And the bullets started flying.
Chapter Five
Randi screamed. Something whizzed past her cheek and she dropped to the ground.
The screen door on the little wooden structure behind her banged open. The man they’d just paid stepped onto the porch, a shotgun clutched in his hands. He fired over her head.
Gasping, she clamped her hands to her ears and rolled to the side.
Guns were poking out from the windows of the black car that had been speeding down the roadway. Gage was crouched behind Marco’s car, a weapon in his hand.
She couldn’t see Marco.
Black smoke from the gunfire wafted through the air, and her nostrils twitched from the smell of the gun powder—so close. So familiar.
She screamed again. This time Gage’s name formed from the scream.
“Stay down.”
Another barrage of bullets crisscrossed the station. The man on the porch stumbled down the steps and fired off his shotgun again. He grunted and staggered.
From her position on the ground, head down, Randi could see the man’s dusty work boots. They shuffled in the dirt and then the rest of him came into view as he dropped to his knees.
“Oh, my God. Gage!”
The man grunted and fell face forward.
Randi rolled out of his way, the dirt sticking to her face and invading her mouth.
She lifted her head in time to see the black car rolling down the road. The gunfire had ceased. Gage still crouched behind the open door of Marco’s car, using it as a shield.
The black car rolled off the road and crashed into a tree.
A sob racked her body as she crawled toward Gage on her hands and knees. “Is it over?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not approaching that car to find out. How’s the guy on the porch?”
“I—I don’t know. Marco?”
“Dead.”
Her stomach lurched and she gagged.
Gage crawled toward her. “Get in the car, and keep your head down.”
She pulled herself into the front passenger seat. From the open door on the driver’s side, she could see the bottom half of Marco’s legs. She wanted to close her eyes and block out the sight. Instead she trained her gaze on the car that had plowed into the tree.
Gage was still out there, and she’d have to warn him about any movement from that car.
A few minutes passed and he opened the door to the backseat and tossed in his duffel bag. Then he dropped onto the driver’s seat and cranked on the car. Once. Twice.
Randi’s heart stalled until the engine turned over.
They careened out of the gas station, leaving the carnage behind them. Gage stepped on the accelerator as they flew past the black car, its passengers immobilized...or dead.
Finally, Randi closed her eyes but it couldn’t wipe out the vision of the man on the porch falling into the dirt beside her. She knew his fate, but she asked, anyway.
“The proprietor?”
“Dead.”
“What happened back there?” She clasped her clammy hands between her knees. “Was it us? Were the men in the black car after us?”
“I have no idea.” He wiped his brow with his forearm. “How would Zendaris’s guys know we had gotten into Marco’s car?”
“Maybe Zendaris’s flunkies sent Marco to pick us up. Maybe they just decided to get rid of Marco along the way.”
His brows shot up as he turned toward her. “That’s convoluted thinking.”
“Why? Because everything else makes perfect sense? Think about it. We had to come out of that jungle somewhere. They sent Marco up and down the road to look for us.”
“Why wouldn’t they just order Marco to kill us?”
“Maybe Marco’s not a killer. He couldn’t do the job, so Zendaris sent his assassins to get it done.”
Gage shook his head. “You may have lost your memory but not your imagination.”
“Really? You think that scenario is so far off the mark?”
His lean jaw tightened. “No.”
“Then my luck just keeps getting better and better.” She slumped in her seat.
Gage trailed a knuckle across her cheek. “Are you okay? You didn’t get down when I first told you to. I was almost afraid to turn around and look at you.”
“Wouldn’t want to lose your star witness against Zendaris, would you?”
“Wouldn’t want to lose you—Randi—woman of mystery.” He flicked her earlobe.
Warmth flooded her limbs, which had been frozen with shock. They were just words—probably lies—but right now she needed those lies.
“I didn’t get down at first because I was confused, in shock. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“I would’ve tackled you to the ground, but I had to get to my weapon. The first round of shots hit Marco, but I think he got the driver because the car lurched once.”
“And the gas station owner happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Looks like it. Poor SOB.”
“Now what? How can we just take Marco’s car? What if someone recognizes it in town? What if we get pulled over by the polizia?”
“We have to keep our fingers crossed. We’ll ditch the car before we get into town.”
“Keep our fingers crossed?” She rolled her eyes. “Do you do that a lot in your line of work?”
“Sometimes it’s all we got.”
After riding in silence for another twenty minutes, Randi bolted upright in her seat. “Look. It’s another car coming.”
“Well, it is a road.”
She held her breath as the car passed them in the other direction. “Someone’s going to find the carnage at the gas station.”
“Yep.”
“You don’t seem very concerned.” She folded her arms, pressing them against her stomach.
“There’s nothing to connect us with what happened back there.”
“Except this car with a few bullet holes in it.”
“We’re ditching the car in another five miles. That leaves a two-mile walk into town. We’re still tourists who got lost.”
“The police will find the car. Our fingerprints are all over it.”
