by Cindy Dees
In mid-afternoon, he called a halt for them to eat and rest. Over yet another tasteless mush of reconstituted calories-this time optimistically labeled tuna noodle delight-he broke the long silence between them. “What do you know about Geraldo Huayar?”
Worry clouded her gaze. “It’s not possible to be near the drug world and not be aware of him.”
“Do you know anything about how he operates?”
She shrugged. “I assume he’s about like any other drug lord. He controls a large farming, manufacturing and distribution network and maintains his position at the top of the heap by a combination of violence and coercion.”
“That’s not a bad start. But there are a few more things you need to know about him. He’s obsessed with people not knowing what he looks like. He probably travels in normal society occasionally and wants the anonymity. Some people speculate that he may have a family squirreled away somewhere that he likes to visit now and again.”
Melina continued to eat, studying him quietly as he spoke.
“Huayar’s also a sadist. He enjoys causing pain. He generally tortures hookers to death in the course of having sex with him, and he often conducts his own beatings and interrogations of people who owe him money or cross him. He’s a particular fan of cutting off body parts.”
She flinched at that one.
“You don’t ever want to cross the guy, but it’s also vital not to show fear to him. He reacts to it like a hyena. It drives him into a violent frenzy. Show him fear and he’ll eat you alive.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” she asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Just in case.”
“In case what?”
He looked up at her candidly. “In case things don’t go well and you end up spending some time with him before my friends can get there and rescue you.”
“Your friends?”
He gestured at the phone lying on the fallen log beside him. “My people know you and your family are out here. Not only are you American citizens, but you’re also innocent victims of kidnapping and extortion. They’ll come get you.”
“Who are your friends, exactly?”
The answer to that was classified. And given that there was a real possibility exactly that information would be tortured out of her before this was all said and done, he dared not give her the real answer.
He’d hesitated too long, though, for she said, “I get the message. The less I know, the better.”
“I’m sorry.” He threw her a regretful look. “I’d tell you under any other circumstances but these. Just trust me. My buddies know their stuff. They can get you and your family out of here.” Uncomfortable with the subject, he asked, “Do you remember the phone number I told you to memorize?”
She recited the phone number to a blind line that would be rerouted through a series of remote, untraceable routers to H.O.T. Watch Ops. Even if Huayar extracted it from her, it wouldn’t help him locate the facility. And if the guy or any of his men ever managed to show up at Pirate Pete’s, they’d be wiped off the face of the earth without a trace.
“How much longer?” Melina asked.
He didn’t need to ask until what. She was talking about when they’d reach Huayar’s camp.
“We’ll get there right around sunset. But we’re not strolling in there tonight. I’m going to do a little recon and get the lay of the land before either of us show ourselves. Tomorrow will be soon enough to do this deal.”
She looked him in the eye for the first time all day. “So we’ve got one more night, then.”
The words echoed through him with the finality of a jury verdict. One more night. It was hard to fathom that his pain was almost over. Just a week ago, he’d felt nothing at all when considering his death, now he felt a mixture of relief and loss.
They walked until nearly sunset, topping the last ridge and beginning the long run into Huayar’s hidden valley. He slowed their pace considerably, paying more attention to silence and stealth than speedy progress.
Melina obviously sensed that they were nearing their target, for she grew silent too, even placing her feet more quietly behind him. He began to keep an eye out for a likely hiding place. It was nearly full dark when he spotted what he was looking for-a tiny gully running perpendicular to their path of travel, most blocked by brush and heavy undergrowth.
“Try not to rub against the branches in here,” he murmured. “We don’t want to leave threads or other signs of our passage.” It was a tall order to ask of an untrained civilian, but he went slow and helped her by holding up ropes of thorny vines and brambles for her to scramble under.
Before too long, they’d worked their way sufficiently far up the gully for his satisfaction. He stopped, and Melina panted quietly behind him. “Okay?” he breathed.
She nodded, probably too winded to talk. Which was just as well. They were within shouting distance of Huayar’s outer defenses if John had guessed correctly as to where the guy had deployed his forces.
Tonight, he built a combat hide-a small hollow dug out of the ground with a camouflaged tarp slung across it at ground level. It was low and damp and uncomfortable, but it was invisible, and that was the whole point.
He passed Melina a full canteen and two power bars packed with protein and nearly two thousand calories apiece. Those should hold her for the next few hours. “I’m going to head out and take a look around. I expect to be out most of the night. You stay here, okay? I swear, I’ll come back for you.”
Her eyes went bigger and darker than usual. She nodded soberly. “I gather there’s no chance of talking you into taking me with you?”
He reached into his pack and pulled out three tubes of grease paint and began methodically covering all his exposed flesh in shades of green and black. He glanced over at her as he tied a ragged bandanna around his head. “I’ve got to be seriously sneaky tonight, and you have no training in that. Besides, it’ll mostly entail lying on the ground staring at a bunch of tents with sleeping people in them. As exciting as reconnaissance and surveillance might sound, the truth is they’re crashingly boring most of the time.”
