by Dana Marton
She’d run into a few of those already. One Canadian guy ran a bicycle rental; another old hippie from Jersey sold tie-dyed T-shirts with Mayan symbols superimposed over psychedelic swirls.
She expected her facilitator to be a mellowed-out travel agent slash travel guide who could help her with the maze of dirt roads that weren’t on any map and didn’t show up on her GPS. The area had a number of indigenous villages without names, logging camps, and temporary shanty towns where people fleeing South America stopped to rest on their way farther north.
She hoped the guy was on his way instead of permanently delayed somewhere, pushing up agaves. Anything could happen to a man, or a woman, down here.
Clara pulled her baseball hat deep over her face and listened to the resumed conversations around her.
The talk centered on the local armadillo races and Chiapas FC’s chances in an upcoming soccer match at Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The two events seemed to hold equal importance for the patrons.
She looked for patterns: who talked to whom, who deferred to whom, who watched whom with suspicion. In the past hour, she’d identified five distinct groups, each with its own captain, with El Capitán being the overall head honcho.
Drug runners? Gun runners? Human traffickers?
Before she could figure it out, the front door banged open, and she turned that way, still hoping for her travel guide, finding herself staring at a mercenary who looked like he’d just stepped out of one of those high-testosterone video games.
Okay. Wow. Because…wow.
A machete strapped to his back, a semiautomatic slung over his shoulder, a handgun in the side holster, and an army knife on his belt, he walked into the cantina with a swagger that said he could beat any man in town and could take any woman to bed. If he wanted.
He was taller than the locals, his hair a few shades lighter, a couple of days’ worth of bristle covering the lower half of his face. He wore army boots, cargo pants, and a black T-shirt that did nothing to conceal a distracting amount of muscle. White flashed as he chomped on the cigar between his teeth, his eyes covered by sunglasses.
Clara slid down in her chair and backed farther into the shadows as she watched him. So Pedro wasn’t alpha dog of the local pack. This guy was most definitely the top predator in Furino. His body language seemed completely relaxed, yet power emanated from his every pore.
All around, hands surreptitiously migrated to the tops of the tables, as if making sure the newcomer didn’t accidentally misinterpret any move as someone going for a weapon.
The mercenary claimed the empty stool at the far end of the bar. He didn’t ask for a drink. The bartender poured him one anyway. He didn’t so much as crook an eyebrow at a woman. But Margarita went to sit on his lap and rubbed against his well-built chest like a cat. She just about purred.
The waitress’s lustrous mahogany hair tumbled to her waist in waves, curling and swinging all over the place. She looked wild and free. Clara touched a hand to the strict bun tucked under her baseball hat.
The mercenary tossed back his drink with one hand while putting the other one on Margarita’s bare knee, running his palm up her thigh, under her short red skirt. He bent to her neck and nibbled her. Or maybe whispered something into her ear, because Margarita laughed. And then he was laughing too, a throaty sound of pure seduction.
One second, Clara was glaring at them with annoyed disapproval, and the next she suddenly felt her own skin heat, as if the man was touching her, his callused palm running over her naked skin. A long-neglected part of her body tingled, waving a flag. Hey, remember me?
At the bar, Margarita flattened her palms against the muscles of the mercenary’s chest and caressed them, moving lower and lower.
Clara blinked. What the hell was wrong with them? Then she clenched her jaw. What the hell was wrong with her?
It had to be the heat. A dozen fans whirled overhead, swirling the hot, humid air without providing much relief.
The mercenary chatted on with the bartender, as if being publicly fondled was par for the course for him, certainly nothing to remove his sunglasses over.
Appalling. Both his behavior, and that Clara would feel hot and bothered from simply watching the outrageous bastard.
Then he finally slid off his glasses, and the next second his unerring gaze pinned Clara, and it was too late to turn away or slide down in her chair, because he’d caught her watching him.
He gave a knowing smirk as he shooed the waitress off his lap and patted her curvy behind. He never looked at the woman again as he sauntered toward Clara, six feet of pure muscle and laser-focused attention.
The scene should have been the opening shot of an action movie—light glinting off hills of muscles, determination in every masculine move, a cocksure grin. Casting directors all over Hollywood would have peed their pants at the sight of this guy.
He dropped into the chair across from Clara, his muscled thighs spread. She clamped her own thighs together. His white teeth flashed in the dim light of the cantina as he chomped on his cigar and took stock of her.
“Are you lost, Cupcake?” His I’m-a-bad-boy-and-you-know-it voice scraped along her nerve endings. He was definitely American. East Coast, if she had to guess from his accent.
Her grandmother used to say there were men the devil put on earth to test good women. Clara was tempted to ask the guy whether he’d just zip-lined in from hell.
“Go away,” she said instead.
His smile was worth a thousand words, most of them dirty. His voice dipped. “How can I, when your eyes begged me to come over?”
She rolled said eyes so hard, she might have caused permanent damage.
One: she hadn’t begged in her life.
