by Dana Marton
Instead, she stepped closer.
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?” She turned the question on him. “Definitely not a hiker from Panama.” She shoved one weapon into the back of her waistband, pulled a plastic cuff from her back pocket—one she had to have stolen from his backpack—then gestured toward the water pipes in the bathroom behind him.
“No.” He measured the distance between them, judging it too great to be covered in a single leap. He was going for it anyway.
Or not.
She squeezed off a shot that passed so close to his ear he could feel the wind of the bullet.
“Hey, all right.” He stepped back, knowing no help would be coming. In a place like this, people knew enough to walk away from gunfire, not toward it.
She tossed him the plastic tie. “The pipe.”
He took a step back, held his left hand up to the pipe and cuffed himself to it. He swore under his breath, not taking his eyes off her for a second. He’d been had. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
What in hell had he been thinking? But of course, he hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d short-circuited his brain the moment she’d stepped into that clearing.
He flashed her his most lethal glare. “The money I have on me ain’t worth it, honey. I’m going to track you down. That’s a promise.”
She gave him a cocky smile, keeping her gaze above his shoulders, then turned away, leaving him handcuffed and naked.
But if he thought this was about cash, he realized his mistake a second later when she untied Zak roughly and yanked him to his feet, not paying any attention to the boy’s muffled groaning.
“You let him be,” Mitch ordered on a voice that usually brought results.
She didn’t even bother with a backward glance as she shoved Zak out the door. The next thing Mitch heard was the door slamming behind them and the key turning.
The sound of a car’s motor coming to life reached his ears a minute later, as he desperately searched the bathroom for a tool that could set him free. Under his breath, he cursed Megan Cassidy—if that was her real name—a hundred different ways, each singularly inventive.
Chapter Three
The rumble of the ancient motor drowned out the sounds of the rain forest, but not the strange noises the kid made behind the gag.
“Are you going to keep quiet if I take it off?” Megan glanced over as she drove the geriatric pickup down an uneven dirt road that cut through the jungle.
Zak glared at her and sounded as if he were trying to swear around the cloth.
“Then I’m sorry, but you’re going to stay this way.” Not that she enjoyed making anyone uncomfortable on purpose.
But he could breathe. She was going to save herself from having to listen to more of the threats and the names he’d called her when she’d tried to take out the gag the first time. She wasn’t going to put up with that from some two-bit drug dealer who got on Juarez’s bad side.
She didn’t know who he was and she didn’t care. All she cared about was returning him to the boss and getting that next promotion, the next level of trust that would allow her to accompany Juarez to the meeting at Don Pedro’s hidden stronghold next week.
The logging road she was on was about to end, which meant they would have to hoof it thirty miles south to the next passable road she knew, the one she’d left her ATV on before she cut through the jungle to cut off the kid at the river. She had figured that would be the way he would go if he knew anything.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t found him alone, which had required some quick thinking and cost her a lot of wasted time. Mitch was… Never mind that. She didn’t have all the details and she didn’t need them, not even if he had the most amazing body she’d ever seen and the most dangerous bedroom eyes she could imagine. Juarez’s orders were only for the kid.
She drove to the point where the jungle became impassable, left the pickup and shoved Zak forward on the foot trail ahead. His head was red with fury as he dragged his feet.
She shoved him harder. “I’d prefer if you walked. It’s easier than dragging a dead body over terrain like this. Of course, the boss probably wouldn’t want the whole body.”
She pretended to ponder the point then put a smile on her face. “As long as I take some vital organ that proves you’re dead, it should be enough for him.”
The kid’s eyes went wide. He picked up the pace.
She undid the snaps at her hips and rolled down her pant legs, transforming her shorts to long cargo pants, the bottom of which she tucked into her boots to keep herself safe from bugs and scratches. Then she pulled a light shirt from her backpack, completing her preparations for the jungle. And she did it all on the go, without missing a step.
She kept an eye on their surroundings as they pushed ahead, looking for anything edible, alert to possible danger. “Watch for snakes on or near the trail. And poison frogs.”
Her stomach growled for the meal they’d missed at that guesthouse. The small chunk of bread and goat cheese they’d eaten after crossing the river hadn’t been nearly enough. But she didn’t have time to leave the trail and forage right now. Night would be falling soon, and before that happened, she had to find a place to camp and make a platform that would keep them off the ground while they slept.
Even a raised bed didn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t awake with a snake or a tarantula up their pant leg, but at least it would improve the odds in their favor. Regardless of what she’d threatened the kid with, she intended to take him back to Juarez alive and in one piece.
Which meant they were going to sit the night out. Walking through the jungle after dark was suicide. She wasn’t foolish enough to attempt that. And they both needed rest, anyway. You got tired, you made mistakes. Then you were no help to anyone.
They walked an hour before she found a good spot, a clearing with bamboo nearby and big-leaf palms that had gathered rainwater she could collect in her safe-filter water bottle. She’d forgotten to fill it at the guesthouse. Okay, not forgotten. But once Mitch had been cuffed to the pipes, it hadn’t seemed too smart to go near the sink.
