HOPE’S JAW ACHED like a mother, but she kept her complaints to herself. She certainly didn’t want another slap from that beefy thug’s hand. The last one had nearly taken her head off.
She worried about J.T., thrown in the trunk like a sack of potatoes. Did he have enough air? Had they killed him? Icy fear drenched her thoughts as her anxiety rose. He couldn’t be dead. J.T. would figure out a way to...escape a moving vehicle with tied hands and feet?
Yeah, he wasn’t a magician.
The car rolled up to a massive, intricately designed wrought iron gate buried deep within the jungle. The driver punched in a code and the gates slowly opened.
Wherever they were going, it was heavily fortified. Armed guards—more than likely hired mercenaries—walked the perimeter of the fencing with hard eyes, incapable of mercy.
They rolled up to a palatial mansion with a fringe of white banisters along the tiered balconies that screamed of opulence and dirty money. Who built a fortress in the jungle unless they didn’t want to be found?
Hope shuddered and swallowed, more frightened of this place than she’d been of sleeping out in the open of the Mexican jungle.
Thinking fast, she banked on the assumption that whoever had commanded her presence had to know what she was carrying, so she was needed alive. But likely J.T. was baggage they didn’t need, which meant as soon as they opened that trunk, the clock was ticking on his life.
She couldn’t bear to let anything happen to him when it was her fault that he was in this mess. Time for a show of audacious boldness.
“If anything happens to me or my friend, your employer won’t get what he’s after.”
“Shut up. You’ll do exactly as you’re told.”
Hope blinked back the surge of fear as her throat threatened to close and held her course with forced bravery. “What I have in my possession could kill each of you within hours. I would enjoy watching your skin boil as your insides melt and your bones disintegrate. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t exactly kill you right away, but you’re quite aware of all the damage that’s happening to your body. In a way...it’s sort of what I imagine it would feel like to be eaten alive.”
That got their attention.
The two men flanking her on either side shifted nervously to give her more room. She smiled.
“She’s just trying to freak you out,” the driver warned as he rolled to a stop in front of the mansion.
“It’s working,” the thug in the passenger seat grumbled, unsure of the situation. “What if she ain’t lying?”
“Indeed,” Hope agreed with a chilly smile, then embellished a little for flair. “That’s what I do for a living—I create new and interesting ways to kill a human being without leaving a trace.”
Okay, so she’d embellished a lot. But they didn’t know that and her very survival depended on selling that lie, so she was going to own it as if she were more dangerous than them.
The thugs bailed from the car a little more quickly than before and she smothered a shaky laugh. Well, at least that part of her plan was working.
The thugs looked to the driver for direction. “What do you want us to do with him?”
The driver paused, plainly unsure if Hope was bluffing and weighing whether or not he should risk it. Finally, he grumbled, “Bring him. Boss can figure out what to do with him.”
Hope breathed a secret sigh of relief, but as the thugs opened the trunk to retrieve J.T., a sudden flurry of motion, blood spattering and cursing ensued as J.T. sprang from the trunk like an avenging demon, swinging a tire iron with the intent of cracking skulls.
The driver shoved her to the ground and charged J.T., deflecting a swing of the tire iron with his forearm and landing a punch to J.T.’s jaw.
J.T. recovered and swung out with his left foot, connecting with the man’s kneecap, driving him straight to the ground.
It was like watching gladiators pummel each other in the ring. Hope could only gape as they grappled, tossing each other around, landing punches and knocking each other sideways until J.T. cracked a good hit across the thug’s face, sending him straight to the dirt.
Elated by his bloody victory, she scrambled to her feet to run with him, but he stopped her with a terse, “You stay,” which instantly baffled and hurt her.
“What are you talking about? You can’t leave me here!”
Bleeding from the nose and lip, J.T. shocked her when he shouted, “I’ll be back! Trust me!” and bolted for the perimeter like a felon evading the guards.
For a long moment, Hope continued to stare with incredulous shock in the direction J.T. had disappeared, unable to comprehend what he’d just done.
He’d left her!
That rotten son of a bitch! Here she was worrying about his safety and he went and bailed on her like a coward?
“I hope you get eaten by an anaconda!” she called out, her indignation blotting out the fear of being left on her own with the scary thugs and only God knew what else.
The driver rose, limping from his abused knee, and then, after his fellow thugs had risen slowly, holding their heads and bitching about their injuries, he barked orders. “Find that bastard and bring him back to me!”
They cast dirty looks, but did as they were told, leaving the driver and Hope alone.
