A moment later there was an explosion of sound, gunfire, and she jerked her head up to see MacGowan on the ground with the older man, locked in a furious struggle. Carlos had been knocked back against a tree, and he was lying there, dazed, as the third man circled the combatants, trying to take a shot.
MacGowan’s leg shot out, sweeping the other man, and he went down, hard. MacGowan surged up, leaving the older man unconscious or maybe dead, and leaped onto the second, catching the man’s head in his hands and giving it a quick, vicious jerk. She didn’t need the sound of crunching bones to know he’d broken his neck, killing him instantly.
He rose, looking down at the first man, reaching for the gun in his dead hand, when Carlos came at him, his machete raised high, too quick for MacGowan to stop him.
“No!” Beth screamed, moving on instinct, slamming into Carlos, knocking him off balance before he could hack into MacGowan’s exposed back. Carlos caught her against his skinny body, bringing the machete up to her throat, so tight she could feel it begin to bite into her skin, as MacGowan turned around, the dead soldier’s gun in his hand.
“Let her go, hermano,” he said in rough Spanish. “You can’t win.”
“I’m not your brother,” Carlos spat. “And I think it’s you who are the one who can’t win.”
“Don’t make me kill you. You’re just a kid.” MacGowan’s voice was unutterably weary.
“You shoot me, I go over the falls, and I take her with me. You want to risk that?” Carlos taunted him.
MacGowan shrugged. And pulled the trigger.
Beth felt the recoil of his body before the explosion of sound in her ear, deafening her. The machete dropped, but his grip on her held, and a moment later he sank back, falling into thin air, dragging her with him.
“Shit,” MacGowan said wearily, kicking off the poor remnants of his boots and dropping the gun beside the dead body. And a moment later he dove after her, his body slicing through the heavy rush of water.
It was bitter cold, melted ice from the peaks of the Andes, and the shock took his breath away. He cursed himself all the way down. The force of landing wrong would probably kill her, if she managed to avoid the stone sides of the canyon. The water was so cold she’d go numb in short order and be unable to swim. He was doing this for nothing. Some quixotic gesture that if he’d stopped for a moment to think about it, he would have stayed where he was, mopping up after Froelich.
His body cleaved the water neatly, lessening the shock, though immersion in the icy river was hard enough. He surfaced, looking around him for a body floating face down.
There was one, but it was Carlos, half of his head blown away by the gun he’d taken off the dead rebel. Stupid piece – a nine millimeter was more than enough fire power. He turned in the water, but there was no sign of her, and he dove under, looking for her. She was more than likely dead, but since he’d already done such a damned fool thing he may as well carry through to the end.
He saw her, drifting through the water like a ghost, her long hair loose and flowing behind her, and he kicked out, heading toward her, grabbing her dead arm to drag her body to the surface. Only to find her struggling when he caught her, panic filling her body.
He hauled her to the surface, clamping an arm around her shoulders to keep her above water as he headed toward shore. She took a deep, harsh gulp of air and then began puking water, and he tilted her so she wouldn’t suffocate. He was more than ready to clock her one if she struggled, but even in her panic to breath she seemed to recognize he wasn’t going to hurt her, and by the time he’d hauled them both onto grass she’d stopped coughing up water and had begun to breathe more normally. No mouth to mouth, he thought reluctantly, sprawling on his back while he tried to slow his own labored breathing. The cold water had been bad enough – dragging her body had just about done him in.
He stared up into the late afternoon sky, then closed his eyes again. He’d killed three men today. Izzy, Ramon the sadist, and the new kid who’d arrived yesterday with Miss Priss. It had been a long time since he’d killed anybody, and he may never have killed anyone as young as the one he’d just shot in the head, thanks to the woman lying beside him. He owed her for that. He’d felt the kid coming at him, and he’d been perfectly ready to stop him when she’d interfered. And why the hell had she done it?
The sky was dark, overcast. November was a month of rains – that was all he needed to make this day perfect. A bloody rainstorm with mudslides. And Hans Froelich’s backstabbing had cut his profit in half. He was going to have to climb back up the cliff and find Dylan, when he’d been secretly hoping he could dump the little monster. It was beginning to look like Beth Pennington was going to end up paying cold hard cash.
He wanted to laugh. As if a piece of ass was worth the kind of rescue money someone like Beth Pennington could afford to pay him. He didn’t need to let her know that. Things worked better if he kept her scared enough to do what he told her to.
That didn’t mean he might not still get a piece of her. If he just put a little effort into it he could have her eating out of his hand. Saving a woman’s life was a powerful aphrodisiac. And he could be down-right irresistible if the mood struck him, for which he thanked his Irish heritage. Not his da, that murdering braggart. But the friends and neighbors who’d tried to look after him when his da went to prison for knocking his wife about once too often, just a bit too hard.
There were times when he wondered if she were still alive. Last time he’d seen her she’d been hooked up to machines, only kept alive because it was a Catholic country, his father locked up in Maze prison. A real republic hero, his da was, dying during the hunger strikes, so that people forgot why he was put in prison in the first place. He still couldn’t hear the accidental clang of trash can lids without being covered in a cold sweat.
