"Triathalon," Jeremiah answered. "I swim, bike, and run."
"Hmph." Craterface dropped his sleeve and stepped back. Given his expression, he suspected he was being lied to. As he addressed his underlings in Spanish, Emma was able to translate his warning. Keep an eye on this one. Kill him if he causes any trouble.
"Sí, jefe," several men muttered while eying Jeremiah mistrustfully.
The tortilla she had just swallowed moved painfully down her throat.
"Si es médico, me podría arreglar el pie," one of them suggested, pointing toward a hole in his boot through which a stream of blood continued to trickle. For the first time, Emma realized he was injured and clearly suffering, given the sheen of sweat on his pallid face. It was obvious he hoped Jeremiah could tend to his injury.
"Mañana," the leader declared, waving aside the suggestion. "Ahora, tienen que dormir." Right now they have to sleep. He pointed toward the back of the room. "Hay dos baños, allí. Ju all wash, ju keep clean, and no get sick. Then ju esleep here en las hamacas. Go," he added waving them off.
As a group, they turned toward the two bathrooms standing side by side against the back wall. The locks on either door had been removed. With civility and consideration, each hostage took turns using the facilities, some of them in pairs.
Emma and Sammy went in together. Wanting to normalize their situation as much as possible, Emma instructed her daughter to brush her teeth with a finger. She bent over the sink splashing water onto her face and under her arms, grateful not to have to see her reflection, as the mirror had been taken down. She used the skirt on her sundress to dry off.
Seeing Sammy's red-rimmed eyes well with tears, she turned and cupped her daughter's face. "We're going to be all right, sweetie," she insisted.
But would they? Worry gnawed at her as she considered how the two of them would survive if something were to happen to Jeremiah. Already, their captors considered him a liability. If they knew what he did for a living and who was probably out there looking for him, they'd shoot him where he stood.
And for herself, she had no idea where the money would come from to secure her and Sammy's release. Her parents had left nothing of any real value when they'd died except the home they'd lived in, which she and Juliet had sold to pay off their college loans. The best that she could hope for was that Jeremiah's SEALs found and rescued them before something irreparable happened.
Think positive, she ordered herself. Even now, help is on the way.
Funny how quickly she had adopted Jeremiah's ideas on harnessing the brain's powers. Given the circumstances, willing a positive outcome was all she could do anyway. For Sammy's sake, she would will it with all of her might.
"We're together," she said, pulling her close for a reassuring hug. "We're going to get through this."
* * *
"I don't think I can sleep," Juliet admitted, staring at one of the two beds in their affordable but surprisingly luxurious accommodations in Playa del Carmen.
The clock by the bed read 2 a.m. They'd had to sneak off the cruise ship using the employee entrance. Once on the pier, they'd scouted out a boat in San Miguel to ferry them from Cozumel to the mainland. The driver had proven so inebriated that Tristan ended up taking over the boat while their driver tossed his cookies overboard.
Juliet had never been more grateful for another person's skills and abilities than at that moment. Tristan had proven just as good at maneuvering a watercraft as he been at racing his four-wheeler. By the time they motored up to the pier at Playa del Carmen and leaped off with their bags, every shop, bar, and even the police station were locked up tightly. Not a soul traversed the streets. And there was certainly no way to rent a car or motorcycle. They'd had no choice but to head for the nearest motel and stay put until morning.
"Nothing else we can do," Tristan declared, stripping off his T-shirt and marching toward the sink in the room with his shaving kit.
Juliet stopped noticing the cutesy details of their ocean-side bungalow and stared in fascination at the screaming eagle inked onto his back. It wasn't at all like her, but she immediately thought of something they could do besides sleeping. Her heart began to thud. In a weird, detached way, it would take her mind off her fear that she would lose what little family she had left.
Tristan pulled a bottle of mouthwash out of his bag, tossed back a swig, and met her gaze in the mirror as he started swishing. He must have read her thoughts—or perhaps it was the desperate and want-filled look on her face—because he suddenly froze, spit out the mouthwash, and turned to look at her.
