FIVE

Lie down like you’re about to pass out.”

“That’s not far from the truth.” Acadia crossed the tiny cell to stretch out obediently on the filthy slab, repositioning the plastic handcuffs to look as though she was still restrained. Heart pounding with both fear and anticipation, she tried to unclench her muscles.

“Okay. Just alerted Gid. Relax. You look like you’ve been embalmed,” Zak said dryly, adjusting the plastic cuffs over his own wrists. “I just want you to look faint, not dead.”

For several beats she felt a prickle of awareness travel through her body like an electrical current as his hot gaze swept over her like the caress of possessive hands.

Was he remembering last night? Apparently not. From his grim expression, she could tell sex with her was the last thing on his mind. Get a grip, Acadia.

She shut her eyes and went limp. “Better?” It was hard to regulate her erratic breathing. Fear. It was fear. And the images of … She held her breath until she thought maybe, just maybe, she could inhale without getting a potent rush of memories of exactly what those hands could do.

Unaffected by the tangible sexual current she felt between them, Zak yelled through the bars. “Hey! Get over here. The woman passed out, she needs water! Hurry!” The panic in his voice was startling; the man was a good actor. “She’s not moving!” Then under his breath. “Five. Four. Three. Two.”

Her lips twitched. He was so damn cocky and confident, utterly convinced everything would go according to his plans. Except they were her plans. She’d remind him of that. If they made it out alive.

The sound of voices got closer, Spanish too fast to translate. Resisting the urge to stiffen, she remained wilted, mentally bracing herself for a confrontation.

It was obvious from the way Zak and Gideon were able to come up with a diversion without a single spoken word between them that they’d been in tight places before. And survived. Being brothers was part of it, but Acadia sensed a deeper bond than that. They trusted one another implicitly.

She couldn’t fathom what that would be like. There’d never been anyone but herself to rely on.

Zak shouted for the guards again, urging them to hurry. Acadia heard their slightly slurred comments as they neared the shack. They were already tipsy. But even so, they suspected a trap.

It was hard to tell just how many men crowded inside. A whole damned herd by the sound and smell of them. The stink was overpowering.

“She needs water and medical care,” Zak told them, letting his voice trail off. The unspoken words to finish off that sentence were clearly “or do you want her to die?” Which would’ve been redundant, even for them.

The guerrillas discussed the situation in rapid-fire Spanish. They’d just divulged that Loida Piñero would return before nightfall, and she’d be pissed. God—if they’d waited even a few more hours to do this—

She peeked through the screen of her lashes as one of the twins—Gold Tooth—came very close to lean over her. Acadia smelled the rancid stink of sour body odor before she heard his booted feet. His breath, moist and fetid, washed over her face, and she had to dig her short nails into her waist to prevent herself from gagging. Hurry, Zak.

In her slitted vision, she watched Zak step behind the men, as if to give them room. She let her eyes flutter fully open and whispered weakly, “N-necesito a-agua, por favor.”

She caught a glimmer of silver on the soldier’s dirty neck and recognized the chain that held her St. Christopher medal. Acadia wanted to reach out and grab it off him, and it took everything in her to maintain the ruse. The medallion and chain had been the last present her father had given her before he’d forgotten her name. He’d laughed as he had clasped it around her neck and said, “So you can travel safely to all those exciting places you’re always reading about, Cady girl.” God. She wanted her medallion back. Now.

But instead of lunging upward and blowing their entire escape plan, Acadia paid attention to what was happening just outside the door.

In a sliver of space between the men, she glimpsed Zak and his brother. Then Gideon was gone. She let out a shaky breath of relief. Almost there. The soldier wearing her necklace slapped her cheeks, and she opened her eyes fully, lest he break her jaw.

He started to turn from her, so Acadia gasped for air and broke into choking coughs so that he would focus on her and not realize Zak was just slipping back inside the hut.

She could’ve wept with relief as Zak, his tone uncompromising and angry, said, “If your leader hears that you didn’t do what she told you, she’s going to be pissed. Each of us is worth twenty million American dollars to her. Which of you wants to tell her that a prisoner died because you didn’t follow her instructions?”

The men were silent, trading loaded glares.