Two: the only thing she wanted was to hit him over the head with the bottle of tequila between them on the table. She was trying to keep a low profile, and he was drawing every eye to them.
He smiled around his cigar. “What’s your name?”
DOD Investigator Clara Roberts, she badly wanted to say to wipe the superior smirk off his face. “None of your business.”
His eyes were a brilliant multicolor green like the rainforest, alive and full of secrets. He let his gaze travel over her chest from left to right, then from right to left with undisguised disappointment.
He tsked. “No tits, no manners.” He shook his head. “You should try to have at least one or the other. A pair of great tits covers a multitude of sins.”
When his gaze reached hers again, the very fires of hell glinting in his eyes, he said magnanimously, “Don’t worry about it, Cupcake. You look like the brainy type. Believe it or not, that appeals to some men. I think I read that on the Internet.” He edged his chair forward until their knees touched under the table.
A tingle ran up her thighs at the contact. She shifted her legs away from his. “Please leave.”
“I can’t. You need me.” He flashed an infuriatingly cocky grin. “Walker.”
A who?
Her mouth dropped open. Light Walker? The hippie travel guide Walker? The one she’d been picturing with long, thinning hair, wearing a tie-dye shirt?
Why on earth would her father send his daughter to a man like this?
Before Clara could figure out what to do with Walker, Pedro stalked back into the cantina. El Capitán was yelling obscenities over his shoulder to whomever he’d been talking to outside. Then the door swung shut behind him, and his gaze swept the room and settled on Clara.
His mouth twisted into a snarl as he strode toward her. “You’re coming with me.” He narrowed his eyes at Walker. “The puta is mine.”
Walker rose in a measured move and stood toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose with the captain, all easy like, displaying none of Pedro’s bustle. The cantina fell silent around them. The hostile looks they exchanged said the two men knew each other, but there was no love lost between them.
Clara wouldn’t have minded knowing what their relationship was exactly.
Pedro’s eyes na
rrowed another notch. “I don’t have time to argue. Don’t get into the middle of this, gringo.”
Walker hesitated only for a second, then his expression hardened as if he’d come to some sort of decision.
“I’m pressed for time myself,” he said around his cigar and pulled his knife from his belt in a lightning-quick move, shoved the blade into the man’s abdomen, and yanked up hard.
Clara had no time to react other than jumping to her feet. Her gore rose from the wet sound of the blade being pulled back. She stared wide-eyed as the captain grabbed his belly to hold in his guts, a stunned look on his pockmarked face.
And suddenly she could smell the contents of his stomach.
Oh God. She swallowed hard so she wouldn’t gag. She needed to look away, but she couldn’t.
She’d never killed a man. Unlike in action movies, most law enforcement officers never killed in their entire careers. She’d certainly never seen a man disemboweled. Light Walker, on the other hand, hadn’t so much as blinked.
Before she could fully recover, Walker shoved the man onto the nearest chair, then reached across the small table, practically pulled Clara over it as he hauled her against him. He spit out his cigar and slanted his lips over hers in a primal gesture of claiming, his left hand all over her butt, while his right hand wiped then put away the knife and went for the semiautomatic to hold the room at bay.
Her head—and her stomach—were still reeling when his lips pulled away from hers as abruptly as they’d swooped in.
“Chica’s mine for the night. Whoever wants her tomorrow, you work that out amongst yourselves,” he said to the den of thieves in general, then sauntered to the back door without letting go of her.
Pedro sat slumped over in the chair, a pool of blood spreading on the floorboards under him. His men rushed to his side. Since the altercation had taken place in the dark corner, they probably hadn’t fully seen what had happened.
And Clara didn’t want to be there when they figured out the particulars. She didn’t protest when Walker pulled her through the back door. Stunned speechless, she followed him.
Her “facilitator” wasn’t a hippy travel guide. He was a stone-cold killer.
The door swung closed at their backs, and Clara squinted into sunshine as Walker dragged her down the rickety wooden steps, his arm a metal band around her middle. The level of noise behind them in the cantina doubled, then tripled, a beehive that had been disturbed. The shock of Pedro’s sudden death was wearing off at last.
“Now what?” she asked, not that she was admitting that Walker was calling the shots. Maybe for the moment. But any second now, she was going to get her act together and take charge.
“Now we run.” Walker let go of her waist, grabbed her wrist, then sprinted forward, crossing the dirt road that was lined by derelict houses on each side, the cantina and the guesthouse the best of the bunch.
He dragged her toward the jungle that began a hundred feet or so behind her guesthouse, and she did her best to keep up, wondering if she could outrun an army of drunken bandits. And whether the bandits were any worse than the man she was running with.
To be completely honest, she wasn’t entirely sure if she was being rescued or kidnapped.
Chapter Four
Clara gasped as she stumbled on a root and went down, for the third time, banging her knees. She ignored the stinging pain and pushed to her feet, then lurched after Walker. They’d entered the rainforest on a foot trail, but Walker had pulled her into the bushes after twenty feet or so.