"You said you'd rather be my teammate than my rebound lover," he reminded her.
She had said that, and she wasn't about to change her mind in the long-term. But this was different.
"I need a distraction," she admitted simply. "It's the only way I'm going to get any sleep."
He drew a deep breath that caused his tan chest to swell. His abs rippled as he blew it out slowly. Thoughts she couldn't begin to interpret flickered in his dark-blue eyes. "I think I can help," he offered with self-assurance.
An inexplicable trembling seized her. Before she lost all courage and chickened out completely, she marched up to him, plucked the mouthwash from his hands and sipped enough to rinse out her own mouth. Their gazes locked. Anticipation sizzled through her bloodstream to the tips of her toes. She spat and rinsed with water, wiped her lips with a clean towel, then threw herself at him.
Absorbing the impact of her body like it was nothing, he pulled her closer, lifting her off the floor and freeing her to wrap her thighs around his hips. She clung to him, fusing her mouth with his. Their tongues tangled for the first time, shocking her with how erotic it felt to really taste him.
He turned with her, pinning her between the wall and his hard body.
Wallowing in the sheer breadth of his shoulders, Juliet raked the smooth skin of his back with her short nails. His minty, clean-cut American taste made her want to consume all of him. She kissed him more deeply, aware of the hard ridge at the front of his jeans that was riding the heated valley between her thighs.
He pulled her against it, fanning a flame that burned brighter and hotter.
Primitive and powerful desires overtook her, making her a creature of instinct. With whispered instructions to let go, she gained her freedom. Sliding down his lean body, clear to the floor, she tackled the button and fly that kept his jeans on his hips.
He reached for the wall as if needing support to keep standing. "You don't have to," he said, his voice rougher than she'd heard before.
But by then she'd already tugged his zipper down and peeled the elastic band of his boxer briefs away from his straining member.
"But I'm not going to complain," he tacked on.
She inhaled him, taking as much of him as she could in one desperate lunge. The more, the better. It was impossible to think of anything else with her mouth encircling his sex. She liked everything about it—the size, the silky texture overlaying steel, the ever-so-slight curve to the right that would ensure it hit her G-spot no matter which position they were in. She couldn't wait for him to fill her.
"Okay," he said after a several moments, his tone a little rattled. "It's your turn."
And that was all the warning she got before he wrenched himself away from her, plucked her off the terracotta tile, and tossed her onto her back on the closest of the beds.
His manhandling was exactly what she wanted—physicality without pain. Something rough and real and completely absorbing to keep her thoughts from straying to the unthinkable.
To her gratification, he seemed to get that. His hands went to the waistband of her shorts. With a flick of his fingers, he undid the buttons and hauled them off—her panties, too—in one competent yank.
"Ah-ah," he scolded as she started to pull her top off. "Me," he said, replacing her hands with his. In less than a second, she lay there wearing just her white satin bra. "Damn hot," he said.
Their caveman tal
k was exactly what she wanted. Fuck me, she almost retorted, biting her lip instead to keep the unladylike command from escaping because, clearly, the words were so redundant. He was obviously going to do exactly that, except he ducked his head and buried his face between her legs first.
Oh, God. Her hips bucked off the bed as his warm mouth landed on the epicenter of her quakes. He lashed the leaping bud with his tongue, sparking rapturous sensations and escalating her toward a climax.
She cried out with equal parts pleasure and disbelief. No lover in her past had ever brought her so swiftly to the brink of orgasm. "Tristan!" she cried as she hurtled over the precipice.
She had scarcely come to her wits again when he was crawling over her, the head of his sex nudging her slick entrance. And just as quickly, she flared to fervor again.
Forty minutes later, Juliet draped herself along the solid length of Tristan's body, using his shoulder as a pillow. With the feeling that she was sinking into quicksand, she succumbed to sleep's pull, amazed that she could let go of the reality that her sister and niece were possibly kidnapped.