Zak gestured with his seemingly bound hands. “If that happens on your watch, she’s going do more than kick your ass. She told you an hour ago to bring us water. Do it already.”

Acadia reached out, then let her hands drop weakly. “Por favor, señor. Agua.”

The men left, locking the flimsy door behind them.

Acadia sat up tailor fashion, resting her elbows on her knees. She stared at her hands blankly as her mind raced.

They’d taken her medallion back at the hotel. All right, so she’d resigned herself to never seeing it again. But now she had, and she damn well wanted it back. She hoped the eyedrops affected Gold Tooth first. And hardest.

The only problem now, she realized, was that they’d made such an issue about getting water that it was all she could think about. She’d talked herself out of acknowledging her parched mouth and the thirst that had dogged her since the early hours of the morning, but now the possibility of quenching her thirst was front and center in her mind.

Would the men poison themselves before they got her water? God, she hoped not.

“Piñero will be back tonight.” She addressed Zak’s broad back. Perspiration stained his blue shirt, and his dark hair curled against his strong, tanned neck. It seemed like a lifetime ago when she’d kissed the sensitive nape. Laughing, he’d rolled her over and gently bitten her in return, his strong white teeth scraping the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder—

“I hea—” He frowned, and his voice roughened. “Don’t look at me like that.”

God, he’d turned just in time to see her lusting. Her cheeks got hotter. She blinked him into focus. Large, unhappy male. She sucked in a deep breath. “Maybe we should hang out in the trees until she gets back to camp,” she whispered. “Take the van …”

Zak turned back to the door. “Unless she’s delayed, or changes her mind. We need daylight for this to work.”

“We need transportation for this to work,” Acadia told him, annoyed with him for thinking he was in charge, and with herself for forgetting she didn’t like him.

Stockholm syndrome, she told herself firmly. That was the only thing that made rational sense. Was it the right syndrome? Technically, Zak wasn’t her captor, but—hell, she’d take any excuse she could get for her inexplicable response to him.

“Who exactly made you boss of me, anyway?” she demanded. “I don’t remember casting my vote. And just as a refresher, I was the one who cleaned your wounds while you were unconscious, gave your brother aspirin for his headache, had the tool to cut off our cuffs, and gave us a way to incapacitate all those men out there without firing a shot.”

He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a cold, dismissive, arrogant glance. “If it works.” He turned back to look outside, his long, elegant fingers clamped around the bars. “Fine. We’ll take a fucking vote. Hope like hell your poisoning plot takes down the guerrillas. Follow our trail in back out, and stick around our entry point to wait for Piñero to return.”

“That has my vote.”

“And if she decides to wait until tomorrow?” he countered.

It was like he was testing her, which ticked her off even more, considering she’d been the resourceful one in this situation. “We follow her tracks and walk to the nearest town.”

“On the road?” he said, with a slight mocking tone.

“Yes.”

“In broad daylight?” This time his sarcasm came through loud and clear, and her temperature spiked for a whole different reason.

“I haven’t thought it through,” she said through her teeth. “But yes, why not?”

“Because more than half the population in these parts are criminals of one sort or the other; because three Americans, one of them a light-eyed blond woman, and another injured, will be picked off like they have targets on their backs. Because we have no idea where the fuck the nearest village is, and Piñero could drive up right behind us, and the next time she kidnaps us she won’t be so nice about it. That enough reason for you?”

She sagged back against the wall, feeling like a punctured balloon. “We aren’t going to follow the road?”

“Did you see a road?”

“No, but we got here, at least part of the way, on a paved road. I think I remember the turns—”

“Or,” Zak cut in, “your fiendish plot works, the men are out of action, and we take a short walk through the jungle until we hit the river. Hire a boat and have a late steak dinner in Caracas tonight. Let me know when you’re ready to cast your vote.”

She was starting to really hate him. “How far’s the river? Do you even know which way it is? What if it’s a really long walk?”

“Walking won’t kill us. What’s out there hunting at night will. We have a narrow window of opportunity before dark. Lie down; they’re coming back.”

Fuming, Acadia stretched out on the slab. She didn’t bother closing her eyes. Every time she thought Zakary Stark was a nice guy, he did or said something obnoxious to change her mind. The fact that he was all kinds of sexy, and turned her on without trying to, was the irritating icing on the cake.

