She was underwater, unable to breathe, unable to move, her only chance of survival, Josh.
Hair twisted across her face, covering her nose like a sheet of plastic wrap. Her cheeks puffed out like those of a blowfish. She was too terrified to release her grip on his shirt, or maybe it was his shoulder that her nails were now digging into, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she wasn’t letting go, ever.
She wanted to drag in air. Her lungs burned and fear made her want to breathe in the worst way.
Her hand gripped his shirt so hard that her fingers ached.
In the swirl of water that threatened to drown her the past flooded her mind as if it were more comfortable than the present and the reality that they could both die.
She could hear the taunts of the children.
That had been so long ago. She’d been eleven.
She could see her sister’s frightened face.
She could feel her own fear that day.
“No,” she’d screamed as she’d watched almost in slow motion. Water had nearly killed her sister. Those children had pushed her off the bridge. Pushed her sister into the river. She was back again, in that river, struggling to save her sister. Then, the only thing she’d had was luck on her side and a river with wide, shallow shoals along its banks.
She opened her eyes and reality flooded in. She squeezed them shut. Her lungs begged for air and she wrestled the fear that demanded she take a breath, underwater or not.
She shifted and found herself sliding. There was a moment of panic as the water seemed to pull at her, trying to tear her away before his hand reached back and steadied her.
She locked her ankles around his middle. Well-toned, hard, the impressions flitted through her mind as easily as the water ran over her skin, caressing it in an odd way, disturbingly cool and detached. Water ran slickly between his skin and hers, making her hold on him tenuous. She concentrated on hanging on, surviving this moment, getting out of the water and not getting shot. As for the rest... She needed a plan and, damn it, it appeared she might have run out of options. Her plan was him and clinging to him. This wasn’t a plan. This was desperation.
They broke the surface and she struggled to draw air, gasping and fighting for control. Her lungs ached and she coughed, but her hold on him was almost unbreakable. He was swimming with slow, strong strokes, taking them away from the threat behind them.
“Hang on,” he said in a hoarse whisper, as if that command were necessary, as if she would let go before he got them the hell out of this river.
To her right, not three feet away, was a ledge that seemed to slice through the water. It was narrow, she suspected too narrow for two. The entrance was close. She could see light maybe twenty feet ahead. Water still stood between them and the exit, and for a moment they seemed to bob in a swirl of current that came out of nowhere. Water lapped over her face, and she choked, fought to bite back a cough that might alert whoever was pursuing them of their presence.
Her pursuer.
A tremor ran through her at the unnecessary reminder.
“Grab the ledge. Can you get it?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts.
Her hand reached out. Her fingers shook. She took a breath. There was no time for hesitation. She felt slick rock. She wouldn’t be able to hold on. She...
“Use me as a float.”
Not following his instruction wasn’t a choice; surviving was. She couldn’t think. She reached out. Her heart hammered.
She couldn’t do this.
She was starting to slide and there was only one place to go—under.
Then her hands were on the ledge, she was half-off his back. It felt as if a quarter of her body lay on the ledge, and her fingernails clawed rock, while the weight of her body threatened to drag her back down into the darkness, into the river alone—without Josh.
Where was he?
“Josh.” She wanted to yell. Instead, it was only a terrified whisper as she was shoved from beneath, pushed, hands on her butt pushing her up and...
She managed to get a grip on the edge of rock and pulled herself the remainder of the way out of the water finally, scrambling, trying to push her legs over the ledge, and within seconds she was there. The slick rock was cool beneath her wet clothes. Her heart hammered, and she searched the water. There was no one, he was...
Gone!
“Damn, Josh...” She wanted to scream his name, as the terror of what and who pursued her beat down on her, hard, relentless and deadly in the darkness.
She was terrified for herself, for him. She couldn’t go back into that water, not alone.
Had he drowned?
Left her?
She almost choked on her fear.
Then he broke the surface. She could see him faintly, the outline, the idea of him. Her heart hammered in a way it never had before. She had been afraid like she’d never been before.
She took a deep breath as he reached up and pulled himself out of the water, landing with an odd thump on the ledge beside her.
She thought he’d disappeared, left—worse, drowned—and she was alone. It frightened her like nothing in the months of flight from the Anarchists had. She’d feared for his safety, for his life. And for the first time she’d feared that she couldn’t do this alone.
A shiver raced through her.
“Erin.” His finger trailed softly, reassuringly along her cheek. He flicked on the flashlight, illuminating her face and lifting the shadows from his eyes.
She clutched her arms beneath her breasts and looked away from him. She scanned the area for where they would go next. Another shiver shook her. Ahead was the pool where many tourists often ended their tour of the caves. At least that’s what he had said. Everything she knew about how to get out of here was what Josh had said.
She’d never felt so helpless, so dependent. She took in a quick gulping breath and squeezed her hands into fists. She unlocked her hands, biting back another shiver.