Nor was she unaware that she'd probably just made the biggest mistake of her life. Getting intimate with a man fresh out of a relationship—a Navy SEAL, at that—was ridiculous. Worse still, he was her colleague as long as they were working to find the missing passengers, and she made it a point never to sleep with a colleague. How could she be professional with a man who'd had his face buried in her crotch?
On the rare occasions that she had brought a man home, he'd been the friend of a friend whom she'd arranged to meet at a bar, a man she never had to see again. Having to see the stranger you'd slept with would feel confining—like being trapped in a car, unable to escape.
Against her will, she relived the helplessness of being stuck in the back seat of their family sedan while her parents lay crushed and dead in the seats before her. A chill permeated her body. To counteract it, she wriggled closer to Tristan's warmth, curving her body to match the outline of his. Immediately, his hand tightened where it rested on her hip.
What about Sammy and Emma? Were they being chained in some dark place, too?
With that unanswered question lodged in her mind, she lapsed into fitful dreams.
Chapter 11
Emma tried to get comfortable. Sleeping in the deep hammock might have been tolerable by herself, but sharing it with Sammy twisted her spine to an uncomfortable degree. There hadn't been enough beds to go around. Jeremiah had given up his claim to one, opting to sleep on the floor directly beneath her. The steel door had been shut and bolted from the outside. The lights had all gone out with a bang. There was nothing left to do but sleep. Or try to.
But with the plywood covering the windows, the darkness was simply too complete, too ominous. Feeling trapped, Emma could only be grateful Juliet wasn't with them. Claustrophobia would have sent her into a panic attack. Sammy started to snore in Emma's ear, but the ugly laughter coming from the lower level stung like salt in an open wound. Their captors were obviously celebrating downstairs.
She craned her neck to determine if Jeremiah had fallen asleep yet.
"Are you awake?" she whispered. The cement floor had to be gouging his shoulder blades.
She heard him roll to his knees. "Not yet. I'll be right back. I need to check on the others."
She swallowed her protest.
So, this was what it was like, she reflected as he moved stealthily away. It took a special woman to ally herself with a Navy SEAL. SEALs protected everyone, not just their family members. Could she be that kind of selfless woman?
Straining her ears, she heard him whispering to the others. The darkness kept him invisible. Beyond the cement walls of their prison, the sounds of the city—the buzz of a motorcycle, the barking of a dog, sirens wailing in the distance—all reminded her that they were nowhere near Playa del Carmen and even farther from their ship in Cozumel. She might never see her sister again.
Slamming a lid on that awful thought, she closed her eyes and waited for Jeremiah to return.
* * *
Jeremiah crawled toward the opposite wall where he heard the older couple breathing.
"Bert," he whispered, alerting the old man to his approach.
"Who's that?" Suspicion sharpened the old man's voice.
"Easy, sir. It's Jeremiah. I'm wondering how your wife is doing?"
"Oh," Bert sighed. "Better now that we ate, but by morning, her blood sugar's going to bottom out."
"I'm fine," Joan insisted, but her voice gave a feeble wobble.
"I've brought you half a tortilla," Jeremiah said. The odds of her lapsing into a diabetic coma looked extremely high. Feeling for Bert's hand, he handed him the half of the dinner he'd saved. "Make sure she eats it in a couple of hours."
"Thank you. Is it true you're a doctor?" Skepticism laced the man's voice.
Jeremiah sensed those around them eavesdropping. Weighing the risks and benefits of telling them who he really was, he told a half-truth. "I'm a field medic."
"Then you're military," the old man guessed his voice carrying.
Jeremiah hushed him. "Yes," he admitted quietly.
"I fought in 'Nam," Bert volunteered on a patriotic note.
"Then you know what we need to do," Jeremiah said, raising his voice again for everyone to overhear—even Emma. Having seen no evidence of listening devices or cameras, he'd determined it was safe to address them all out loud. Their captors were too busy partying to hear them anyway. "If we all work together, we'll get through this. We keep our eyes open, and we protect each other."
