Chapter 18
Durrand marched Eddy silently from the cantina.
“That our Jeep?” His voice was no more than a husky rasp.
“Listen, I was just—”
“Get in.”
“I didn’t—”
“Now!” he ordered and propelled her firmly toward the vehicle.
It wasn’t until then that she spied the quartet of men who had
followed them from the bar.
“Señora Petardo,” called the nearest of them and hurried after them. “We will have some fun together. Sí?”
“Don’t answer,” Durrand ordered and prodded her toward the driver’s door.
She would have liked to believe there was something in her that rebelled at the rough command, but her shaking hands and quick-fire acquiescence made her think differently.
Despite her uncertain fingers, the locks popped open when she touched the electronic key. She was sliding inside in an instant. Durrand joined her a fraction of a second later.
“Let’s go.” His voice was tense.
She shoved the Jeep into reverse. The men were still coming, crowding the bumpers, but she shifted into first and roared away, forcing the nearest of the foursome to jump aside.
In the rearview mirror, the cantina looked hunched and vindictive. The Jeep was silent but for the sound of the engine. Durrand stared straight ahead.
Eddy took a deep breath. “I’m a trained operative.” She wasn’t entirely certain whom she was reminding of that fact, but she shifted a sideways glance at her passenger.
A muscle jumped angrily in his jaw. “Turn here.”
“What?”
“Here!” he said and she did as ordered, careening around the corner onto a narrow, rough-cobbled side street.
“What are we doing?”
He didn’t speak but kept his gaze on the rearview mirror. There was not a single car visible behind them, but they drove on, bumping over crossroads, rushing past emptied produce stalls and humble houses.
“Take a left.”
She did so at the last moment, tires squealing.
“I don’t think—” she began, but he interrupted her.
“I noticed. Take a right.”
She gritted her teeth and spun the steering wheel.
Silence echoed between them as they sped along, but finally he exhaled and turned toward her.
“I thought we established that I was the lead on this mission.”
She wasn’t sure when guilt had entered the equation, but there was something in his tone that made her cheeks heat up and her voice turn sulky. “You said I should rest,” she reminded him.
He raised one brow the slightest degree.
“I was just having a few drinks. It wasn’t like I was running a marathon.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Do you always find the company of inebriated men relaxing?”
She tried for a casual shrug, almost succeeded. “My father was stationed at Camp Lejeune for three years.”
He gave her a look that asked what the hell a marine station in North Carolina had to do with anything. It was a decent question, and one she would have been hard-pressed to answer, but he didn’t pursue it. His inhalation made his chest expand. If he hadn’t been acting like such an asshat, she would have been content enough to admit that it was a pretty good chest.
“For the remainder of this operation, you will keep me apprised as to your position.”
She tightened her hands on the wheel and hoped to hell he couldn’t tell they were still shaking. “This isn’t the Army, Durrand.”
“Lucky for you it’s not, Edwards. If I were your commanding officer, I would have you court martialed for insubordination, and punished to the full extent of the law.” He drew in another deep breath. The muscle hopped in his jaw again. “Listen, if you want to get yourself murdered and dismembered on your own time that’s your right as an American citizen, but you’re going to have to put it on hold. Right now, Shepherd’s waiting.”
“Yeah?” she asked and found, to her surprise, that her latent sassiness had finally made a surprise appearance, tardy though it was. “Where?”
His glower darkened.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“No luck?” Her words were punctuated by a bump in the road that propelled her violently from the seat. It effectively knocked the know-it-all grin from her face, but she felt somewhat better when he was forced to slap a broad palm on the dash and glare at the road ahead instead of at her.
“You want to try your hand with the police, too?”
She glared a question at him.
“Slow down,” he ordered. “South American law enforcement makes cantina bartenders look like school children.”
She would have liked to defy his command, but one glance at the speedometer convinced her otherwise. She may be methodical and orderly in the rest of her life, but when behind the wheel, her inner demons sometimes took control. Or maybe she simply had to speed to keep the rest of her life on track. She eased up on the accelerator.
He was still gazing out the windshield. “You know how to get back to the hostel?”
“Of course, I…” She paused, glanced at the dashboard, and realized her GPS remained in her bag. “Well, I did until we took those unscheduled turns.”
“It’s on the east side of town, right?”
She nodded. She’d found it on a map, and she had a good memory. Unfortunately, her sense of direction wasn’t quite so stellar. Her mother had once admitted she only baked to help her daughter find her way from the bedroom to the kitchen. The smell of melting chocolate chips would always be due north to Eddy.
