Heated Pursuit

by April Hunt

  “Damn it, go!” Rafe barked.

  “And where the hell would you like me to go? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s not a freaking metro stop!” she yelled over her shoulder, a moment before she slammed her foot directly across her attacker’s kneecap. Birds scattered at the man’s yelp, their wild calls a homing beacon for anything carrying a submachine and a bad attitude. With one man down, Penny efficiently turned to a second.

  Her red hair, hanging in loose waves, swung around her face as she pivoted. A punch, a kick, a quick sidestep. She never stopped moving. With each second, her eyes glittered with both concentration and confidence. She looked like an Irish warrior princess, not even flinching when her new opponent landed a solid punch to her jaw. Instead, it slid off her. She reached out for a handful of the man’s danglies and let the momentum take her down into a quick roll.

  The man screamed like a toddler and dropped to the ground while Penny quickly returned to her feet. Fucking beautiful.

  Rafe reluctantly pulled his gaze away. Two more guards stood in front of him. A hasty rush brought fool number one into a headlock. Rafe squeezed, cutting off the man’s oxygen long enough to weaken his body before cannonballing him into his waiting friend.

  A snap of a twig spun Rafe around just as Penny brought a rock down on the final sneak attacker’s head. The man dropped like a lead weight and took her attention with him.

  Breathing ragged, face pale. She looked a second away from throwing up or passing out. Rafe took the rock from her shaking hands. His own hands were steady, but inside, his gut clinched with the fierce need to get her out of there. And safe.

  In the distance, more shouts and directives could be heard.

  Rafe cupped her jaw and forced her gaze upward. “You have to go. Now. No arguments.”

  “But—”

  “The more of Diego’s men we put down now, the fewer that will be after us later.”

  “I can stay and help.”

  Rafe shook his head. “I can handle the rest on my own, and quicker if I’m not worried about you, too. Go north.” He prayed she wouldn’t argue. “I swear: I. Will. Find. You.”

  In an abrupt move he didn’t anticipate, she captured his face between her soft hands and planted a kiss on him that rocked him straight to his core. He savored what she gave him and took a bit for himself. The sweetness of her lips made it too damn easy to get lost, which would’ve been what happened if she hadn’t pulled away first.

  Breathless, she murmured, “If you don’t, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  “Sounds kinky.” Rafe’s mouth kicked up in a mischievous smirk that Penny’s frustrated growl quickly evaporated. He dropped his forehead to hers and breathed in her flowery scent. “I need you to trust me right now, Red. Believe me when I say that nothing is going to keep me from finding you.”

  Heavy footfalls broke the tense moment. She pulled away, anxiety etched on her face in the form of a frown. “I do.”

  Rafe reeled her in for another quick kiss and whispered against her lips, “Then go.”

  She hesitated and then took off in the direction he pointed to. Once he was certain she was safely gone, he cracked his neck and turned around as a second set of camo-covered vultures skulked out from behind a set of trees. “Let’s finish this, gentlemen. I’ve got places to be and bigger heads to knock together.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Penny ran as if her life depended on it. And it did. Her chest ached with the effort of pulling fresh oxygen into her lungs, and her eyes, unaccustomed to the darkness of the surrounding jungle, missed uprooted trees and hidden rocks. She stumbled. Fell. Then she picked herself up and kept running although she had no idea to where. Putting distance between herself, the armed men, and the compound became her only goal.

  After another near face-plant to the jungle floor, the tears threatened. Each step and stumble not only increased the distance between her and Fuentes’s thugs, but Rafe, too. Lethal didn’t even begin to describe the man, especially when he was pissed. He’d single-handedly taken down at least six of Diego’s henchmen without breaking a sweat. But how the hell would he find her?

  Every inch of the jungle looked like the next, each tree like the one before. If it weren’t for quick sneak peeks of the moon, she wouldn’t even know if she’d gone in a straight line or in circles.

  Self-doubt hijacked what remained of her concentration and, with the aid of a tree root, literally brought her down to her hands and knees. This time getting up wasn’t as easy.

