by Cherry Adair
“Hold on to that,” he directed when the edges parted and the tie fell away. “We want them to think we’re still secure.”
He held out his wrists and she took the knife from him, efficiently sawing through the thick plastic tie. It took her a little longer than it had taken for him to saw through hers, but she got the job done.
She was holding up well, but they needed water to replace what they’d sweated out. Strands of honey-blond hair stuck to the sweat on her face and neck, her cheeks gleamed with hectic color, and her gray eyes were shadowed. When a person got that exhausted, fear was damn near impossible to hide.
As if reading his mind, her eyes met his. “You must be as thirsty as I am.” She glanced outside to make sure no one was looking, then rummaged around in yet another hidden pocket on the thigh of her voluminous cargo pants. This one revealed a flip-top plastic container.
“Got a cold beer in there?” Christ. Wouldn’t surprise him. If he hadn’t been familiar with the SCOTTeVEST outfit she wore, he would’ve sworn she didn’t even have a pocket on her.
“The alcohol wouldn’t be good for us in this heat, even if I had a six-pack stashed in my pants. Besides,” she added, “I’ve seen you after a few drinks. You need all your common sense, sorry.”
His gut clenched. She’d seen a lot more of him than somewhat drunk. “Jesus,” he said flatly. “Is it always about sex with you? I thought the pole dancer shit was BS.”
Her eyes, so velvety and gray that any idiot would want to wrap himself in their warmth, opened wide. “You really do have sex on the brain, don’t you?” She sighed, like some kind of put-upon schoolteacher. “It’s the tropical climate, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of other issues to fill your every waking moment soon. Like staying alive.”
She held out the container. “Another mint? Three’s our limit until we know … until we get out there and know what we’re dealing with.”
“Sure, General.” Zak held out his hand, filthy and still bleeding from the paper-cut-like lacerations he’d sustained from the sharp grasses and leaves en route.
So were hers. But she hadn’t said a word. She would, soon enough. Oh, she wouldn’t whine, he figured. The smart ones rarely did. Jennifer had used to have fainting down to an art form. She’d “fainted” to get them a room at a fully booked hotel in Peru, and pretended she was pregnant when she wanted to get into the shade the time they’d gone sand-boarding in Gharb Soheil. The situation hadn’t even had to be dire. If Jen wanted something, she used theatrics to get it. Zak had never known what was real and what was faked. He’d eventually stopped trying.
He knew unequivocally that Acadia would eventually pull the weaker-sex card in ways that would tie a man up six ways from Sunday, and with such innocence he’d convince himself he was a fucking abusive brute. Fortunately for him, the blinders had come off years ago. “Fool me once” and all that crap. Been there, done that.
She shook a tiny mint onto his palm. Zak put it in his mouth. “They didn’t search you?” he asked around the cooling tab.
She wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m blond and female in a male-dominated country. Who wouldn’t trust this face?” She opened her eyes wide and batted her long lashes.
Same crap Jen used to pull, Zak thought with knee-jerk irritation. Depending on her femininity and beauty to pay her way. The difference was that there was humor behind Acadia’s statement. Jennifer had had no sense of humor—it had taken him years to realize that.
Looking at Acadia’s angelic features, soft blond hair and smokin’ hot body, anyone would trust her. Until they saw the devil in those soft gray eyes. Just like he’d done the night before. Despite her stripper claims and the wild implications that she was a hell of a lot more experienced than she had actually turned out to be, he’d been intrigued enough to test the boundaries.
He had to admit, it had been so worth it. Right up until morning, when real life had come crashing right back down around his ears.
And hers, this time.
Acadia curled her slender fingers around one of the bars. In the same way as she’d wrapped them around his—
Zak pulled his mind back from that visceral memory and glanced over at the shack where Gideon was being held. He couldn’t see him; he’d probably gone to lie down on that hard cement ledge. Smart move, but atypical of his brother, who never sat down if he could stand, never stood if he could run. The extreme sports they both loved had conditioned them for pretty much any contingency, be it bad weather, bad food, or dangerous people. The places they frequented meant they were always prepared for the worst. Some of their best adventures had been when they’d bested all the elements that kept sane people from attempting a particular sport in a particular location.
