Fields' Guide to Abduction, - [famous ebook reader TXT] 📗

A beam sliced through the trees. The sudden brightness arrived with the deafening whir of rotors.

Pablo disapproved of both the light and the noise. Strongly disapproved.

The horse reared on its hind legs.

“Lean for—”

My warning came too late. Jake slipped off Pablo’s backside.

And he dragged me with him.

Pablo left us at a canter.

Meanwhile, Jake and I played Twister on the forest floor.

For an instant, I saw us through a film director’s lens. Two people who shouldn’t be together but couldn’t help themselves. Tangled Limbs. Tangled emotions. Screwball comedy.

Screwball comedies were dead. And if we didn’t get moving, we might be too.

“I’m assuming your chopper wouldn’t use searchlights.”

“That wasn’t mine. We’re too far away.” Jake’s voice was grim.

“So Javier is looking for us.”

“Javier? Where’s Quintero?”

“Away. He’s on his way back to Mexico. Javier said it would take two days for him to get here.”

“Damn.” Jake’s voice was grimmer than before. “We’d better get up.”

Neither of us moved. Even with a sharp stick poking my upper arm, there was comfort in closeness. In the familiar smell of hair. In the familiar scent of skin. In the way we’d always fit together seamlessly.

The helicopter circled and the beam cut five feet to our right.

“C’mon, Poppy. We need to move.” Grimmest voice yet.

I pushed up. It wasn’t my fault my elbow ended up in his stomach or that I slipped in my too-new boots.

“Ooomph.”

“You say oomph a lot.” Pointing that out was easier than apologizing.

“Saving you may leave permanent scars.”

If I had hackles, they would have risen. “You? Scars? You should see what you did to my psyche.”

“I told you I was sorry.” He rose. Slowly. As if his bones ached. As if breathing wounded him.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t have time to be hurt.”

He limped forward toward a spot where the trees left no room for light.

I followed. “Where don’t you have time to be hurt?”

“My knee and—” he winced “—I might have broken a rib.”

“Lean on me.”

“You couldn’t possibly support me.”

“Which one is your good knee?” I wanted to kick it.

“Right.”

I draped his left arm over my shoulders. “Let’s get moving.”

We walked, slipping on the uneven ground, tripping on rocks, stumbling over roots.

The helicopter made a third pass and we froze. This time the beam of light cut fifteen feet to our left.

We didn’t move until the sound of rotors faded.

Jake was sweating. I’d run with him on a baking hot beach without seeing a drop of perspiration. And now, on a chill night lit only by stars and a wan moon, sweat dotted his forehead.

“Just how badly are you hurt?” I demanded. “I want an honest answer.”

“Not bad.” The pain had affected his lying skills.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll live. Let’s talk about something else.”

Fine. If that’s how he wanted it. “How do you know about the flash drive?”

“Can we talk about that later?”

“No. Because, if we die tonight, I want to know before I close my eyes.”

“I was sent to recruit you.”

Not what I was expecting to hear. And not an answer to my question. “What?”

“You heard me.”

We lurched forward a few more steps. “Recruit me for what?”

“Merida.”

“Why me?”

“It was thought you could get to Ignacio Quintero.”

The little part of my heart that had remained whole through his death and resurrection disintegrated into dust. Jake and I had never been real. He’d never cared about me. I’d been a job.

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put you in that much—” he paused and looked around the pitch-dark mountain “—this much danger.” He tilted his head and looked up at the distant stars. “Do you understand who you’re dealing with?”

“A drug lord.”

He snorted softly. “Quintero buys a kilo of cocaine in Columbia for two thousand dollars. That same kilo is worth thirty-five thousand in Chicago, one hundred thousand if it’s broken down into grams.”

“Chicago?”

“The Sinaloans control ninety percent of the drug trade in Chicago.”

I too looked at the stars. They were blurry so I swiped at my eyes.

“The Sinaloans—Quintero—make three billion dollars a year. They’re not going to let anything or anyone interfere with that.”

The weight of Jake’s arm across my shoulders was suddenly too heavy. He’d spent months getting to know me and decided I wasn’t up to the task. My already broken heart ached and I stumbled.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe I wasn’t up to it.

All we had to do was walk. One step followed by another. Walk. And I couldn’t do that without tripping. “You thought I couldn’t handle Quintero?”

“That’s not it.” He shook his head and his free hand crossed his chest as if he could hold his rib in place. “I knew you could handle him. It was me.”

“You?”

“I couldn’t let you walk into danger. Quintero’s a sociopath. Maybe even a psychopath.”

“Shouldn’t that decision have been mine?”

He grunted.

“Why did you fake your death?”

“A separate issue.”

One I would return to if I got the chance. “None of this explains how you know about the drive.”

Jake sighed as if he knew what was coming next. “Gonzales works for Merida.”

I took a single, deep breath. “Gonzales-who-wouldn’t-return-my-passport, Gonzales?”

“Yeah.”

This very moment I could be sitting on the deck at my house in Malibu. I could be in New York negotiating a publishing contract. I could be in Paris drinking a café au lait. Instead, I was running away (stumbling away) from sicarios. “Why didn’t you make him return my passport?”

“We disagreed about that.”

I should hope so. Why hadn’t Gonzales returned my passport? He had to have known I had nothing to do with any of the deaths at the resort. We inched forward in silence and the answer came to me. “Gonzales used me as bait.”