’t even look at me.

I was already gone from his head. He just said, ‘Slap him and he’ll shut up. ’ And started counting again.”

“God,” Sophie whispered. Her eyes were wet.

“Yeah.” Jon reached up with his thumb to catch the tear that fell.

“Go on.” Her hand was even hotter now, this weird warmth that sank right into his bones. The memory of this had haunted him all his life, but now…now it felt like he was telling a story about someone else, long ago, in a distant land.

“Popper wrestled me into the car. He must have sedated me because I woke up with a raging headache, hugely thirsty and it was almost night. We were somewhere I didn’t recognize.

The car had stopped, Popper was getting gas.

I tried the door and it opened. He hadn’t bothered switching on the child lock.

He must have thought I’d stay out for much longer.

I was covered with a blanket. I bunched the blanket together so that in the dark, it could look like I was still under it.

I made it to the back of the station. I peeked out to see his reaction, but he just got into the car and drove off.

I stole a couple of bottles of water stored out back, together with some energy bars.

Then I sneaked into the back of a pickup.

I had no idea where the pickup was going and didn’t care.

I’d get off at gas stations and get onto another pickup.

I ended up in Ohio. My last ride happened to be a good guy.

” He smiled at the memory. A fireplug of a man, short cropped gray hair, wide smile, huge heart.

“Mickey Gardener. Who happened to be chief of police in Oroville, Ohio. He found me asleep in his off-duty pickup. I’d been traveling for days, had lost all sense of time.

My ribs stuck out and I was sleep-deprived and exhausted and at first I couldn’t talk.

Didn’t have the energy. He took me to the local clinic where I was hydrated, fed, and checked for injuries.

There was some kind of mixup with child services so I stayed in the clinic longer than necessary.

But after a few days in which I was fed well and slept in a bed I realized that not talking was a really good strategy.

Gardener sat down with me for half an hour, a really silent half hour, in which he asked me where I came from, how I came to be in the pickup, where my family was.

And I just stonewalled him. I figured if I didn’t talk they couldn’t know where to send me back.

And they didn’t, because my parents sure as hell hadn’t reported me missing.

I stayed with the Gardeners for a couple of months, but I couldn’t stay forever.

His wife had MS and could barely get through her day.

So I went through a series of foster homes.

I know a lot of people complain about foster homes, but to me they were heaven.

Plenty of food, clean clothes. Compared to what I grew up with, it was heaven on earth. And then I joined…the military.”

He’d been selected immediately for Special Forces until the CIA’s military arm went fishing and scooped him right up. No need to say that. No need to say that they’d recognized the killer in him immediately.

But it wasn’t the killing that attracted him to the military, it was the camaraderie. Working hard together for the same thing. He’d loved every second of the team-building exercises.