He stood up, water dripping from his hair and from his clothing, and his presence seemed to fill the narrow ledge. He held out his hand.
She didn’t take it, not immediately. The truth was she couldn’t stand. Her legs were shaking too much. She willed the shaking to stop. But just thinking it, just taking a deep breath didn’t steady her nerves, not that quickly and they didn’t have time. She knew that.
“We’ve got to keep going,” he said in that short, decisive way that was nothing like the Josh of their initial meetings. “Details later.”
She nodded.
This was a man not used to being ignored. This was a man used to being in charge.
Josh was no tourist. He’d made that quite clear. But the question that threatened her very safety was what did he want? The only thing that was clear was that in the moment he wanted her alive.
Alive was what she’d fought for all these months. She took the hand Josh offered and for the moment, for as long as it was necessary, she gave him her trust.
Chapter Seventeen
The cave was directly behind them and a pool of water in front. The sun was blinding after the darkness of the cave and the blackness of the underground river. Now they stood poised on a rock ledge fifteen feet up and faced more water.
“Jump,” he ordered.
Despite the command, he knew she couldn’t, not immediately. She was faced with two terrifying options—potential death behind them and the fear of water, and its association with death, in front of her. He could feel the fear and doubt and see that she was frozen. It was a normal reaction, instinctive—the will to survive. But she had no choice. The grip on her hand told her so. He tried to communicate everything he couldn’t say into that palm-to-palm connection. He squeezed her hand once, looked at her and said, “You can do this. One, two...”
“Three.”
The counting was what kept him focused, grounded and he hoped it did the same for her. It was a fleeting thought as they were in the air on three, leaping from the ledge that skirted a small opening from the cave into a pool of water, crystal clear and cool. Again, water closed over their heads. He could feel her fingernails biting into the back of his hand. He squeezed her hand, his other arm pushing them back up.
They broke the surface. His hand still had an iron grip on hers as he turned to face her, one arm holding her up, the other treading water. Her face was red as she fought not to gasp for air, trying to remain silent, aware that there was still a threat somewhere behind them.
He wiped a drop of water from his brow and then traced a finger gently down her cheek.
“That man...” she began and she shivered despite the warm evening air.
He knew she was biting back panic, and still he slammed her with the truth.
“Dead,” he said bluntly. Although for the flight through the river he’d maintained a belief that they were still being followed, known the possibility existed and pushed himself because of it, now there was no reason to believe so. There would have been more shots if the man weren’t dead. Instead, there had been silence for too many minutes. And prior there’d been an odd thud, the sound of a body falling, hard to confuse with anything else.
She nodded, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. The water lapped at their waists as they waded out. As she stepped out of the water, he let go of her hand.
“We’ll circumvent the resort, go in off the trail. Go to my room. It’s the safest right now,” he said.
“Is it true?” She hesitated, her face almost pained. “What you said? That you’re CIA?”
He knew that his silence was all the answer she needed.
Her face seemed to lose color. If she had been pale before, her face was a death mask now. It was as if every bit of emotion, of life, had been sucked out of her.
“I’m here to take you home,” he added in case that hadn’t been clear.
She shook her head violently and took a stumbling step back.
He reached out to her, and she knocked his hand away, her wet hair swinging across her cheek and making an odd slapping sound.
“The Anarchists won’t touch you. You’re safe. You’ll be in protective custody.”
“No!”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand, Erin. You don’t have a choice.”
“I’m under arrest?”
“No, of course not. But you’re not free to go, either. I’ll accompany you the whole way.” He held her gaze. “Let me get you out of Mulu.” He stepped back from the reality of the rest of where he was taking her. “I know you have plans, but the river is not safe.”
Surprise was in her eyes and in the lift of her brow.
“The man who was tracking you wasn’t their best.” He shook his head. “And there’s someone else, another assassin en route.”
“More than one... Oh, my God.” She squatted down, defeated.
He suspected her legs were unable to hold her and he felt for her. She was one small woman, untrained in this kind of thing, with men after her who were able to track and take out the most skilled individuals.
“I can’t do this. There’s no place where they won’t find me.”
“There’s one place,” he replied.
“Where?”
He held out his hand. “With me.”
She looked up at him and gave him a single nod of her head and, he suspected, all the trust she had in that moment.
She gave him her hand.
If her trust wouldn’t last beyond getting her out of Mulu, he’d face that later. In the meantime, he wasn’t sure how much he trusted her new resolve. He definitely wasn’t releasing her hand. He’d learned a long time ago not to trust any of his assignments. And that was all she was, an assignment. And if he told himself that often enough, he hoped it might be true.
* * *
“JOSH!”
Her cry had him immediately on guard as he instinctively looked up.
