Friendly Fire (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 3) (16 page)

The leader frowned and looked around. "
De quién es?
" Whose is it?

The youth shrugged. "
No sé
."

Jeremiah squeezed Emma and Sammy's shoulders in a silent message to keep quiet. Craterface darted him a suspicious look.

"
Tíralo en el camión
," he said to his underling. Throw it into the bus.

To Jeremiah's dismay, his sat phone was lobbed through the bus's open door, followed by an iPod, three more cell phones, and a Kindle. When a guerilla jumped into the bus with a can of gasoline, it was apparent they were going to burn not only the bodies but any technology that could be used to track them down.

He swallowed convulsively. The situation for the remaining Americans was looking worse by the second—except in one regard. He glanced at the chubby Guerilla. As long as that man kept wearing his watch, Uncle Sam would know where to look for them. Because one thing was certain—they weren't going to stick around here.

The guerilla with the gas can leaped off the bus and tossed in a match behind him. With a loud roar, the interior of the bus exploded into flames. Almost immediately, the smell of burned flesh and hair wafted toward them. Emma clapped a hand over her nose and mouth and stared up at him with disbelieving eyes.

He couldn't believe this was happening either. Actually, he could. He'd expected something along these lines to occur since the day he'd boarded the cruise ship—except this was even worse because he couldn't take action without getting himself or Emma killed.

Noriega's little twin gave a shout, and his minions tossed their remaining goods onto the burning bus. Jeremiah watched the book Emma had checked out of the ship's library incinerate while it was still airborne, the inferno radiating an unbearable heat.

"
Ándenle,
" shouted the leader, ordering his troops to get a move on.

Within seconds, they were being ushered up the road at gunpoint.

But the elderly man still holding his wife didn't budge.

Craterface glanced back at them. "
Mátenlos
." Kill them, he said to his bloodthirsty sidekick.

Fuck!
An inward battle raged in Jeremiah. He would draw attention to himself, but he couldn't let the old couple be slaughtered in cold blood. Releasing Emma and Sammy, he stepped between the gun-toting guerilla and the elderly couple while reaching out a hand to them.

"Let's go, sir," he said, taking hold of the woman's other arm. "Here, I'll help you."

Blue eyes filled with grim resolve met his. "She's diabetic, son. She won't last two days without her insulin."

"Anything can happen in two days, sir. Give it a chance."

"Fine," the man muttered, nodding at Jeremiah to proceed. As they started forward, Craterface waved his men off and barked at them to walk faster.

When they caught up to Emma, she offered to help the woman in his stead. "I've got her," she insisted. "You protect Sammy. Please."

Her voice held just enough of an edge for him to know that in her terror for her child, she held him somewhat responsible for their situation. Emma knew he'd foreseen it yet hadn't managed to stop it.

God damn it!
She might never be able to forgive him, let alone let herself fall in love with him again.

Relinquishing the old lady to Emma, he put a protective hand on her shoulder for the briefest moment before reaching for Sammy. Already, he had noticed several of the guerillas ogling both her and Emma. The thought of either one of them disappearing into Mexico's sex trade made his blood curdle.

Not on my watch, he swore silently.

If he didn't get mother and daughter safely back home, it wouldn't matter what Emma thought. He'd never, ever forgive
himself
!

Chapter 10

"Well, have you at least alerted the police on the mainland?" Juliet asked the security officer.

The swarthy, mustached officer sat behind his desk in his office aboard the
Escapade
, acting as if nothing was amiss, even though it was nine o'clock at night and the cruise ship had delayed its departure because the ferry had never returned from Tulum. Twenty-four passengers and one crewmember were declared missing.

If that weren't alarming enough, Tristan had received a call from his master chief hours earlier stating that Bullfrog had dialed his number. While he hadn't spoken to him, Master Chief had heard gunfire and people shouting. Something awful had happened to Emma and Sammy, and no one seemed to be doing a damn thing about it.

"We alerted the police right away." The uniformed officer cast her a patronizing look, one she'd seen many times in her line of work. "The passengers were seen boarding the bus to return to the ferry. The police are searching for the bus now. It must have gone the wrong way."

"How?" Juliet demanded. "Isn't there just one main road going up and down the coastline?"

The officer's mustache twitched. "Quintana Roo is a state encompassing over 40,000 square kilometers and many roads. If someone wanted to hide them, they could be anywhere."

She absorbed his reply with dawning horror. "Are you saying they might have been kidnapped?"

He flicked an invisible piece of lint off his uniform's lapel. "Of course not. I'm sorry, miss, but I have nothing more to tell you. You must excuse me," he added, "but I have work to do."

Tristan, who stood behind her, spoke up suddenly. "If you could keep us updated, we'd appreciate it. Room 508," he added, supplying the man with Juliet's cabin number.

"Of course." He dismissed them by turning toward his phone.

But Juliet held her ground. "The ship won't leave Cozumel until they're found, right?" she asked.

He kept his back to her. "That's up to the ship's captain, miss. We have well over 2,000 passengers onboard. We cannot stay here indefinitely."

She weighed the benefits of breaking the desk lamp over his head.

"Come on, honey." Tristan tugged Juliet out of the man's office and into the corridor where the laughter floating out of the casino made a mockery of her distress.

