Spy Hard (7 page)

“Sí, sí.”
The woman shooed him away.

He had a fair idea what the treatment would be. Astringent plant juices, then leaf-cutter ants to close the skin. They had incredibly strong mandibles and were nature’s sutures around here. The natives held them up to the wound until they grabbed on to it on each side, then twisted the body off, leaving the head and mandibles in place, which held tight long after the ant’s death.

“I’ll be back in a little while. I need to talk to you.” he told the woman.

Then he patted the boy’s head. “You hang tough, buddy. I’m going to take care of you, all right?”

He left them and headed back to the barracks, putting a plan together. If he was going to save anyone, he needed to start getting ready right now. They had no time to waste.

Dusk gathered outside, the day nearly over. Time was passing way too fast. Melanie stood by her desk, madly digging through the drawer, picking up and discarding items from the clutter, looking for something skinny, something that was stiff but also bendable. Nothing. She slammed the drawer shut, then stared at the old Spanish dueling pistol Pedro had given her to shoot herself with if she thought she would be taken by Cristobal’s men.

Seriously.

She sank into the chair behind her. How on earth had she ended up here, at this point in her life? Her hand shook as she lifted the weapon.
This is what you get when you let other people make your choices.

But never again—if she survived this. Never again.

She turned the gun. Looked straight into the barrel. She’d received one bullet only, in the chamber. Her brother-in-law didn’t trust her with more. He hadn’t made it to where he was by being stupid.

She lowered the weapon and turned to look out the window, into the settling dusk. A dozen men were hustling along out there, preparing for the upcoming battle. Jase wasn’t among them.

Wouldn’t have mattered if she did spot him at this point. She was locked into her room. She’d waited too long.

Another mistake.

She felt heavy and tired, her brain hormone-flooded. She wasn’t exactly operating on all cylinders, just enough to see all her mistakes clearly. Whoever had said hindsight was twenty-twenty hadn’t been kidding.

She should have run away right at the beginning, when she’d first gotten here. She’d been a lot more nimble on her feet back then, probably could have made it—if not out of the jungle, at least to the nearest settlement. From having overheard the men talking over the past months, she knew there were a handful of small villages not far from here and a research station to the north, plus a Jesuit mission.

But back then, she’d still believed that the Don would take her back to the city eventually. Months had passed by the time she’d finally realized that he had no intention of doing that, despite his promises. Then she’d wasted more time looking for an ally, examining each man who had access to the hacienda, and discarding each possibility.

She’d found Jase too late.

She had failed.

A sense of defeat washed over her.

Then her baby kicked.

“Okay, okay. I’m not giving up. Give me a second to wallow, then I’ll think of something.” She couldn’t fold. She owed her son better than that.

“I’m going to get us out of here,” she promised. Then panic bubbled up her throat as she pushed the gun away. Could she really make it to safety? What if—

The baby kicked again.

“I hear you.” She steeled herself. She
was
going to escape. Or die trying. She wasn’t going to sit around until things got so bad that the only way out would be to shoot herself.

Okay then. First things first.

She needed to set aside the problem of the door for a minute, and do something she
was
capable of doing.

She dressed, keeping the night in mind, putting on dark maternity slacks and a dark top, a lightweight dark shirt on top of that, a dark blue scarf wrapped around her neck. She slipped her swollen feet into her single pair of hiking boots, could barely bend low enough to tie the laces.

Tugging on the shirt must have loosened the barrette in her hair, because it slipped to the floor when she bent to her boots. She stared at it for a moment, then grinned.

She broke the barrette apart to make a slim metal strip. She tried to manipulate the lock with that. Minutes clicked by as she twisted the small tool this way and that, but achieved nothing.

She straightened too quickly, pushed by frustration, and upset the tray on the small table by the door. Her leftover lunch, which Consuela had forgotten to retrieve, dumped at her feet. The fork! Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She rushed to grab it, then bent the prongs to a shape she thought would work best. Adjusted the angle after the first try. Still no luck.

Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes. She dropped the fork, wiped away the tears and waddled back to the table for the gun. She could shoot the lock. Maybe. She’d never shot a gun before. She had no idea if she could hit a target that small.

One bullet.
Her hand shook.
Oh, God. Sure. No pressure.

Then another thought occurred to her. Even if she did manage to destroy the lock, she had no idea how many people were downstairs and would come running. Stealth had to be a big part of her getaway plan. If she didn’t have that, she didn’t have much of anything.

She lowered the gun.

Then she raised it again. Maybe by some miracle the house was empty. Maybe by the time the men outside figured out where the shot had come from, she could escape through the hacienda’s back door.

She aimed the weapon. Then jumped when an explosion shook the air. It had come from the back of the camp.

Her heart raced. Could the enemy already be here?

She rushed to the window and watched the men run off in the direction of the explosion. Half a dozen of them ran out the hacienda’s front door to follow the others.

Good.
Maybe they were all gone now. Hope took flight in her chest. She could do this. If the enemy was here, so much the better. Maybe in the confusion she could get away unseen.

Her baby deserved better than this.

Maybe she should have been more careful about marrying Julio. Maybe she should have researched her husband’s family more thoroughly before agreeing to bring his ashes to the family crypt. Maybe she was a foolish woman, blinded by sentimental notions of love, and she deserved what she got, but her baby was innocent.

“Dear Lord, please help us get away from here.” She whispered the words heavenward and aimed the gun once again, just as the door banged open, about giving her a heart attack.

Jase stood in the doorway, his wide shoulders nearly filling it. His graphite-gray eyes were fierce, his gaze unflinching as he took her in.

Her knees shook with fright.

Shoot!
Self-preservation screamed in her head. But her fingers seemed frozen on the trigger.

Did he come on the Don’s orders to guard her during the battle? Or did he come on his own, in the hopes of finishing what they’d started the last time he’d been up here?

“You should never hold a gun on a man unless you’re planning on killing him.” He strode in, annoyance all over his face. He pushed her weapon aside. “I’ll get you out of here. But just so you know, I don’t like it.” He grabbed her backpack from under the bed. “You will do exactly what I tell you, every step of the way. Is that clear?”

How did he know where she kept her runaway emergency bag? She stood frozen to the spot for a second, too stunned to move, trying to process everything. Her chance to get away from Pedro had come at last, but only by having another man take control of her. That had never led to anything but disaster in the past.

He shot her an impatient look. “Are you coming?”

She held on to her pistol as she rushed out the door after him. She wasn’t giving into his power, she told herself. She was just using him to get her out of here.

For once, not a single one of Pedro’s men hung out downstairs. She followed Jase out the back. He seemed to be taking the exact route she had planned.

The boy, Mochi, waited for him outside the door. Okay, she hadn’t expected that. The kid held a flour sack that seemed to be moving. Must have been a trick of the descending darkness, or a figment of her jumpy nerves.

Jase picked up the large camouflage backpack that sat at the boy’s feet and swung it over his shoulders, carrying hers in his left hand, leaving the right free for his weapon.

“If you want to live, keep up the pace,” he told them, then began running toward the perimeter fence.

Once they were close he ordered them to stay in the cover of a ramshackle shed, one of the originals that the humid air and the vegetation had slowly eaten apart over the years.

He dropped the backpacks and strode toward the fence. He called out, “Jorge? What the hell is this?”

The man guarding the section came running. Melanie pulled back into the deep shadows, drawing Mochi with her, holding her breath. The little boy snuggled up to her. The flour sack wiggled against her leg. Okay, the boy definitely had something in there. But now was not the time to ask questions.

“Qué pasa?”
The man stopped next to Jase, peering into the jungle, his rifle pointed at the dark forest.

“Someone cut the fence.” Jase gestured, bringing the man’s attention closer.