This close to the village, plenty of trees had been cut by the locals, so the canopy was thin instead of forming an impenetrable umbrella. The availability of more sunlight meant plenty of bushes that slowed their progress. The nearly impassable undergrowth seemed like a completely different jungle from the comfortably wide tourist trails that led to the Mayan ruins—the only part she was familiar with.
Since the gun in her right boot rubbed painfully against her ankle, she stopped for a second, grabbed the Glock, and stuck it into her sports bra. She would have preferred having it in hand, but she needed both hands free as she fought her way through the undergrowth, branches slapping at her.
Walker headed up an incline, and she followed, grabbing protruding roots for support, then flailing when the thick layer of leaf mold crumbled under her feet and she slid back. He waited for her at the top and reached out his hand, yanked her up next to him, then pointed at a nearly invisible animal trail that led down the other side.
“We have to go faster.” And he broke into a run.
She ran after him, stumbling on the uneven ground, catching herself on a leafy branch. “This can’t be safe.”
She had no idea what plants were poisonous to touch. And what if she stepped on a snake?
He cast a look back over his shoulder without slowing, just as gunshots sounded behind them. “It’s safer than a bullet in the back.”
He had a point there. She ran faster, trying to catch up.
Gunshots sounded again, this time from closer.
“We need to get off the trail.” Walker darted into the undergrowth again.
She followed, tripped after a handful of steps, heading face-first toward a broken branch that looked to be at the right height to put out an eye, but at the last second, strong hands closed around her shoulders and hauled her up. Then Walker wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her after him.
“When I duck, you duck. When I jump, you jump.”
As he sped up, she needed all her strength and concentration to keep up with him. They vaulted over roots, logs, tree stumps, while branches swatted her in the face. Then something dropped on her shoulder, but even as she screamed, her heart stopping midbeat, the next oncoming branch swept the tarantula away.
Aww! Ick!
She manically brushed her shoulder with her free hand, every inch of her covered in goose bumps.
“When running from people who’re trying to kill you,” Walker advised as he kept dragging her, “it’s better to stay quiet. Generally speaking.”
He was melting through bushes, while the lianas did their best to hang on to Clara. She swallowed back any complaints. She focused on just hanging on for another few minutes, until they could stop to catch their breath.
Breath-catching didn’t seem to be in Walker’s vocabulary, however.
When, after twenty minutes or so, they suddenly found themselves on top of a cliff over a rapidly flowing river—a thirty-foot drop—he jumped without pausing, without warning, dragging her with him.
Nononononoooo!
One second, she had solid ground under her feet, the next she was airborne, flailing. Walker let go of her hand.
She hit the water the wrong way, and it hurt. She immediately went under. The current rolled her for long, desperate seconds.
Did he want to kill her?
Because she was drowning.
Which way was up, dammit?
Then his arm clamped around her waist, and he dragged her to the surface. “Swim!”
She wanted to shout right back at him, but her mouth was full of dirty river and God only knew what parasites and disease, so she spat and coughed as she fought the current that rushed them forward.
Her cowboy boots, filled with water, pulled her down. She kicked them off, one after the other.
She felt lighter and a smidgen more optimistic after that, for about a split second. Then she caught a better look at the river, narrow enough so the vegetation hanging in from each side obstructed the view. Visibility was maybe fifty feet, if that. As the water swept her along, she had no idea where they were headed from one minute to the next.
All she could think of was what usually happened in situations like this in the movies.
Don’t let there be a waterfall straight ahead.
She swam toward shore for all she was worth. Until Walker grabbed the back of her shirt to hold her in place.
“Save some energy,” he shouted to be heard
over the rushing river. “Getting out will be a lot harder than getting in. Don’t try to swim straight for the shore. Angle yourself slightly and go with the current. Let the water do the work.”
That he had enough breath to talk seemed superhuman. She gasped for air and angled her body, stopped struggling.
Oddly enough, she made more progress with less effort. She was actually reaching closer and closer to shore.
Of course, the water still trapped her. The river was no longer hemmed in by tall cliffs, but the bank towered at least three feet above current water level. No way out. So for now, she concentrated on not going under.
A full hour must have passed before they reached a stretch of low shoreline. Even here, the jungle stood like a wall of green on both sides. The dense stand of bamboo was as effective as a fence.
Since the river created a break line in the canopy, more sunlight meant thicker undergrowth once again. They had to fight jumbled roots and impenetrable vegetation while being rolled forward, their grasping fingers finding purchase, then losing it, over and over again.
Walker caught a handful of overhanging lianas first, then caught Clara by the upper arm, guided her to a fallen tree that lay half on land and half in water.
For long minutes, all she could do was cling to the log, the current pressing her upper body against it, while she spit water and gasped for air. Then, once she caught her breath, she inched toward shore handhold over handhold.
When she finally made it out, she dropped onto her back in the first available spot. Thank you, God.
“You okay?”
“Alive.” She hated how weak and winded she sounded. The muscles in her arms and legs burned with exhaustion.
Breathe. It’s over. Breathe.
But long moments passed before her heart stopped its mad cartwheeling in her chest.