Passion Punch

by Tricia Leedom

  He paused just inside the empty stairwell and caught himself on the wall when a wave of dizziness tried to knock him sideways. His head thumped with pressure like it was about to pop off. He took a deep breath and exhaled before he forced himself to continue on. Following the narrow passage to the other side of the house, he paused outside the servant’s entrance to Linus’ study.

  As he stole a peek inside, his vision blurred. He blinked to clear it and counted two guards, but in his current state, he hoped to avoid a fight. He pulled the detonator out of his pocket and hesitated. What if April hadn’t returned to the dining room where she’d promised to stay put? No, she understood something was going down tonight. She wouldn’t chance it.

  He pressed the button and a massive explosion rocked the house. The fire alarms wailed. The guards ran out of the room to check on the commotion.

  He’d planted the explosives in his room in the north wing of the house because it was the only place he could set up without being noticed. It also offered the lowest chance of casualties, because the entire staff was working the party on the central ground floor and the family suites were in the south wing.

  Jonas slipped into Linus’ study and approached the pedestal displaying the PRIM. The two-foot-long missile rested in its custom Titanium case. He closed the case and paused to fight off another wave of dizziness. Shouts came from the hall too close for comfort. He pushed through his sickness and slipped through the servant’s entrance. Taking the stairs to the second floor, he turned south, and made his way to April’s bedroom. Located conveniently close to the back stairwell and camera free, it was the perfect place to store his go-bag.

  He slipped inside the room, closed the door, and nearly jumped out of his boots when he spotted April standing in the dark.

  The dim light of a nightlight illuminated her in a soft orange glow. She had changed into a pair of jeans, hiking boots, a white tank top beneath an unbuttoned pink-plaid flannel shirt. There was a backpack on the floor beside her foot.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She raised her chin a notch. “I’m going with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “No, you’re not coming with me.” Jonas moved past April and dropped the Titanium case on the bed.

  The stubborn woman followed him. “I have to go. My father thinks you came back to work for him just to get close to me again. He’s a ruthless man, Jonas. You know that. He’ll use me as bait to get that back.” She pointed to the PRIM. “He’ll hold me hostage and who knows what else until you hand it over.”

  “It won’t work.”

  She recoiled. “Would you really let him hurt me?”

  His heart thumped against his ribcage. He steeled himself against another wave of dizziness. “Step back,” he growled. “I need to crawl under the bed.”

  “Why are you so hard-headed?”

  He glanced down at the front of his pants aghast. Nope, not hard-headed yet, thank god. “I’m practical. Your father won’t hurt you and I can get away faster on my own.”

  She moved out of his way when he flattened himself on the rug to pull out the rucksack. It was loaded down with everything he needed to survive in the rainforest for a couple of days with just enough room for the titanium case. Crouching on the floor, he added it to the pack and paused to wipe the sweat off his brow. He was burning up. No surprise. His head felt like a simmering volcano.

  “And what if you’re wrong,” April stood over him. “What if my father lets Roman interrogate me? Who knows what he’ll do. You may pretend not to, but deep inside you care about me, Jonas. You know I can’t stay here. I have to get home to my little boy… our little boy.”

  He stood and slung the rucksack over his shoulder as he eyed her getup. “Where did you get the clothes?”

  “My step-mother wore this when she went hiking in Buenos Ares last year. I swiped it from her closet this afternoon.”

  “This is a very bad idea. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. The jungle is a very dangerous place, even without Linus’ men hunting us, and they will hunt us.”

  She squared her shoulders. “I’m not afraid. And anything is better than staying here.”

  He was going to regret this for the rest of his miserable life which, at the rate he was going, was coming to a rapid end soon anyhow. “Stay close and do exactly as I say. We have to move quickly.”

  “You got it.” Her earnest expression melted into a grin.

  He was fucked.

  Jonas stepped around her and went to the door. Pausing to listen for movement, he opened it carefully.

