Shock Waves (21 page)

But then Ethan was more than holding her hand, he was supporting, holding her up.

“Killed his wife,” she whispered. Degraded her first. “Then himself.” A cry broke from her throat. “And the kids thought it was funny. They wanted to go inside. They wanted to spend the night.”

Against the bright light of early morning, Ethan’s eyes went dark. “And you?” he asked, his voice unbearably gentle.

She blinked up at him, pulled herself back from the memory. “I wouldn’t get out of the car.” She’d been lucky to simply breathe.

Against her face, Ethan’s hand stilled. “Did you convince them to leave?”

She looked away from him, toward the pyramid-looking structure in the distance. The Mayans had been architecturally advanced, she remembered reading. They’d built their structures in accordance with the solar calendar, creating fascinating
displays of shadow and light, mysteries that remained to this time. “No.”

Ethan swore under his breath.

For some foolish reason, his anger on her behalf soothed.
She wanted to turn her face into his hand, to press her lips against his palm, but instead she turned to see his eyes. “They
took the keys with them and it was the middle of January, and sleeting, and so c-cold.”
She paused, refused to let her teeth
chatter in memory. “But I would not get out of that car. I … couldn’t.” Couldn’t walk knowingly into a place
where evil
lingered. “Because I knew.”

His hand fell away. “And that’s how you know this was a happy place.”

She felt the smile curve her lips, and for a dangerous moment, let herself believe that Ethan Carrington, man of concrete fact and cold, hard evidence, believed her. “There’s a little sadness in the air,” she said, glancing to the other side of the main building, where what looked to be tennis courts stood abandoned, weeds jutting up between cracks in the weathered
red concrete.
“But it’s not dark and it’s not evil. It’s more
sorrowful for something beautiful lost.”

She paused, drew in another breath, found not the putrid stench of mud, but the tangy scent of fruit. Mango, maybe. “I think you were right,” she said. “I think it was a hurricane.”

He stared at her a long moment, then started moving again, pulling her toward what looked to be the reception area. “We need to get out of the open.”

They heard it at the same time, the low rumble of what sounded like an engine. And then they were running again. She broke toward the building, but Ethan tugged her toward the crumbling ruins of what looked to be a small-scale replica of
a Mayan city.

“They’ll look in there first,” he said, and she knew that he
was right.

Behind them the rumble stopped, replaced by the echoes of
doors opening, then closing. Then shouting.

Jorak’s men had caught up with them.

Chapter 12

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^
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E
than pulled her behind an overgrown banana tree, then led her deeper among the small buildings made of weathered but uniform stone. She recognized the elaborate structure with viewing areas on three sides as a ball court, where Mayan warriors would play a game similar to soccer, different only in that the winning captain lost his head. There was a statue to one of the gods, Chacmool, she thought, the god of fertility on whom the Mayans relied to bring crop-quenching rains.

“This way.” Ethan ran toward a massive army of decomposing columns. The ivy-covered structures flanked another templelike building, but he didn’t run toward the dark opening, veering instead toward the entrance to a cave.

Darkness obliterated every trace of the storm-washed morning. A chill pervaded the walls, dampness, but not severe, and Ethan led her deeper inside, toward the trickle of water.

“A
cenote,”
she realized loud. An underground river. Mexico had few bodies of water flowing above ground, but within the bodies of its caves lay an intricate network of sunken rivers flowing toward the ocean.

Ethan stopped, kept holding her hand. “Want a bath?”

She couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the complete absurdity of his question, or maybe the way he tossed it out, lazy, casual, as though there wasn’t a squadron of men combing the grounds looking for them. But, God help her, she did. She wanted a bath. They’d been running for hours, through the thick, muggy jungle, tromping in puddles and hacking their way through vines, and her body practically screamed with filth and exhaustion. “Is it safe?”

Too late, a little voice inside asked, from what? The men outside, or the man with her?

Drips of light squeezed from a fissure in the rock overhead, enough that she could see Ethan staring toward the mouth of the cave, little more than a speck in the distance. “Lizzie and I went to Cancun for our senior trip,” he said. “There are these eco parks nearby, and they let you snorkel in the underground rivers.”

She toed off her sandals and dipped her foot into the water. Cool. That was her first thought. Refreshing.

“They won’t look in here,” he was saying, and on an instinctive level, Brenna believed him. And if by some chance they did, the river offered an escape route.

She didn’t stop to think. She didn’t stop to consider. She stripped off the torn nightgown and slipped into the cool fresh water. It swallowed her like a bowl of fresh gelatin, and relief sang happily to every nerve ending.

And then Ethan was doing the same. She heard the rip of his zipper and told herself not to look, but could no more have stared in the other direction than she could have ignored his dominating presence in her dreams only a few weeks before.