  A lightning bolt pierced through her upper thigh. Jesus, it hurt like hell.

  Penny pushed herself to her feet with a strangled cry before feeling around for the source of the white-hot pain. Her fingers bumped against a two-inch-long branch impaled into the fleshy part of her outer thigh.

  “This is so not the time to summon your inner klutz, Kline,” Penny muttered. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she wrapped her fingers around the offending twig. “You can do this. Easy-peasy.”

  Not giving herself any more time to anticipate the pain, she gave it a yank and only half swallowed a whimper. “Holy hell. Okay. It’s all good. No more stick. No more pain.”

  She deep breathed for ten long seconds to try and convince herself of the latter, when the sound of faraway shouts echoed through the trees. Time up. Ten seconds would have to do. Sucking in a keening wail, she started running again. One hundred yards in, her lungs seized.

  There was a reason why she relegated herself to the cheering section during all of Rachel’s marathons, and it wasn’t because she got to wave her little pom-poms. Hand braced on a tree, she focused on easing the tightness in her chest. A wet warmth slid down the outside of her leg. She probed the area where the tree branch had been and winced at the metallic-scented stickiness it left behind on her fingers. It was too dark to see the damage, and when Rafe burst through the foliage like a tornado with legs, there wasn’t time to either.

  He grabbed her hand without missing a beat and dragged her along for another sprint. “Gotta keep moving, sweetheart.”

  “Do I even want to know why?” She nearly stumbled again before getting her feet back under her.

  “No.”

  They ran, faster than she’d ever run in her life, throbbing leg be damned. Bark flew, becoming flying missiles as bullets whizzed past their heads. Rafe pulled her along as if he knew exactly where they headed. A leap and dodge later, he screeched to a sudden stop, her body bouncing off his back.

  “Why did we…?” Penny followed the direction of Rafe’s gaze.

  Her stomach plummeted. A cliff. An honest-to-God drop that ended either into the roiling river below or the ominous rock formations that lined its shore.

  “Please tell me we’re not going to do what I think we are,” she pleaded. Behind them, the shouts of Diego’s men got louder. But Penny’s gaze was too focused on Rafe’s apologetic look to care that they were running out of time.

  “You do realize I have a fear of heights, right? If I had a problem with a chopper that supposedly receives regular maintenance, what makes you think I’d be okay with free-falling off the face of a cliff?” Her throat dried as she glanced over the edge at the churning water. “What if we hit a rock?”

  “Actually, I’d be more concerned with what’s living in that water.”

  Before she could yell at him, he pulled her in for a hard kiss. “We’re doing this together, Red. Side by side.”

  “We really have no other choice?” A bullet zinged into the tree to their left. “I guess not.”

  Penny squeezed his hand with everything she was worth and got into position. If it had been anyone else telling her to jump, she would’ve gladly pushed them over herself and watched their descent. But this was Rafe. With him by her side, she felt as if she could do anything…maybe screaming like a banshee while she did it, but anything nonetheless. “If we die, I’m still kicking your ass.”

  “That’s one beating I’ll enjoy, sweetheart. On thre
e.” Rafe smirked, the damn-crazy fool of a man. “One. Two.” He squeezed her hand, flashing her a wink. “Three.”

  * * *

  From far away, the sound of Penny’s name echoed in her head. She groaned, burrowing her face into her hard pillow as her sleep-addled brain slowly connected a trail of dots…the smell of earth, of sweat…of cold, rushing water.

  Penny sat up with a start. Her head cracked against something solid, making her wince.

  “Damn, sweetheart.” At the sound of Rafe’s low curse, she lunged in his direction. He caught her and pulled her into his lap, still rubbing the spot where her head connected with his jaw. “If I didn’t already guess it, now I know you have a hard head.”

  “Where are we?” She blinked repeatedly, squinting into the darkness. “Oh God. Are we dead? Did something eat us when we dove into the water?”

