Straight From the Hip(53)

Nick sank down next to her and put his hand on her back. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”He’d used very few words to paint an incredibly vivid image, she thought grimly, swallowing and trying to get control. “No, it’s okay. I went off on you.” She thought about the sounds she’d heard. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“Yeah. I get them a couple of times a week.”

That often? She sucked in a breath. “Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I already do. All I’m missing is the details. What happened?”

“You should go to bed.”

She angled toward him. “I should do a lot of things. Have you noticed I’m stubborn and used to getting my way?”

“You? I don’t believe it.”

She managed a slight smile, then let it fade as she reached out and touched his bare shoulder.

He didn’t move as she worked her way down his chest. The scars crisscrossed his flesh, some deeper than others, some just thin lines.

“Are they on your back, too?” she asked.

“They’re everywhere.”

The nausea was back, but she ignored it. “What happened?” she repeated.

He took her hand in his. She wanted to think it was for comfort, but she had a feeling it was more about keeping her from finding additional scars.

“It was about ten years ago. I was working for an oil company. Some of the work I’d done in graduate school was about imaging. It’s technical, but basically there are ways to look below the earth’s surface to find potential oil deposits. There was a big one in South America. We knew about it for a while but there were complications with getting it out of the ground.”

She pulled her hand free. His gentle touch was more of a distraction than she needed. “I know what extraction is. I’m Jed Titan’s daughter. I practically have oil in my blood.”

“Right. As part of my work with the imaging, I discovered a new way to extract the oil. It avoided most of the geographical problems, so a couple of guys and I flew down to check out the area ourselves.”

“And?”

“It was perfect. Using my new techniques we could get to all the oil and do minimal damage to the environment.” He shifted on the bed. “The land was owned by a few dozen families. I met Francisco, who sort of ran things. I convinced him and he convinced the others. The beauty of the plan was they still had access to nearly all their acreage. They could farm and live their lives while raking in the money from us.”

“So where’s the bad?” she asked, knowing she wasn’t going to like how this was going to end.

“I thought I was smarter than everyone who said it couldn’t be done,” he said. “I ignored the warnings, both scientific and spiritual.”

“There were spiritual warnings?”

“Local legends not to take from below the ground. Anyone who did would be cursed by the gods.”

“Creepy,” she said as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “What happened?”

“In the early stages of drilling, we hit a lot of gas. I didn’t think anything of it. We were testing the local air and there wasn’t any hint of a problem. Three months later, the people started getting sick. We figured out right away we’d poisoned the water, but by then it was too late. Three people died.”

Izzy stared at him, not sure what to say. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you know there was a risk before you started?”

“It was an impossible chemical reaction. Unpredictable. Nothing like this had ever happened before. If we’d used traditional drilling methods, we might have caught it. But we didn’t.” He sounded disgusted with himself. “We managed to save the rest of the village, but it was too late. Two of the dead were from Francisco’s own family. Everyone blamed him and he blamed me.”

She didn’t know what to say. She knew firsthand the dangers of drilling miles deep into the earth. People could die—but not the innocents. Not those who hadn’t signed up for the risk.

“It was my fault,” Nick said hoarsely. “I did it. In my arrogance, I was so sure. I went to Francisco to apologize. He took me prisoner and he took a friend captive, as well. The men in the village held us for months, torturing us with knives. They fed us just enough to keep us alive, but never enough that we weren’t starving. They broke my friend’s legs and he nearly died from an infection. I don’t know how many times I faced death. If I’d been by myself, I would have given up, but I couldn’t. My friend wouldn’t let me. We kept each other alive.”