“Did you ever see a counselor to get help for yourself?”
“I went to a counselor right after it happened. Logically I know what I need to do to overcome my fear, but it’s hard to face something you don’t necessarily see that often.”
“Until you met me,” Damian said, his voice low. “Do you think you can ever get over your fear of guns?”
“Maybe. I am trying.”
He shifted beside her, his eyes locked on hers, his fingers trailing lightly against the back of her neck. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”
She shook her head, as much in answer to his question as to clear the shiver working through her.
“You know,” Damian continued. “You did refer to yourself as my girlfriend earlier today.”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “That was just a cover story.”
“It doesn’t need to be.” He drew her close, pausing when their lips were just a breath apart.
She didn’t have any reason to be nervous, she reminded herself. He would be like the other men she had dated in the past, someone to spend a week or two with until they both decided to part as friends. Yet when she thought of how much she had already come to trust Damian, she found herself hoping this would last.
Never before had she found someone she could confide in so completely, someone she always looked forward to being with. His lips pressed against hers in a tender kiss, and she felt herself melting against him.
Her hand came up to rest on his arm, and she could feel the strength there. She sensed the bridled energy humming through him, and yet he kept the kiss light and easy, his hands gentle as he held her close.
When he pulled back, she saw confusion in his eyes, and she wasn’t sure what to say. She was saved from needing to say anything when Damian’s cell phone rang.
“Sorry,” Damian said, shifting away from her so he could retrieve his phone from his pocket. He looked down at the screen. “It’s Kel.”
He answered it, and his forehead wrinkled in confusion as he listened to Kel for several minutes. “Okay, if you think that’s necessary.” He paused for another moment. “Yes, sir.”
“What was that all about?” Paige asked after he hung up.
“He said he was going to text me a phone number to call to check in with him when we get to Venezuela. He doesn’t want to take the chance that I’ll be connected back to him.”
“That makes sense.”
“Maybe we should consider getting you one of those prepaid phones for the same reason. I know you and Vanessa have talked on your phone.”
“Actually, I already have one. I’m leaving my regular phone here.” She wasn’t sure how much she was allowed to tell him. Then she took a leap of faith and decided to trust him completely. After all, she needed him to trust her. “Vanessa had someone alter one so the GPS signal can’t be traced. I also have an alias to travel under.”
“What’s the alias?”
“Jessica Archibald.”
“Does that mean I have to call you Jessica?” Damian asked.
“In public, I guess you do.”
“This is going to be weird.”
“Of course, that’s assuming anyone would even be paying attention,” Paige said. “Honestly, I still haven’t quite gotten used to the idea of traveling to another country tomorrow, much less being undercover.”
“When you decided to switch careers, you definitely went to the extreme.”
“Trust me. It wasn’t intentional.”
Chapter 25
Vanessa watched the dark street below, the activity picking up as people came and went to the restaurants throughout the dinner hour.
She had gone down to the hotel restaurant and ordered her meal to go so she wouldn’t be away from her surveillance for long. She had a policy against ordering room service. Too many potential problems with strangers coming into her room.
Her ruse of changing hotel rooms appeared to have worked, and her attention was now primarily on the video feed coming from her first hotel room. She was a little surprised no one had shown up looking for her yet, and a seed of hope sprouted that perhaps no one was really after her.
That hope bloomed for another fifteen minutes. Then it was squashed. A motion sensor sounded, followed by a shadow crossing in front of the camera.
Vanessa fiddled with the resolution, adjusting it so the image cleared despite the darkness of the room. She was a bit disappointed to see it was the same woman she had spotted in the airport, the woman who, according to Paige, had faked her own death. Vanessa had hoped to see someone else, someone who could help her figure out why she was being targeted.
The woman checked the room and then set about planting her own surveillance equipment. Vanessa’s eyes widened when she picked up the pen camera Vanessa had planted, replacing it with an identical device. The picture went black when the woman slipped it into her bag. Vanessa hoped she didn’t realize what she had picked up, but a few minutes later, the feed came back for a split second before the unit was disabled and the picture was replaced with static.
“Great,” Vanessa said out loud. “Now what do I do?”
Remembering her conversation with Paige, Vanessa activated an encryption program on her tablet so her web history couldn’t be traced. Then she did a search for Canaima. She read through the description of the national park that was home to the longest waterfall in the world. The lack of accessibility and ruggedness of the terrain gave Vanessa a glimmer of hope.
If Damian was right, it really was possible her husband and his squad were stranded. That idea was so much better than the alternative. Still, she couldn’t quite fight the negative thoughts that crept into her mind. No matter how many times she went over the possibilities, she struggled against one glaring fact: her husband was a whiz with communication equipment, yet no one had heard from anyone in his squad since they’d left the ship.
Regardless of the hope she felt in Damian’s analysis, she couldn’t just sit and wait for her husband to magically appear. She needed information, and the only way to get it was to continue living the identity of Lina Ramir and taking her chances with Morenta.