Pinpricks of light flirted with his bare chest, farther down to his hips, where he was unceremoniously shucking off his cargo shorts. She watched them fall, felt the breath jam in her throat when she saw the dark-gray boxers hugging his buttocks and thighs, the unmistakable bulge she’d felt through her clothing but longed to feel more intimately.

The rush of heat prompted her to slip beneath the surface of the water. When she came up with cool water dripping down her face, Ethan was paddling toward her. “Feels great,” he said, and then his calve, bare, hairy, brushed hers.

She braced herself, looked beyond him to the ledge, searching for his boxer shorts. Seeing them.

“Head downstream for now,” he instructed, and through the wavering light, she saw that he had one hand out of the water, and in it, he held the sleek black semiautomatic he’d lifted from the fallen guard. He’d stashed their clothes high on a ledge.

“On the outside chance they shine a light in here, I don’t want them to see us.”

She did as he instructed, turned and stroked her way through the water, not freestyle as she loved, but the quiet, easy movements of breaststroke. The cool water sluiced around her body, taking with it the fatigue and exertion of the long night.

“As soon as they’re gone I want you to rest,” Ethan said from beside her.

“You, too,” she said, but from the low sound he made in his throat, she knew he had no intention of lowering his guard until—

Until what? That was the variable she’d yet to figure out. He had a plan, that much she knew. He was too clever not to.

“Ethan, about what you told me earlier. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Shh.” With one arm he drew her to him, and she realized the
cenote
was shallow enough here for him to stand. He leaned against the rocky side of the cave and pulled her into his body, flesh to flesh, tucking her head under his chin. “Don’t talk.”

Once, not so long ago, she would have resisted the way he anchored her to him, would have resisted the command. But the hard heat of his body soaked into hers, and with his arm securely around her, she could almost believe they were both going to get out of this alive.

“Relax,” he said, threading his fingers up into her damp hair. “Just let go.”

Her body hummed in response to the roughly whispered words. Lethargy stole through her, heat, a tickle from her ex
posed breasts down between her legs. She felt his body grow increasing stiff, but the age-old panic didn’t claw its way
through her, didn’t stab into her throat.

“Ethan,” she murmured, lifting her face to his, and then his mouth was there, on hers, and he was kissing her, not hard and urgent like the last time, but soft, tender. She opened for him, let him sweep his tongue into her mouth, and there in the darkness of the cave, with the cold water lapping around them, she would have sworn she’d found heaven.

But then he turned away, scraping his whiskers along her jaw, staring the direction from which they’d come. “Rest.”

And that’s when she realized it. There were no cameras here. No one watching. No pretense to maintain. There was just the two of them, and the truth of who and what they were.

* * *

Ethan had subjected himself to a lot of tests in his life. His grandfather had taught him how to live off the land, and as a fifteen-year-old, he’d done just that for ten days, living alone in the woods, with nothing but the clothes on his back. He’d hunted and fished for his food. He’d found berries and leaves. He’d made a fire. He’d willed himself not to be cold, even when the temperature dipped into the forties and an annoyingly cold drizzle fell from the sky.

At VMI, he’d survived the equivalent of basic training. He’d learned what sleep deprivation did to a man. He’d learned how to disconnect his mind from physical discomfort. He’d learned to disconnect his body from mental anguish.

Later, when his sister Kristina died, he’d made himself be strong, the rock for his shattered family, when all he’d really wanted was fall to his knees and cry. She’d been his sister, a bright, beautiful light, and he’d loved her, but in the end he hadn’t been able to protect her from someone he’d mistakenly called friend.

Twice, damn it. Twice he’d mistakenly called a man friend. Twice that man had crushed something precious and vital.

All those tests had hardened him, prepared him for the years to come. But Lord have mercy, none of them prepared him for standing chest deep in the cool water of the shadowy
cenote,
with Brenna’s naked body draped around his, her head resting against his chest, while she slept.

He hadn’t expected her to drop off. He hadn’t expected her to let go like that, to … trust. Even now, the memory of her naked body sliding against his, her surprisingly full breasts against his chest, her legs wrapped around one of his, her soft, broken breathing, made him go so hard it hurt.

He’d braced himself for the dreams, the images that had ripped her from sleep the first night they’d slept together. But they hadn’t come. She’d shifted occasionally, her flesh sliding
against his,
soft, inviting, and he’d remembered the sweetness of her kiss, almost like a sacrificial offering.

Now he watched her standing on an upstairs balcony of what had once been a luxurious guestroom. She faced the ocean, barely visible through the fading light and dense vegetation, but its roar left no doubt as to proximity.