  Leto kicked the door in, and Jonas fell on his ass.

  April screamed and backed up against the wall.

  “Going somewhere?” Leto clenched his brass-knuckled trench knife.

  He grabbed Jonas’ shirt front and pulled back his fist. Jonas blocked the punch, caught Leto behind the arm, and used a pressure point to bring him to his knees while he rolled to his feet in the opposite direction.

  Leto had raw power but no finesse. Pissed off now, he roared and extended his blade, aiming for Jonas’ sternum. Jonas stepped aside at the last moment and elbowed Leto in the head. While he was down, Jonas grabbed his wrist and applied pressure until his hand went limp and the brass-knuckled knife slid off his fingers.

  Feeling suddenly woozy, Jonas staggered back a step and remembered he was supposed to stay calm. His heartbeat pounded furiously in his chest trying to finish the job Leto started.

  “Jonas, look out!” April shouted, but he didn’t see the left hook coming.

  His head snapped sideways, and pain exploded in his cheek as he fell into the nightstand.

  “Hey, Roman,” April cooed in a sexy voice drawing his attention. “I have something for you.”

  “Oh yeah?” He took a step in her direction.

  She held up a pink sparkly tube of mace and pressed the button, but nothing came out. “Shit.”

  “Stupid Bitch. The safety’s on.” Leto took another menacing step toward her. “When I finish with him, I’m coming for you. Or should I make him watch?”

  She chucked the tube of mace at him and hit him square in the eye.

  “Ouch!” He pressed his palm to his face and bent over.

  Jonas’ heart thumped a techno beat in his brain as he regained his footing and slipped a knife out of his chest holster. Leto turned toward him, and Jonas let the blade fly, sinking it into his neck.

  April gasped and cringed away as Leto clutched the hilt of the knife an instant before he dropped like a stone.

  Jonas felt bad she had to see that, but she’d insisted on tagging along.

  He didn’t stop to fetch the knife. He still had three more in his harness and one in his boot. “Let’s go.”

  Out in the hall, the fire alarm still wailed, making his pounding head hurt even more. He headed for the servant’s stairs not looking back to see if April followed him. Maybe seeing him murder Roman Leto would be the wakeup call she needed to change her mind about going with him. He pushed through the door and sprinted up the steps to the third floor. On the turn, he saw she was right behind him, twisting her silky blonde hair into ponytail as she ran.

  He slid a small can of spray paint out of the side pocket of his rucksack and positioned it in his hand before entering the servant’s dining room. He pushed through the doorway and reached up to blacken the camera lens before moving further into the vacant room.

  “Where are we going?” April spoke in a hushed voice. “There’s no way out of here.”

  “Actually, there is. This way.” He passed through dining room into the kitchen and blackened the camera pointing toward the pantry.

  He unlocked the window, shoved it open, and used his utility knife to cut out the screen. “Come on.”

  “What are you doing? There’s nothing out there but the pool.”

  He tried not to sigh. “Exactly. We’re going climb across the pool cage and go over the back fence.” />
  “Oh,” she said faintly. “Sounds easy-peasy.”

  “It’s not.” He climbed through the open window. When she didn’t follow, he poked his head inside. “We’ve got to go now. You still with me?”

  She looked a little queasy, but she nodded and climbed out the window.

  “Keep your weight on the steel frame,” he said, while she still held onto the window ledge. “Don’t step on the screen. It might take your weight, but it might not and that would be quite a fall. When it gets steeper, we’re going to have to go down backward on our bellies. I’ll cut hand holds in the screening. You can use mine. Got it?”

  April’s face was extra pale in the silvery moonlight that filtered in through the trees. “Got it. Go. Go!”

  The rain had finally let up, but Jonas didn’t count on it staying dry for long. They traveled across the top of the cage silently and without incident, and when it started to curve downward, they laid on their bellies and crawled.

  “How are we going to get—” April started to ask, but Jonas grabbed her leg and shushed her.