* * *
Seth stirred from his spot on the jungle floor, his senses suddenly alert. The sounds of the night had changed. Silence stretched out before him, the rustling of small animals nearby no longer evident. A couple of birds squawked a warning, feathers ruffling anxiously.
Seth opened his eyes and saw Tristan keeping watch a short distance away. The gun in his hand indicated he had noticed the change too.
Moving slowly and silently, Seth reached for the sidearm buried beneath the palm leaves he had used to cushion his head. His fingers gripping the gun, he sat up and looked around.
Nothing was visible in the darkness, nor did he hear anything but the looming silence.
But that alone told him what they were dealing with, or at least narrowed down the possibilities. A predator loomed out there, but this time, it wasn’t the human variety. Humans made noise, and Seth couldn’t detect any scent that people so often carried with them. No, this was a different kind of predator.
The camp was dark on purpose, a precaution to protect them from the people who had tried to kill them. Seth decided a change in plan was in order.
Tristan was standing now, his own gun drawn. With his teammate to back him up, Seth stood as well, retrieving a pack of matches from his vest.
He struck one now, picking up a palm leaf to provide fuel to the flame. Holding it out, he circled slowly. When he held it out to his right, he didn’t see anything, but to his left, he caught a glimpse of two eyes illuminated less than five yards away.
* * *
Seth aimed his gun in the direction of the animal staring at him. He thrust the flaming palm leaf toward it, now able to make out a vague outline of the creature, some sort of cat.
“What is it?” Tristan asked, the other squad members now stirring.
“Not sure. A panther or puma, may
be.” The heat from the flames licked near Seth’s hand, and he leaned down to pick up another palm leaf. He used his foot to clear a space on the ground and dropped the flaming leaf, quickly picking up another and setting it on fire.
The crackling of the fire masked the movement of the sleek cat, and when Seth looked into the darkness again, it was no longer visible. “I’ve lost it.”
Brent moved to the center of their campsite clearing. “Quinn, help me make a fire pit. Jay, climb up that tree and cut down some more palm leaves for us to burn.”
“Always up a tree,” Jay said, moving cautiously to the tree closest to him, which was on the opposite side of the clearing from where Seth had spotted the animal. He tugged on some gloves and checked his knife before starting his climb.
“Anyone hear anything?” Quinn asked.
“It’s hard to with all the racket you’re making,” Seth said, again swinging the palm leaf in a circle in search of the threat.
He thought he heard a rustle of leaves a short distance away but couldn’t distinguish it from the movement behind him. Jay cut two palm leaves and threw them down to Quinn, who placed them in the area he and Brent had cleared. Brent leaned down to light it, and Seth heard another faint sound a short distance away.
Seth lifted his hand to silence the team. Brent and Quinn froze, Brent squatting beside the fire circle and Quinn holding another palm leaf in his hand. Jay also stopped what he was doing, now watching from his spot seven feet up the tree.
At the edge of the clearing, Tristan remained upright, his gun still at the ready. Several seconds stretched out in silence. Then a series of rapid movements accompanied by a growl broke through the stillness.
“Tristan, watch out!” Jay shouted.
A blur of muscle and fur bounded straight for Tristan from behind, giving him no chance to turn and aim. Instead, he reacted by swinging his arm as he spun. He cried out, the panther’s claws gouging his arm. A fraction of a second later, Tristan’s gun struck the animal’s skull, knocking it back, staggering.
With Tristan now between him and the panther, Seth picked up a rock and sent it flying. Startled by the projectile and stunned by the blow to the head, the cat retreated a step.
Brent set the palm fronds ablaze, frightening the animal further. With one last look at Tristan, it shook its head and bounded back into the darkness.
“How bad is it?” Seth asked, dropping the palm leaf he held and rushing forward. He could see blood seeping through Tristan’s shirt, the fabric shredded by the animal’s claws.
“We’re about to find out.” With Seth’s help, Tristan tore away the fabric. Blood pooled in the four claw marks, making it difficult to see how deep they were.
Quinn pressed a thick gauze pad against the wound to stop the flow of blood. Tristan fisted his hand and then flexed his fingers. “I can move everything okay. I think he just got flesh.”
“It still looks deep enough to need stitches,” Seth said.
“Great. Who wants to do the honors?”
“I’ll do it.” Quinn offered, his med kit already in his hand. “But since we have a fire, how about we have Jay dig out some of those plantains. He can roast them for an early breakfast.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“So?” Quinn looked up expectantly. “I’m about to work up an appetite. And Tristan needs to keep up his strength.”
“Why not,” Brent said. “Jay, find some sticks. It looks like we’re going to have a banana roast.”
“They’re plantains,” Quinn corrected him automatically.
“Whatever.”