“We need to turn right then,” he said. She nodded and tried to look intelligent. The fact that he knew which way was east…in the dark…in a foreign country…kind of made her want to poke him in the eye.
She breathed carefully and wheeled around the corner. “What did you learn?” she asked and accelerated again.
He gripped the handle above the passenger door, making the cords in his arm stand out taut and hard. “Not to let you drive.”
She shifted her gaze to his face. “Was that a joke?”
“No,” he said, but she smiled a little nevertheless and let her body relax an iota.
“I take it the locals weren’t too forthcoming with you?”
For a moment, she thought he would argue, but he just deepened his scowl and glanced out the window at the houses rushing past. “Turns out no one in Bogotá has even heard of cocaine.”
“How about Quinto Castelle?”
“What?” His tone was harsh, his eyes sharp as talons as he turned them toward her.
“Quinto Castelle. The bartender indicated he’s one of Herrera’s main thugs.” She felt her heart trip a little just saying his name. “He also said a woman’s mutilated body was recently found in Quebrada Verde. That translates to Green Gulch.”
He waited for her to continue.
“The victim’s lips had been burned.”
His scowl was deep enough to drown in.
She inhaled. It wasn’t any easier to say the words than it had been to hear them, but she forced them out. “He said Herrera likes to brand his victims.”
The muscles tightened in his left arm, but he took a deep breath and spoke quietly. “You believe him?”
She considered it. She’d been baiting El Cerdo’s proprietor. That much was certain, but he’d said the words with conviction. On the other hand, she’d been barely cognizant of the four men who’d been drinking behind her, so maybe she hadn’t been as discerning as she had thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“What does your gut say?”
She glanced at him. “I think—”
“Don’t.”
She looked back at the street. Three young women with long black hair were laughing together under an overhead light. “I believe him,” she said.
He nodded, but not for her benefit. He looked as if his thoughts were miles away. Maybe in the Quebrada Verde.
“Do you know where it is?” he asked.
“The gulch where the woman’s body was found?”
“Yeah.”
“Southeast, I think. Three…maybe four hundred miles from here?”
“Near where we think Jacobs exited the river.”
She nodded, knowing what he was thinking. Despite the less than trustworthy appearance of the men with whom they’d just parted company, Bogotá was as tame as a puppy compared to Putumayo Department, which bordered Peru and Ecuador.
“You sure?”
“I have a good memory for maps.” She didn’t say the word photographic, though others had.
“How long ago was she found?”
“Tuesday.”
“How decomposed?”
She kept her expression impassive though her stomach jittered. “I don’t know.”
He nodded again. “She probably died fairly recently. Bodies don’t last long in the jungle. Especially heads. Insects are most attracted to orifices, so faces deteriorate first.”
She managed a stalwart nod. “Sure.”
“Of course, we don’t know if it really was Herrera’s handiwork.”
She tightened her grip on the wheel.
“Or that Miller’s team had targeted Herrera in the first place. Or that the bartender was telling the truth.” He chuckled and stared into the dark distance. “Shit. This is as FUBAR as it gets.”
She glanced toward him. In profile, he looked like nothing so much as what he was…a wounded warrior on a life or death mission. “We’ll find him.” The words left her lips without permission. The trite platitude sounded as silly as a nursery rhyme in the quiet darkness.
She waited for him to blast her for daring to utter such nonsense. He turned toward her, expression ultimately solemn. But maybe in the depths of his eyes there was a pinprick of gratitude. Of hope. “In a billion acres of jungle?”
“You said to listen to my gut.”
“And it tells you we’re going to find Shep?”
She thought about it for a second then, “I hope so.”
“Hope.” He breathed the word and faced the darkness outside his window again.
“If you don’t have hope, why are you here?”
“Because it’s my job.”
She waited for him to go on.
“Shep was in my squad.”
“So it’s duty. That’s why you came?”
He shook his head but didn’t turn toward her. “No. I’m just a born hero.” There was derision in his tone, tension in every line of his body, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it was true. If he was simply built to be heroic. If it was in his DNA like his dark hair and intimidating size.
“Is that why you came to El Cerdo?”
He glanced at her, brows lowered.
“The bar,” she explained. “Is that why you came after me? Duty?”
“I thought if you were raped it might discourage you from continuing with the mission.”