“I’ll take care of it, Randi. Which reminds me—we’re going to fingerprint you to see if a match comes up.”
“Because you’re so sure I’m some kind of criminal?”
“You don’t have to be a criminal to have fingerprints on file. There are professions that require fingerprinting.”
“Like teaching.” She liked the sound of that.
Gage snorted. “Like some schoolteacher is going to run off with an international arms dealer.”
Arms dealer? And here she figured Zendaris was a run-of-the-mill drug dealer.
She braced her feet against the floor of the car so hard she could’ve punched through the corroded metal. “And what type of woman would take up with an international arms dealer? A stripper? A hooker? Some junkie?”
He threw her a sharp glance. “I’m just saying, be prepared. You have no memory. You don’t know what type of woman you were...are.”
Tears flooded her eyes and she turned her head to look out the window, the greens and blues of the landscape blurring together. She didn’t feel like a bad person. What if everything Gage suspected was true? What if she was some gold-digging stripper who’d decided a man who dealt in death and destruction was a good choice for a lover as long as he could pay?
She didn’t want to be that person. She didn’t feel like that person. Once she regained her memories would it all come tumbling back to her? Would she fall back into the person she was? Would she and Gage truly become enemies?
Gage tapped the glass. “Up there. We’re ditching the car there.”
Seconds later he aimed the car onto the shoulder of the road where it stirred up dirt and gravel. He continued to drive into the foliage. Branches and sticks slapped the windshield. He nosed the car into a fallen tree trunk and cut the engi
ne.
“Grab the backpack.”
She yanked the backpack out of the backseat while Gage threw open the back door and retrieved his duffel. He pulled a T-shirt and a large, square cloth from the bag and tossed the cloth to her.
“Wipe down the dash, door handles, seat belt—whatever you could’ve touched.”
Randi dropped the backpack on the spongy ground and started with the dash in the front seat.
When he finished wiping down his side of the car, Gage crammed the T-shirt back in his bag.
“There’s one more thing I want to check before we hightail it out of here.”
He shoved the key in the lock of the trunk, and then held up one hand. “Your rag.”
She tossed it to him and he lifted the trunk, which squealed on rusty hinges. He poked around and then swore.
“Son of a...”
“What is it, a dead body?” Her shoes squelched against the wet leaves as she joined him on unsteady legs.
He gestured to a bag, not unlike his own, the top gaping open. Neat rows of plastic bags lined the duffel.
Randi’s heart flipped and she staggered backward. “Drugs?”
“Coke.”
“D-does that mean,” she waved an arm behind her back, “all that at the gas station was meant for Marco and not us?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Just because Marco was carrying his own supply doesn’t mean he wasn’t working for Zendaris. My guess is Zendaris has his finger on the pulse of any drug activity in the area.”
“When the police find this car and these drugs, they’ll tie them to the mayhem at the gas station, won’t they?”
“If they find the drugs.” He hauled the bag out of the trunk.
“What are you doing?”
He fished a bag from the stack and held it up. “This has enormous value on the street—money to continue to fuel the drug empire down here. There’s no guarantee the cops are going to confiscate this. I’m not going to risk this stuff getting on the street, into neighborhoods, fueling even more violence.”
He grasped both ends of the duffel bag and hauled it out of the trunk. He lugged it to a small, stagnant pond and dumped it.
The bags of coke tumbled from their neat rows into the muddy water. Gage grabbed a long stick and poked at the bags until they sported holes. Then he skewered them and drove them to the bottom of the pond.
Fine, white powder floated on the water, and Gage stirred the mixture.
Randi spun around, one hand pressed against her stomach. What kind of life did she have? If this was her normal, she didn’t care if she ever recovered her memories. She’d create a new life, a new normal.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Not so fast. We can cover our tracks even more.”
He bunched up the cloth and held a lighter to one corner. The flame flickered, and then gobbled up the material. Gage tossed it into the interior of the car. Black smoke poured from the open windows.
Taking her arm, he said, “Now let’s get out of here.”
An acrid scent overpowered the fresh air as Gage propelled her back toward the road.
“Is the car going to blow up? Will it set fire to all that vegetation?”
“If it reaches the gas tank it might blow, but I don’t think it’s going to set off a conflagration or anything. The jungle is wet. The fire’s not going to get too far.”
“I guess you’re right.” From the safety of the road, Randi eyed the smoke curling up from the interior.
They walked the rest of the way into town without incident, except for the number of cars they saw. One driver pulled over to offer them a ride, but they declined, having less than a mile to go.
The small town unfolded before them, one main street branching off into others, houses with corrugated tin roofs scattered up the hillside.
The locals gave them a wide berth, although questioning stares followed their progress through the town.
Gage held his phone in front of him. “Service.”
“Thank God. Is someone going to get us out of here? Out of this country?”
He stopped and propped up the side of a building with his shoulder while he texted on his phone. “I’m sending out the SOS now.”