The Stark brothers knew how to survive against overwhelming odds. Gideon’s conserving his strength for what was coming indicated that he was hurt worse than he’d admitted to.
Fuckit.
They’d traveled at least three hours in the van, which meant approximately a hundred miles and change. Then they’d trekked through the jungle for another four. He figured it was barely noon, given the sun’s zenith.
There was maybe enough daylight to get back to civilization, but night came fast in the jungle. Which meant so did the predators.
It was damned strange that they’d been transported so far away from the pickup point. The kidnappers would demand ransom, sure. Then kill them. The thing that bothered him was that they could have done that in someone’s backyard. Christ, this kind of operation frequently did. It wasn’t necessary to take them way the hell deep into the jungle just to hold them for a while.
Most of the local kidnapping operations were known as secuestro express, or express-kidnappings. It was a grab and hold kind of job; they kept the victim until the ransom was paid. Less than forty-eight hours. Those kidnappers were known to keep their victims prisoner in someone’s house, or even the trunk of a car, not transport them hundreds of miles into the jungle. Not to a secret location that looked like it had been built, or was in the process of being built, for the express purpose of detaining victims.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why didn’t they just kill us somewhere closer to the hotel?” Acadia asked, keeping her voice low, although no one was taking any notice of them.
Again, it was as if she was tuned in to his frequency, a feeling Zak didn’t like. Still, it wasn’t her fault she’d been swept up in this.
“They probably figured it would be easier to secure us away from civilization.” The mint was gone. A sweet memory.
She plopped down on the filthy cement ledge that had probably been a bed at some point, lifted her ass to adjust something in her clothing, then settled back, one foot on the ledge, arm around her updrawn leg. She rested her chin on her knee.
“What do you think they are going to do to us when they figure out nobody is going to pay our ransom?” he asked sharply.
“Of course someone will pay—”
“Who has access to your bank account?”
“Nobo—”
“Right. Nobody. What were you planning to do? Give her your PIN number?”
“If that’s what it takes for her to release us, God yes,” she said fervently. “In a heartbeat.”
He rolled his eyes. “She won’t thank you for it. She’ll order you killed. Just like Gideon and myself.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Grow up, Barbie,” he shot back. “This is the real world, and people aren’t as friendly as they are in Junction City.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” She gave him a pointed look. “But … I must admit,” she continued, voice softening, “even though you’re extremely cranky and uncommunicative, I’m glad they put us in here together.”
He wasn’t. “There are only two cells,” Zak pointed out, turning back to the guerrillas. They were laughing and shooting the breeze, money in the pot, bottle still making the rounds, weapons on the ground beside each man, close at hand.
New weapons. Plenty of ammo.
“And they weren’t going to put you and your brother together so you could figure out a way to get out of here,” she finished logically.
“Yeah. That too.”
“Too?”
“They found us in bed.” Zak paused, then turned his head to give her a cool look. “In bed. Bare-ass naked. They put us together so they’d have something to entertain them later.”
“Good God. Watch us, you mean?” She grimaced, then opened a flap over her left breast, removed a tangled knot of rubber bands, chose one, and stuffed the rest back inside the pocket. “Surely they don’t think we’d have sex … in here?” She stretched out her arms, her fingertips brushing the walls.
“I presume they don’t have Wii or TV reception way the hell and gone out here.” He pointed to a peephole in the wall about eye level behind her. Acadia gave him an even look as she scooped her hair into a haphazard ponytail on top of her head and off her neck. As she messed with her hair, her vest, heavy with all those damned pockets, parted, exposing the soft curve of her belly. It looked smooth and vulnerable, velvety soft. He’d rubbed his face there last night, nuzzled his lips against her fragrant heat.
