little visibility. She reached for her weapon as quietly as possible and waited.
She was awake but she hadn’t seen him yet. Mitch crouched in the cover of some bamboo. The smartest thing would be to shoot her right now, but he wanted to know who she was and who she worked for. She intrigued him, he couldn’t deny that. It kept her alive. For now.
“Drop both guns to the ground,” he told her without showing himself.
After a moment of hesitation, she did, then slipped from her shelter, searching the darkness in the direction of his voice. “How did you find us?”
He’d followed the logging road on the polizia man’s motorbike, then tracked their trail through the jungle. “I could smell the smoke of your fire from miles away.”
“I didn’t think you’d be so close behind,” she admitted, then pulled a machete from behind her back and came at him.
How in hell did she see him?
The first blow almost took off his nose. He dropped the old pistol he’d bought in the village, knowing he wasn’t going to use it, not yet, not until he had some answers. And for that, he needed both hands to restrain her.
He grabbed her wrist and held the machete away from them. She launched herself at him again, and they ended up grappling on the ground in short order, which was a really bad idea, considering all the poisonous bugs and snakes. The sooner he got her under control the better.
“Quit it,” he snapped at her.
She ignored him.
He kicked the embers as they rolled, and the flames livened up, giving them both a little more light. He could see Zak from the corner of his eye, working madly on the restraint on his leg.
“You stay where you are,” he growled at the kid. The last thing he needed was for the idiot to pick up one of the discarded guns and shoot him by accident.
That small diversion—his attention on Zak for a split second—was enough for her to make her move. She flawlessly executed a flip he remembered from special ops training. Interesting. And where would she have learned that?
He responded with a move a martial arts fanatic taught him while he’d spent two years deep undercover in Thailand. That made her eyes go wide and got him control of the machete at last.
He tossed the weapon aside and pinned her to the ground, embarrassed to be breathing so hard. Her firm breasts pressed into his chest. That image of her at the guesthouse, wearing nothing but a towel, popped into his mind. He batted it away. “Where did you get your training?”
“Where did you get yours?” She strained against him, taxing his focus.
“Who do you work for?” Don’t think lean pink thighs.
“Same guy everyone works for around here.” She grunted with frustration as she tried to heave him off, undaunted by the sixty or so pounds he had on her.
He kept her firmly in place, ignoring the interesting ways her body moved under his. At another time, in another place … Focus. “Not me.”
“Let me guess, you’re Cristobal’s.”
Cristobal was a rival drug lord, controlling vast territories north of the river. He had the reputation of being a ruthless bastard who didn’t hesitate to burn whole villages if someone crossed him.
“Guess again.” He transferred both of her wrists to one hand, then reached out with the other and grabbed his gun from the ground, feeling much better with a weapon handy.
She stared at the barrel and turned all soft under him, her large eyes filling with tears. “Juarez is going to kill me if I don’t bring the kid back. You don’t know my situation. You have to help me. Please.”
He went slack like an idiot at the sight of her tears. She immediately shoved her knee where sharp knees had no business going. Her elbow slammed into his chin, and before he could begin to breathe again, she was out from under him and running into the jungle, taking a split second to sweep down and pick up her own weapon.
What was wrong with him? He was the most cynical man he knew. He could usually smell a trap or a scam from a mile away. But something about her kept sneaking under his defenses.
He rolled to his feet and tore after her, limping, determined not to make the same mistake again. They were both playing with their lives like this, dammit. He couldn’t see her in the darkness—the thick canopy above didn’t let through much moonlight. He fired a warning shot in the general direction where he could hear her moving.
Then he could no longer hear her. Could he have shot her by accident? So much the better. Except, part of him didn’t like the idea of Megan Cassidy dead, no matter how much grief she’d caused him. He caught himself. There he went again, thinking stupid thoughts.
He stole forward step by slow step. At last he spotted her figure emerging out of the darkness. She faced him head-on, her legs slightly apart, with her gun in both hands, aimed directly at him. A movie poster combination of dangerous and sexy. She made a fine-looking enemy, he had to give her that.
But he was done letting that affect him. He pointed his own gun right back at her. “Now what?”
“One of us shoots the other and gets what she wants.” Everything about her was cocky, from her stance to her voice.
It turned him on, God help him. But he was a professional. “Juarez will kill Zak if he gets him back,” he said, deciding to reason with her instead of using brute force and threats. He could always fall back on those. Maybe he could appeal to her feminine compassion. “He’s just a kid.”
For a moment she wavered. But only for a moment. “That’s between the two of them.”
All right, so she wasn’t interested in compassion—not that big a surprise. Maybe she was interested in money. “I’ll pay you for him.”
“I’m not after money,” she snapped, as if offended. “Why do you want the two-bit crook? You two business partners? He screwed the big boss over. He’s going to do the same with you.”
He thought for a long moment, trying to figure her out, then decided to take a calculated gamble. “He’s not a two-bit crook, exactly. He’s the son of a U.S. governor.”
That gave her pause. “Which one?”
He told her, and again she wavered.
“The reward would be substantial.” He pushed.
She didn’t even bother to acknowledge that. “So you’re U.S. law enforcement or something.”
He calculated how far they’d come from Zak. Far enough. The kid should be out of hearing distance. “Or something.”
For a second she took her eyes off him to scan the black jungle behind him. Her gun never moved, however. “Where is the rest of your team?”
“Where I come from, we don’t waste a whole team’s time on a quick little job like rescuing a politician’s idiot son.”
She