Gold Tooth shoved a plastic cup through the bars at Zak. He made a crude suggestion that Acadia only vaguely understood, but her whole body flushed with fiery humiliation.

A big fat steak dinner accompanied by about a gallon of ice water, in Caracas, alone, sounded more and more appealing.

THE GUERRILLAS WERE DROPPING like flies, which surprised the hell out of Zak. He would have thought the eyedrop thing was an urban legend, but damned if it wasn’t working.

Gideon had emptied the whole container of drops into their guards’ new bottle of rum. Within an hour, most of the men were puking their guts out, two were unconscious, and the rest seemed to be confused and lethargic as they staggered into the trees clutching their bellies. A bloodless coup.

“I can take some of the crap in your pockets, lighten the load some,” Zak offered, glancing at Acadia over his shoulder.

She gave him a cool look. “The weight’s evenly distributed.” The woman went from hot to cold and back again on a dime. He didn’t even try to figure her out. The way she’d pulled up her hair made her look like a sexy girl-next-door.

Which was, as any red-blooded man knew, the most dangerous and subversive kind of female. He turned away from her smooth skin and the drugging fragrance of jasmine.

Blue Bandana was trying to give his brother water. And failing. Gold Tooth couldn’t hold the cup. Water splashed into the grass at his feet. Blue Bandana went back for more. “Don’t be so fucking stubborn,” Zak told Acadia as he tracked the last holdout, now carrying the almost-empty rum bottle, back to his twin. Finish it, asshole. “You’re going to have to run.”

“And I will. How long?”

Whatever. “Blue Bandana’s the holdout. He wasn’t drinking as much as the others. We’ll give him another fifteen minutes to catch up.”

She lay back, closed her eyes. “Wake me when it’s time to go.”

She was taking a nap? Now? Well, at least she’d shut up for a while.

Zak turned back to observe the goings-on outside. Gold Tooth was out cold. His twin chugged the remainder of the drugged rum and looked around, clearly worried and confused as hell. A man stumbled out of the tree line, made it two yards, and collapsed.

Zak knew for sure which direction they wouldn’t go: toward the entry point the guerrillas had chosen for their latrine.

Blue Bandana leaned against the cookhouse, clutching his belly. He shouted for help, but everyone had his own problems. The Uzi slid off his shoulder as he leaned over to puke.

“Let’s go.”

Acadia was up on her feet like the goddamn Energizer Bunny. “About time.”

Zak kicked open the door and motioned to Gideon, who did the same. A few of the men gave them bleary looks as they converged, then ran across the clearing. One even reached weakly for his weapon, but that was the extent of their interaction with the escapees.

Miracle of miracles, her plan had worked.

As he ran, Zak helped himself to a machete from one guy, an Uzi from another, and several clips and half a dozen sets of plastic handcuffs from a third, then jogged over to the twins, who were sprawled close together. Zak undid the stainless steel band of his watch from Blue Bandana’s scrawny wrist and quickly fastened it on his own. The man looked up at him with pain-filled eyes, then rolled his head to puke.

“Payback’s a bitch,” Zak told him, with no small amount of satisfaction. Quickly, he stepped over the man’s supine, twitching body, grabbed the other twin by his hair to lift the dead weight of his head, pulled the silver chain he’d recognized earlier over the bastard’s neck, and let Gold Tooth’s head thump back to the ground. He stuffed the long chain and medallion into his breast pocket for safekeeping.

She’d better get herself a harder-working patron saint. So far, old St. Christopher hadn’t given her anything even remotely close to safe travel. The thing about relying on anyone or anything was that they’d eventually let you down. Saint or person, they were all fucking fallible. Some more than others.

Except for Gideon—his brother had always been there, and no way was Zak going to let him die in this shithole. Not, he thought grimly, that a busted rib was a death knell, but Zak damn well wanted to make sure that was the extent of the injuries today.

He jogged over to join his brother and Acadia near the tree line.

Acadia, jaunty ponytail swinging, had an Uzi strap slung across her shoulder. Zak had never seen a more incongruous sight outside of the movies: a sexy blonde wearing an automatic as a fashion accessory. Gideon had gone shopping among the writhing bodies as well. He was loaded for bear with a machete, an Uzi, and God only knew what else. Zak shot him a grin, indicating with a jerk of his chin that they should get moving.

