She was about to bend down and pick up a rock that was lying at her feet when Acosta lunged for her. Tasha leaped back, ignoring the strange squealing noises and sudden burst of activity behind her.
Her feet scrambled on the loosely packed earth. She ducked, but she wasn’t quick enough. Acosta managed to grab her arm and stop her before she could get away.
“Where are my workers?” he spat, his face just inches from hers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tasha said.
“She has nothing to do with this. Let her go back to the hotel and you and I can work this out, man to man.”
Tasha twisted her head to see that Quinn had raised his palms up, as if in surrender. She wouldn’t trust him. She doubted Acosta would either.
When she felt the tip of a knife digging into her stomach, she knew she was right.
“Turn around,” Acosta ordered.
She had no choice but to obey. As she turned, Acosta raised his right arm and rested it against her shoulder, the knife in his hand now pressed against the soft skin of her neck.
Quinn’s eyes flashed with anger. “I don’t even know this woman. Why do you think that torturing her will make me give you what you want?”
Tasha felt her flesh crawl as Acosta pushed the tip of his knife into her neck. His breath was hot on her skin as he leaned toward her and laughed.
“I have a very good memory, Mr. Hayes. You may wish to forget the circumstances under which we met, but I have not.”
“What does he mean by that?” Tasha asked with a frown, pulling as far away from Acosta’s knife as she could get.
“Nothing,” Quinn answered.
Acosta laughed again, caressing Tasha’s upper arm with his thumb as he did so. “So, you don’t know the details of this man’s past. And, yet, you allied yourself with him against me. Not a smart move, Ms.—O’Shaunessey, is it?”
Tasha swallowed. All right. This guy was giving her the creeps.
She didn’t know how to respond, but was saved from having to answer when—for God’s sake, was this the Grand Central Station of landing platforms?—the jangle of another traveler coming down the zip line reached her ears.
When one of the girls that Tasha had helped rescue from the kitchen that morning appeared, Tasha grimaced.
What was she doing here?
The girl landed on the platform with an ungraceful oomph, but she was out of the harness before Quinn could stop her.
She neatly sidestepped Quinn’s arm as she dashed toward Acosta, brandishing a stick she must have picked up on the other end of the line.
“You let go of her,” the girl ordered in a voice that belied her shaking hands.
“It’s okay, honey. Go back to the hotel,” Tasha said, sending Quinn a look that pleaded with him to get this poor kid out of here.
Quinn tried to grab her, but the girl was too fast. He lunged right and she dashed left, circling around Acosta’s back, where she managed—even as frightened as she must have been—to land a blow across the man’s shoulders.
Acosta growled, but didn’t loosen his grip on Tasha, instead jabbing the knife into her neck until she felt the sticky wetness of blood dripping into her T-shirt.
“Do it again and I’ll kill her,” Acosta said, whirling around to show the girl what he had done.
“Leave her alone!” the girl shouted.
The chattering sound that Tasha had heard earlier was growing louder by the second and she looked up to see that the trees seemed to be coming to life, their branches shaking, leaves falling to the ground, as the noise increased.
“Stop!” Quinn yelled.
Tasha looked back at the girl just in time to see her reach her arm back. Thinking the girl was going to throw something at Acosta, Tasha figured now was her chance. She shoved her heel down as hard as she could on Acosta’s instep and ducked out of the way just as a barrage of projectiles came flying through the air, as if the trees were launching an attack.
Tasha rolled away from Acosta and covered her head as the air filled with flying objects—rocks and sticks and God only knew what else.
Acosta’s howl of pain stopped abruptly as Tasha rolled over and over on the warm dirt, thinking only of getting to Quinn and the girl and getting the hell out of here before Acosta could kill them all.
It was only when the jungle became eerily silent that Tasha stopped and peered between her fingers at the scene before her.
Celie stood at the edge of the clearing, her jaw hanging open. The girl who had followed them was standing right where Tasha had left her, one hand still holding the stick, the other closed around a handful of dirt that was seeping out from between her fingers.
Quinn loomed over the prone form of Jorge Acosta, who was lying on his back, staring up at the cloudless sky.
Slowly, Tasha lowered her hands and pushed herself up into a sitting position.
“Is he . . .”
She looked at Quinn, who looked back at her and nodded.
“Yeah.”
“But who?” Tasha asked.
Quinn glanced up into the trees, then shook his head, as if baffled.
“Acosta’s dead,” he announced, and then added, “The monkeys killed him.”
CHAPTER SIX
“What the hell is going on here?”
Tasha stood in the center of the clearing, looking from Quinn to Acosta to the trees and back. She wasn’t budging until he told her the truth about his involvement with the fugitives . . . and his history with Jorge Acosta.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Quinn answered. Then he bent down and grabbed Acosta under the arms. “Somebody get his feet. We’ve got to get him back to the hotel as soon as possible. His men are arriving later today.”
“Why don’t we just leave him here?” Celie asked.
“Because if he’s not there when his men arrive, they’ll torture us all to find out where he is. If they find him out here like this, they’ll never believe we didn’t kill him.”
“How is getting him back to the hotel going to help?” Tasha asked.