“Rape? Miguel didn’t even like me,” she scoffed and wished immediately that she could call back the words.
Durrand’s brows rose like twin pistons. “You can’t honestly be that naïve.”
She tried to formulate a scathing response, but he wasn’t through with her yet.
“What do you think…that rape’s about…affection or something?”
“No. Of course, not. I meant to say, he wasn’t even interested in me.” Dammit! She refrained from closing her eyes to her own stupidity. “That’s not—” she began, but he was already chuckling.
“Holy shit, what the hell was I thinking?”
Anger spurted up, surprising in its ferocity. “Maybe that you’d rather not have your best friend shipped back to you in pieces!”
The words sounded harsh and cruel in the ensuing silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. But I can help you if you’ll let me.”
The Jeep was silent. “Not if you’re dead.”
“Well…” Her fingers were beginning to go numb. She eased up on the steering wheel. “I’m going to try my best not to be.”
His stare was hard enough to bruise, but finally he turned back to the passenger window. “He’s my responsibility.”
“What? Shepherd?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew that’s what he meant. Great. She was learning to read his silences better than she could interrupt his words.
“He’s a grown man, Durrand. A soldier. A Ranger, for that matter. Among the best-trained military men in the world.”
“He’s a jumper.” The words were soft, quiet, but she was pretty sure she’d heard him right. She just had no idea what it meant.
“A…what?”
“If someone’s in trouble he doesn’t think, doesn’t…” He drew a deep breath. “He’ll just jump right in. So what if he gets his fucking brains sprayed from here to eternity? So what if the poor bastard he’s trying to save is already dead. So what if—” His voice broke. He cleared his throat.
She drove in silence, fists tight on the steering wheel, mind churning as fast as the Jeep’s tires.
“Just because he was careless, doesn’t mean you should have been,” she said.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
She was tempted to back down, to apologize for being presumptuous, but his eyes were a little too bright. “If you had tried to save Warren, you and Shepherd would both be dead.”
He glared at her.
Backing down was looking like a better idea every second. She just couldn’t quite manage it. “Ray Warren, better known as Intel to his friends.” She’d researched more than Jacobs in her spare time back in her cozy Tudor. Died six months ago in Kabul.”
He didn’t argue, didn’t agree.
“Shepherd tried to save him. You saved Shepherd.”
A muscle twitched in one lean, unshaven cheek, but he shifted his attention quickly away. “This is Eldorado.”
“What?”
“The highway. Do you know how to get to the hostel from here?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Seeing the sign illuminated by the Jeep’s headlights, she turned, heading east on the Autopista Eldorado. In less than five minutes, she pulled up to their humble inn, shifted into park and turned off the motor. “I’m not your responsibility, Durrand,” she said.
He watched her in the dimness for a second. “I’m in charge. That makes me responsible for you. Just like any other soldier in my unit.”
She felt her anger fire up again. “So if it was Shep back there in the cantina, you would have dragged him out by his arm?”
“By the time I got there, Shep would have either been shacked up with some black-eyed señorita or in a firefight.” He snorted a soft chuckle and let his head fall against the cushion behind him. “Possibly both. Dumb bastard never could keep his gun in his holster.”
She didn’t know if that was supposed to be metaphoric or literal.
“If I had a bullet for every time I bailed his ass out, I’d never have to buy another round of ammo,” he said.
“Is that why you think you owe him? Because you saved his life?”
He stared at her, expression bland.
She refused to fidget. “It’s a well-known phenomenon,” she said.
“We were in Somalia together. Did you know that?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t have time to completely research your record.”
“It was darker than hell’s basement on that beach, but my squad got the hostages out. I stayed behind to hold back the rebels. Fifteen of them. Maybe twenty. No chance really. No hope.” He shook his head, turned toward the hostel. “Till Shep came back for me.”
“Oh, well…” She cleared her throat. “I guess that might be a good reason, too.”
“Maybe.” His tone was ironic.
Grabbing her backpack, she yanked up the door handle and stepped outside. “Well, that’s good news then, isn’t it?”
He followed her out, his movements a little slower.
“What is?”
“I haven’t saved your life once,” she said and jamming her key in the hostel’s lock, pushed her way inside. “In fact, for a second back there, I was thinking about killing you myself.”
“And how is that good news?”
“You don’t owe me a thing,” she said then rushed past the tiny kitchenette, made a beeline for the bathroom and vomited as unobtrusively as possible into the porcelain bowl. Damn Aguardiente.