With Acadia between them, they ran for the cover of the trees and dense foliage. He and Gideon had decided they’d enter the jungle here, circle around the clearing, and start their trek toward the river several hundred yards out from their entry point.

They hacked at the undergrowth only as much as they had to, preferring to push and crawl their way through so as to leave as little evidence of their passage as possible. Even a mediocre tracker would know their direction, but for the next couple of hours, no one from camp would be in any position to do any following. After that the jungle would have closed around them and blurred their passage. Or so their theory went. Zak sure hoped to hell they were right.

Acadia had gotten over her anger surprisingly quickly. Jennifer had always managed to sustain hers for days, sometimes weeks.

Gideon was in the lead, Acadia in the middle, Zak in back. Which left him in the perfect position to watch her curvy ass sway in front of him.

Damn.

He had a vivid memory of rubbing his cheek on the soft firm pillow of her ass before flipping her over to bury his face against the fragrant curve of her belly, then …

He’d slept with other women since Jennifer, but he’d never been this distracted by their very presence. He dropped back, letting the murmur of Gideon’s voice and Acadia’s soft response fade into the jungle ahead of him.

ZAK HAD DROPPED BACK again, letting them move ahead. Acadia knew he was walking two steps for their every one as he kept circling around to make sure they weren’t being followed.

She picked up her pace to catch up with Gideon, who was wielding the enormous machete to clear a path. Feeling a little queasy, she pressed a hand to her roiling tummy as she walked. Nerves. Stress. Heat. Too much action. No food … The list went on. Since the two men were in exactly the same boat, worse because they’d both been hurt, she didn’t bitch about the situation. Now that they were relatively safe, or as safe as humans could be in an animal’s natural habitat, the adrenaline overload was seeping away. She was dying of thirst and would have killed for gallons of ice-cold Diet Coke. Gideon pulled aside a large branch he’d just cut, and a spider with long, skinny legs and a black, hairy body practically leaped onto his shirt. He flicked it off with barely a glance. She felt it prudent not to point out that it was an aggressive and highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider. Acadia shuddered as she took a giant step to avoid it as it scurried into the thicket.

“That Visine thing was damned well brilliant,” Gideon told her, his voice low. “You’re a font of useful information.”

“I’m the manager at Jim’s Sporting Goods. It helps to remember all the warranties, and the inventory levels, and when to reorder and what bills to …” She paused as she caught herself rambling. “Anyway, having a good memory is my superpower. That and being crazy organized.”

“Well, we wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. Thank God for your organizational skills, Jennifer would’ve—”

“Jennifer? Zak’s wife? What was she like?” Acadia looked over her shoulder to make sure Zak wasn’t behind her.

“Beautiful, fearless … Jesus, that woman went where grown men feared to tread.” Gideon paused. “She was also fucking bat-shit crazy.”

Poor Zak. “Mentally ill? Or just … you know?”

“As far as I know, there wasn’t a medical diagnosis,” Zak’s brother admitted as he ruthlessly sliced away a dense tangle of vines blocking their path. “But she was loud, theatrical, and a congenital liar. One never knew if she was acting or not, she was that good at BS. I’ve never met a more selfish, self-serving woman in my life. Jennifer wasn’t just fearless, she was reckless, and she endangered anyone stupid enough to try to protect her from herself.” He paused for a moment, breath rough as he had to use more muscle to cut through a large branch. “Zak never saw any of it. For some inexplicable reason she was the love of his life. I never got it.”

Acadia helped him drag aside the branches he’d cut. “You didn’t like her.” She stated the obvious. She felt sorry for Zak, because even loving his wife as much as he had, it couldn’t have been easy living with someone like that.

“I didn’t like who Zak was around her. He—” He abruptly stopped talking. His shoulder-length dark hair snagged on a branch as he turned to flash very white teeth in her general direction. But he was looking behind her. “You okay back there, Zak-attack?”

Zak put a finger to his lips and motioned for Gideon to continue walking and lower the volume of their conversation. Acadia didn’t speak Starkese, but she didn’t need to. Someone was behind them.