Quinn grunted as he lifted Acosta and dragged him one step, then another, toward the zip line. “I don’t know yet. But we can’t leave him out here.”
Tasha chewed the inside of her cheek as she contemplated their situation. Quinn was right. There’s no way anyone would believe that a rogue band of monkeys was responsible for Acosta’s death—not when Quinn, Tasha, and even the girl who had followed them had a motive to kill him. Celie was the only one who didn’t have reason to fear Acosta, and one could reason that she might have done the deed in order to save her sister. God knew, if Celie was in trouble, Tasha would do the same.
“Look, you can either trust me or take your chances with Acosta’s men,” Quinn said, grunting again as he struggled to haul Acosta’s dead weight by himself. “And I can assure you from personal experience that they don’t know the meaning of the word mercy.”
The girl dropped her stick and ran over to pick up one of Acosta’s booted feet. Her glance back at Tasha was filled with fear. “He’s right. We must hurry.”
When Tasha hesitated, the girl let go of Acosta’s foot and, with one hand, pulled the shoulder of her ragged shirt down to expose the skin of her back. Tasha gasped at the welts she saw there—a few white ones that had healed over time, and some more recent ones that were still ugly and red.
That spurred Tasha into motion.
She nudged the girl out of the way and picked up Acosta’s feet. It wasn’t easy clipping the dead man into a harness, but with all of them helping, they managed.
“I’ll go first and make sure the coast is clear,” Quinn said, clipping his own belt to the zip line in front of Acosta.
“And I’ll ride right behind him and make sure he stays upright, just in case anyone’s watching,” Tasha said. They had tied him to the cable running from his waist to the line overhead, but it was possible that the rope might come loose during the ride. If that happened
, he’d arrive at the hotel spinning wildly out of control, the way Tasha had that morning.
Tasha got into place behind Acosta, looping her legs around his waist to hold them together. She avoided looking into his eyes, even though they didn’t look any more flat and dead than they had when the man was alive.
Even dead, he gave her the creeps.
“I’m ready,” Tasha said.
“Let’s go,” Quinn ordered. And then he was gone.
Tasha looked back at Celie and the girl, who was clipped to the line behind her. “You guys get out of sight as soon as we get to the hotel,” she said.
Celie nodded and waved in the direction that Quinn had just gone. “Be careful,” she cautioned.
“I will. You, too.”
She let go of the line overhead and was soon flying over the canopy of trees, her legs wrapped around a dead man.
Definitely not how she had imagined this vacation turning out.
This day had become a never-ending nightmare.
Quinn swiped a palm over his face and tried to come up with a plan of what to do with Acosta’s body, but every idea he came up with was flawed.
By the time he spotted the roof of the hotel up ahead, the only conclusion he had come to was that there was no way they were all going to make it out of this alive.
Or, rather, no way he was going to make it out of this alive. If someone had to take the blame for Acosta’s death, it would have to be him. At least he would be prepared for the punishment Acosta’s men dished out.
Even now, a decade later, he couldn’t forget the endless days and nights of pain.
Absently, he rubbed his left kneecap, the one Acosta himself had pried loose with his own fingers. It still ached whenever it was about to rain.
Quinn grimaced and shook his head to clear his mind of memories of those days. He wouldn’t give up hope, not yet.
He reached up with one gloved hand to slow his descent and looked up to see that Olivia was waiting for him on the landing pad.
Great. Now what?
Olivia’s voice reached his ears even before his feet hit the white-painted square on the roof.
“Acosta’s men are here. They’re looking for him,” she said.
Quinn unclipped the harness from around his waist and glanced around the roof. “Where are they? And how many are here?”
“Just three,” Olivia answered. “They tried his room, but he - wasn’t there. They’re waiting for him in the lobby right now. I told them I didn’t know where he had gone.”
Quinn wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. It had cooled down somewhat now that evening was approaching, but it was still hot out here. What he wouldn’t give for a cool shower, a cold beer, and for this nightmare to be over.
“He followed us out to the waterfall,” Quinn said. “And the less you know about what happened out there, the better. Go stall them. Offer them a drink or something. But whatever you do, don’t let them leave the lobby for the next fifteen minutes or so. You got that?”
Olivia’s gaze swept to the zip line, her solemn brown eyes not registering shock or anything else, even though Quinn knew she had to see Tasha and Acosta; they were only a hundred feet behind him.
She nodded once, then turned to leave without another word.
“Oh, and have someone leave a key outside Acosta’s room for me,” Quinn called after her retreating back.
Olivia nodded again as she disappeared down the stairs.
Quinn sighed and rubbed his throbbing forehead with his hand. Things were going to get pretty ugly from here.
But there was nothing he could do about it. The wheels had already been set in motion.
Hell, he’d probably been doomed to this fate ten years ago, when he’d been sitting in that open-air bar, having his fifth tequila shooter, and seen those girls’ faces pressed against the dirty windows of that van. In that moment, if he had just turned away, just poured the liquid gold down his throat and shrugged off what he had seen, he wouldn’t have spent three years in the prison where he’d had the extreme displeasure of meeting Jorge Acosta.
