Chapter 23
“Are you sure this is the right road?” Eddy glanced sideways at Durrand. He was holding onto the handle on the dash again, expression dark.
His conversation with Javier, the arms dealer, had been short, quick, and bracketed by thunderous expressions rather like the one that currently occupied his face.
“I’m not sure this goat trail is a road at all.”
The path they were on wound upward like a vicious snake, writhing and twisting its way toward some uncertain destination. Rocks the size of Halloween pumpkins adorned their route. Eddy swerved to the left to avoid the latest one.
A mile or so back they had passed a boy riding a horse and leading two mules, both of which carried lumpy packs. The scene felt like a slice from the distant past, except that the kid had been punching keys on his cell phone as he rode. Maybe Durrand was right? Maybe any yahoo could pry into her business. The idea made her palms sweat.
“He said to take the second right and not the first, correct?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She nodded and glanced at him again. He was scanning the hills. They were endless, impossibly green and desperately lonely. She stifled a shiver.
“You think he’s watching us?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe it’s a setup.”
He shifted his gaze toward her without speaking. The look in his eyes suggested that he might have considered that possibility.
“What’s the penalty for buying weapons without a permit in South America?” she asked, but he ignored her. She’d never met anyone better at it.
“Slow down.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Look for a path heading west from the crooked Brazil nut tree.”
“Are you kidding me?” There must be a few billion trees in the jungle. And she wouldn’t know a Brazil nut from an Argentina monkey.
He scowled at the world ahead. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
At the moment, he didn’t even look like he knew how to joke.
“There,” he said and pointed to an enormous tree that grew at a bent angle across the road.
Eddy swung the Jeep to the left. It bumped over the ruts like a carnival ride gone mad.
“That way.” Durrand pointed toward a trail that branched off to their right. But it wasn’t really a trail at all, just a few flattened blades of grass and some broken saplings. Still, she turned in. A jagged boulder was perched on a rocky outcropping, almost completely covered in vines. “Stop here,” he ordered.
She did so.
“Kill the engine.”
Once she turned the key, the morning seemed heavy, pregnant with silence and impending doom. “We walk from here?”
“I walk,” he said and, lifting a duffle bag from the floor, slipped the strap over his head. “You stay with the Jeep.”
She opened her mouth, maybe to argue, but he raised a hand. “Not my decision,” he said. “Javier insisted that I go in alone.” She had to admit that he didn’t look thrilled with the idea. “Take these.” Pulling a small pair of binoculars from one of a half dozen of his pants pockets, he handed them over. “You see anyone coming…anyone at all, call me on my cell. Let it ring twice.”
She took the binoculars in one hand, raised them to her face, and wondered if they had any reason to assume their phones would work when they most needed them. “Then what?”
“If I don’t show up in two minutes, come in and save my ass.”
She lowered the field glasses with a snap.
“Now I’m joking,” he said and shoved a knife into his boot. She stared at him. His teasing expression was strangely similar to his dour expression. “If I’m not out in fifteen minutes get the hell out of Dodge. I’ll meet you back at the hostel.”
“How?” she asked.
He was already exiting the Jeep. “Not your problem.”
“But—
“Stay out of sight,” he ordered. “This should only take a few minutes.”
In a matter of seconds, the jungle had swallowed him up. She was not a patient person. Others at the agency would have disagreed with that assessment, but she was not a woman who could sit and wait. Inactivity made her fidgety.
Dragging out her tablet, she tried to do a search on Quebrada Verde. But there was no satellite signal available. Maybe Durrand was right about technology, she thought and opened a conventional map. According to the blog she’d read while online earlier, the Tortuga River was relatively user-friendly. Except for the alligators and…
A noise from behind startled her. She glanced in the rearview mirror and jerked. A lone figure was approaching on foot. He wore the deep green uniform of the Colombian police. Aviator glasses hid his eyes, and his mustache, thick as a raccoon’s tail, made him look sinister, like a caricature of a villain. Visions of Romancing the Stone stormed through her brain. But she put them aside. She was being foolish, she told herself. Still, she felt sweat bead on her forehead.
Folding the map rapidly, she shoved it under the seat and turned to the window.
“Good morning, officer.” She employed her best Spanish and tried to give him the full force of her smile, but her lips quivered with nerves.
He didn’t respond, just watched her from behind his mirrored lenses.
“I’m not…” Her mind was galloping. Where was Durrand? “I’m not double parked or something, am I?”
Sadly, that was the best joke she could muster under duress, but he didn’t smile back.
“You are American?”
“Is it that obvious?” She upped the wattage of her smile, but there wasn’t much left in reserve. “And here I’ve been so proud of my Spanish.”
“Why are you here?”
“Here?” She forced a laugh. It sounded painful. “That’s the thing. I’m afraid I don’t know where here is.” She gestured toward the maps that Durrand had left on the dash. “I’m totally lost.”
He scanned the jungle that surrounded them before returning his gaze to hers.
“Surely you are not in this remote spot alone, chica,” he said and removed his shades. His lips curled into a smile for the first time. Neither the sight of his eyes nor his expression made her feel better. His mouth seemed to be entirely disassociated with the rest of her face. Her mind raced along, tumbling over a dozen less than comforting scenarios.
“I’m afraid so,” she said. “I wanted to get in some early-morning sightseeing.” She shrugged, disarming but confident…or annoying and pee-in-her pants scared.
“Do not tell me you came to our country unchaperoned.”
“No!” The word came out too quickly, too forcefully. She smoothed out her tone. “No. My husband…” Durrand’s broad, no-nonsense image filled her mind. She found she desperately longed to convey that image to this less than charming officer. “My husband accompanied me.”
He stared meaningfully at the empty seat.
