My Spy: Last Spy Standing

by Dana Marton

  Not that Megan appreciated their good fortune—having a roof over their heads and all. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and brimming with something that looked suspiciously close to tears. Even Zak was looking around with a dubious expression on his face.

  He couldn’t allow them to fall apart now. “Sit.”

  They both obeyed.

  “This is what we’re going to do. We’ll clean up, then have a decent meal. Then we’ll get some rest.” He looked at Megan. “You should wait to report the attack until you reach a bigger place. The policía in a village like this is probably one man. He won’t be able to do much. And he might even be in league with the bandits.”

  Plus, he didn’t want any part of the police report. If they were together when she went to the authorities, the police would also want to talk to him and Zak.

  She went a shade paler, probably remembering the attack, but she nodded.

  He couldn’t let her think too much. “All right. Let’s get on with the cleaning up. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry. The sooner we get ourselves in decent enough shape to go out and look for food, the better.”

  Zak went first. He didn’t take long, then settled in front of an ancient radio bolted to the wall, trying to make it work while Megan took her turn. She didn’t loiter, either, confirming Mitch’s suspicions about the water being unheated. He was about to ask Zak, but then the bathroom door opened and she stood there wrapped in nothing but a worn towel.

  His tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  She had legs a mile long. Lean pink thighs. Zak stared at her wide-eyed with a stupid grin on his face. She tugged the towel down in a self-conscious gesture that nearly caused her breasts to spill out on top. She looked desperate and embarrassed, the hottest thing Mitch had seen in years. Or ever.

  Stop staring, get moving, he told himself, and after a few seconds he actually did it.

  He moved to grab his gun off the dresser, but she moved toward her bag on the bed at the same time, getting between him and his weapon.

  In nothing but a towel.

  Which would have been just fine—more than fine—if she were a different sort of woman, if they were alone and he wasn’t in the middle of a clandestine mission.

  He practically ran for the bathroom, needing that cold shower ASAP.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” he called through the closed door, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  He peeled off his clothes, stepped into the shower and let the cold spray hit his head. Exactly what he needed. He tried not to think of Megan Cassidy in that flimsy towel, those legs or those wet, soft locks framing her delicate face.

  Morning couldn’t come too quickly. She needed to get far away from places like this and men like him.

  He quieted the little voice in his head that said he should put Zak on the military transport then stay behind and personally escort Miss Cassidy back home to make sure nothing bad happened to her.

  That voice had nothing to do with her long, lean thighs. Rescue missions just ran deep in his blood. He couldn’t help it if his instincts were to rescue her, too.

  She was the proverbial damsel in distress, a scared, lost little thing who’d gone through considerable trauma in the past day. She collected orchids in New Jersey. This was probably the first massacre she’d ever seen.

  He couldn’t relate to a life that sheltered.

  He was drying off when he heard a crash come from the bedroom. He didn’t stop to dress, just burst through the door without thought, ready for fighting. He swore viciously at the sight that greeted him.

  Zak was tied up on the bed, a rag in his mouth keeping him quiet. Megan stood in the middle of the room, dressed in shorts and a black tank top, boots on, hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, looking like the lead character in a kick-butt video game. A fierce scar ran from her ear to her throat, a pink line her tumbling locks had covered up until now.

  All uncertainty was gone from her fiery amber eyes, all paleness gone from her face as she glared at Mitch and pointed his own gun at him. She held a matching weapon in her other hand.

  Where did she get that from? “Put them down,” he ordered.

  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 in 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’d 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 e
yes 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 into 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 started 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 policía 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 discar
ded 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 who controlled 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.