Crazy Love by Tara Janzen

he’s big into vice, with high stakes in prostitution and gambling. A lot of people think he’s the power behind the Jai Traon pirates harassing the shipping lanes in the South China Sea, but his major source of income is still China White—Southeast Asian heroin.”
    And who in the hell, he wondered, had been briefing Skeeter on his missions?
    He angled his gaze at Hawkins, who gave him a slow shake of his head.
    Good God. Just how deeply had the girl gotten herself into the secrets of Steele Street and SDF? The potential answer to that question unnerved him. There were things she really shouldn’t know—including what she’d just said.
    “The commendation stays where it is.” Nonexistent, nothing but a piece of paper in a pocket.
    Jakarta was behind him, and Washington, D.C., was here and now. They had the Godwin file to deal with, and after he stole the Godwin file, there’d be another mission, another job, and then another, until Negara was nothing but old business, best forgotten, and that’s the way he wanted it. He did not want the damn Jakarta thing hanging over his head like a friggin’ guillotine—but it was, ready to drop without a moment’s notice.
    But that was just him, and a little residual paranoia, which, really, was to be expected, considering where he’d been last week—at least where he thought he’d been, mostly.
    Shit.
    He brought his hand up and wiped it across his mouth. The cramped cell on the hillside was clear in his mind, the filth, the smell, the shackles, and his neighbor—the guy hanging next to him, dying. He’d been thrown into that cell, and he’d made his escape from that cell, but in between those two events, sometime between the dark days and darker nights, there had been someplace white, and clean, and excruciatingly bright.
    It hurt even to think about it, how bright the place had been, the light almost blue, searing into his brain, making time stop. There had been nothing to hold on to in that place, no handhold for reality, and maybe there hadn’t been any reality at all. Maybe the white place had been a drug-induced hallucination.
    Because there had been drugs. God only knew what. God and the doctors on the U.S.S.
Jefferson,
he hoped.
    After his escape, a Navy medical team had checked him over, inside and out, and told him he was fine—probably just fine. If the injections Negara had given him had been lethal, he would have already dropped over dead, probably. That had been five days ago, plenty of time for their antidotes to counteract the warlord’s chemical soup—probably.
    A week would be the true test.
    Probably.
    Shit.
    He didn’t have to look to know the bruises were still there, two of them up the inside of his right forearm, each with a tiny pinprick in the center where Negara’s needles had gone in, three more where the Navy had run their counterattack. As an added—but probably unnecessary—precaution, the doctors had given him a series of backup antidotes, three injectable Syrettes safely nested in a square of foam rubber inside a small stainless steel case—red if his body temperature started to rise over the hundred-degree mark and/or he started hallucinating; blue if his temperature dropped below normal and/or his guts started turning inside out; and yellow if his heart stopped. So it was red—hot and whacked; blue—cold and puking; and yellow—dead. He felt like freaking Alice in Wonderland.
    And, yeah, injecting himself with the yellow Syrette if his heart stopped was
probably
going to be a real good trick. He’d meant to tell Hawkins about the potential necessity for that particular procedure as soon as he’d walked into Steele Street last night—but he’d gotten distracted.
    His gaze strayed back to Skeeter. Hell, he was still distracted, which made him wonder if instead of harboring a time-delay component, Negara’s chemicals hadn’t already taken full effect, simply making him stupid—because it was nothing but stupid to be so