Her Hero After Dark

The tone of the dark blob softened. “Where does it hurt?”

Everywhere. Dark blob? Gemma was fair and blond. Everything about her was pale, even the light blue of her eyes. He squinted at this woman. Memory hovered close by. He was not in Ethiopia. And this woman wanted something from him ….

The pain receded just enough to allow him a moment of lucidity. Jennifer, not Gemma. His captor. Although she was calling herself something nicer than that. Debriefer. Yeah, that was it. And she wouldn’t let him have something—

She laid a hand on his shoulder, and the joint felt like it had literally exploded.

It was as if everything he’d suffered so far was a bare shadow of the pain that slammed into him now. As much as he hated himself for doing it, he screamed. And once he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop.

Jennifer reeled back from the man thrashing on the bed before her. A high-pitched keening tore from his throat, shocking her to her core. She didn’t do anything! She just touched his shoulder. And he acted like she’d gouged out his eyes with hot pokers.

He barely looked human. He was hairy, huge and bathed in sweat. As if she’d landed in a really bad rendition of Beauty and the Beast. Where was the man from her dossier? Jefferson Winston was suave. Elegant. Sophisticated. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to this man.

Sheesh. If ever there’d been a better advertisement for the evils of drug addiction, she’d never seen it. The man had become little better than a wild animal. It would be a tragedy if it weren’t his own darned fault. She flinched as he let loose another bloodcurdling scream. And this time he didn’t stop.

Freaked out, she retreated to the living room and turned on her laptop. She initiated a voice over internet protocol and called H.O.T. Watch headquarters on the Red line. It was reserved for life and death emergencies.

The duty controller answered with a terse, “Go.” Most callers on this line had no time to fool around with the niceties.

“It’s Jennifer Blackfoot. I need to speak with a physician who specializes in drug addiction recovery right now. I’ll stay on the line.”

“Roger.” The controller’s voice came back in a few seconds. “I’m patching you through to the substance abuse team at Wilford Hall Medical Center, ma’am,” the controller announced.

A male voice came on the line. “This is Dr. Kinchon.”

“Hi, sir. Jennifer Blackfoot. CIA. I’m debriefing a man who appears to be suffering from severe drug withdrawal symptoms. I need to know what to do to alleviate his reaction.”

“What substance is he withdrawing from?”

“I have no idea.”

“I need to know what he’s coming down off of if I’m going to suggest a treatment. It could be dangerous in the extreme to respond incorrectly.”

“Sorry, sir. He just came into my custody yesterday.”

“What are his symptoms?”

She frowned. “Extreme pain. Delirium associated with his more extreme pain episodes.”

“Is he scratching at himself? Hallucinating? Sweating profusely?”

“Yes, he is sweating!” she exclaimed, relieved.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since his last fix?”

She had yet to hear back from Brady on what his off-the-record conversation with the Ethiopians had revealed. She pictured his thick growth of beard and guessed, “At least two months. Possibly several.”

“Months?” the doctor exclaimed. “That’s not possible. He would be long past any delirium tremens if that was the case. He must have taken something within the past few days.”

At that moment, Jeff let out a scream that echoed through the house and sent an involuntary shiver down her spine. He sounded like he was dying.

“Please, Doctor. He’s in terrible pain. Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“You can try hot or cold compresses.”

“He screams any time I touch him.”

“Aah. Extreme tactile hypersensitivity. Don’t touch him, then. Even the slightest contact may very well feel like a knife stabbing him. You might consider restraining him for his own safety.”

Lovely. Just what she wanted to do. Torture the poor man. Not to mention she doubted any of the rope in the house would hold him down. “Please, Doctor. There has to be something more I can do to help him.”

“Find out as quickly as possible exactly what he’s been taking and when the last time he had it was.”

“Done.” She wasn’t sure how she was going to track down G. and bully the information out of the guy, but by golly, she’d make it happen if she had to show up on this G.’s front porch herself and beat it out of him.

Abruptly, silence fell over the house. Jennifer disconnected the call and raced for Jeff’s room. Funny how the silence scared her even worse than his screams. At least when he was screaming she knew he was still alive.

He was alive when she got there, but he didn’t look good. His skin was a ghastly shade of gray and his eyes were rolled back into his head. She risked touching him in his unconscious state and he was burning up. She’d never felt a fever burn so hot on a person’s skin before.

A flash of her grandfather, who’d been a traditional medicine man, came to mind. What would he do with a patient like this? She recalled his whispery voice murmuring, “Heat a cold man, cool a hot man, child.”

She sprinted for the linen closet and yanked out a bed sheet. She threw it in her bathtub, soaked it with cold water, and carried the sodden mass into Jeff’s room. She spread it over him, settling the cloth against his body as gently as she possibly could.

His thrashing diminished slightly. But as soon as the sheet warmed to his body temperature, his whimpering increased in intensity. Damn. She fetched her laptop and called H.O.T. Watch again.

When the call went through, she demanded, “Who’s G.?”

“Standby one.”

She waited in an agony of impatience.

“No idea. G. has a dummy internet server. From it, your guy’s message was routed all over the world. Assuming we can track it at all, it’s going to take a while to follow the trail back to the target.”

“Define a while,” she demanded tersely as Jeff moaned beside her.

“Two, maybe three, days, ma’am.”

“I don’t have that long.” She thought fast. “Put me through to Leland Winston.”

“Uhh, it’s four o’clock in the morning in New York.”

“Tell him his grandson is dying and I need his help. He’ll take my call.”

She wasn’t wrong. The billionaire’s gravelly voice came on the line in under a minute. “Who is this? And what’s this about Jeff dying?” he demanded.

“Agent Jennifer Blackfoot. Your grandson’s CIA debriefer. He’s in horrendous pain. Appears to be withdrawing from some sort of drug. We need to find out what it is and when he last had it.”

Strangely, Leland devolved into a bout of cursing fit to embarrass a sailor. Now why on earth would he react like that? Was this drug use an old problem of Jeff’s that had resurfaced, maybe?