“Your friend is going to die for that,” he promised Hope with a glower, then jerked his head and growled, “Start walking.”
He pushed her and she stumbled, refusing to let him see her tremble. She was smarter than this Neanderthal. Lifting her chin, she threw him an icy glare that she hoped promised a grisly, torturous death and walked into the cool confines of the huge main house.
Ceiling fans pushed around the humid air, while native flora hung from huge pots, lending a wild look to the cultured and opulent surroundings. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a monkey pop out from behind a huge potted fern or a snake wind itself free from one of the vines and loop itself around the banisters.
The man pushed her into a large office, the walls decorated with animal trophies that immediately made her queasy, barked, “Wait here,” and then he left.
The room was richly appointed with a definite masculine touch—above and beyond the dead animal heads, of course—so when a sharply dressed man with hair that was lightly graying at the temples walked in with a glittering smile that made her want to hide, she knew she was looking at the man who had likely killed Tanya.
Maybe he hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he’d surely given the order.
Actually, she thought with another glance at the animal trophies, maybe he had pulled the trigger. Maybe he was one of those sick freaks who enjoyed hunting human beings for sport.
She couldn’t help the shudder, which he caught, prompting him to smile.
“Would you care for a cool beverage?” he asked solicitously, as if her arrival hadn’t been under duress and practically a hostage situation, his voice colored with a rich Spanish accent. “The locals make a delicious tropical drink called ulubomba that’s made from the crushed cupuaçu, a creamy fruit that tastes of chocolate, banana, pear, passion fruit and pineapple. I confess, it’s been a bit of an obsession for me since the first time I tasted it.”
Hope stared as he levered himself into an expansive leather executive chair behind a huge mahogany desk. “Are you kidding me right now?” she asked, going straight to the point. “Why have you kidnapped me and brought me here against my will?”
“Ah...” He steepled his fingers and said, “My apologies for the rough transport, but you are a difficult person to procure.”
“Perhaps a phone call would’ve been more efficient,” she returned, narrowing her gaze. “Forgive me for being less than eager to make your acquaintance after you killed my friend and tried to shoot me out of the sky.”
She was going off a hunch, but he didn’t try to deny it. Spreading his fingers as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he said, “One must regrettably crack a few eggs to make an omelet. As a scientist, I’m sure you can appreciate that concept.”
“My friend was no egg for your omelet. She was a human being with family and friends who are grieving her loss.”
“If it appeases your ruffled feathers, it was not my intention to have your plane shot down. That was an error in judgment on my employee’s behalf. Thankfully, we discovered you are quite resourceful. I was impressed with your ability to evade my attempts to bring you here.”
“Am I supposed to be flattered? Who the hell are you?”
“Let’s not waste energy bickering about things in the past, as the future is what interests me most. My name is Anso DeLeon. It is my pleasure to finally meet the woman who will help me make history.”
“You’re insane. I wouldn’t help you walk across the street after what you’ve done.”
He rose and walked to a lion’s head hung midsnarl on the wall. Gesturing to the trophy, he said, “You see this here? This is an African lion, the alpha. He had testicles the size of dinner plates and lionesses twitching their tails in his face all day long. It was a genuine pleasure to watch him in action, awe inspiring, really. He was living large, king of his universe without apology. I respected that.”
“So you responded by killing him and sticking his head on your wall? The cost of your admiration is too high for my blood. Maybe you could’ve just snapped a picture on your phone like most normal people.”
“A picture has no soul,” Anso responded as if that made perfect sense. “The local people believe that when they take the life of an animal, they absorb the spirit, the strength of the animal.” He stroked the big cat’s lifeless cheek. “I ate his heart from his still-warm body. I felt the spirit of this creature become part of me and it was beautiful.”
“I think the lion would disagree.”
He shrugged. “You will never understand the power of taking a life,” he said, adding, “You are a woman. Your power is to give life. I do not fault you for your ignorance.”
Ignorant? Who was Psycho Suave calling ignorant? She held her tongue, choosing bored silence over obvious indignation as her weapon of choice.
Anso mistook her silence for one of acquiescence and smiled indulgently. “You have journeyed far and I have not shown my best hospitality. Let me amend that error. Fresh clothes, a bath and a room fit for a queen await. You will join me for dinner.”
She wanted to shout, Dream on! but she needed time to think, to process, and she couldn’t do that while suffering this bastard’s banter. Hope lifted her chin. “Very well,” she said stiffly as she bent to pick up her pack, but he stopped her with a cold smile.
