Chapter 19
“You all right?” Gabe didn’t glance up when he asked the question. He’d never actually known anyone who was able to upchuck with so much decorum. Impressive. Spooks must have entirely different training than Rangers.
“I’m fine.” Her tone was prissy. Also impressive. The guys he knew always sounded a little raspy after tossing their cookies. “I just drank more than I wanted to.”
“More than you wanted?” He allowed himself to look up now, but contained the smirk that threatened to follow. He had removed the lamp from the end table and spread a map of the Putumayo area across the rough particleboard.
“It took a while to get the bartender to loosen up,” she said. “I figured he would take more kindly to me if I kept drinking.”
He didn’t mention that she could have ordered something nonalcoholic. Shit. She wasn’t a lush was she? Maybe that’s how she had become such a proficient vomiter. Practice makes perfect. Or…and maybe this was a worse scenario…perhaps fear had made her vomit. Holy hell, they hadn’t even reached the edge of scary yet. Then again, he’d been as nervous as a virgin himself when he’d realized she was alone in a bar. He ground his teeth and knew for a fact that he should have never brought her here. He should never have taken the risk if her presence was going to throw him into a goddamned tizzy every time someone glanced her way. He wasn’t normally such a wussy. Hell, while on a mission in Bagdad, Jairo had decided Gabe didn’t have any nerves at all. He remembered the pin Shep had used to test the theory. Fucking numb nuts, he thought and felt his eyes water.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was quietly sympathetic.
Damnit. He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t the one who just barfed up my intestinal tract.”
“It’s no big deal,” she said but she looked pale. Well…paler, her fresh-peach complexion practically alabaster. And for a slim second, he was almost tempted to admit that she’d been damn brave, but even he wasn’t that big of an ass.
“Get some sleep,” he said instead and nodded vaguely toward the single bed.
She ignored him completely. They’d hardly known each other for twenty-four hours and she’d already mastered the technique. She must be a quick study. It usually took women at least a couple of days. “Ever heard of technology?” she asked and moved closer.
He scowled at the big ass map in front of them. “Heard of it,” he said. “Don’t trust it.” She was standing beside him, their arms almost touching. He managed to neither move closer nor farther away. Go Army!
“You don’t trust it as in you think it’s going to fail, or like you believe it’s going to betray you?”
For a moment, he wondered if there was a difference between the two, but he wasn’t dumb enough to ask. Instead, he considered ordering her to go to bed again. But he thought better of it. What the hell was he going to do if she refused? Wrestle her onto the mattress and tie her to the headboard? The ensuing images were both disturbing and disturbingly erotic. He felt restlessness in his lower regions and increased his attention on Putumayo.
“It’s longer than I realized,” she said.
He jerked his eyes toward her, but she didn’t shift her attention from the map spread beneath his palms.
“The length of the gulch. How long do you think?” she asked. Her eyes were as wide and green as a Tennessee meadow.
“Durrand?” she said and lifted her gaze to his face.
Shit! Was staring at her like she was the Holy Grail? He gritted his teeth and grunted. Hopefully, it sounded more noncommittal than bestial. “Ten miles, I’d say. Did the bartender give you any idea where along the gulch Herrera’s men might be?”
“No.”
“Have you heard anything on the news about it?”
“I haven’t had a chance to check yet,” she said and pulled out her tablet.
He waited, studying the lay of the land as he did so. But patience wasn’t with him. “Anything?”
She shook her head.
“Maybe the media’s no more forthcoming than the locals regarding their little drug problem.” He scanned the map. “That’s a shitload of jungle to search. Your cantina friend give you any other clues?”
“I didn’t want to push him too hard.”
“Next time, don’t push at all.”
“And have no intel whatsoever?”
“Could be he was just stringing you along. See how far he could play the pretty Americano. Fun game. Probably hasn’t had that many laughs for months,” he said and returned his attention to the maps.
“The tour!”
He raised his eyes at the excitement in her tone. “What?” he asked but she was already tapping away at her keyboard.
“He said the people who found the mutilated body had been on some kind of tour.”
He straightened abruptly, heart pumping a little faster. “Private or guided?”
“I’m not sure.”
“First thing in the morning, I need you to find out what companies offer trips into that area.”
“Why wait?”
“Businesses down here are barely open during regular hours. You’ll never find anyone manning the phones this—”
He felt her staring at him and let his words slip to a halt.
“Right…” He refrained from clearing his throat. “Look them up online,” he said, but ahe was already lost in technology. Maybe if he were really lucky, she wouldn’t realize he’d forgotten about the Internet again. But he wasn’t the lucky one. It had been common knowledge in the barracks that Shep had gotten the lion’s share of good fortune. The thought almost made Durrand laugh out loud.
“Looks like there are two companies that service that area,” she said.
“Any way to know if either of them made a trip last week?”
She was scowling at the screen. Her brow was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Holy shit, he’d probably done his first tour while she was still wearing Pampers and drooling on the colonel’s well-decorated shoulder.
“It doesn’t say anything on their sites. I suppose finding dead bodies isn’t something they’d advertise. Probably not great for tourism. But I can try to hack into their private emails.”
He didn’t question how that could be done. No use sounding more antiquated than necessary. And maybe he would know how that was possible if he had ever been on the intelligence end of operations. But he had never pretended to be anything other than a warhorse. Intel was the brains of the company, and Intel was dead, just like the others.
His throat felt tight, his muscles wooden, but he managed to pull a topography map from its cardboard tube and press it open.
After a few moments, he shook his head.
“What?” She glanced up, fingers still dancing on the keys.
“There’s no way the Jeep’s going to make the entire trip.”
“How long will it take on foot?”
He narrowed his eyes at the map and calculated. “Looks like the roads end about eight klicks from the gulch itself. So it’ll probably take me…” He shook his head, figuring and feeling a little sick with the results; Shep may be a colossally stubborn pain in the ass, and sure as hell, he’d know Gabe was coming for him, but he couldn’t last forever. “A couple hours to reach the gorge?”
“What about we?”
He glanced up, worrying over a thousand details at once. What kind of idiot would bring a woman like her into this tropical slice of hell? “I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“But you think it will take longer with me along.”
No one had ever accused him of being a diplomat, but he didn’t like to think he was a complete lackwit. Though more than a few had suggested as much. “Two always takes longer than one,” he said.
She was staring at him, challenge sharp in her eyes. “I won’t slow you down.”
He offered no expression, but seriously, she looked like a damn fairy princess in her daisy yellow dress, and fairy princesses didn’t seem like they’d be real great at humping a forty-pound pack through snake-infested jungles.
She was still watching him, maybe waiting for him to make a total ass of himself. It probably wouldn’t take long. “You finding anything there?” he asked and nodded toward her tablet.
She glanced back down at her tablet, tapped a few more things on the screen, and inhaled softly. “Here!” Her tone was tight with excitement, her apple blossom cheeks flushed. “There’s an email to Emocionante’s employees advising them to steer clear of the Gueppi vicinity. Isn’t that near the gulch?”
He scanned the map and nodded. “Who’s the memo from?”
She skimmed lower, lips slightly parted. “Alejdro Garza sent it.”
“You heard of him?”
“No.”
“Any way to find out where he lives?”
She tapped away again, paused, and read off an address.
He nodded once then bent. Retrieving the bag of purchases he’d recently made, he tossed it onto the bed and pulled out a twelve-inch hunting knife.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced up at the sound of her voice. Her eyes had gone from Tennessee meadow to Caribbean Sea, but he would be a fool to be influenced by a pair of pastoral eyes.
“I’ll be back before dawn,” he said and strapped the blade to his hip. “Get some sleep.”