She’d look just like that after a shower, glistening, with damp tendrils of hair the color of honey streaked with butter clinging to her neck and shoulders and curling over her breasts. Pebbled apricot nipples—
Zak let his forehead thump against the rough, rusted bars. The small pain jolted his brain. Fuckit. She was just a pretty girl. Nothing extraordinary, nothing special. Just one of a million available blondes out there.
“I hope you have a plan to get out of here sooner than later.” She looked at the card-playing, booze-swilling guards, then back at him. “Do we have a plan? Or are we going to wing it?”
A drop of sweat rolled slowly down his temple, stinging like hell as it hit the slash beside his eye. Appropriate. Obviously he hadn’t paid enough attention, with the first injury so close to his eyes. He needed a second for the lesson to really sink in. “Wing it.” Mostly. The plan he and Gideon had come with relied on fast thinking as the opportunity arose.
“Okay. Just give me a few minutes’ heads-up.” Apparently their daring, insanely dangerous escape was as simple as that.
She rummaged around in another breast pocket and took out a flat packet of something or other.
He should hang the woman upside down and shake her, Zak thought, half baffled, half amused, and all so damned horny he couldn’t see straight. He’d like to start by sliding his hand into that pocket and cupping her—
She jumped off the ledge and came to stand beside him. “Since we seem to have the time, would you do me a favor?”
“You want sex?”
“Um …” She pretended to consider it, then rolled her eyes, “No.” She pulled a moist towelette from the pack in her hands. “Would you mind cleaning the um … the b-blood off my back?” Her voice shook, suddenly not nearly so calm or composed. “It doesn’t bother me—blood, I mean. Not usually, I’m pretty tough that way. Sort of. Kinda. Most of the time. But that was just …” She walked back to the shelf, where there was at least an ounce more privacy, and turned her back. She waved the cloth over her shoulder. “Please?”
There was no blood on her clothing because she’d been naked when the rapist had been shot by Piñero. Zak stood at the bars and realized he’d gripped one in each tense fist as she waited, her back presented like an offering.
“Zak?” She still had her back to him, but it was obvious by the way her elbows and shoulders moved that she was unzipping her vest.
He’d rather have faced a thick-necked psychotic guerrilla with an Uzi and a shit attitude than Acadia’s pale, slender, naked back right now. There was something about her that was insanely appealing. He didn’t understand what her draw was. But whatever it was, he was being sucked into some sort of sexual vortex and he wasn’t sure why her, why now.
She slipped off the vest, tossing it onto the ledge, then crossed her arms and pulled her T-shirt up around her neck, exposing her back. Her skin was pale where the tropical sun hadn’t turned it red, and as fine-grained as a baby’s. The dried brown blood splatter was an obscenity, and the sight of it on her made Zak want to put his fist through something.
Like maybe the brick wall. Or every single leering face of every single asshole hombre who had looked at her slender naked body. The ones who’d touched her he’d shoot. God Almighty, and he was a man who abhorred guns.
“Could you hurry?”
Oh, Jesus. While he’d fought and she had nearly been raped, while he and his brother had rested their unconscious heads on her thighs … Fuckit, she’d been wearing someone else’s blood on her back like some kind of brutal warpaint.
“Yeah,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to do. He walked up behind her, deliberately blocking her body from view, and took the wet cloth from her. “Let’s get this over with.” He ignored the vulnerable nape of her neck. Ignored the smooth line of her vertebrae, like little stepping stones trailing down the pale silken skin of her back.
Ignored all of it. Unfortunately, his brain connected what her skin looked like to what it had felt like under his hands the night before. Baby soft, smooth, silky. It wasn’t a leap to remember how she’d responded when he’d kissed the tender skin at the juncture of her thigh, or how sensitive and responsive her nipples were when he rolled one on his tongue—
She dropped her head, holding her T-shirt out of the way. “Just on my back.”