When Jorge bent to investigate the breach, Jase grabbed him from behind and in one violent motion broke his neck, then dropped him to the soft pile of leaves that covered the ground.

Melanie’s stomach rolled. She was going to be sick.

But then she gritted her teeth.
No,
she wasn’t. She was taking control. She was running away.

“Let’s go.” Jase rushed back for them and the backpacks.

Mochi took her hand and held on tight. She made a low, soothing sound. “We’ll be okay.” And she moved forward, not letting on that her knees were shaking.

Sure, she knew that she’d always been surrounded by violence in the camp. But this was the first time she saw any of it up close and personal. She’d do well to remember that Jase wasn’t just a good ol’ boy from Texas. He was very much one of Pedro’s men. She held her gun tight as she moved forward in the cover of the darkness.

She couldn’t see the breach until they were just a few feet away. Someone had carefully snipped the aluminum wire. She had a pretty good idea who that had been.

“Where are we going?” she whispered, wondering if she was jumping from the pot into the fire.

“North. Time to see about a new job.”

North worked for her. The research station was that way.

Jase helped Mochi through the hole first, then held the wire back with his bare hands to help her pass through.

She angled her body. The contortionist act would have been much easier if she didn’t have a beach ball attached to her midriff, but she made it through. She was going to be as tough as she needed to be. She was going to survive this.

Then she was outside the compound for the first time in months. She glanced behind her, her muscles tight with tension. But she didn’t see anyone back there. Nobody seemed to realize what they’d just done.

She was free
.

She straightened her spine and drew a deep breath, looked up to the sky. No man was ever going to control her again. Her fingers tightened on the gun as she looked at Jase’s back. He’d already turned his attention to the forest and was moving rapidly forward into deeper cover.

Mochi turned back to her with a look of concern, as though to make sure she was all right.

She flashed him a smile. “We’ll be okay.” And the boy nodded, as they both hustled forward.

She watched where she stepped, wary of snakes and spiders. She might not spot them in the dark. Some of the plants, too, were poisonous, but she didn’t know all of them, only a couple. She hoped Jase did, and wouldn’t lead them into something that could kill them.

Okay, so he’d broken her out. But she was pretty sure he wasn’t helping her out of the goodness of his heart. Chances were, he’d gotten cold feet and just wanted to avoid the battle, deciding to sit it out in the jungle than pledge allegiance to the winner. He was probably only bringing her with him for entertainment, since she’d done her best to pretend the last time they’d met that she wouldn’t mind entertaining him.

“Where are Cristobal’s men?” she asked, wary of running into them.

“Still some distance away, I’d guess.”

“The explosion?”

“I needed a distraction.”

“Where are we going?”

“Away from the fighting.”

“More specifically?”

“Plenty of logging down river where a man can find a job. Other kinds of work, too.” He didn’t mention what she would be doing. Did he plan on making her his camp woman?

Mochi looked back again to check on her. Again, she did her best to reassure him with a smile. She wasn’t sure why the boy was with them. Maybe Jase hoped the kid would help them navigate the jungle. She hoped the same. Her chances of reaching safety would triple if she could get Mochi to help her.

Truthfully, as long as she had Mochi, she didn’t really need Jase, who was at least as big a threat as help, if not bigger.

The boy held a branch aside so it wouldn’t hit her belly.

“
Gracias,
Mochi.”

She padded deeper into the forest behind them, and after the first couple of yards the undergrowth thinned enough so she could see better in what little moonlight filtered in through the canopy. She weighed the gun in her hand and lifted it, pointed the barrel at Jase’s back as he moved carefully ahead in the semidarkness. She hesitated for a long moment, then adjusted her aim at his right shoulder. Newfound resolution or not, she didn’t think she could kill a man in cold blood.

Not unless it became absolutely necessary.

Which wasn’t the case right now. He’d gotten her away from camp; now she just needed to get away from him. She didn’t have to kill him for that. She hoped.