“Will we have time to eat? I’m starving.”
“Me, too.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket.
Randi scanned the faces of the buildings lining the street. “I guess this isn’t restaurant row or anything.”
“Time to use that perfect Spanish you picked up...wherever you picked it up.”
A couple with two young children crossed the street and Randi approached them. She asked about restaurants and they recommended a few places around the corner.
“One block up and two over. There are a couple of places still serving lunch.”
“I could definitely use some desayuno.”
“Desayuno is breakfast.”
“Breakfast, lunch... I can eat anything about now.”
They turned onto the street with the restaurants. People still eyed them, but shops and eateries commanded their attention more than two gringo strangers.
Settling on a café with a colorful awning in the front, they stepped inside the small dining area. A waitress balancing two platters of steaming food on one arm waved them to a cluster of empty tables.
They ordered a couple of beers and some fish with rice and red beans. The waitress placed a basket of arepa between them and a small pot of butter.
Gage picked up the bread and broke off a piece. “Do you know what this is?”
“Arepa. It’s made from cornmeal.”
He added a dab of butter to the piece he held between two fingers. “Now how do you suppose you know that?”
She sighed. “I’ve obviously lived in Colombia for some time.”
“But you speak English without an accent, not even an English accent. You’re American.”
“Most likely.” She broke off her own piece of arepa and slathered it with butter. “But my hair, eyes and skin are dark, so I’m probably Colombian, too.”
“You probably are. He must’ve met you here.”
She bit into the bread and the crumbly texture melted in her mouth. Dabbing her lips with a napkin, she said, “Yeah, I guess he found me in a Colombian strip club.”
A muscle twitched in Gage’s jaw. “That’s your narrative, not mine.”
“You told me to be prepared.” She took a swig of beer from the bottle. “I’m preparing for the worst.”
“You haven’t—” he poked at some crumbs on the table “—remembered anything yet?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No. Do you think I’m holding out on you? Do you think I will hold out on you once I start remembering?”
“No. I think... I think we’ve shared too much. These kinds of experiences bring people together, form a bond.”
She blinked and stuffed more bread into her mouth. Was he using some kind of psychological ploy on her? Once the U.S. government had her in its clutches, would Gage trade on their relationship to pump information out of her?
Her gaze darted to his face. He had a slight tilt to his head as if waiting for her confirmation about this unbreakable bond they shared because a few bad guys had shot at them—twice.
She shoved another piece of bread in her mouth and folded her hands on the table. She didn’t want to confirm or deny anything. She had to look out for herself. She had a lot to lose.
The waitress slid their plates in front of them. The lemony smell of the fish mingled with the sweet aroma of the plantains that bordered the plate.
Gage plucked one of the fried bananas from his platter of food and popped it into his mouth. “Mmm, this I know. I love plantains.”
“Since only one of us at this table has a story to tell, tell it.” She picked up her knife and fork and sliced off the corner of her fish.
“You know plenty. I’m Gage Booker and I work for the United States government bringing down the bad guys.”
“What branch of the government? You talk about the CIA as if it were another agency. Don’t you work for the CIA?”
“Let’s call it an offshoot.”
“Let’s call it some covert-ops group that isn’t answerable to the normal chains of command.” She pointed to the phone in his pocket. “Haven’t they answered you yet?”
“Not yet. I received confirmation of my message. They’ll come through.”
“How’d you end up working for this...offshoot?”
“I started in military intelligence.”
“Branch?”
“Army—Green Berets.” He scooped up a forkful of red beans. “Who’s interrogating whom, here?”
“Your turn will come soon enough. Where are you from? What motivated you to join the military?”
It was his turn to stuff his face. Chewing his food, he raised his eyes to the ceiling. “This is good.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything about yourself, are you? Name, rank and serial number? That’s it?” She stabbed a piece of fish. “What happened to this special bond we’re supposed to share?”
“It’s still there. I know nothing about you, and yet the past almost twenty-four hours have cemented our connection.” He took a sip of beer, his eyes above the bottle kindling with warmth.
Don’t get sucked in.
She shook her head. “A connection that’s going to end as soon as you find out I’m Zendaris’s stripper mistress.”
He choked, and the beer dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. “Have you convinced yourself you’re a stripper? Is this something else you have a strong feeling about?”
“Like you said, I’m preparing for the worst.”
He wiped his chin with his napkin. “There are worse things than being a stripper.”
“Yeah, like being a stripper involved with some scumbag arms dealer.”
Gage’s phone, which he’d placed on the table between them, vibrated. He swept it into his palm and cupped his hand, reading the display.
“The cavalry is coming to the rescue.”
Randi didn’t know whether to feel relieved or make a run for it. She settled for something in between. She scooted to the edge of her chair and took a small sip of beer. “Is someone coming to pick us up?”
“They’re sending a helicopter tonight, or rather tomorrow morning—early.”
Trap, Secure: Navy SEAL Security Page 6