The problem with jasmine, Zak thought, feeling savage and out of sorts and generally pissed off, was that the soft flowery scent smelled like innocence. Like things he didn’t want to think of: joy, and hope. He efficiently ran the wet wipe across her shoulder blades and frowned at the stubborn, rust-colored flakes. “It’s dried,” he muttered, voice gruff. “I have to scrub if you want it off.”
Oh, God, she wanted it off. Acadia felt each individual fleck and speck of blood as if it had stuck to her skin and fastened like some kind of grotesque tick. She shuddered. “As hard as you like. Please.”
Making a rough sound she couldn’t identify—probably disgust that she was so squeamish under the circumstances—Zak did as she asked—a little more vigorously than Acadia was prepared for. His steadying hand tightened on her shoulder as she staggered under the sudden pressure, but she braced her feet, not saying a word as he briskly applied the wipe to her skin.
She’d rather be rubbed raw than carry that man’s blood on her for a second longer.
“Done.” He yanked down her T-shirt to cover her, and she heard the scuff of his boots as he stepped away.
“Thank you,” she said with feeling as she slipped her arms into the armholes of the vest hurriedly. She turned around. “Give me the … that.” She wiggled her fingers, and he handed her the blood-smeared wipe. “I can put it to good use.”
When he only cocked his head, scarred eyebrow twitching inquisitively, Acadia kneeled on the cement ledge and stuffed the cloth into the peephole.
His lips twitched, but he didn’t smile as she returned to his side. “They can look in through the door.”
“Where I’ll see them.” She went to stand next to him. The bump on his temple was a painful shade of purple. “I have more aspirin if you’d like some.” She reached up to touch the bruise, and he jerked away.
“Don’t pet me. I don’t do touchy-feely.”
“Really? I would never have guessed,” she told him tartly. “I love being petted.” She loved no such thing. No one had ever done it, and it wasn’t something she was used to. But under the circumstances she felt the urge to needle him. “I don’t suppose you’d consider giving me a hug—No? Okay. Never mind.” She disguised her smile at his annoyed expression by digging into her pocket for the aspirin. “You must have a terrible headache; here, take a couple of these.”
“I don’t.” He gave her a brief glance, his eyes unreadable as she stuck the flat pack back in h
er pocket. A muscle jerked in his jaw as he held the severed ends of the plastic handcuffs. He had very large hands, which she’d noticed last night, but up close she saw that his fingers were long and almost elegant, like a piano player’s.
Her gaze flickered to his face. “Do you play? I had lessons when I was little, but my parents lost interest almost before I did. I was terrible—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” His head turned a few beats before he made eye contact.
“Do you have absolutely no social skills?” Acadia demanded crossly. “We’re stuck in this confined space because of you, we’re probably going to die because of you. You don’t appear to have a viable plan to get us out of here, do you? No, apparently no—”
“What do you want from me?” His eyes glittered, and the skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones.
“The answer to that seems obvious. Get me out of here alive.”
“Do I look like a fucking hero to you?”
“Don’t swear at me just because you’re scared too,” Acadia said furiously. “You look like a man whose money and position got me where I am right now. You look like a man who doesn’t have a plan. You also look like a big, strong guy who should be able to outsmart ten drunk guerrillas who are half asleep. I don’t give a hoot if you’re a hero or a freaking antihero. If nothing else, help me formulate a plan that’ll work before we all die in here.” Acadia was stunned to realize that she was absolutely furious, and worse, she was yelling.
She lowered her voice with considerable effort. “And the very least you could do in our last hours on this earth is talk to me in complete sentences.” She punched him in the arm. His brow rose. No one was more shocked than she was. There wasn’t a violent bone in her body. Or at least there never had been before she’d met Zakary Stark, almost been raped, been kidnapped, and been thrown into isolation with a monosyllabic pacifist.
She punched him again.
He didn’t blink. “Feel better?”
“How old are you?” she demanded, jaw aching because she was gritting her teeth so hard.