That was why Zak had insisted his brother lead. With Gideon hurt, he’d intentionally placed himself between them and anyone coming up behind them. All right, maybe he didn’t want to be a hero, but he was watching out for his brother.

Despite his snarling sarcasm, that knowledge made her estimation of his character climb a few notches. The fact that he’d lost the love of his life was really sad. Gideon might not have liked Zak’s wife, but the brothers were obviously close. They watched out for each other. Cared. Like family was supposed to.

Like her family used to, before everything went to hell.

She’d always wanted a sibling. A brother, maybe, like Gideon. Staff Sergeant Dad would’ve loved having a son instead of the girlie-girl daughter who’d had zero interest in wilderness survival or combat training. Although, come to think of it, both skills would have come in pretty damned handy right now.

Gideon took her arm and propelled her forward, slashing the machete faster and bringing her along in his wake. “So you know all about sports equipment and camping, right?” He kept his voice low, but if it seemed like nonsense to her, Acadia suspected it was to give Zak time to fall behind whoever was following them.

“I’d better. I’ve worked at the store since junior high.” She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “Are you sure we should be talking?”

“They heard us already,” Gideon whispered in return. “If we stop, they’ll know we’re on to them. Keep talking. Zak will deal with them.”

“For a guy who claims not to be a hero, he’s doing a fair impersonation of one.” How many men were back there? Had Piñero returned early to find her men dropped and her prisoners gone? Acadia’s adrenaline did a sharp spike. Zak was back there alone …

Gideon slashed at thick vegetation, jungle sap clinging to the blade. “He had a … situation a few years back. Doesn’t want anyone to depend on him.”

“His wife was killed in Haiti, right?”

As much as she wanted to hear all about Zakary Stark and what made him the man he was—hell, as much as she wanted to hear about anything that took her mind off this mess—her ears were tuned to the sounds around them. The rustle of the leaves, a scratch of claws on bark as small animals scurried nearby, bright eyes watching their progress.

Waiting for the sound of automatic gunfire to erupt behind them, every cell in her exhausted body was braced for the impact of a bullet in her back. “She was a war correspondent for CNN, right?” she continued, shoving a tangled clump of leafy vines aside like a curtain.

“She took unnecessary risks … Look, if you want to know, ask Zak. He was the Jennifer Stark expert.”

Acadia wasn’t Zak’s type. Gideon didn’t have to say the words aloud for her to get that message. Putting up his hand, he stopped. Thank God.

It didn’t seem right, anyway, to talk about her one-night stand’s dead wife in the middle of a jungle escape. Or maybe ever. She lifted her hand to shove aside another thick green vine, and it reared up and looked her in the eye, then opened its yellow mouth and flicked its tongue at her.

“I’ll wait here,” Acadia whispered after she’d jumped back, hand over her heart, and managed to get her breath back. Her heart was beating overtime with fear. As much as she didn’t relish being left alone, she said softly, “Go back and help him.”

She stomped her feet as a winding army of red ants started an organized march over the toe of her boot.

“He doesn’t need help, sweetheart. Zak can handle himself just fine.”

“But why should he when we’re here?” she asked reasonably, scraping the last four clinging ants off her boot with a leaf.

“Know how to use that?” he asked, voice very low. She glanced up from her feet to see he was indicating the Uzi slung over her shoulder. “It can be a bit unruly.” Not waiting for an answer, Gideon pulled one of the handguns out of his belt. “Know how to use this?”

Acadia accepted the gun. Her father had always meant to take her to the range, but never had. And it was one thing to show a customer a gun’s features in the store, another to shoot someone in cold blood. She swallowed hard. “I’m a crack shot,” she lied through her teeth. In this instance, in theory was good enough, and she figured motivation would help her aim considerably. “Go.”

He reached over and clicked off the safety, then used the blade of the machete to lift the barrel to chest height. “Not Zak or me. Point and fire.” One minute he was beside her, the next just the movement of the foliage indicated he’d been there at all.

Indecisively, Acadia stood dead still for several minutes. She listened intently, her palms growing damp and slick. Every crack of settling branches, every whisper of moving foliage, even her own heartbeat, gathered like a slick knot of paranoia and fear in her gut.