  “If we’re dead, someone should really talk to the Big Guy Upstairs about his accommodations.” Rafe brushed his hand over her cheek, pushing a strand of wet hair off her face. “We jumped. We lived. We’re fine.”

  Everything slowly started coming back to her. The bullets. The kiss. The damn freaking cliff. When they’d managed to swim their way to the bank of the river God only knew how many miles from where they had jumped, Penny had been ready to pass out from exhaustion. And it looks like she had.

  “You’re fine?” she asked. “No bullet holes? No missing limbs?”

  “I’m whole and intact. Right as fucking rain.”

  Good. Because she’d hate to hit an injured man. She swatted his chest, making him chuckle. She went to smack him a second time, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a kiss. As far as methods went for silencing someone, she favored this one. By a lot.

  Anger at being forced to leave him behind evaporated, or maybe it washed away in the river, because with one brush of his tongue, she kissed him back with everything she had. Tongue. Teeth. The shift of her body. The embrace was short but loaded with so much electrically charged heat that it took a while to register that she was still drenched from head to toe.

  The kiss turned salty. She tried to pull back, but Rafe slipped a hand into her hair, ensuring she didn’t go far as his thumb wiped away the errant moisture on her cheeks. Lip to lip, his mouth brushed against hers as he said, “Please tell me you’re okay.”

  Now that he held her, she was hunky-dory. As the fear that she’d never see him again slowly poured from her body, her heart rate leveled. Penny was in more trouble than just being stranded in the middle of the jungle with no charted way out. Because if she hadn’t thought it before, she knew it now. Her risk of falling hard for Rafael Ortega had grown exponentially.

  “Red?” Rafe asked again, pulling her from her own thoughts.

  “What was it you said? Right as fucking rain?” She forced a quivering smile. When compared to the possibility of future heartbreak, the persistent throb in her leg was nothing. “But what about you? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  With Rafe’s body as her guide, she ran her palms over his shoulders and down his chest. She’d worked her way toward his abdomen and waist when he caught her roving hands.

  “Keep doing that and you’re going to see just how okay all my limbs are, sweetheart.”

  “Oh.” Warmth flooded into her cheeks. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do…that.”

  “You do that a lot without meaning to. It’s become my permanent physical state when I’m around you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  She closed her eyes on a mental whimper. No touching! “What are we going to do now? And what about Carlotta? We can’t just leave her there to fend for herself.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what we have to do. At least for now. We’ll be no good to anyone if we’re caught and hooked up to intravenous drips of Freedom. That cliff was our saving grace. It’s going to take Fuentes’s men time to scale down or go around, and before that happens, I want to make sure we’re long gone. Something tells me Senior has nothing on his mini-me in the psycho department. You good to move?”

  “I may need a little nudge,” Penny admitted.

  With gentle hands, he helped ease her out of their makeshift hidey-hole. The cave was no more than a dent built into the face of the cliff, but it served its purpose and had kept them hidden from Diego’s searching men for the last…

  “How long have I been sleeping?” Penny asked, absently stretching her sore muscles. A zap of pain zipped through her thigh, making her wince.

  “Not long. A half-hour at most. You needed a rest and I needed to re-group. Hopefully Fuentes’s men will think we’re dead and will stop looking for us and turn the hell around, but I wouldn’t place all my money on it.”

  The shift of moonlight confirmed that at some point while she’d been sleeping, Rafe had channeled his inner jungle mercenary. A combat vest stretched over his broad chest. It was adorned with a collection of ammo clips for the AK-47 draped over his shoulder and the Glock strapped to his thigh.

  From head to toe, he looked mouthwateringly good—and dangerous. He tossed a black bag she hadn’t seen before on a nearby rock and began pulling out its contents. Camo pants. Boots. The last thing to come out was a knife with a seriously lethal-looking blade.

  “Was there a department store around here that we passed? Or a hunter’s lodge?” she asked.

  “It would make it easier for us if there were, but no. Both the clothes and the bag”—he tossed her the pants—“are courtesy of one of Diego’s men who is nearly buck-ass naked and trying to explain why to his boss. It’s no runway material, and the bag isn’t exactly a survivalist’s wet dream, but it’s better than nothing. And by some stroke of luck, everything inside managed to stay dry.”

