Read Online Shock Waves by Jenna Mills - Free Book Online Page B

her legs.
    “Christ,” he muttered, then turned toward the night. Clouds whizzed by now, high, thin, obscuring the faint glow of the southern stars. She was a complication he hadn’t counted on, a kink in his plan he hadn’t expected. He understood the vendetta between him and Jorak. He knew what was at stake. He knew how to bring the other man down.
    But Brenna … her involvement disturbed him in a way he didn’t understand. All signs pointed to her involvement. A messenger, maybe, someone sent by Jorak to warn Ethan what would happen if he didn’t cooperate, to intimidate him prior to the face-to-face meeting. Maybe that’s why they’d bruised her jaw, to prove Jorak gave mercy to no one, not even those in his employ. Or maybe he only meant her as a distraction, a beautiful woman to muddy the waters and blur Ethan’s focus.
    The evidence was clear, the facts compelling. Those were the commodities Ethan trusted, the touchstones on which he thrived. But God help him, for one of the few times in his life, he didn’t want to believe.
    He smiled bitterly, reminding himself it would take more than a pair of fascinating blue eyes and dire warnings to make him forget the betrayal that had forged him into the man he now was, and the thirst for justice that had consumed him ever since.
    “Tell me something.”
    The three words reached out of the darkness and lured him back toward her. He turned to find her watching him, just watching, her eyes glowing with the expectation of a defense attorney about to lay a trap. “What would you like me to tell you?”
    “Why you didn’t put up a fight.”
    He was a man who trained himself for all possibilities, but the gustiness of her request caught him by surprise.
    “Back by the river,” she clarified. “You saw the limousine before the men saw you. I was watching. You could have slipped back into the woods, gone the other direction.”
    And missed his chance at Jorak, the invitation he’d been carefully engineering for weeks. Months. Years.
    “Cowards run,” he said simply. His grandfather had taught him that. VMI had reinforced it. Jorak Zhukov had proved it.
    Brenna’s eyes took on that unnatural glow he’d come to recognize. And dread. “And real men stand and fight? Is that it?”
    “You tell me,” he said, mirroring her quiet words. He glanced toward the two guards blocking the cockpit door, the MP-5Ns slung across their shoulders, then back at Brenna . “Didn’t you say you could see what’s going to happen?”
    She surprised him by laughing. “I’m not a witness you’re cross-examining, Ethan. I’m not a suspect on the ropes. You can’t block my questions through questions of your own.”
    All by itself his mouth curved into a smile. “Touché.” He’d have to be more careful around her, more aware. She saw too much, shone a spotlight into dark corners he didn’t want illuminated. “Maybe I already have enough blood on my hands. Maybe I’m not interested in amassing more. Too sticky.”
    The light in her eyes dimmed. “In other words, if Jorak has you, he’ll leave your family alone.”
    The truth, the fact she’d gleaned it from words purposefully vague, proved he had to keep his guard high. “It’s me he wants. It’s me he’ll have.”
    “What about your own blood?” she shot back. “Don’t you think your family will care if it’s spilled?”
    “It won’t be.” Of that he was sure. He’d worked too hard, planned too long. Nothing would stop him now. No one. Not Jorak, not this woman—with her claims of precognition and those unnerving fairy eyes that seemed to see right through him—and, God help him, especially not the niggle deep inside, the ridiculous whisper that sometimes evidence didn’t mean a damn. “Not so long as I have what he wants.”
    “And do you?” she asked. “Have what he wants?”
    “He thinks he wants it.” The truth, he knew. That’s what Jorak claimed to want. But Ethan had long since learned the