A six-inch, emerald green lizard watched her from a nearby branch. The red ants marched in a wide, serpentine swath up the rough trunk of a nearby tree. A bird called. Leaves rustled as some small, unseen animal darted over and around protruding roots.

It sounded like … nature.

No voices. No gunshots.

God. Acadia’s heart almost stopped. Were Zak and Gideon dead? The locals must know of ways to kill their prey without making a sound. The very thought that the two men were dead, and that she might be all alone, with no one close by to call upon but raping, pillaging guerrillas, chilled her to the bone. And the small scared part of her brain wanted to yell, “What about me?”

Because being alone in this vast greenness terrified her, and her panic level was escalating by the second.

Stay? Go?

She hefted the gun and cautiously followed the path of slashed branches back the way she’d come, struggling not to imagine feral hunting cats or—worse, probably—sweaty guerrillas behind every shrub.

Zak met her halfway, Gideon behind him. The relief she felt at seeing the two men was profound. She searched Zak’s face and body for any signs of injury. Other than the bruise on his temple, he looked like the same cranky, hot and sweaty, preoccupied guy. And, God help her, incredibly sexy. He’d taken off his shirt and stuffed it in his waistband. Sweat trickled down his broad chest and sparkled like diamonds in his chest hair, which narrowed in a line down toward—

Acadia dragged her attention back to his face. “What happened?”

“Just a jaguar.”

She let out a huff of a breath. “Oh, if only you were referring to the car, and not some ravenous wild animal looking at us as a potential snack.”

Gideon barely hid a smile. “She was just curious. More scared of us.”

Acadia took another deep breath, the arm holding the gun shaking. “No one from the camp is following us?”

“Not yet,” Zak said flatly. “But they will. If Piñero does come back tonight, you can bet your ass she’ll be on us like white on rice. The more miles we can push between now and dusk, the better our chances will be.”

He glanced at the gun in her hand. “Know how to use that?”

“I work in a sporting goods store. What do you think?”

His eyes said exactly what he thought. He made a twirling motion with his hand and said to her back when she spun on her boot heel, “Just don’t shoot yourself in the foot. I’m not carrying you.”

Maybe the jaguar would get him.

TWO GRUELING HOURS LATER, Zak called a break. Gideon clearly needed medical attention, and Acadia was flagging, although neither had complained. He consistently checked their direction, both on his watch GPS and on the small handheld GPS Acadia had brought with her. At the rate they were going, they had six or seven grueling hours still to go before they reached the river. Zak knew they couldn’t continue after dark. He added the time for them to stop and make a rudimentary camp. But the longer they were in the jungle, the higher the risk of the guerrillas’ catching up with them.

How much longer could Gid go on? Skin gray, he was clearly in a lot of pain, and favoring his side more and more. Cracked ribs were bad enough. But what if one was broken? Gid could puncture a lung before they reached civilization. And the more time Zak spent with the ever prepared Acadia Gray, the more he realized just how fucking scared he was that this would go south at any second. That Piñero’s men wouldn’t be given the same constraints to stay away from her a second time. They were out here, hundreds of miles from civilization, with determined bad guys closing in, in a jungle filled with deadly animals, snakes, and insects. They were fucking lunch on the run.

The only thing ensuring Gideon’s and Acadia’s safety was himself.

He didn’t fucking want the job.

“There’s water here.” He indicated a fast-running trickle of golden-brown water running through a mossy crease and disappearing into the foliage. “Let’s drink our fill, and catch our breath.”

Acadia hesitated. “I have a SteriPEN to purify the water, but I don’t have a container big enough for all of us to drink out of.”

Of course she did. “Then I guess we’d better hope our shots protect us, because this is the only game in town.”

“I also have iodine tablets.”

“If we want to wait around thirty minutes for them to take effect? Take a risk, or go without a drink. We’re not hanging around here that long.”

She drew in a breath. “Right.” Then she sank to the ground and leaned over, cupping her hands. The long golden swath of her ponytail fell into the water beside her face, but she didn’t seem to care, just kept drinking.

Jennifer wouldn’t have touched that water without someone ensuring it was purified, and preferably bottled and chilled. His wife had thrived on danger and difficult conditions, as long as someone made sure she was safe and had all her creature comforts. She’d sought out filthy places, but hated getting dirty. It was a strange dichotomy Zak had never understood.

