Page 40 of Jacking Jill

Benson smiled faintly. “Lots of head-scratching decisions were made tonight,” he said pointedly, ignoring Jack’s glare and glancing up at the open war-room door. Fay had just entered the room, followed by a brown-haired woman in a black cocktail dress. “Speaking of which, you must be Jill Hennessy. I’m John Benson. The guy you called an asshole earlier, remember?”

Jill’s brown eyes widened and her freshly scrubbed face paled and then turned beetroot red. She parted her lips, glancing at Jack in mortified panic before gulping twice and then managing a hesitant smile. “I . . . I only said you sounded like an asshole,” she explained, her smile brightening as she swept her gaze past Jack and up at Hogan and then back to Benson. “Hogan and Jack were the ones who confirmed you were an asshole.”

Benson cracked up with laughter, smacking his knee on the table-edge and sending splinters of pain rocketing through his reconstructed shin. Grinning and wincing at the same time, Benson rubbed his knee and nodded in Jack’s direction. “I like her. I guess she can stay.”

Jack cracked a grin now too, more smiles breaking on the faces of all the Darkwater men and women in the room. Benson sighed, shaking his head as that familiar ripple of energy moved through his body, taking away the pain in his bones. He watched in silence as Jack stood from his chair, walked over to Jill, leaned in close to ask her if she was feeling all right. Jack’s tone and posture were oddly self-conscious, like he was acutely aware of everyone’s attention on him but couldn’t stop himself from showing concern, from giving a shit about this woman even though Jack didn’t usually give a shit about anyone except his team and himself.

Where’s that player-cool cockiness now, Benson wondered as he watched Jill wave off Jack’s concern and say something back to him in hushed tones. Damn, the guy seems like a different person around this woman, like that choice he made to go to Jill instead of Diego changed everything—starting with Jack himself.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, you old fool, Benson told himself angrily when he saw color darken Jack’s cheeks at something Jill was saying as the two of them stood near the wall by the door like co-conspirators in some secret plan. You’ve always known that with so many players in the game now, destinies will come into conflict, fates will fight each other for primacy. Not everyone gets to live out their fate in this slice of reality. Not every couple gets their happy ending in this spin of the great wheel of probability. Sooner or later one of these Darkwater couples will get thrown off the spinning wheel, go tumbling down into an abyss from which they can’t climb out, no matter how strong their bond, no matter how fierce their love, no matter how hot those flames of sex and violence burn in their fated souls.

Darkwater was created to serve a purpose greater than just one man and one woman, Benson reminded himself as the buzz of conversation rose up around him again. Each individual Darkwater mission was just a stepping stone to a grander mission that was now unfolding, becoming more clear as Marcus and Delilah Robinson got closer to the White House—which would bring Benson and Darkwater closer to the inner circles of power and influence, put them in a position to steward Benson’s beloved nation of America to its unspeakably grand destiny, its immeasurably infinite fate as the beacon of freedom and light, the pinnacle of the good and the right.

And no country can fulfill that sort of sweeping vision without sacrifice.

Without pain.

Without loss.

Without death.

“You’re dead if you go back there, Jill,” came Jack’s voice through Benson’s throbbing head. He blinked himself back to the real world, glanced over at where Jack was holding Jill’s arm as Jill made for the open door. “Don’t be an idiot. You don’t even have a car. Not that you’re in any condition to drive.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Benson said, pushing himself to his feet, holding onto the table-edge as the pain roared up from his shin and radiated through every bone and sinew of his body. That throbbing headache was back—if it had ever left—and combined with all the coffee and adrenaline was bringing Benson’s temper to a boil. “Fay, take Jill back to the medical wing. Lock her in there if she tries to leave without my permission.”

