“There aren’t many people here,” Paige said, turning into the breeze.
I wondered briefly if that should worry me, but brushed it aside. Oliver wouldn’t have moved us from one unsavory place to another.
The surf rushed up the shoreline toward Paige. She lifted the hem of her sundress and moved closer as the water rushed over her feet.
Zooming in, I brought her image into focus and snapped the picture before she moved. I’d frame that one. The curve of her backside showed as the breeze lifted her dress. When the glint of her wedding band threw a prism of color in the air, I snapped another picture.
She turned, saw the camera in my hands, and smiled.
Anyone watching would see a husband and wife soaking up the sun while they explored the beach of Saint Michael parish.
It was easy enough to get caught up in the lie. Especially when you were standing on the edge of paradise with your soul mate.
Paige wandered over to where I stood.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get the pictures tomorrow and then be able to sprawl out here for the next two days?” she asked, tipping her face to the sun.
“We can only hope,” I answered.
I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for. Yet, Oliver had put it on my shoulders regardless. Just because I was a good photographer didn’t mean I was a good spy… or whatever the hell he expected me to be.
“We’re just lucky we’ve come at end of the wet season. I can’t imagine slogging around in the jungle during a monsoon,” she said.
“Wouldn’t be able to get very good pictures either,” I added, looking over my shoulder at the wall of green behind me.
“Are you worried? About tomorrow, I mean,” she asked.
Was I? I didn’t think so, but then again, I wasn’t faced with any adversary either. If, and when, that happened, I was sure my opinion would change.
“No,” I answered, giving her a smile. “But I really don’t think we should be out here once the sun goes down.”
She giggled. “Afraid a crab might pinch your toes?”
I winked at her, keeping the real reason to myself. Not too far from where we’d stood on the beach, there were dual ruts leading into the jungle. Which meant vehicles came in and out of that spot quite frequently. Whether or not it was militia, or possibly an access road for paid safari tours, I couldn’t say. All I knew was I damn sure didn’t want to be out in the open once the sun went down.
IT HAD RAINED AT SOME point during the night, making it impossible for the little four-wheel drive our guide all but helped us into make it along the muddy ruts serving as our road into the jungle.
We’d made it less than a mile before the inexperienced driver sank the ass end of the Jeep up to its frame.
“Rookie,” Paige said with a snort as she stood up on the seat, climbed over the windshield, and then trekked across the hood of the Jeep to peer over the end in disgust. “I told you to rock it back and forth. Did you listen?”
The driver beamed a huge smile at her. Not from Barbados himself, Erol, our driver, heralded from the island of Jamaica. “Womon, I can take you wid me back to de island. Show dem man how American gurls can be so cruel.”
His accent was heavy. His smile deep. He, for some reason, found Paige’s sarcasm enticing.
“Ay, mon. You ever get tired a’tha gurl, you send her to Erol,” he’d told me.
After trying, and failing, to winch the truck out, Erol left to see who he could scrounge up for help to pull out the Jeep. Paige and I insisted on going further into the jungle on foot. We couldn’t afford to lose any more daylight.
We’d made it a mile in when the heavens opened up. Water rolled down the sides of jutting rocks, making it almost impossible to hold onto anything, let alone try to walk on it.
“We’re not going to make it far enough and still make it back to the beach by nightfall. I think we should come back tomorrow morning. Without Erol,” I said, watching a steady line of water run off the brim of my baseball cap.
“Good plan,” Paige said, ducking when a bolt of lightning arched over the treetops above us.
“What are you doing?” I asked, unable to keep a straight face.
“Shut up. It’s a reaction. I can’t help it,” she grumbled.
Thunder shook the air around us. “Yep, time to go before we get barbequed in the middle of the jungle.”
Neither of us heard him approach. The storm made it almost impossible to hear each other. Paige’s scream, however, shattered the air around me.