The difference between the two women, he thought, feeling a heavy sense of disloyalty, was that Jennifer, while wanting to be here, would’ve expected someone else to tote her shit, expected someone else to protect her, and expected that when she was tired, Zak—or someone—would make a comfortable camp for her.

Acadia just assessed the situation and kept going.

She was wise to have low expectations with him around. And he knew those expectation were at ground level … for now. Give her a few more hours of trudging through impenetrable vegetation with the very real possibility of getting shot, and the bitching would start. She was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, Zak thought sourly.

He observed how gingerly his brother knelt beside her, favoring his right side as he bent and giving a little involuntary grunt of pain. Acadia put a slender, dirty hand on his arm. “Hang on.”

She rose and felt down her right calf almost to her ankle.

Zak crouched beside the stream. “You’re a regular Girl Scout,” he said sarcastically. “Got a water bottle in there?”

“Zak,” Gideon cautioned, giving him a puzzled glance.

She ignored the sarcasm. “I wish.” Acadia dug in an unseen pocket and pulled out a little silver triangle and popped it open. A folding cup. Of fucking course she had a cup on her. She dipped it in the water and handed it to Gideon.

Gideon lowered himself carefully to the ground, a hand on his ribs. Once settled, he accepted the water and drank, then dipped the cup back into the stream and gave her a grateful smile. “You’re incredible.”

“I’m prepared.” She dipped her fingers into the stream and rubbed them on the back of her neck with a sigh. “Although quite frankly, it never crossed my mind that what I packed would be this necessary. My friend Julia booked the river tour, but there were three nights of camping included, and I just … Well, you never know when you’ll need—”

“A folding cup?” Zak muttered, annoyed with himself for letting her slip under his skin. Gideon was a likable guy. Of course she’d be attracted to him. The fact that she’d had that sassy mouth all over him just hours ago was beside the point. The friendly light in her eyes diminished when she looked at him. Fine. Zak wasn’t trying to fucking make friends here.

This was a life-and-death situation, and he was the one responsible for the safety of all three of them. He didn’t want the goddamned job, he hadn’t asked for the goddamned job, hell, he wasn’t qualified for the job, but no one else had stepped forward.

“Or eyedrops,” she said pointedly, then pulled out a foil-wrapped bar from a pocket on the side of her right knee. “Protein bar.” Then she went back for another and sat cross-legged on the spongy ground, lifting her hip to rearrange whatever was in a back pocket and using her teeth to tear the wrapping from each bar. She broke off an inch of each, then handed Zak and Gideon the balance.

“All right,” Gideon said as he leaned against a tree trunk and stretched out his legs. “Now you’ve got me curious. What else is in your magic pockets, sweetheart?”

While Zak knew that his brother was just as determined as he was to get the fuck out of all this green, he looked like he was settling in to score points with Acadia. Something about that made the hair on Zak’s neck stand up. They didn’t have time to sit here at all, let alone loiter around chatting like they were in a damned pickup bar.

Gideon was using that voice. The voice he used when he wanted to get into some attractive woman’s pants.

Sorry, bro. Been there, done that. And, God help him, he wanted to do it again.

Why the hell did he feel like a third wheel?

“I’m just happy you have them,” Gid answered—referring, Zak presumed, to her magic pockets. “And that you’re along for the ride.” Gideon grinned as he shoved a hank of long hair over his shoulder and repositioned the webbed strap of the Uzi across his chest. His eyes were shadowed and his skin looked pale against a day’s growth of beard. “Believe me, if I ever go on another survival adventure, I’m taking you with me.”

“I don’t need another adventure, thank you. This trip was something my friends coerced me into doing to put a little spice in my life. I think even they’ll admit this is going way farther than any of us intended.” Holding a piece of protein bar between her teeth, she made a “wait” motion with an upheld finger.

She took a tangle of rubber bands out of a breast pocket, untangled one, and handed it to Gideon. She closed her lips over the piece of protein bar and chewed as his brother acted like she’d just given him the keys to the castle and scooped his too-long hair back and secured it.

“Marry me, woman.”

“No thanks,” she replied cheerfully. “I suspect you two live life a little too far out on a limb for my small-town-girl tastes. I presume you were going to jump the falls with your brother?”