She chuckled. It sounded like gravel on tin. “I mean, he came to your beautiful country with me.”
“And his name?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your husband…” His gaze dropped to her chest for a moment then rose leisurely. “The lucky man to whom you are wed…what is his name?”
For one frantic moment she failed to recall the fictional name he had chosen, but in a second her mind cleared. “Luke,” she said. “Luke Lansky.”
His lips twisted knowingly. “Shall I be encouraged by the fact that you could not, at first, recall his name?”
She tried to chuckle. “I didn’t forget,” she said and forced a shrug. Casual as a heart attack. “It’s just that…most people call him…” Her mind was racing along like an out of control locomotion. “Rage.” Holy mother of God, what was she talking about?
He raised a brow. She giggled, feeling dizzy. “He’s rather…protective.”
His smile soured. “Then he obviously was not the man we just spotted slinking through the jungle.”
She refrained from closing her eyes, from freezing, from babbling like a lunatic, though all of those things seemed like likely possibilities. “No. If it’s who I think it was, my husband is much bigger. That was…Nathan. My brother.” She motioned vaguely. “He went to…relieve himself.”
“I see.” He turned his head again as if scanning the jungle for her fictional kin. Eddy did the same. But Durrand was nowhere in sight. “I hope he did not get lost.”
“I’m sure he’ll be back in a moment.”
“It is easy to become disoriented in the jungle. Perhaps you should return to the village.”
“Without Nathan?”
“Sí. The sun…” He smiled. “It is hot, and I’ve no wish for your pretty skin to become burnt.”
“Well, that’s what SPF 40 is for.”
He stared at her blankly.
“Sunblock. See,” she said and raised her arm. It was as pale as whipping cream. “Not a hint of color.” That much at least was true. Her antecedents, British laborers all, would have known her by her glow-in-the-dark skin.
“Ahhh, you Americans and your many products.” He shook his head as if amused. “Still, I fear I must insist that you return to the village. In fact…” Rounding the bumper quickly, he opened the passenger door. “I believe I will accompany you to make certain you arrive safely.” He stepped inside.
She swept her gaze desperately toward the jungle where Durrand had disappeared. “I couldn’t possibly leave my brother. He’ll—” she began, but a small click of noise made her lower her attention. It was then that she saw the pistol resting on his thigh.
The world ground slowly to a halt.
“Please, chica...” He smiled. Absolutely no emotion showed in his eyes. “I must insist.”
She swallowed, nodded, and started the engine with fingers numb from fear. “What about my brother?”
“I am certain he will be fine. So long as he does not upset Javier.” His smile looked real now. Real and chilling, and frightfully predatory.
She felt gooseflesh prickle her arms. “Who?”
He chuckled. “Turn the car around, señora. Or are you not truly married?”
“Why would I lie about that?” Her face felt hot. Her mind was spinning, but she spoke again before he could answer. “My brother is going to be extremely upset if I leave him.”
“As is my captain if an Americano ruins his bust…no matter how unspoiled her skin is.”
“His bust?” A hundred yards to the right she saw a blur of movement. Khaki against green. Every terrified instinct in her longed to stare. To convince herself that it was Durrand, but she kept her attention in the rearview mirror as she backed around. The cords in her throat felt as stiff as telephone cables.
“Is that not what you call it in America?” he asked. “A bust?”
She wasn’t positive, but she thought there was a fast-moving figure scrambling downhill, skimming through the trees on a trajectory that would intersect the road. She shifted clumsily into first, grinding the gears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His teeth looked maliciously white against his mustache. “Javier was seen headed toward his little hut by the river.”
She shook her head. “Javier?”
“It is where he, at times, meets with his clients to sell them his wares.”
“Like…” She shrugged and took her foot off the clutch. The Jeep hiccupped and yanked to a halt. “I’m sorry.” Don’t look up, don’t look, she ordered silently, and kept her gaze on the shifting gear. “I haven’t driven a stick in years.”
“Start it again,” he ordered.
She did so, killing time by studying the tiny diagram on the shifter for a moment and hoping again that she hadn’t imagined the khaki-clad figure rushing toward the road.
“Go,” he ordered.
“I’m trying,” she said and shifted from neutral into first while glancing at the policeman from the corner of her eye. “But what about my brother?”
“With whom you were sightseeing?”
“Yes.”
“In Putumayo? Where there is more cocaine than people?”
She opened her eyes wide. “You think we came for drugs?” she asked and let her foot slip off the clutch so that the engine chugged painfully.
“Do you say that you did not come for the coca?”
“Coca? No! Absolutely not. We would never—”
“Then you were meeting Javier for the guns. Sí?”
She felt the air leave her lungs.
“Shift,” he insisted.
“But the road is so—”
He lifted his pistol. “Shift.”
She did so. He smiled. The Jeep began to pick up speed. And try as she might, she could see no more of the khaki-clad figure she hoped she hadn’t imagined.
“We must hurry now so that we may take our time later,” he said.
She jerked her gaze to his. It was hooded and horrific, shining with a dozen awful thoughts. She felt sick to her stomach. “Take our time with what?”
“Just drive, señorita.”
“Señora,” she corrected, and he laughed.
“I do not mind if you are married,” he said.
She felt the blood leave her face but strove for machismo. “Touch me and I’ll turn you in to your commanding officer.”
“My captain, he is not the kind to hold this against me. Though he prefers younger chicas, I myself do not mind some…how do you say in your country…some dust on the bottle.”
Terror squeezed her lungs tight, but she reminded herself that she was no wilting lily. She’d been trained for such emergencies. She glanced toward him, mind spinning with escape strategies that seemed as unlikely as a miracle.
“Neither do I mind some blood,” he said and raised the pistol.