She looked crestfallen, but thankfully not rebellious.
“Rest and gather your strength tonight, Mel. Tomorrow we’ll get your family back, and then all of you will need to hump out of here as fast as you can.”
That put a spark in her otherwise terrified gaze. He turned to leave, but she placed a soft hand upon his arm. He stopped and looked down at her.
“Thank you, John. For everything. For making this trip with me. For taking care of me. For letting me into your heart.”
Oh, for crying out loud. That was actually a lump trying to form in the back of his throat! He nodded tersely and looked away from her. He spoke under his breath at a point just beyond her right shoulder. “It might even be daylight before I come back. If I’m not back by sunset tomorrow, wait till full dark and then make your way out of here, back to the Land Rover. I’ve marked the easiest course for you on this map.” He shoved the folded map and a spare compass into her hands.
“Come back to me,” she said softly.
He glanced over long enough to make brief eye contact with her. Her gaze was unnaturally bright with tears. As hard as he was trying to keep this all business, he couldn’t help reacting to her distress. He murmured gently, “This isn’t goodbye forever, sweetheart. I’m just going out to take a peek at the layout of Huayar’s camp.”
“It’ll be goodbye forever soon enough,” she sobbed under her breath.
He winced. Damn, he wished she wasn’t so good at getting under his skin. Women’s tears hadn’t bothered him for a very long time. But then, they didn’t often cry for him, either. Cursing under his breath, he turned and strode out of their secret camp.
As he’d expected, Huayar’s camp was at the far end of the valley, backed up against a monstrous stone cliff that made approach from the north nearly impossible. He dropped to his belly and slithered past the first line of sentries, w
ho were spaced too far apart to be effective-case in point, the ease with which he’d slipped between them.
The second layer of defenders were obviously not rank amateurs being broken in to sitting watch in the woods. These guys were better armed, more alert and much more closely spaced along the camp’s security perimeter. John took his time easing down the line of men, counting them and taking note of their armaments and positions.
On his second pass of the line, one of the men had turned away from his post to take a piss against a tree, and John took advantage of the resulting gap to creep past the guy. From here on out, he’d proceed strictly on his belly. Which meant the going would be snail slow.
It was almost an hour later when he slowly pushed aside a large-leafed elephant-ear plant and gazed down at the camp before him. At least two dozen armed men and women lounged about. Relaxed though they might appear, he had no illusions on that score. They could be in full-combat mode in as long as it took to hear a gunshot or a sharply worded command.
The camp was laid out in two roughly concentric circles. The smaller sleeping shacks formed the outer ring, and the larger communal spaces occupied a series of tents and crude buildings in the inner ring. The only exceptions were two slightly more solid buildings standing side by side at the very back of the camp…no doubt the drug lab and Huayar’s personal quarters. They would be the two most valuable facilities out here, hence, the most protected.
He studied the traffic flow of bandits for the next hour, trying to figure out where Melina’s family was being held. There was no sign of any hostages out here, which meant they were inside one of the structures. He pondered the odds that they were in the drug lab, but ruled it out. Huayar was too cautious to take a chance on the family members seeing his production operation and then possibly escaping and carrying tales to his enemies.
Surely, he wouldn’t keep prisoners in his home. Not unless he was already torturing them for his own entertainment. And from his two contacts with Huayar’s men so far, John had gotten the distinct impression that the bandit had yet to start cutting on the Montez family. So, they had to be somewhere else. Two other structures were heavily guarded and skirted around by most of the bandits…he’d lay odds one was a stash of weapons and ammunition, and the other probably housed Huayar’s prisoners. He needed to get closer to those two buildings and take a closer look. He had a 50/50 shot of picking the one with the Montez family in it. Left or right?
He took off crawling to his right because the ground cover looked heaviest that way. He’d almost reached his goal when a sudden presence behind him made him freeze in his tracks. What the-?
Chapter 12
Melina curled up on her side, failing to get comfortable on the hard ground. She missed John’s shoulder. Heck, she missed him. How long she lay there listening to the sounds of the night, she didn’t know. But it was a long time. Eventually, fatigue and the altitude caught up with her and her eyes drifted closed.
She dreamed of hangmen’s nooses and bleak, gray-blue eyes staring straight through her. She woke up with tears on her cheeks. Damn him! Why wouldn’t he reconsider his decision to kill himself? Didn’t he care enough about her not to rake her over the emotional coals like this? She raged silently into the night, crying and screaming inside her mind. It accomplished nothing except making her eyes puffy and her heart sore. He was being selfish and immature and whatever the male equivalent of a drama queen was! If he were here right now, she’d smack him around and tell him to quit acting like some damned martyr. Didn’t he understand that she needed him?
Eventually, her fury gave way to helplessness. There wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to talk him out of his decision to kill himself. It was a stark reminder of the solitary journey life ultimately could be. She had to walk her path and he had to walk his. She had no more control over him at the end of the day than he had over her. But then, she’d hoped what they were building between them wasn’t about control. She’d hoped it was about something deeper. Something more enduring. Something like…love.