And Acosta wouldn’t be dead now.
But Quinn guessed those girls would be.
He sighed again, then turned when he heard the zip line start to hum at Tasha’s approach. He stood at the edge of the landing pad, watching her chew her bottom lip as she concentrated intently on getting safely to the platform.
He had to hand it to her—she had cojones. Ironclad ones.
Any other woman he’d ever known would have run screaming from Acosta. Hell, they wouldn’t have gotten themselves involved in this mess to begin with.
Which, considering that Acosta had gotten himself killed because he had followed Tasha out into the jungle, might not have been such a bad thing. Still, he had to admire her motives. She’d only interfered to begin with because she was trying to help keep the fugitives safe.
“Acosta’s men are here. We’re going to have to get him up to his room. Quick,” Quinn said with a grunt as Tasha overshot the red X in the center of the landing pad and whacked into his gut with her knees.
She nodded, already hurrying to untie Acosta from the cable.
“Should we put him between us? So we can pretend he’s been drinking if we get caught?” she added.
“No, that’ll just slow us down. I’ll put him over my shoulder,” Quinn answered. He crouched down and put his shoulder against Acosta’s stomach. “Go ahead and unclip him,” he said.
Acosta’s body slumped forward when Tasha did as he asked, and Quinn sweated with the effort to lift the man’s dead weight onto his shoulder. He took a wobbling step, thankful that Acosta’s room was on the second floor and that he wouldn’t have to climb up any stairs with the man on his back.
He heard Tasha’s footsteps behind him and considered telling her to go to her room now so as not to risk them being seen together. But he didn’t for two reasons. First, he wasn’t certain he - could make it all the way with Acosta’s two hundred lifeless pounds on his back and he might need her help to get him there. Second, he didn’t think she’d listen anyway, so why bother?
“I’m sorry I’m not much help,” Tasha said as she trotted to keep up with him.
Quinn just grunted and kept putting one foot in front of the other.
By the time they reached the hall leading to Acosta’s room, Quinn was staggering like a drunk under Acosta’s weight.
“What room is he in?” Tasha asked, nervously glancing up and down the hall to make sure they were alone.
“Two thirty-three,” Quinn answered shortly, then added, “Should be a key card in the door.”
Tasha hurried past him and stopped when she reached the door to Room 233. Quinn half-expected the key to be missing—or for it not to work even if it was there—but Tasha was holding the door open by the time he managed to lurch his way to the room.
“Thanks,” he ground out as he stumbled over the threshold and unceremoniously dumped Acosta’s body on the king-size bed.
“Can we make it look like a heart attack?” Tasha asked, leaning over Quinn’s shoulder with a frown creasing her forehead.
Quinn frowned, too, but more because the feel of her breasts pressed into his back was doing things to him that shouldn’t be happening right now.
Focus on the dead guy, he admonished himself.
“How would that explain the bruises on his forehead?” Quinn asked.
“Hmm. Good point,” Tasha answered.
They stood in silence for a moment, neither able to come up with a scenario that might make Acosta’s death look natural. Finally, Quinn just shook his head. The bottom line was, they were totally screwed. They could leave Acosta here and try to pretend they had no idea what had happened, but Acosta’s men wouldn’t be satisfied with that. They’d start with Quinn—who wouldn’t tell them anything, no matter what they did to him—and then move on to the rest of the staff. No matter how loyal his employees were, Quinn knew that when the pain got
too bad, most people would give up their own mothers to make it stop. Acosta’s men would find out about the fugitives, and that would lead them to the girl and, thus, to Tasha and her sister.
Not only would the fugitives be returned to captivity, but there was no telling what Acosta’s men might do to the O’Shaunesseys.
Which meant that Quinn had no choice. He was going to have to face this. Alone.
“You should go back to your room now,” he said, allowing himself a moment of pleasure as he leaned back into Tasha’s warm body.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked up at him with doubt shining from her eyes. “Are you sure? If I stay, I - could back up whatever story we come up with.”
Quinn smiled sadly. Ah, the world’s last optimist.
“No, it’ll be better if I handle this alone,” he said.
Tasha surprised him then by raising her hand and gently smoothing a lock of his hair off his forehead. “I’m starting to think I might have been wrong about you,” she murmured.
Quinn caught her hand in his and, slowly, his eyes on hers the whole time, lowered her palm to his mouth. He kissed her, tasting the salt on her skin. Then he folded her fingers into a fist, as if she - could hold his kiss forever that way.
“Sometimes, things aren’t always what they seem,” he said.
“No,” Tasha agreed, then stepped back with a small sigh. “Usually they’re much worse.”
So much for her being an optimist.
“You’d better go,” he said.
Tasha took another step toward the door, as if reluctant to leave.
“Go,” Quinn ordered. Then, because he suspected she would stay if only he asked—and because he found himself tempted to do just that—he raised his head, leveled an even look at her, and said, “All the rumors you’ve heard about me are true. I trade in human flesh. I’ve served time in prison. And,” he added, as if that weren’t enough, “Julia and Matthew Martin didn’t just vanish. I helped them plan their wedding . . . and then I made them disappear.”
Catch of the Day Page 21