“The pack, if you please, will remain with me.”
Hope felt the color drain from her cheeks. “My pack stays with me.”
Anso smiled and snapped his fingers. Two men appeared. One grabbed her arm while the other scooped the pack up.
“I await your delightful presence at supper.”
And then she was dragged away, her pack in the hands of a man whose cultured smile and cold eyes gave her the chills as surely as staring down the business end of a gun aimed at her head.
* * *
J.T. RAN UNTIL he was certain he wasn’t being followed, and then he collapsed, his chest heaving as he caught his breath under cover of the thick jungle foliage.
Once again, he was lost in the jungle.
And he’d left Hope behind.
It’d been the only way—a calculated risk to protect her safety in the only way he knew how—but it still stung like a bitch to know that she thought he’d abandoned her.
It didn’t matter that he’d promised to come for her; she’d watched in disbelief as he’d run away, which probably made him look like a coward.
He cringed.
But how much worse would it have been if Hope had been shot in the back as they both ran?
You can’t save her if you’re both dead.
Reason was a paltry balm for his shrieking conscience.
J.T. pulled his phone and called his brother, but the call went to voice mail, which meant Teagan was probably already in the air.
Which also meant he had to sit tight, stay alive and wait for his brother to find him so they could go in, rescue Hope and put this wretched place in the rearview mirror.
Staying on the ground was a risky venture—due to both roaming predators and poisonous things that bit—so J.T. took to a tree, climbing the massive thing until he found a branch that he could fashion a small bower from to spend the night. Lashing vines together with broad leaves, he tied himself to the tree and settled in for a long night.
Closing his eyes, he kept his mind purposefully blank. It was too easy to second-guess every decision when he was getting an instant replay every ten seconds, and he couldn’t waste energy looking backward.
The jungle cacophony became white noise and J.T. dozed here and there. Why his thoughts drifted to his last tour of duty, he had no idea, but soon he was reliving one of his worst moments.
“Renegade, you are clear to engage.”
The static voice of Mission Control crackled in his headset above his mask and J.T.’s gloved hand hovered over the button that would release the heat-seeking missile.
“This is Renegade. Target acquired,” he confirmed as his jet split the sky like a hot knife through butter. The mission was a simple one, but highly classified. Deep in the Afghan desert, the hideout of a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader had been supposedly discovered. J.T.’s squadron, the Hell Cats, were charged with carrying out a sensitive mission—take out the leader’s lair with minimal civilian casualties.
J.T. didn’t hesitate. He pushed the button. “Fox Two is a go. I repeat, Fox Two is a go.”
A deadly sidewinder arrowed straight to its intended target and everything went boom.
Except...the intel had been bad.
And J.T. had blown up a small village, killing everyone in the dead of night.
The ensuing investigation had cleared J.T. of any wrongdoing, but that hadn’t absolved his conscience. J.T. finished up his tour and hung up his dog tags for good.
Collateral damage, they’d said.
His buddies couldn’t understand why J.T. was so shaken up by the mistake.
“Shit happens,” Rocco “Rooster” Gianni had said with a shrug. “There had to be some reason that the intel put us there. Maybe they weren’t so innocent after all. Let it go, man. You know what they say—war is hell, right?”
“They were innocent people,” J.T. said, feeling sick to his stomach. “I didn’t sign up to kill women and children.”
“I’m telling you, they couldn’t have been all that innocent. For all we know, they were harboring that SOB and if that’s the case, they got what they deserved.”
In the end, J.T. just couldn’t get right with it and had to end his military career earlier than he’d planned.
Hell, he’d always thought that they’d have to pull his cold, dead fingers from the throttle to get him to stop flying. The thrill of zero-G had always been a bit of an addiction.
But fate was a bitch that way.
Guess she’d had different plans for the Carmichael boys.
Why was he thinking of that night? He’d long since put that incident in a locked box and tucked it away.
Maybe because he’d been holding on to Blue Yonder for selfish reasons and should’ve listened to Teagan from the start when things had begun to sour for their small charter business.
And now he was lashed to a tree in the Amazon jungle with a fairly high probability that he was going to die within the next twenty-four hours and his brother, Teagan, was caught in his mess, too.
Why couldn’t he have been gifted with a smidgen of Teagan’s levelheaded foresight? No, he was always the one doing something reckless and stupid.
Like taking on a client that his gut plainly told him to steer clear of—and then sleeping with said client.
He supposed he deserved the lecture that was coming.
If he survived.