She snorted into the sweatshirt serving as her pillow at that one. Love. Right. He loved her a hell of a lot if he was still determined to kill himself after all they’d shared with each other. If he was really that blind, maybe she was better off without him anyway.
But it was a bitter pill to swallow.
Who’d have guessed? She hadn’t allowed herself to care for someone in years, and when she finally did, she picked a man so absorbed in his own misery he couldn’t see past the end of his sorry nose. But then, maybe that was the point. Maybe she’d allowed herself to have feelings for him because there was no chance of him reciprocating her feelings for her. He was utterly safe for her to care about.
Okay, that was messed up. She was messed up.
Not like that was any big newsflash. After all, she was out here with the intent to trade her life for those of her parents and brother. At least there was a certain nobility to her sacrifice.
She jolted awake sometime later, chilled to the bone and panicked. Something was pressing over her mouth, cutting off her breathing. She grabbed for the hand, clawing frantically at it.
“Easy, darlin’,” John breathed from very nearby.
The cobwebs cleared from her brain, albeit sluggishly. That had been possibly the worst night’s sleep-or lack of it-in her entire life. She stared up at him and he cocked a questioning eyebrow at her. She nodded from beneath his hand. Yes, she was all here, now. She wouldn’t scream.
He lifted his hand away from her mouth, cautiously.
She mouthed, “Can we talk?”
“We can whisper,” he whispered.
“Well? Did you see them? Are they all right? How soon can we go get my family?”
“I saw them briefly. They were asleep under blankets, so I didn’t see much about their condition. But they didn’t look tortured.”
She flinched. How did tortured people look anyway? She supposed they would be bruised and maybe bloody. They must get a really haunted look in their eyes, too. The idea of her parents looking like that nearly made her choke.
“Hey, they’re alive,” John interrupted as a panic attack threatened to take hold of her. The blunt observation shocked some sense back into her. There was that. They were alive. Something to be thankful for.
“How are we going to get them out?”
He exhaled slowly. “About that…”
Her breath caught at the grim tone in his voice. This wasn’t going to be good news.
“It’s gonna be tough. Huayar’s people are good. Very good. Well armed. Well deployed.”
“What’s the plan now?” she asked grimly.
“First order of business-lie down and go back to sleep. We’re probably gonna have a long night tomorrow.”
Go back to sleep! He had to be kidding. But surprisingly enough, when he wedged himself in beside her in the tight space and pulled her into her usual position plastered to his side, she actually did fall back asleep reasonably quickly. She must be more exhausted than she’d realized. But then, emotional roller coasters did that to her. It was part of why she’d steadfastly refused to ride them for all these years. She should’ve known better. But no. She’d hopped on this runaway thrill ride of her own volition with full knowledge of what a colossal wreck it would turn out to be.
For a final time, Melina woke up, this time of her volition and in her own good time. John lay beside her as usual, his arm holding her close against his side and one of his thighs entangled with hers. It was how they usually slept-like they couldn’t get enough of one another.
To wake up beside him like this every morning, for a lifetime of mornings, now that would be heaven…strike that thought. Not happening.
Awareness that this was probably the last time she would ever wake up like this, his heart beating solidly beneath her ear, sent tears scalding down her cheeks. John shifted beneath her and she held back her sobs by force, refusing to give in to the grief. Not yet. There’d be time fo
r that later.
But then his lips moved in her hair, and she was lost. Tears streamed down her face as she rolled over and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.
“Hey, what’s this?” he murmured.
“Don’t ask,” she mumbled. She didn’t need him telling her not to care about him and to get over it. He was killing himself and that was that.
His arms wrapped around her with a depth of tenderness beyond anything she’d ever felt from him before. “Sweetheart. Don’t tear yourself up over me. I’m not worth it.”
She raised her head, gazing at him blearily. “So help me, John. If you say something like that to me one more time, I’m going to kick your ass.”
His eyebrows shot up and a startled chuckle rumbled in his chest beneath her. “Well, okay then.”
She glared at him for added emphasis.
He pressed his hand to the back of her head, drawing her down to him for a kiss so sweet it all but melted her innards. She sipped at him delicately, savoring the faint remnant of toothpaste on his breath. How could a guy who was about to die take time to brush his teeth before bed? The paradoxes of this man drove her crazy!
His palms cupped her cheeks, his fingertips sliding into her hair and drawing her head away from him fractionally. “Thanks,” he murmured.
“For what?”
“For caring about me.”
“I more than care for-” She broke off. She was not going there. She was not making any grand declarations of her feelings to a man who’d throw them away along with his life.
“Aww, baby. I really am a bastard, aren’t I?” He drew her close and then gently rolled over, reversing their positions. Slowly, he slid down her body, kissing his way lower, divesting her of her clothes and loving her with hands, and mouth and skin. At one point, he laid his head on her breast, and the two of them just breathed together. Nothing more. Just sharing the most basic act of life, their rib cages rising and falling in perfect synchronicity.