In light of Master Chief's testimony and the security officer's comment about the size of Quintana Roo, a terrible certainty was taking root inside her. She jerked to a halt.

"We can't simply wait here doing nothing," she determined.

"I agree." His gaze never wavered from hers. "Want to go to the mainland and look for them?"

She almost hugged him for his action-oriented response. "Yes, but..." She weighed the risk of leaving a ship that was due to depart any minute, and the slim possibility that Emma, Sammy, and Jeremiah were already on their way back.

"But we could end up passing them on the open water and never know it," he finished.

A solution occurred to her. "So we'll leave your sat-phone number in my cabin where Emma will see it if they make it back."

"Perfect." His equanimity warmed her. "Let's go grab a change of clothes." He drew her toward the stairs.

She thought of another problem. "What if they don't let us off the ship?"

"No worries." He flashed her a grin. "Bullfrog left me blueprints of the ship. I'll find us a way off." Catching up her hand, he kept it in his as he kept walking.

She let him hang onto it. It's just a show of solidarity. He's not trying to claim you
,
she assured herself. At that moment, with her world poised to turn upside down, it was comforting to know she wasn't alone in this predicament.

"Thank you," she heard herself tell him.

His smile disappeared. "We'll find them," he promised her.

* * *

"Emma, wake up."

Emma roused from a light slumber, remembered where she was, and tried to orient herself. The only familiar thing was the feel of Sammy's skinny frame slumped against her. Memories from the past six hours raked over her, bringing her more sharply awake. She peered across the aisle to see Jeremiah's silhouette framed by distant lights. All around her passengers murmured amongst each other. She heard sniffles and moans.

"What time is it?" Too late, she remembered Jeremiah's watch had been taken from him.

"Around midnight," he guessed.

They had been ordered into a smaller second bus, parked about half a mile from the one that had been set ablaze. Spewing pungent exhaust, that bus had proceeded for hours along narrow, rutted roads that snaked through the dense countryside. Watching the sun sink behind the endless vista of palm trees and scrubby brush had felt like a kind of death. And still, they traveled.

She'd slowly come to terms with the fact that they'd been kidnapped. And with Jeremiah's satellite phone burned to a crisp inside the bus of death, they weren't likely to be rescued any time soon. A shudder of horror skimmed down her spine.

"Where do you think we are?" she asked, pitching her voice low to keep Sammy from waking. The longer her daughter found escape from their situation, the better.

Jeremiah swung a knee into the narrow aisle and shifted closer. "We've been heading generally northwest," he whispered, "taking back roads the whole way. I'm guessing that's Mérida coming up on our right."

"Why would they take us to Mérida?" she asked assessing the skyline as it rose up out of the palms trees brushing the side of the bus.

When Jeremiah didn't answer, she reached across the space between them and dug her fingers into the canvas of his cargo shorts. "Answer me," she implored.

He put his hand over hers and squeezed it with equal fervor. "Best-case scenario, they put us up in a secure building, contact our relatives, and set us free as our ransom is paid."

"My God," she cried in a strangled voice. If that was the best-case scenario... "Don't tell me the worst," she implored.

The stagnant air shifted as he closed the distance between them to lay his forehead against her temple. "I'm so sorry," he whispered with such heartfelt regret that the seed of resentment she'd nurtured earlier shriveled and died.

Turning her head slightly, she gazed into his haunted eyes through the shadows. "It's not your fault, Jeremiah. You tried to stop it from happening."

"I thought something was going to happen on the ship," he confessed.

"I remember. You told me to go to that balcony if something went wrong." The bittersweet memory splintered through her thoughts.

"I would never have let you visit Tulum if I'd realized how this would all go down."

The torment in his voice drove home the pressure he had to be feeling. No doubt he had already assumed the responsibility for their survival.

Lifting a hand, she stroked the side of his jaw, feeling the stubble that had begun to grow there. "We'll be okay," she assured him. "Didn't you tell me recently that thinking positive thoughts leads to positive outcomes?"
And vice versa
.

His smile flashed in the darkness. "I did say that," he acknowledged. "And as long as Chubby wears my watch and stays close, we'll be found."

Hope flared within her. "It has GPS in—"

He covered her mouth unexpectedly with his mouth, keeping the watch's capability a secret. The sweet pressure of his lips brought to mind the rapture she had felt on the balcony under the stars. How long ago that moment seemed in light of recent events! Would it have ended differently if she'd known what they were headed into?

Hell, yes
. Their present circumstances were already teaching her lessons about the transience of life.
Carpe Diem
. She ought to have seized the moment while she could.

The vegetation on either side of the bus thinned and then disappeared altogether, replaced by squat cinderblock and tin structures, huts, and walls. Taller buildings twinkled in the darkness ahead of them, beckoning them into an urban jungle that was possibly more frightening than the wilderness they had just traveled through.

Jeremiah straightened reluctantly away from her. "I need to watch where we're going," he explained, positioning himself to peer intently out the front of the bus.

Emma followed his gaze. They turned down a maze of roads, all of which looked the same to her. Then, at an unmarked intersection, the bus squealed to a stop. The American hostages murmured uncertainly. The doors opened, and the majority of the guerillas stood up with their weapons and filed toward the exit.