He wasn’t very big, but the knife in his hand made up for it. He waved it in Paige’s direction as he took one step, and then another, toward her.
“Paige, run!”
I lunged for him, catching his wrist and twisting it in hopes he’d drop the knife. We tumbled to the ground, me getting full advantage on him since I outweighed him by a good thirty plus pounds. He bowed under the pressure of my knee in his back. Frantically, I looked around in search of Paige. She wasn’t there. She’d listened to me and made a run for it.
The guy on the ground hollered words I didn’t understand as he tried to break my hold. The nerve he’d had to pull such a dangerous-looking blade on my wife fueled my anger into something like a rage.
Taking his knife from him, I slipped it between my belt and my shorts before flipping him over and relieving him of his gun. One by one, I tossed the bullets in every direction. The jungle obligingly swallowed them up for me.
I let him up. When he got to his feet, my fist snapped out, catching him under the jaw. He landed in a sprawled heap on the jungle floor.
Thunder rolled through the air and lightning forked jagged fingers through the sky as I grabbed the only thing at hand to tie him to the tree. Once he was bound, I’d figure out who to call because I wasn’t bringing Paige back in the jungle if the knife-wielding maniac had other friends hidden somewhere in its depths.
“Not so tough now are you, asshole?” I said, dragging him to the nearest tree. The thin vines were slippery in my hands. I fumbled them several times as I tied pieces together and wrapped my captive around the trunk of a young banana tree.
They always described the barrel of a gun as cold when it touched skin. And maybe it was supposed to be. But for me, in that moment, it wasn’t.
The hot metal pushed against the side of my head near my temple as a rough voice said, “Move and you die.”
My hands stilled. The vine fell from my grip into the lap of the man I’d thought to be unconscious. He looked up at me, eyes blazing. I didn’t have time to step back before he launched himself from the ground, slamming into me like a linebacker.
We hit the ground hard, rolling as we each fought to incapacitate the other. It ended with a single shot. Blood splattered on my face. Bits of something heavier slid down over my nose. I wiped it with the back of my hand as I scrambled out from underneath the dead weight of him.
The gun that killed him took aim at me. The man holding it jerked his head. Before I could make the connection, someone came up behind me and grabbed my arms, pulling them behind my back.
I hadn’t had time since the first attack to be afraid. Watching the man holding the gun take two quick steps, gun raised at my head… it scared me shitless.
He drew his arm back, bringing the heavy handle against my head. I heard the sickening crack it made only to be replaced by a ringing of my ears. Colors, bright flashes of them, danced to the unmelodic tune.
My knees buckled. I’d have fallen if not for my arms wrenching upward. Held by some unmovable force I couldn’t see.
Bile rushed up the back of my throat as if I’d been taken by a violent fit of vertigo. It had been a long time since I’d been hit with an episode like that. Not since I was thirteen or fourteen and I’d had double ear infections. That had been the sickest I’d ever been in my life. There was nothing worse than feeling like you were bobbing along like a jig on a line. The current taking you wherever it damn well pleased, yet you
hadn’t moved a muscle. When it got that bad, it was best just to be sick. You felt a bit better once you did.
I’d been violently sick, but felt no such relief. If anything, I felt worse. My head throbbed in time with my racing heartbeat. My vision blurred and wavered as it doubled in on itself. Black spots shot through like falling stars and burst like fireworks. It was so disorienting that I closed my eyes.
The voices of the two men sounded like growling, snapping, as they spoke. It was clear they were discussing me, even if I had no idea what the hell they were saying.
I kept quiet. Waiting for a chance where they’d think I was too injured to be of any consequence to them. When that moment came, I’d run, just like I told Paige to do. Just like I should have done.
MY LUNGS BURNED. EACH BREATH, like fire, burst from my mouth. The look on Mark’s face as he’d told me to run urged me on. I had to stay ahead of him and not slow us down.
I sailed over fallen logs like a hurdle jumper with a finesse that would have made Mr. Smith, our high school track coach, very proud.