She wasn’t going to think of the way she’d left him. Naked.
She’d almost dropped her guns when he’d busted out of that bathroom, all muscles and tanned skin.
“Here.” She hung her backpack on a branch and used her short machete to cut enough bamboo for a double bed and enough vines to suspend it. When she was done, she pulled the rag from Zak’s mouth.
“Keep quiet,” she ordered before she showed him what she wanted him to do. “I’d recommend you do a good job. You don’t want to sleep on the ground here, believe me.”
She wasn’t a great fan of the jungle. The past year hadn’t been fun, exactly. But she would have put up with worse to achieve her aim. She scanned the trees and moved toward one that seemed to have potential, all while trying not to think of Mitch—and failing.
“Where are you taking me?” Zak called after her. Dirty and exhausted, he sounded a lot more subdued than when he’d screamed choice obscenities at her earlier.
She ignored that question as she got working on the bay leaf palms locals used for thatching to keep the rain out of their huts. “We need a roof to keep us dry overnight.”
“Why does it rain so much here?” he whined, pulling his shirt away from his neck where the wet clothing had rubbed the skin raw.
She had some salve that would work on that.
“Because it’s a rain forest.” She kept Zak in sight as she worked. When she dragged the palm fronds back, she helped him finish the beds—he hadn’t gotten far—then put the roof on, thatching it as best she could. The sky was already darkening by the time she finished. They had only minutes to start a fire.
She grabbed a dry cotton sock from her backpack and used that as kindling, wondering how far Mitch was behind them. Far enough, hopefully. She hadn’t seen another vehicle at the village.
Getting a fire going in
a place that dripped with moisture was quite the trick, but the burning sock dried the bamboo shavings she piled on, and then that caught fire at last. Just in time. The jungle around them was already black. Because of the tall trees, night here was a sudden thing. You’d better hope you were ready for it.
“Here, put this on your neck.” She tossed the small jar of salve to the kid, then tied his left foot to the platform with some vines and one quick hook.
“You can’t do that to me!” He yanked his bonds, his face turning red with outrage. “What if some wild animal attacks us? How do I escape?”
She put more wood on the fire then climbed onto her side of the platform, stashing the guns so they were at hand for her but out of reach for the kid. “If any trouble comes our way, I’ll take care of it.”
He swore viciously, but did it under his breath this time. And he didn’t try to attack her, mindful of her weapons. Good. He wasn’t an all-around idiot then. He seemed to have the ability to learn.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked again.
“Back to the camp.”
“I have money—my father has money—”
She needed sleep. “No.” However much drug money the kid and his family had, there weren’t enough greenbacks in the world to tempt her. Something a lot more important was at stake.
Zak fell into sullen silence. Bugs began their night serenade. A macaw cried somewhere above them in the canopy.
She closed her eyes, ignoring her growling stomach. In the morning, as soon as there was sufficient light, she would find something to eat.
Her dreams were jumbled, and mostly involved Mitch. In some of the dreams, he was naked in her bed. In others, he was trying to kill her.
She woke in the dead of the night to a noise that didn’t fit in with the rest of the sounds of the jungle. Or had she dreamed it? She listened carefully. No. Even the insect chorus was off. Something was disturbing their nightly routine.
Their fire had burned down to embers, providing little visibility. She reached for her weapon as quietly as possible and waited.
SHE WAS AWAKE but she hadn’t seen him yet. Mitch crouched in the cover of some bamboo. The smartest thing would be to shoot her right now, but he wanted to know who she was and who she worked for. She intrigued him, he couldn’t deny that. It kept her alive. For now.
“Drop both guns to the ground,” he told her without showing himself.
After a moment of hesitation, she did, then slipped from her shelter, searching the darkness in the direction of his voice. “How did you find us?”
He’d followed the logging road on the polizia man’s motorbike, then tracked their trail through the jungle. “I could smell the smoke of your fire from miles away.”
“I didn’t think you’d be so close behind,” she admitted, then pulled a machete from behind her back and came at him.
How in hell did she see him?
The first blow almost took off his nose. He dropped the old pistol he’d bought in the village, knowing he wasn’t going to use it, not yet, not until he had some answers. And for that, he needed both hands to restrain her.
He grabbed her wrist and held the machete away from them. She launched herself at him again, and they ended up grappling on the ground in short order, which was a really bad idea, considering all the poisonous bugs and snakes. The sooner he got her under control the better.
“Quit it,” he snapped at her.
She ignored him.
He kicked the embers as they rolled, and the flames livened up, giving them both a little more light. He could see Zak from the corner of his eye, working madly on the restraint on his leg.
“You stay where you are,” he growled at the kid. The last thing he needed was for the idiot to pick up one of the discarded guns and shoot him by accident.
That small diversion—his attention on Zak for a split second—was enough for her to make her move. She flawlessly executed a flip he remembered from special ops training. Interesting. And where would she have learned that?
He responded with a move a martial arts fanatic taught him while he’d spent two years deep undercover in Thailand. That made her eyes go wide and got him control of the machete at last.