“This week, jump the falls; next week, Alpine ice climbing.”

Acadia shrugged. “Ah, see there? This week, see the falls; next week, back to refolding pup tents at the store. We’re just too different.”

Jump the falls, his ass. She was a terrible liar. “See the falls?” Zak queried silkily, and raised an eyebrow as her laughing gaze met his.

Zak ate the dense chocolate bar, glad to have it. For all he knew, Acadia, the pole dancer who wasn’t, had a six-course gourmet meal secreted somewhere on her. “Right. When you kids have finished flirting, we need to get mov—”

He froze as all the ambient noise in the jungle suddenly ceased. Gideon and Acadia looked at him intently, Gid shifting quietly to get access to one of the handguns at his waist.

Zak pointed, held up a hand for them to stay put, and went to investigate. He was in the mood to beat the shit out of someone.

Marry me, Zak thought as he picked his way carefully back the way they’d come. Gideon had never been married. He thought it was all fluffy fucking clouds and roses. He thought once the “I do’s” had been said, the love just grew and deepened and it all became some magical fucking fairy tale and ended with happily ever after.

Zak hated to disillusion his older brother, but real-life marriage wasn’t sprinkled with fairy dust.

A wife would get under his skin. A wife designed to love the thrill of adventure as much as he and Gid did wouldn’t be able to help herself; she’d climb into his head and twist him around, make him doubt himself. Make him face himself, stare down mortality in a way that had nothing to do with extreme adrenaline and everything to do with his own helplessness as she died in some fucking war-torn country without him there to save her. Like Jennifer. Fuckit. Gid would find out if he survived. Right now, Zak needed to concentrate on that.

The birds had stopped singing. Now the jungle was a silent wall of dripping, humid vegetation as every living creature lay low. This wasn’t your standard oh, shit, a jaguar silence. Humans were present. The jungle recognized the difference.

And so did he. They weren’t even trying to be subtle.

Two men shoved their way through the undergrowth, coming straight toward him. Pug Face and Shorty. Neither looked up to see him standing right there in their path, feet spread, Uzi held over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

The men looked like shit. Pale and sweaty, and not too steady on their feet. Hardly a fair fight, but Zak wasn’t feeling particularly fair at that moment.

They stood between him and a steak, a cold beer, a colder shower, and a clean, empty bed.

Instead of ducking out of sight, Zak charged. He swung the metal stock of the Uzi at Pug Face like a club before the man saw it coming. The flat edge hit him head-on in the nose with a satisfying crunch and spurt of blood, and drove bone and cartilage through the soft tissues. Up into the guy’s brain. He dropped like a rock, dead before he hit the ground.

Zak stepped over Pug Face’s prone body while Shorty was still fumbling to get his weapon in a position to fire. The electrical tape holding the grip assembly to the rear magazine well was firmly in place, but the ratchet on the bolt-retracting slide was giving him trouble in this humid heat. His sweat-slick, shaking hands tried to unlock the bolt so he could fire.

At this close a range, just three feet, Zak knew a 9mm Parabellum round would make a sizable hole in him, if Shorty ever got his shit together. He flexed his knees. “That’s why I hate guns,” Zak told the man in colloquial Spanish, straightening his back. “Never ready when I’m ready. Now, this?” He bent from the hip socket. “This is ready.”

Using a baseball grip on the sixteen-inch barrel of the machine gun, he swung it like a golf club. As every pro said, it was all about the follow-through. Golf was a boring-as-hell game, but Zak had found a more creative way to use his skill. Just as Shorty switched gears and pulled the Taurus from his belt, the stock of the Uzi slammed up into his chin, knocking him on his ass.

A bullet discharged from the handgun and scared the crap out of a flock of red-and-green parrots, causing them to catapult through the treetops, shrieking and flapping their wings. Zak’s heart rate hadn’t elevated in the slightest. Maybe Jennifer had been right. He was dead, he just didn’t know it.

Even when he staggered back in reaction to the bullet that slammed into his shoulder, he didn’t feel anything, emotionally or physically. But that round of fire was exactly what he’d been trying to fucking avoid. Might as well have sent up a here-I-am-come-and-get-me flare.