I had to be cracking up, thinking about an old teacher. Stay focused! Keep moving. Get the hell out of this damn jungle.
I had no idea how far I’d run. Or if I’d stayed on the unmarked path Mark and I had ventured up. Surely, if I were going the wrong way, he’d let me know.
I strained to hear past the sound of my heart thundering, and my own breathing. Dared a glance behind me. I had to know he was there.
I skidded to a halt, coming up short against a Shak Shak tree. A flurry of wet petals fell around me, landing on the ground like obese snowflakes.
Past the white blobs, I could see the outline of someone running toward me. I sagged against the tree in relief, giving myself a chance to slow my heart rate. Once he got close enough, I’d set out again.
I bent, hands on knees. Each breath coming hard and fast. I knew better than to just stop. That wasn’t going to help me at all, but damned if I could follow the rules when my legs felt like hot jelly.
Mark came crashing down the slight incline and I pushed off the tree, putting as much power into my stride as I could.
“Womon!” Erol called to me.
He was just off to my right. Knife held high. He drew his arm back, and before he let it fly, he said, “Get down.”
“No!” I cried out, sliding on a patch of leaves as I scrambled to get back to Mark.
Why? Why would he do that? Why would he hurl a knife at Mark?
“You fucking bastard,” I said, torn between hurting Erol and helping Mark.
Mark. I had to get to him. A knife wound in the jungle would be a nightmare to take care of with no medical supplies.
Erol grabbed my arm as I rushed past him and swung me back around. “Get ta da Jeep,” he said.
I struggled against his hold. “Get your hands off me!”
He ignored me, asking, “Where is your mon?”
I elbowed him in the gut as hard as I could with the hold he had on me, grunting as I said, “Idiot! You threw a knife at him.”
He let me go, staring at me as if I were the idiot, and then pointed at the crumpled body yards away. “Dis mon? Dis gorilla? Womon, look!”
His insistence moved me closer. The body lying on the ground was not Mark.
“I have to go back. He’s in danger,” I said, covering my mouth to keep the terror crawling up the back of my throat from becoming a scream.
Erol reached down and yanked the knife free. Blood dripped from the tip in rhythmic time. Plop. Plop. Plop.
My vision wavered for a moment until my anger sparked. Get the hell over it. It’s blood. Big deal, Paige. I’d seen enough of it as a nurse. Dead bodies were not a shock. Murder, however…
“Get to da Jeep and get back to da beach. Help will be der,” he said, shoving me toward a narrow path. “Follow dis down.”
I stood firm. “No. If you’re going to look for Mark, I’m coming with you.”
“Womon, dis is no game. Get to a phone. Call Oliver.”
My hand shot out with the intention of slapping him senseless.
But he was quick, stopping me before my hand could make contact. “Devil womon. Keep your claws aimed at the right target.”
He shoved me back, jogging off. Before I could follow, he disappeared into the green.
SEETHING, I GRIPPED THE STEERING wheel of the jeep, imagining it was Oliver’s neck as I bumped along faster than I should have been going through the jungle.
Erol’s last words echoed on repeat. Call Oliver. The bastard was one of their own people. Why hadn’t they thought to tell us who he was?
The Jeep burst out of the jungle like a bird from a tree. The tires spun a wake of wet sand behind me, but I didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. All I could do was hope like hell I didn’t sink the stupid Jeep into the sand like Erol had done in the mud, or slide into one of the massive rocks jutting up from the sand.
I hit the brakes hard and cut the wheel coming in sideways, sliding along the grass at the back of the cottage. The Jeep shuddered to a stop when I cut the ignition.
I bailed out over the side and then sprinted around to the front door.
Grabbing the handle, I wrenched the doorknob, slamming my shoulder into it, forgetting we’d locked it on our way out. And Mark had the key.
I bit back the scream of frustration I wanted so desperately to allow free rein. It wouldn’t do me any good. Wouldn’t get me inside any faster.
