Secret Guardian

by Jill Sanders

  “Listen, Nathan—”

  “Ethan,” he said and took her bag from her hands.

  “What?” She continued to look at him, and his smile was doing something to her insides.

  “My real name is Ethan Knight. Not Nathan Cruz.” He lifted the bag and nodded his head. “This shouldn’t be too heavy for you to carry.” He walked out of the room and set it next to his black one, which looked equally full.

  She took the bottle of remover with her and followed him. “Your name is Ethan Knight? You are Ethan Knight?” When he nodded his head, she crossed her arms.

  “Did my father send you?”

  Chapter Four

  Ethan walked at a steady pace as he watched the back of Ann’s dark head. She defiantly fit in to the crowd now. Before, heads had turned when she walked down the street and men had seemed to fall aside with their tongues wagging. At least that’s what he always imagined. She had that effect on men, kind of like the coyote in the cartoons when steam shot out of its ears, and its eyes did the slot machine spin.

  Okay, so it wasn’t that bad. If he wanted to be totally honest, that’s the way he’d felt when he’d first seen her. She’d walked across the room in a hot red outfit, and he’d lost control of his wits. Not only had his temperature risen, well … he shook his head and cleared the image from his mind.

  They’d been walking for almost an hour and already he could tell she was slowing down. So far they hadn’t run into any trouble. When Ann stumbled, he reached out and took her arm. She yanked it free and glared at him. He smiled at her in return, which only caused her to frown. The small crease between her eyebrows caused him to smile even more.

  “Would you stop doing that?” She turned her head away from him. When he smiled, she felt her insides melt. He had a lopsided smile and she could just make out a small dimple to the right side of his mouth, not to mention the small cleft in his chin. It just screamed to be kissed, and it upset her that she was thinking along those lines. Especially since her two friends had just been killed.

  “Fine, next time I’ll let you fall on your pretty face.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Not that!” She adjusted her backpack for the hundredth time.

  “What then?”

  “Smiling. You look like an idiot when you do it.” She frowned at him again. He couldn’t help it, he laughed out loud. He was happy to see a small smile form on her lips.

  “If the bag is too heavy, I can carry it,” he said after she adjusted her bag again.

  “It’s not. I just didn’t think we’d be marching at such high speeds.”

  He almost laughed again. “Princess, we haven’t even begun to march. Wait until we hit the outskirts of town. I’m sure there will be plenty of men looking for us there and we may have to actually do some running.” He looked around and realized they were less than three blocks from the edge of the city. “We’d better eat lunch and rest here, just in case.”

  He walked over to a small shop and sat on the bench next to the doorway. Here, on the outskirts of town, the walls and shops were covered with graffiti. The buildings were crumbling and the roads were used and old. There was trash everywhere, covered with the musty smell of mold and cooked food.

  Ann walked over and sat next to him and watched as he removed a small brown bag from his pack.

  “Here.” He handed her a small baggie of cheese and crackers, then he took out one of the many sealed bags of beef jerky and handed it to her.

  She sat and ate the food in silence. He’d expected her to complain about the food, or maybe her feet. But instead she just watched people walking by and silently ate everything he’d given her. Then she pulled out a bottle of water and downed half the contents.

  “Did my father send you?” she asked again. He’d gotten out of answering it before when Javan had come in. They’d left shortly after he’d reported everything he’d discovered.

  Ethan nodded his head and finished drinking his own water. Then he turned to her and noticed her frowning.

  “If it helps, he didn’t know this was going to happen.”

  “If he didn’t think this was going to happen, then why did he hire you? What else is going on that I would need GI Joe to save me from?”

  He smiled. “Is he still calling me that?”

  Ann frowned even more. “The kid thinks you can walk on water.”

  Ethan thought about it. Her half brother, Blake, had been eight at the time he’d saved him, which made him around thirteen now.

  “Is he chasing girls yet?” He smiled.

  Ann laughed. He enjoyed the rich sound and the way her eyes lit up.

  “He started two years back. He has quite the collection of girlfriends. He actually took two girls to a school dance a few months back.” As she continued to talk about her brother, Ethan noticed how she relaxed and looked like she was enjoying herself. He could plainly see that she cared about her brother.

  He remembered when he’d finally found his older half-sister, Ruth Ann. She’d been stolen as a baby by her biological father and raised under the name of Roberta. He’d run into her at the Portland hospital a few years back while he was on a job. When he had seen her he’d done a double take. She looked so much like a younger version of his mother, he knew instantly that he had found his missing sister. He’d followed her and broken into her place just to confirm his intuition. After being satisfied that she was Ruth, he’d left her a small clue he knew she could easily follow back to their mother. After all, he’d found out that she was a top Portland detective at the time.