Maybe forty feet away and twenty feet up, metal glinted in the light that dodged through the trees and it was clear that an armed man stood on the ledge. He stood slightly to the side, protected by the nondescript rock that hung into the jungle’s vast reach. Josh registered size, hair color and matched him to a previous glimpse he’d gotten of their pursuer as his hand reached for his gun and his other pushed Erin behind him.
One shot and then two, the man dropped, his gun clattered partway down the rocks.
“Dead?” a small voice asked behind him.
“Dead,” he confirmed as he spun her around. “Let’s get out of here.”
But only a few minutes into the hike that would take them back to the resort, she stopped, and he suspected she might be at her limit. They were alone except for the virulent life that hid in the jungle surrounding them.
“He’s dead,” she whispered. “Were there two?”
“No.” He’d made a mistake. He’d thought he’d killed him once; he’d been wrong. His right hand clenched into a fist.
Unacceptable.
“Same man. He wasn’t dead. He is now.”
Tentatively, he touched her arm, the bare skin like velvet beneath his fingers. He’d dragged her through hell and she had said little. He tilted her chin with a forefinger, concerned that maybe she was in shock.
“Erin?”
Her lips quivered and a tear slipped down her cheek. He hadn’t expected that; he suspected neither of them had.
“I’m out of my league,” she murmured as her weight pressed against him as if her body had no will of its own. She looked up, and he looked down and somewhere in the middle their lips met. And once it had begun, he couldn’t stop it. It was as if the shock and trauma that had just occurred needed the reaffirmation of life—they were alive. They had survived. The thoughts were only blips on his radar for her lips were full and moist against his. One hand skimmed the warm satin of her breast. Her nipple pebbled against his hand, and he realized she was braless.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. What he needed to do was get his hand off her breast, to lead them forward. There was no place for sexual antics with a dead man behind them. There was no place anywhere.
But he wanted the feel of her skin against his. Wanted it worse than he could remember ever wanting anything in his life. The danger, here in a place where this shouldn’t happen and most of all with her—a woman whose curves he’d only imagined and had tentatively only explored the edges. His groin tightened at the thought of holding her, exploring her.
The timing was wrong.
He’d had his share of one-night stands and short-term relationships. He’d given his heart to no woman. And he definitely hadn’t given his heart to Erin, but he suspected rather belatedly that while he might not have offered it, she might very well be in the process of a covert operation and be stealing it out from under him.
No.
She was a woman, not a covert operation. He pushed away and with the danger behind them gone, he began to move forward, not looking backward at her face, not willing to see what her eyes might reveal.
She was an assignment, no more, and while he wasn’t willing to give his heart, he was more than willing to share his body.
Chapter Eighteen
One down. How many more to go?
He had pushed her to her limit and beyond, but they had finally made it back to the resort and relative safety. Josh’s mind raced even as his senses were attuned to everything around him.
They entered the resort from the back. It was quiet as many of the tours were still an hour or two from completion. He looked at Erin. She was pale despite her time in Asia. Her hair hung free of its earl
ier ponytail. One piece of dark hair had dried into a curl and the rest hung straight. It was an odd thing to notice yet it was a relief to touch the edge of normal if only for a second.
“You’re all right?” he asked softly.
She nodded as if speaking might be too much effort. She’d been quiet the whole walk back, as had he. He’d been planning and considering his next move; he suspected she might have been doing the same. He wanted to tell her there was no need. Instead, he had maintained the silence.
Tenuk met them, his hands fisted by his sides. “Son of a bitch! I didn’t think you’d make it out. I was about to go in after you.”
“We did. What the hell happened? We were compromised. We had the all clear.” He looked Tenuk directly in the eye. “You gave it to us.”
“I know.” Tenuk shook his head. “Like you said, I gave that to you this morning. Damn it!” His fist clenched. “Faulty intelligence. No excuse. I’m just thankful you made it out alive.”
Josh watched Tenuk closely while he listened for any changes around him.
“Came in on foot and by river. Took out two of my men before I was alerted that he’d slipped through the net.” Tenuk ran a thick hand through his hair. “I didn’t find out soon enough to warn you. I take it you managed. No injuries, I mean.”
“I managed,” Josh said.
“Can’t keep all angles covered. I know that now. The river and the jungle, it’s too easy to come in under the wire.”
“Makes sense. Just wish you’d been aware of that sooner. Would have saved me a lot of grief.” What he had to remember were the men the Anarchists had now hired were more than likely every bit as experienced in tracking and slipping under the wire as he was. Josh bent his head back as perspiration peppered the nape of his neck. The heat had dried his hair. “You might want to do something about the body in the pool outside Clearwater.”
“I’ll handle it,” Tenuk replied.
He could feel Erin stiffen beside him.
“No other alerts?” he asked Tenuk as he took her hand, ran a thumb down her palm, trying to instill some sort of calm, of confidence.
Suspect Witness Page 12