He tossed the weapon aside and pinned her to the ground, embarrassed to be breathing so hard. Her firm breasts pressed into his chest. That image of her at the guesthouse, wearing nothing but a towel, popped into his mind. He batted it away. “Where did you get your training?”
“Where did you get yours?” She strained against him, taxing his focus.
“Who do you work for?” Don’t think lean pink thighs.
“Same guy everyone works for around here.” She grunted with frustration as she tried to heave him off, undaunted by the sixty or so pounds he had on her.
He kept her firmly in place, ignoring the interesting ways her body moved under his. At another time, in another place… Focus. “Not me.”
“Let me guess, you’re Cristobal’s.”
Cristobal was a rival drug lord, controlling vast territories north of the river. He had the reputation of being a ruthless bastard who didn’t hesitate to burn whole villages if someone crossed him.
“Guess again.” He transferred both of her wrists to one hand, then reached out with the other and grabbed his gun from the ground, feeling much better with a weapon handy.
She stared at the barrel and turned all soft under him, her large eyes filling with tears. “Juarez is going to kill me if I don’t bring the kid back. You don’t know my situation. You have to help me. Please.”
He went slack like an idiot at the sight of her tears. She immediately shoved her knee where sharp knees had no business going. Her elbow slammed into his chin, and before he could begin to breathe again, she was out from under him and running into the jungle, taking a split second to sweep down and pick up her own weapon.
What was wrong with him? He was the most cynical man he knew. He could usually smell a trap or a scam from a mile away. But something about her kept sneaking under his defenses.
He rolled to his feet and tore after her, limping, determined not to make the same mistake again. They were both playing with their lives like this, dammit. He couldn’t see her in the darkness—the thick canopy above didn’t let through much moonlight. He fired a warning shot in the general direction where he could hear her moving.
Then he could no longer hear her. Could he have shot her by accident? So much the better. Except, part of him didn’t like the idea of Megan Cassidy dead, no matter how much grief she’d caused him. He caught himself. There he went again, thinking stupid thoughts.
He stole forward step by slow step. At last he spotted her figure emerging out of the darkness. She faced him head-on, her legs slightly apart, with her gun in both hands, aimed directly at him. A movie poster combination of dangerous and sexy. She made a fine-looking enemy, he had to give her that.
But he was done letting that affect him. He pointed his own gun right back at her. “Now what?”
“One of us shoots the other and gets what she wants.” Everything about her was cocky, from her stance to her voice.
It turned him on, God help him. But he was a professional. “Juarez will kill Zak if he gets him back,” he said, deciding to reason with her instead of using brute force and threats. He could always fall back on those. Maybe he could appeal to her feminine compassion. “He’s just a kid.”
For a moment she wavered. But only for a moment. “That’s between the two of them.”
All right, so she wasn’t interested in compassion—not that big a surprise. Maybe she was interested in money. “I’ll pay you for him.”
“I’m not after money,” she snapped, as if offended. “Why do you want the two-bit crook? You two business partners? He screwed the big boss over. He’s going to do the same with you.”
He thought for a long moment, trying to figure her out, then decided to take a calculated gamble. “He’s not a two-bit crook, exactly. He’s the son of
a U.S. governor.”
That gave her pause. “Which one?”
He told her, and again she wavered.
“The reward would be substantial.” He pushed.
She didn’t even bother to acknowledge that. “So you’re U.S. law enforcement or something.”
He calculated how far they’d come from Zak. Far enough. The kid should be out of hearing distance. “Or something.”
For a second she took her eyes off him to scan the black jungle behind him. Her gun never moved, however. “Where is the rest of your team?”
“Where I come from, we don’t waste a whole team’s time on a quick little job like rescuing a politician’s idiot son.”
She considered him for a long time. “Are you one of Colonel Wilson’s men?”
He went still. Now that was a question he hadn’t expected. Who the hell was she? “How do you know Colonel Wilson?”
The Colonel headed the Special Designation Defense Unit, SDDU, a top secret team of commando soldiers who ran various secret missions around the globe without anyone knowing. So how did she know?
“You’re not CIA. The FBI never sends just one man. If you were a mercenary, you wouldn’t have helped me. There was no money in it,” she added. “So that didn’t leave much.”
Sound logic. But it didn’t explain how she’d come to know about his team. Very few people knew about the SDDU. A handful of top government officials, and the few FBI and CIA agents who’d done joint missions. Had she?
“Who do you work for?”
She pressed her generous lips into a tight line as she glared at him without saying anything.
“Have you infiltrated Juarez’s band of criminals?” He couldn’t help being a little impressed.
“You’re ruining an undercover op a full year in the making,” she snapped at him. “I need Zak.”
He reported to the Colonel, not to anyone else. “You can’t have him.”
“There’ll be a meeting between Juarez and the big boss, Don Pedro, next week. No outsider has ever been to the Don’s secret stronghold before. We know he deals weapons to terrorists from there. I need to know what kind and how much. I need to uncover his connections. These are weapons that could march straight north, across Mexico and then through the U.S. border.”