  Roberta found the clue and less than a month later tracked his parents down, finally coming face-to-face with her real family.

  He’d attended her wedding to Ric Derby shortly after that and less than two year later had been at the baptism of their daughter, Rose.

  “Are you listening to me?” Ann interrupted his thoughts.

  “Yes. You said your stepmother Coleen had a field day after Blake was returned, and wouldn’t let him leave the house for almost two months.” He smiled when she frowned back at him. He was thankful for his great memory, something he shared with his sister, Roberta. Maybe that’s what made them both suited to do the jobs they were in. Since getting married, Roberta had retired from the police force and was head of security for her husband’s large art galleries, a move that had caused Ethan to second guess his life. He had retired from the military and gone into private practice for himself shortly afterwards.

  Taking odd jobs here and there allowed him to have weeks, even months off so he could spend more time with his family or just do some traveling, something he had always enjoyed.

  “It should have been me.”

  “What should have?”

  “In the van. I was just there. I had just left. If I had—”

  “Stop!” He turned to her and took her shoulders into his hands. “It’s called survivor’s remorse, Ann, and you’re too smart to fall into the trap of what if’s.”

  She looked at him as tears slid down her face. He wanted to gather her up and hold onto her, promising her that everything would be okay. But the look on her face told him it was too soon. She didn’t trust him, yet.

  “I know. I understand it, but you can’t deny the fact that I’m to blame. If I hadn’t done the interview….”

  He shook her shoulders lightly. “If I hadn’t taken this job, you’d be lying in the gutter next to Mark.”

  The shocked look on her face told him that he was heading down the right path to snap her out of her guilt. He knew he was being harsh, but he needed her at full mental capacity. He knew what was lying ahead, and he couldn’t drag her physically or mentally the entire way through the jungle. She needed to take the steps and judging by the anger in her eyes now, she was on a fast track to recovery.

  Looking around, he could see they had taken enough time. The next few hours would be a lot harder than the first half of the day. The steep hills and paths they were going to take were just plain tortur
ous. He’d actually had to use this pathway once before, and could remember every sore muscles after the few days of hiking. He kept this information from Ann, thinking that if she knew ahead of time what he was about to subject her to, she’d change her mind about trusting him.

  “We’d better get going.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. He pulled her closer then he’d intended and enjoyed the spark of desire that crossed her face. Interesting. He closed the distance between them by pulling her closer and noticed her eyes softening. Very interesting, he thought. Maybe the hike through the hills wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “What?” He threw the glass across the room and watched as it shattered against the wall. “You promised me you’d have her by morning. I don’t know if you know it, but it’s after one. I leave in less than five hours. I don’t care what you do or who you have to hire. Find that woman or you can forget about ever working in Brazil again.”

  He could feel the vein in his temple bulging as he looked across at the two men. He turned his attention to the larger man.

  “I told you, I don’t think the cameraman was who you said he was. He has to be from some kind of military forces to have disappeared like that. Maybe he’s an agent? All I know is that I have over a hundred men out looking, not to mention all the loyalists who have their eyes and ears out. Miss Rhodes has disappeared from Rio.”

  He leaned over the table and looked at the man. Even though the man was bigger than he was, he wasn’t afraid of him. After all, he was the one with all the power. If he didn’t like how the man was doing his job, all it took was one word from him and he would see to it that he ended up floating downriver. Using his power and money always made him feel better.

  After all, what good was being second in command if you couldn’t use the perks once in a while? Of course, he wouldn’t let anyone know that he was as easily replaced as anyone else. He’d only been in this position for four years. He could still remember his predecessor. Seeing the man’s head leave his shoulders in one clean blow from his boss’s sword was an image he carried with him every day. He liked to think it helped motivate him to be the best he could be.

  Knowing what would happen to you if you failed was always a great motivator. He used it with the men under him. After all, none of them had ever seen or met his boss. To say the man was a recluse would have been an understatement. In the four years he’d worked for him, he’d only seen him face-to-face a handful of times.

  “I don’t care who the man is that she’s with. It can’t be that hard to find a single spoiled girl in this city, even if she is with an army of special agents. If you don’t find her by the time I leave Brazil…”

  He was done with threats. Pulling out his gun, he aimed it at the smaller man’s chest and fired. He didn’t even blink as the man hit the floor with a shocked look on his face.

  The bigger man’s face said it all. Maybe now he would actually get something done right.

  He calmly set his gun back on the desk and sat down. “Now, clean up this mess and get back to work.” He flipped open his laptop and got back to work, not paying any attention to the man carrying the body out.