  He heard a voice coming toward the pool. They both went still. His foot was five feet from the thick tree branch that extended over the perimeter fence. He had planned to hang from it and jump down the rest of the way, but it was too far of a drop for April. He would have to waste time tying a rope to the tree branch for her to climb down.

  Four guards came from opposite directions and met in the pool area beside the lounge chair April had sunbathed in earlier in the day.

  “What the hell happened? Smith blow himself up?” one of the guards asked.

  “No, the explosion was a diversion so he could steal the PRIM.” Jonas recognized this guard’s voice. Miguel Diaz was actually a pretty decent guy. He had manners and more education than most of the mercenaries on Linus’ security team. He was in it for the money like all the rest, but he sent most of his income back to his parents in Cuba. “He took Miss April hostage.”

  “Boss must be pissed.”

  “He sure is. He says shoot to kill, but don’t hurt Miss April.”

  April shifted to look back at Jonas and caught her foot in one of the handholds he’d cut into the screen. She gasped and leaned too far to the right. The screen broke and her leg swung down, threatening to pull her over. Jonas grabbed her other leg to keep her from falling.

  The guards looked up.

  “There they are!”

  “Wait!” Chavez said. “Don’t shoot. You might hit the girl.”

  Jonas cursed beneath his breath and slid the gun out of the holster on his hip. He aimed and fired two shots into the pool. Water exploded in the air like a dancing fountain at Disneyworld, and the guards scattered.

  “Let’s move. Let’s move,” he hissed at April as he started crawling backward toward the tree.

  She followed more slowly than he would have liked, but she had four feet of open cage to crawl past. When Jonas reached the tree branch, he swung a leg over it and pulled the rope out of his pack. He could already hear reinforcements hauling ass to the pool area and no doubt more were making their way around the outside of the fence. Offering April his hand, he pulled her up behind him.

  They scrambled across the branch ten feet to the other side of the fence. Jonas tied off the rope and shimmied down it first. April had already positioned herself to follow when his feet hit the soft mossy earth. She grabbed onto the rope and swung wildly. He caught it and held it steady from below. “Use your feet to control your descent.”

  The security team didn’t even try to be quiet as they crashed through the thick jungle maybe seventy feet away.

  “Come on. Come on.” He waved her down.

  When April was low enough on the rope, he grabbed her hips and set her on her feet.

  “Now what?” She turned to face him and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Put your backpack on your frontside and stop asking questions.” He walked away from her to uncover the off-road motorbike he’d found in the garage and hidden behind some large ferns.

  “Why am I putting it on backwards?”

  He straddled the bike and kicked started the engine before he sat back as far as he could go on the seat. “Get on. Hurry.”

  “Why in front of you? Wouldn’t it be safer if I sat on the back?”

  “There’s no time to explain. Stop asking questions. You’re as bad as your son.”

  Her eyes narrowed with annoyance. “You mean our son. And just so you know, he can be as ornery as you are when he wants to be.”

  His patience was wearing thin and the lava swishing around inside his brain was minutes away from erupting, but the reminder that the kid was their son not only hers, softened the edge in his voice. “Please get on the bike, babe. We’re really running out of time.”

  She nodded and threw her leg over the saddle.

  “Put your feet on top of mine and hold on to my thighs. I won’t let you fall.”

  When she settled back against his chest, he tightened his arms to brace her and revved the throttle. As the bike shot off into the night, gunfire exploded around them, pinging off the trees, exploding bark and branches. He’d cleared a path out of there, but it wasn’t easy keeping his bearings straight in the dark while bullets zinged past his ears. He leaned lower, trying to shield April from flying debris and to keep his head from getting blown off. He swerved to avoid more gunfire and drove off the path for a moment plowing through the undergrowth.

  April screamed as the bike bucked and branches whacked them in the face.

  “Keep your head down,” Jonas shouted over the roar of the motor.

  “I’m trying.”