She’d changed into the sundress he’d grabbed for her while gathering supplies before leaving the compound, and the soft white fabric whipped about her legs. Her hair, finger combed and air dried, fell in soft waves against her shoulders.

She’d barely spoken since she’d awoken, since her eyes had opened, wide, dark, and stared into his with an intensity that still had the power to rattle him.

“You need to eat.”

He didn’t expect her to turn toward him, but she did. “So do you.”

He gestured toward the soft yellow blanket spread out where a bed had once been, where bread and cheese and water now awaited. “From last night,” he explained. “I pocketed them during dinner.”

She glanced toward the ocean, then a cracked outdoor bathtub in the corner of the balcony, then moved into the empty room. “Thanks.”

“I don’t think Jorak’s men will be back,” he said. At least not tonight. In all likelihood, they’d fallen for the ploy of the boat set out to sea. And by morning what they thought wouldn’t matter. “We should be safe for the night.”

She sat and crossed her legs, reached for a bottle of water. “Then why won’t you put that down?”

He stared at the semiautomatic in his hand, the way his fingers curled around the sleek curves like a lover’s caress and
forced himself
to set it on the floor beside her.

“You have to quit blaming yourself,” she said, pushing a dinner roll toward him. “None of this is your fault.”

He took the bread and tore it in two, watched her sitting there, with her hair
falling softly against
her face. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, damn it,” he practically growled. It was his penance and he was prepared to pay. Craved to pay. But not hers, damn it. Not hers. “You
weren’t
part of the plan.”

She looked up, met his gaze. “It’s going down exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

Something hot and violent flashed through him. “Bull. You shouldn’t be here right now.” Shouldn’t be in the line of fire.

“You don’t know that,” she said with a calm acceptance that ripped at him, and again he realized just how deep her scars penetrated.

“The hell I don’t,” he said, and forgot all about that control he’d be holding in a death grip, the test he’d been administering to himself, the test he had to win.

The one he was about to fail.

He pushed
aside the bread and stretched toward her. If his eyes were a little too hot, his voice a little too rough, too bad. It was about time
Brenna
Scott realized that whatever the hell was going to go down between Ethan and Jorak was not predetermined. “I am not,” he said very slowly, very succinctly, through rightly clenched teeth, “repeat,
not
going to let that bastard hurt you.”

He’d die before he let Jorak hurt another woman Ethan lo—

The thought, the word about to grate from his throat, staggered him. Intensity, he remembered thinking. Adrenaline. That was all. Brenna’s eyes, those whitewashed pools of sapphire, remained eerily calm. “You might not have a choice.”

The urge to grab her shoulders and shake her, shook
him.
“The hell I won’t.”

“Ethan—”

“What did you see, damn it?” And this time he couldn’t hold back. He reached for her, took her arms in his hands but didn’t shake, just pulled her closer to him, held her tight. “Tell me what you saw, on the beach.”

Finally she reacted. Finally that calm facade she wore like a tight-fitting glove unraveled, and her eyes went dark. Her face, kissed by the sun, went pale. “I’ve already told you.”

“No, you haven’t,” he said, and knew. She’d been holding back. He held her gaze with his, a timeless prosecutor technique that never failed to produce results. “Not everything.”

The sound she made was so raw he barely heard it. She twisted against him, but he wasn’t about to let her run, not now, not when the truth stood between them like one of the ancient, inexplicable Mayan relics that dotted the Mexican landscape.

“Tell me.”

The words were deliberately quiet, purposefully forceful, and he literally saw them rip away the last vestiges of her denial.

“You,” she said, not in anger or resignation, but with a sadness that swamped him. “I saw you,” she said. “I felt
you.”

And the way she said it, with dread drenching her words, made it obscenely clear that whatever she’d seen, felt, had rocked her badly. “What, damn it? What did I feel?”

“Her,” she ground out, “You saw her. You felt her.”

Ethan released her abruptly and sat back on his heels, tried to breathe. Couldn’t.
Her?
No way. No possible way Brenna could know that. Not yet. “Who, damn it? Who did I see, feel?”

Brenna’s eyes dimmed and her eyelids fluttered, and for a fractured moment, he thought he was going to lose her, but then she inhaled roughly and met his gaze. “She’s not supposed to be there,” she said, and the words were rote, almost
mechanical, like she
was reciting a scene from a movie, “but you look up and though the sun nearly blinds you, you see her, standing at the end of the beach beneath a banana tree, and suddenly everything you planned, everything you waited for, doesn’t matter, because there’s only fear, a terrible, shredding fear that you didn’t do enough, and now something’s going to go wrong and
she’s
going to be the one taken down, and you can’t let that happen.” She exhaled raggedly, pressed on. “So you run. You know you shouldn’t, you know you might die in the process, but you don’t care. All you care about is her. So you run.”