  He had an email to send and knew he wouldn’t like the response.

  Ann was going to kill him. They were on hour five of their ‘small trek’, as he’d called it, and not only were her feet killing her, she was sure she’d sweat more fluids than she had taken in, or weighed, for that matter. He’d never told her they were going to be hiking through the jungle at top speeds. If he had, she would have told him where to go and how to get there.

  “Nath… Ethan.” She corrected herself. “I have to stop.”

  “Shhh!” He’d been acting strange for the last half a mile. She had a few rocks in her boots and needed a moment to use the nearest tree.

  Her shirt was sticking to her skin, and she wanted nothing more than to remove it and toss it aside. But the bugs were so bad under the canopy of the trees, she didn’t want any new bites on exposed skin. Looking at the back of his head, she realized he wasn’t fighting any bugs off.

  “Ethan, I need to stop.” She thought this name suited him better than Nathan. He turned and looked at her, his eyes burrowing into hers. She tried very hard not to look away. She knew when to stand her ground and this was one of those times. They’d been walking for hours without so much as a complaint from her. Normally she would be spewing them, but in light of her being at fault for their predicament, she bit her tongue.

  He nodded and she relaxed, letting out the breath she’d been holding. She turned and started walking towards the nearest large tree.

  “Where are you going?” he growled out.

  She turned quickly and put her hands on her hips. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go behind that tree and use the facilities. I’m sure I will be perfectly safe seeing as it’s only ten feet away.” She turned and stomped the rest of the way.

  Once behind the tree, she dropped her pack from her shoulders and almost fell over without the extra weight holding her down. Her shoulders were killing her. She leaned against the tree and closed her eyes as she rolled her head, using her hands to massage the sore muscles.

  She bent over and stretched her back muscles and was about to stand up again when she heard a loud thud. She jumped and turned to see Ethan standing there with his machete in one hand and a large snake the thickness of his thigh in the other. Its large head was on the ground, and she watched in horror as he slowly untwisted its body from around his arm then dropped its limp body to the ground at her feet.

  “Always check the tree before you stand under it for too long.” He turned and walked away, leaving her staring at the large boa constrictor. She shivered then grabbed her pack up and followed him back to the small clearing.

  “I thought you had to use the facilities?”

  She could see him laughing at her, but didn’t care. Images of snakes, leopards, and all the other creepy or crawling things that lived in this jungle flashed in her mind. Things that wanted to eat her. She shivered again and didn’t even mind that his eyes were laughing at her.

  “You forgot to put on your bug repellent.” He walked over to her, took out a small tub from his pack, and handed it to her.

  “I am not wearing that stinky stuff.” She crossed her arms and looked at the repellent she’d smelled earlier.

  “You think that snake was bad? Try malaria or yellow fever. Put it on, Princess. The only person who can smell you is me, and I don’t care what you smell like.”

  She took the tube and he turned to walk behind a large bush, no doubt to relieve himself. She slathered the thick cream on her exposed skin. She had over three dozen bites on her arms already and was trying very hard not to scratch them so they didn’t scar up. The thick cream stank, but when she rubbed it over her bites she could actually feel the itching dissipate.

  She still had to go to the bathroom, so after rubbing the cream into her arms, she went behind a small tree, and after spending several seconds looking up into the branches above her head, quickly dropped her pants.

  When she walked back to where her pack was, she was happy to see Ethan leaning against a tree, looking bored.

  “How much farther are we going to go tonight? How can you tell you’re going in the right direction?”

  She sat on her pack and removed her left boot to empty it of the dirt and pebbles that had been bothering her for the last hour.

  “I want to go another two hours before we make camp.” He handed her a small pouch of the beef jerky as he popped a piece into his mouth.

  She didn’t know if she would make it two more hours, but when she wanted to voice her complaints, an image of Mark popped into her head and she closed her eyes.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” he said softly. She looked at him and realized he must have guessed where her thoughts had turned. She looked down at her boot and played with the laces.

  “If I hadn’t taken the chance they would both still be alive.�
� She didn’t realize the tears were coming, but knew she’d held them at bay for over a day and that they had to come at some point.

  “Ann.” She saw his boots by her feet, but kept her eyes fixed on her own boot and hands. “I know you think that you were foolish doing that interview, but what you were trying to do was a very noble thing. The world should know about the injustice going on down here. Did you see those people in the favelas?” He knelt down and put his finger under her chin, bringing her eyes up to meet his. “Those people live in fear every day that they’re going to be killed for talking to the wrong person or for crossing the wrong street. The drug lords have complete control there and it just pisses me off to think that what Heitor said might be true. That government officials may have control of it all. The people need to know.”