  He wished he’d found a helmet on his search through the garage. He would have gladly given it to April to protect her head.

  The foot pursuit petered off the farther they moved away from the compound, but he didn’t expect Linus to stop chasing them. Jonas had cut the fuel lines on the remaining five bikes, but he wasn’t able to get to the SUVs. The route they took wasn’t wide enough for an automobile though, so that would give them a pretty good head start.

  They reached the path just as the rain started up again. A steady, insistent monsoon-like shower that turned the hard-packed earth to mud in seconds. The bike was made for off-road riding, so it stayed upright without too much trouble as he focused on getting as far away from the compound as possible.

  As the rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins began to calm, his massive headache abated too, and he started to feel things again. Like the raindrops pelting his face and stinging his eyes. And the soft weight of April’s body fitted snuggly between his spread legs. Her hands squeezing his thighs in a vicelike grip.

  The vibration of the motor was soothing. It had been ages since he’d ridden a bike, and he’d forgotten how the growl sank into your bones and made you feel one with the machine. His stomach tightened as a new kick of adrenaline made him sit up straighter.

  Two hours into their ride, the fuel tank hit E. They’d traveled as far as they could go on a half tank of gas on a dark and rainy night in a swampy, overgrown rainforest. It was time to strike out on foot and find a place rest for the night.

  While April huddled in the shelter of a giant Kapok tree, Jonas hid the motorbike in some bushes and wiped away their tracks with a fallen branch.

  Glancing over at April’s soggy, bedraggled form, his gut twisted. “Careful not to rub against the bark,” he warned.

  “Why? Are there snakes?” She jumped away from the massive trunk and gave it a wary glance.

  “Yeah, there are plenty of snakes, but I’m more concerned about the ants. The trees are crawling with them, and they’ll chew you up.”

  She cradled her backpack a little tighter to her chest. “Fun.”

  “Not really.” Tossing the broken branch on ground, he took out his machete and headed away from the road. “Stay close. You can get lost out here pretty quick.”

  It was humid as hell and black as
pitch, but the thick canopy overhead blocked the worst of the rain. He reached for the cord around his neck and pulled out the medallion-shaped flashlight hidden beneath his shirt. He switched it on and trudged ahead.

  The mist rose around them in wispy spirals. Insects chirped and the occasional bird squawked a warning to the other forest dwellers letting them know intruders were in their midst. They’d be fine as long as they didn’t stumble across a caiman or a jaguar.

  About fifteen minutes into their trek, he found a small clearing on slightly higher ground that would make an ideal spot to set up camp.

  When he stopped short, April plowed into his back.

  “Hey!” she said. “Let me know when you’re planning to stop next time. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. We’ll rest here for the night. We’re both soaked and I know you’re probably exhausted.” He took off the flashlight and hung it on a small branch. It wasn’t ideal, but it illuminated the clearing well enough to let him see what he was doing.

  “That was crazy,” she said a little breathless. “My heart’s still racing. Is that what you do for a living?”

  He dropped his rucksack on the ground and turned to face her. Resting his hands on his hips, he shook his head. “Not every day, but whenever the situation calls for it.”

  “You must really enjoy your job.” She covered her mouth, smothering a giggle. “I thought I felt something hard poking me in my backside the last few miles, but I thought it was your gun.” Her gaze dropped lower and she laughed outright then.

  Jonas frowned and looked down too. The front of his cargo pants stuck out like he’d pitched a circus tent behind his fly.

  Damn Viagra.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  April tried to stop laughing, she really did, but the stress of the last few hours had built up inside of her and it felt good to let it out.

  “It was the vibration of the bike,” he grumbled.

  She giggled harder. She couldn’t help herself.

  “You know what? Nevermind.” He turned away and took a length of rope out of his pack. He stalked toward a tree and looped one end over a branch before walking eight feet to the next tree and doing the same. The whole time his erection pointed in the direction was traveling like a wayward compass.