Chapter 26
Damian made his way down the aisle of the plane as he returned to his seat. He hated sitting in the passenger section of a plane, finding he much preferred being in the pilot’s seat since learning how to fly during his extensive training with the navy. He had gotten up to stretch his legs a few minutes before, certain that they must be getting close to their destination. The fasten seat belt sign came on when he was three rows back.
He reached his seat to find Paige dozing and was grateful Kel had managed to upgrade them to business class. Just the advantage of not having someone sitting beside them was worth whatever the upgrade had cost.
The moment he sat down, Paige shifted in her seat, her head sliding down until it rested on his shoulder. He stared down at her, something inside of him softening.
He thought of their time together the night before, of the kiss they had shared, of the nightmare she had suffered as a teenager. Her story and her obvious struggle in sharing it touched him. Not only had she lived through a frightening event, but she didn’t seem to recognize that her instinct had been to help those around her, even when she was struggling herself.
He worried a bit about her abhorrence of guns, especially since the Saint Squad routinely wore sidearms. Then he caught himself. He barely knew Paige, and here he was trying to figure out if his profession would be a deal breaker in their relationship.
He looked past her to see the clouds out the window. Trying to take his mind off the woman beside him, he considered his possible courses of action when they arrived in Maracaibo.
His first instinct was to go straight to Canaima, but he fought against that, knowing how long the odds were that he would stumble across his squad in such a vast area of wilderness. He could do it, given enough time and a helicopter, but with the civil unrest in the country of his birth, he doubted he could secure both without alerting the government that something was amiss.
He certainly couldn’t go after Morenta alone with only Paige as his backup. No, he would have to be more creative in searching for information and the trail that would lead to his squad.
He felt the plane start its final descent and saw where water gave way to land. Paige stirred beside him again, and her eyes fluttered open. She straightened in her seat, and when she looked up at him, he saw insecurity reflected on her face.
Hoping to calm them both, he reached for her hand. “Everything will be fine,” he said in Spanish, aware that she could speak a limited amount of the language.
Paige’s response was a subtle nod of her head and a squeeze of his hand. This was foreign territory for her, but as she looked up at him with those chocolate brown eyes, he realized this was foreign territory for him as well.
* * *
Paige stood silently beside Damian as he checked them into their hotel, curiosity eating at her. Kel had made their travel arrangements, but she had assumed they were going to stay with Damian’s family to keep with their cover story.
Instead, Damian had instructed their taxi driver to bring them here to a hotel overlooking Lake Maracaibo.
He spoke rapidly in Spanish. She could pick out words here and there, but not enough to really know what was going on.
The clerk slid two hotel keys across the counter to Damian. After thanking the man, Damian turned, handed one key to Paige, and put his hand on her back to guide her to the elevators.
Paige held back her urge to question Damian about why they were here as they followed an older couple into the open elevator car.
Though it took great effort, she waited until Damian unlocked a hotel room and motioned her inside before she asked, “Why are we staying here?”
“I don’t want to take any chances. Kel told me the reason my squad left me behind was because of my family,” Damian said. “Besides, if a Colombian drug lord really is behind my squad’s disappearance, I don’t want to take a chance that my presence might put anyone in danger.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Paige stood awkwardly by the door and held up her room key. “What’s my room number?”
“Actually, we’re both staying in here.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry, it’s a suite.” Damian walked her farther into the room, where a table and four chairs occupied one corner. A couch stretched along the wall beside the window, and a television sat on a dresser across from it. He
motioned to a door to the right. “You can take the bedroom.”
“Can I ask why we’re sharing a room?”
“Security.” Damian dropped his bag beside the table and crossed the room. Standing to the side of the window, he peered outside.
“Security?” Paige repeated. “Security for whom?”
“Both of us.” He shifted to face her. “If we’re in the same room, we know any knock on the door is a potential threat.”
“Or we could look through the peephole to see who’s on the other side.”
The intensity that came into Damian’s eyes surprised her. “If Morenta really is behind all this, he and his men are just as likely to shoot through the door as they are to wait for one of us to open it.”
Paige felt her face pale, the gravity of what they were trying to do suddenly weighing on her. “I’d better try to call Vanessa.” She dialed the number and was concerned when it rang once and then went to a generic voice-mail account. “She isn’t answering.”
“Did she say where we should meet her when we got here?”
“I never got the chance to tell her we were coming. I only talked to her for a minute last night, but she ended the call suddenly, and when I tried calling her back, her phone had been turned off.”
“Do you think her phone is off now?” Damian asked.
“That’s my guess.”
“Do you know where she’s staying?”
“No. She didn’t tell me.”
“I’ll check in with Kel,” Damian said, retrieving his own phone.
He made his call, but he did more listening than talking, so Paige couldn’t make out what they were discussing. A couple minutes later, he hung up, and she asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. One of the leads he uncovered gave me an idea of how we might track down Morenta,” Damian said.
Drop Zone Page 16