Ah, but that was in the past. What mattered was now. He sat up, glancing over at her, wondering if he was going to have to fend off her teary gratitude.
Not likely. She was glaring at him, bless her. “You could have killed me,” she said, her voice raw from the water she’d puked up.
“You’re welcome.” He shoved his mattered hair away from his face and narrowed his eyes. Bloody hell. The icy cold water had plastered her loose shirt against her body, and her nipples were hard, pushing against the cloth. He could warm them, he thought, wondering what she’d do if he tried it. “You’re alive, aren’t you? That little piece of shit would have taken your head off with that machete in another moment. What did you do to make him hate you so much?”
“Nothing. I was his teacher.”
He laughed without humor. “That explains it then. He was too fucking young to die. I owe you for that.”
“He killed Father Pascal. As the old man was praying. And he raped and killed Tia Maria, who helped with the laundry and the cooking. She was in her fifties, a grandmother, and the last thing she saw was him, a child she’d known from infancy. He died too quickly.” Her voice was cold and bitter, and she drew her legs up, pressing her face against her knees.
He could thank her for that, but he wasn’t in the mood to be grateful. The sun had set, the temperature dropping, and his wet clothes were cold and clammy against his skin. “And what the hell were you doing, wandering around in the jungle like that? I told you to stay put. They could have killed you if I hadn’t gotten to you first.”
Faint color stained her pale face. “I was trying to warn you.”
“What?”
“I said I was trying to warn you. I saw them coming and I thought the waterfall would be too loud for you to hear them, and I was trying to find you.”
He stared at her in amazement, not sure what to say. “I hate to tell you this, darlin’ one, but I can save my own life. Next time stay put and wait for me to come for you. I’m not one of your orphans to be rescued.” The color on her face darkened, and he felt a moment’s regret. He pushed it away. “I’m going to need to climb back up and see if I can find Dylan. He’s
a pain in the butt but he’s worth too much to leave behind. Unless you have any objections.”
“Of course not,” she said. He had to give her credit – she was terrified of the idea of being left alone, but she didn’t say a word. “You can’t leave a teenage boy out alone in the wilderness.”
“He’s older than your friend Carlos.”
“Don’t!” She shuddered, casting an uneasy glance toward the water. The body had sunk beneath the surface, and she wouldn’t have had a good look at the damage the forty-five caliber bullet had done. She put her face back down on her knees. “Go ahead,” she said weakly. “I’ll be right here.”
He couldn’t afford to show her any mercy. He started back, surveying the cliff he was more than likely going to have to scale, then paused, spun around and hauled her to her feet. She looked up at him, her big eyes wide and unnervingly calm in her pale face. Without a word he hauled her toward the underbrush, and for a moment she began to fight him. He caught her flailing arms in one hard grip, pulling her back against him as he dragged her further into the undergrowth. He released her, and she went sprawling on the ground.
“Stay put,” he said in a flat voice. “If you even know the meaning of the term. I’ll come back for you, but if you make the stupid mistake of following me again I’ll let you die.”
It took him a moment to recognize the look of panic that faded into surprise and then into nothing at all, and he managed a mirthless laugh. “No, sweetheart, I’m not going to rape you. I’ve got more important things on my mind right now. Mainly staying alive. You’re a choice piece of ass but I value my skin a little more highly than a quick fuck in the undergrowth. Now stay put or I might change my mind.” He wouldn’t, of course. He’d been in too many war zones, seen the horrors of rape at close hand, and it disgusted him. But nothing else seemed to scare her into obeying him, and he wasn’t beyond fighting dirty.
He turned his back on her before he could change his mind. It wouldn’t take much to convince himself he had to kiss her to scare her into not moving, had to feel those hard nipples against his hands, push his body against her. He was cold and wet and bad-tempered and he was getting a hard-on anyway, which annoyed him as much as her big innocent eyes. He hated women who screamed and cried, yet for some reason Beth Pennington’s measured calm drove him crazy.
A moment later he was gone, the jungle closing around him, as the sun set behind the jagged peaks of the Andes.
Beth shivered. He was bluffing, she knew it. He wasn’t going to rape her, even if she’d felt a moment’s panic when he’d started dragging her into the bushes. It had been a knee-jerk reaction on her part, and she should have known better. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to believe, but one thing was absolutely certain. He cared more about staying alive than having sex with someone like her.
It wasn’t as if she thought she was a dog. She was tall, average weight, a pretty enough face. But she had a touch-me-not quality that scared men off, and she’d never done anything to change that. She wasn’t interested in having a lover or a husband. She’d tried sex, given it a fair shot, and she hadn’t liked it. She could see no reason to change her mind.
She didn’t want or need a man. She’d perfected her calm demeanor, the one that no one could get past, and for the last few years no one had even tried. MacGowan had made it clear he valued money, but she was pretty sure he valued freedom more. He’d settle for payment for services rendered, despite his threats to the contrary.