Just to the left of the door, where the small porch ended, was a window big enough I could get through.
My shoe came off with a quick yank. I shoved my hand inside of it. With one solid punch, the window shattered. Shaking the pieces of glass from my arm, I put the shoe back on and then proceeded to unlock the window and heave it upward, proud that it hadn’t taken me much more than a few minutes. If my choice of career didn’t work out for me, I could always be a cat burglar.
Hoisting myself through the window, without getting cut on the jagged shards of glass littering the frame, kept my full attention.
The startling sound of a female voice asking me, “Paige? What the hell is going on?” took the last of my coordination. I fell through the opening face-first, thinking at the last second to tuck my head, so I didn’t catch the floor with my nose.
Ella hovered over me. “Oh, damn. Are you okay?”
“Where’s Mark?” Josh said, snapping me out of it.
I came up from the floor in one swift move and then shot past Josh toward the bedroom. We’d left Mark’s phone stashed inside a decorative box, made to look like a book.
My hands fumbled the faux book, dumping the phone to the floor. It bounced across the floor hard enough the back popped off and the battery shot out, disappearing under the dresser.
I hit the floor, knees jarring with impact. My fingers stretched, pulling until they stung as I prayed with everything in me that nothing besides dust bunnies resided under the dresser.
“Paige, what the hell are you doing? Where’s Mark?” Josh asked me as he grabbed me by the ankles and yanked me across the floor.
I scrambled back on hands and knees, just getting my arm back under the dresser when he pulled me right back out again.
“Damn it, Josh! I need that battery,” I said, kicking out at him.
“What the hell is going on? Answer me, damn you!” He was pissed. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him so angry before.
“I have to call Oliver. Get out of my way!” I lunged past him, ready to dive under the dresser once more.
“What the hell is going on?” Oliver’s voice barked.
I spun around to see Ella holding her phone out to me. I grabbed it from her, holding it like a lifeline as I said, “Oliver, you have to help him. He’s in the jungle, and there was a man with a knife. And another man with a knife, but Erol killed him—”
“Are you with Josh and Ella?” he asked. Voice calm, yet alert.
“Yes,” I answered.
I hadn’t had time
to really think about what happened. I’d only had time to react. Which was how I’d kept myself from going into any sort of shock. The adrenaline had kept it all at bay.
Once I’d begun to shake, I couldn’t stop. Ella swept in beside me and guided me back to the living room with one hand around my waist, the other helping me keep hold of the phone.
“I need coordinates, Paige. Where were you when it happened? Tell Erol to send them to me right now,” Oliver said as the phone hissed and popped with the sketchy reception.
Some people were quiet or got violently sick when shock hit. And then there are some who go into hysterics. And since I found myself laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe, it was safe to assume I was one of the crazy ones.
Ella nudged me, trying her best to break through my momentary breakdown. “Paige, where is Erol?”
I had a feeling she’d said it more than a few times by the look on Josh’s face. All I could do was shake my head, because there was nothing I could do to stop the humorless laugh that took over all rational thinking.
Josh stormed across the room and grabbed me by my upper arms, hauling me to my feet as he said, “If you don’t snap out of it, I’m going to smack you right across the face, and then get my ass beat by five of my friends when they hear about it. It’ll all be on you if I need life support after that.”
I heard him. I even nodded. But damn me if I could get control over myself.
His hand cracked across my face. Pain radiated across my cheek and broke through the endless cackling coming from my mouth.
My hand went to the burning spot immediately, and I blinked against the tears pooling in my eyes as Josh stumbled back from me.
Ella, who’d been watching us with rounded eyes, made a move for him.
“No,” I said, stepping in her path.
She glared at him, but spoke to me as she asked, “Are you all right?”
“Someone better answer me right fucking now!” Oliver’s voice bellowed.
The Vows We Make (The Six Series Book 4) Page 15