Silence followed his assertion. Then a gruff voice he recognized as Bad-Ass Joe's spoke up.
"I'm a cop in Newark," the man volunteered, his voice disembodied in the darkness. "Name's Joe. You need my help, you got it," he added, clearly hoping to make amends for resisting Jeremiah earlier.
"Same here," said a voice that had to belong to the honeymooner. "I'm Mike. I'm—uh—I'm an accountant," he added on a meek note.
The rest were too shaken up, too afraid to speak up, except the teenage boy whose mother hushed him.
But Jeremiah felt as though he had a team, small but solid, and that was enough. "Thanks, Mike. Joe. We'll talk tomorrow," he promised.
Making his way back to Emma, he found her as much by her scent as by the sound of her breathing. As he stretched out under her, she dropped her hand out of her hammock to indicate her unspoken support. He laid his own hand over hers.
"Do you have a quote for this unenviable situation?" she finally asked him.
He had to smile at her attempt to seek normalcy in their abnormal circumstances. Searching his repertoire of quotes, he found something inspirational. "'If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?'" T.S. Eliot," he replied.
She managed a humorless chuckle. "I'm feeling pretty short right now," she admitted.
"You'll grow," he promised. That was the upside to scary situations. They brought out the best in people, tapping strengths they didn't know they had. The very real downside was that survival wasn't guaranteed. They would all have to live through this ordeal before any one of them could appreciate how they had become stronger people.
And the really scary part was that their survival depended on the human decency of the Noriega look-alike downstairs. If that man was in any way associated with the ruthless drug lords infesting Mexico, the chances of them all surviving unscathed were slim at best. But he wasn't going to dwell on such negative thoughts. Positivity would prevail, so long as he clung to it.
* * *
Juliet and Tristan looked up as a Mexican of Mayan descent stuck his head into the waiting room. No taller than five feet with the classic hooked nose and keen dark eyes, he appeared too young to be the lead detective they'd been told to wait for.
"Miss Rhodes?" he said, with only the faintest Mexican accent. His dark eyes seemed to take a snapshot of them.
Juliet leaped to her feet. "Yes."
&
nbsp; "Detective Canché. Follow me, please."
He disappeared from the door, leaving them to chase after his diminutive form, past the information desk where they'd asked for help initially, down a carpeted hallway in a building so new it still smelled of fresh paint.
They trailed him past a plaque with his name on it, into a corner office that boasted floor-to-ceiling glass walls on two sides. The detective pulled a gun out from under his shirt, dropped it in his desk drawer, and threw himself into a chair that had been jacked up to make him look taller.
"I'm told you have family that was on the missing tour bus?" he began, getting right to the point.
"My sister and niece," Juliet acknowledged as she sat on the edge of one of the two plush chairs facing him.
Canché took stock of Tristan as he approached the second seat. "And you are?" he asked.
"Tristan Halliday." He swallowed Canché's hand in his before sinking into the seat next to her. "My teammate was also on the bus."
Halliday. Juliet repeated the name in her head. She hadn't even known his last name before she slept with him, which was par for the course—her ordinary MO—though nothing about her feelings for Tristan felt ordinary. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered except finding Emma and Sammy.
"Teammate?" Canché repeated with a frown.
"We serve in the Navy together," Tristan explained.
Canché stared at him a second longer.
"Have you found the bus yet?" Juliet cut in, impatient for an answer.
They had arrived at the glittering new police station at 8 o'clock that morning to find out if the police had found the lost tourists yet. No one at the information desk had given them an answer, though their expressions and darting eyes suggested they knew something. Instead, they'd been told to wait for the lead detective who, given the rumpled state of his collared shirt and the dark smudges under his eyes, had been up most of the night.
He ignored her pointed question, drew a notepad in front of himself, and said, "Your name, please, and the name of your family members."
A pulse tapped at her temple as she spelled out their names.
Friendly Fire (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 3) Page 12