  Penny held up the pilfered pants and lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “I’ll need a good amount of luck to keep these pants around my waist. Tell me you have a belt in your magic bag of tricks.”

  “Actually, I do.” Rafe produced a utility belt from the bag. With a flick of his hand, he had it hooked around her waist and tugged her body—and her mouth—straight to his. “But you won’t hear me complaining if your pants happen to fall down. Not one damn bit.”

  “I’m sure I won’t, but I think I’ll use the belt anyway.”

  “Killjoy.” His mouth twitched with a faint smirk. Way too soon, he pulled away, back to business as he nodded toward the clothes. “You need to change out of those wet things and into something more travel friendly. And make sure you tuck the bottom of the pants into the boots and tie the string up nice and tight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise, you’ll become a taxi service to creepy critters. Trust me. A few of them bring an entire different meaning to the phrase ants in the pants. And let me tell you, rain-forest leeches are a bitch—and don’t need water to creep into warm crevices.”

  When Rafe redirected his attention to his magic sack, Penny shimmied out of her running shorts and smothered a groan. Her leg burned as if someone had shoved a branding iron through her upper thigh, but using a flashlight would risk broadcasting their position. She made a mental note to check it when there was not only some natural light, but a few solid miles between them and the compound.

  She slipped into her new clothes, rigging the oversized pants as best as she could with the belt so they didn’t drop down to her ankles. Next were the boots—the very large, oversized ones that would fit easily if her feet were four inches longer. “I’ve never been a fan of clowns and now I get to play one while running for my life.”

  Rafe looked her way, his attention dropping to the “borrowed” boots and her noticeably smaller tennis shoes. “That’s not going to work.”

  Penny snorted. “You think? I already have a problem staying on my feet but you can forget any chance of it if I have to stumble around in these clod-hoppers.”

  The visual of her stumbling through the jungle brought a smirk to his lips, too. “Keep your sneakers on. We’ll
just have to make sure we dry them out every time we make a stop. Still, try and tuck the pants into your socks as best as you can.”

  She nodded and tried to fix the hem as best as she could. “You said we need to get gone, but to where? Were Diego’s men kind enough to draw you a map with a big you-are-here X?”

  “No such luck, but Diego confirmed he used local villagers for Freedom’s testing. He wouldn’t want something like that done in his own backyard, but he also wouldn’t want to go too far from outside his reach either. And you said Rachel mentioned him dropping into her village often, right?”

  “Often enough to raise her alarms.” Penny grabbed the emergency clutch from her wet shorts and stuffed it into one of her now many pants pockets.

  “Then we can bet we’ll run into a village sooner or later.”

  Rafe rechecked the magazines on the confiscated guns before turning around.

  She could have stood in the middle of a war zone, surrounded by the stench of smoke and death, and one look from Rafe would make her feel as though she were draped in silk and lying seductively on a mound of rose petals.

  This moment was no exception. The longer his gaze lingered on her, the more the soft flutter of stomach butterflies transformed to pterodactyls. She cleared her throat and tried to direct her attention to their situation rather than the stir of awareness. “So, how do we find a village?”

  “One thing you can rely on no matter the continent or country is that the people will be where the water is.”

  “Well, we obviously found that.” She felt her lips pull up into a faint smirk and was rewarded with a chuckle from Rafe.

  “We can’t stay too close. The area around the river is going to be the first route Fuentes’s men search, but since this one flows north”—he nudged his eyes up to the brightly glowing stars beyond the canopy of trees—“I’m almost one hundred percent certain that this is the Río Patuca. It arches up until it reaches the coast—and, most importantly, reaches civilization. Wherever there are villages, there’s food and supplies. We can barter for what we need to get us to the nearest established town, and from there, get in touch with Stone and the others. Fuentes may have an inside man in the DEA, and the sooner we get that info to the team, the sooner this’ll end.”