“Excuse me?” Jill’s face sharpened with indignation. “I don’t need your permission to go anywhere. I’ll walk out to the damn highway and hitch a ride if I have to.” She wrenched her arm away from Jack’s grip. “Nina’s all alone back there. She’ll just be an afterthought in all that chaos at the Carmine mansion with Bobby dead and the crashed cars on the road and all the guests and everything. She’s hysterical and also high on God-knows-what. I’m really worried that she’ll overdose by mistake or maybe even on purpose. I need to find her and make sure she’s all right.” Jill’s lower lip jutted out as she glared at Jack, who’d stopped trying to grab her arm and instead had parked his big body squarely in the doorway, blocking her exit. “You know I have to go to Nina, Jack. What would you do if one of your teammates needed you in a crisis, if their life was in danger?”

Jack’s face hardened, his gaze flicking left and right as he tried to avoid Jill’s defiant eyes. He took a breath, blinked twice, then finally looked at her. “Jill, it’s too dangerous for you and you know it. You can’t help anyone by going back to the Carmine Mansion. Besides, I heard Nina screaming at you at the accident site. She blames you for Bobby’s death.”

“She wasn’t thinking straight,” Jill said with stubborn insistence. “Her fiancé just got shot in the head and she’d been in a car accident and she was probably high and drunk.”

“Romeo will send her to the hospital,” Jack said unconvincingly.

Jill snorted. “You know he won’t.” She glared at Benson for a moment, just long enough for Benson to see the fire in her eyes, feel the fierceness of her determination to do something completely irrational but heartbreakingly honorable. “For the same reason Benson wouldn’t allow you to take me to a hospital. Because the hospital will call the police, and neither John Benson nor Romeo Carmine want the cops anywhere near this thing. Whatever this thing is.”

“Darkwater,” said Benson matter-of-factly.

Jill stared with impatient confusion. “What?”

“You asked what this thing is.” Benson grinned. “This thing is Darkwater.”

Jill frowned, cocked her head at Benson. “What the hell is Darkwater?”

Benson leaned on his walking stick which, after almost twenty-four hours of pacing and stomping, was now much more than a prop. He felt like a hobbled old wizard, and was mildly surprised when he caught a reflection of himself in the tinted glass window and saw that he was still in a modern tailored suit with neatly cropped hair and not in a flowing dark medieval robe with a head-full of hissing serpents. “Darkwater is . . .” he started to say before glancing at Nancy and grinning. “Actually, why don’t I let Nancy explain it.”

Nancy looked up, saw the glint in Benson’s eyes, and sighed. “Darkwater is a symptom of John Benson’s madness, Jill. I suggest you follow your survival instincts, walk out that door, and don’t look back. You’re far safer hitching a ride on a dark highway at 3 a.m. than listening to Benson pontificate about the universe and its mysteries and how he’s the steward of America’s fate and we’re all destined to be pawns in some vast game of cosmic chess where he’s the grandmaster.” Nancy smiled primly at Benson, raising two well-plucked eyebrows above her cat-eye tortoise-shell reading glasses. “Did I capture the essence of Darkwater, John? Anything you’d like to add? Anyone?”

Chuckles rose up as Nancy swept her twinkling blue gaze around the room, finally settling on Jill’s stupefied face.

Jill stared at Nancy, clearly more confused than ever. Nancy’s tone was sharp, edgy, but with a strange mix of sarcasm and seriousness that was new. Benson’s gaze lingered on Nancy. He wondered if she was testing Jill the way Benson had done with all the previous Darkwater couples. Was Nancy checking to see if Jill could really walk away from the energetic vortex named Darkwater, if Jack would let her walk away?

Because if you can walk away from Darkwater, then maybe you should.

So Benson stayed quiet, leaning on his cane as he watched Jill’s gaze move from Nancy to each of the Darkwater men and women gathered in the war-room. Jack was still blocking the exit with his body, but Benson knew Jack wouldn’t be able to stop Jill if she really wanted to go.

Because Benson wouldn’t let Jack stop her.

And he sure as well wasn’t going to let Jack go with her either.

---