She was cold. Her clothes were wet and clammy, and she considered stripping them off on the remote chance that they might dry, then thought better of it. She had no idea how long it would take MacGowan to get back down to the lake, but she wasn’t going to risk it. Besides, she was already feeling vulnerable enough fully dressed.
She lay down on the damp earth, wrapping one arm around her body, tucking the other beneath her head to cushion it. He was coming back to get her, and he would see her safely back to the city.
Nothing else was worth considering.
Barringer always sat at the same table in the company dining room, but nowadays he sat alone. His friends, the men he’d started with, had either retired or died, and he disapproved of the new bunch, with their foul language and flashy behavior. He held with an old-fashioned view of covert work, one that had served him well. The more boring, self-effacing you could be, the better you did your job.
And the women! It appalled him, to listen to their cursing and their brazen behavior. Women had a place in the world of espionage, but it was on their back. They could lure a man in, but it was up to their male counterparts to handle the complicated stuff. Not that women couldn’t kill – he knew that far too well. But in general he didn’t trust them. Part of the reason why he never married.
He ate the same thing every day, a chicken salad sandwich on white bread. He supposed it was boring, but he liked order and he liked routine. His job was unsettling enough, never predictable, never ordinary. It was little wonder he wanted the rest of his life to be calm.
Sully’s initial report wasn’t promising. MacGowan had killed a number of his captors in his escape, and they were out for blood. The poor fools had finally realized they could continue to collect the money whether MacGowan was alive or dead, and right now they wanted dead.
He had complete faith in an old campaigner like Sully, though, and he’d given him a blank check. For enough money the Guiding Light would help him recapture MacGowan and kill the other escapees. If MacGowan died in the firefight then Sully could cover it up, and Isobel Lambert would believe he was alive and well and heading for England to kill whoever was in charge. She wouldn’t just sit back and let that happen, and Killian would be there with her.
No, things were moving along as well as could be expected. In another week Killian might very well be within his reach. And then he’d be dead, and Barringer could retire in peace.
But he would miss the chicken salad sandwiches.
CHAPTER SIX
When she woke it was full dark, and she was filled with panic. She could hear nothing past the muffled roar of the waterfall, and she sat up, immediately alert.
It was much cooler up here at higher elevations. Back in the tiny village of Talaca the nights had been hot and steamy, and she would lie in her tiny nun’s cell in her underwear and pray for a stray breeze. She could hear the wind in the trees overhead, and the night was chilly. Her clothes were still damp and clammy, clinging to her skin, and she shivered.
She heard the rustle of bushes and froze. She’d been a fool to fall asleep – she should have kept going, following the water. It could flow in no other direction but downhill, where towns and cities lay. If MacGowan was as good as he said he was he’d be more than capable of catching up with her if he wanted to. Even if he didn’t want to, she was better off taking her chances than staying there like a sitting duck, waiting.
It was too late now, she thought irritably. If she got caught it was her own damned fault for being so trusting. Trusting MacGowan would come back, trusting that things would work out for the best. Hadn’t she learned first-hand that life wasn’t particularly fair? She might die on this mountainside because of her stupid belief that helping people was her responsibility and her calling.
The night birds were silent now, and she wondered what kind of four-legged predators roamed around here. She already had enough trouble with the two-legged kind. Would she prefer to be raped and slaughtered by someone like Carlos, or torn to pieces by a jackal or puma or whatever prowled the mountainside? Neither option seemed particularly delightful. Someone, something was getting closer, and she looked around her for a weapon, but there was nothing. Should she try to run, or stay where she was, hoping whatever it was would miss her?
A shadow loomed out of the darkness, suddenly, and she screamed, then slapped her hands over her mouth when she recognized MacGowan. There was a faint sliver of moonlight, enough to illuminate his gaunt figure, and she could see the trace of an ironic smile.
“Good thing the Guiding Light are looking miles away, or you would have brought them straight to us, princess,” he growled. “You wanna try not to scream so much?”
“That was the first time I screamed,” she shot back, indignant. She couldn’t begin to count the number of times she wanted to shriek in total panic, and each time she swallowed it. “Did you find Dylan?”
“Unfortunately.”
Beth’s heart sank. “Damn,” she said softly, getting to her feet. Her legs were cramped, and she stumbled a bit before she righted herself, but MacGowan didn’t make any effort to help her. “He was so young.”
“Still is,” MacGowan said in a disgruntled voice. “Hey, brat, show yourself. Our little nun thinks I killed you.”
The lanky teenager appeared out of the heavy foliage, a sullen expression on his face. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered.
“Yeah, right. That’s why you were still trussed up like a Christmas goose when I found you,” MacGowan drawled.
“I thought the others had killed him, not you,” Beth snapped. “And I told you, I’m not a nun. I’m not even Catholic.”
“Close enough, Sister Beth,” he said. He was deliberately taunting her, and she knew she shouldn’t rise to the provocation, but she couldn’t help it. She bit back her retort. “And I’ve already lost one meal ticket – I’m not about to let go of another.”
“Such nobility of spirit,” Beth said under her breath.
“You betcha, lady,” he shot back. “I’ve been stuck in a hellhole for almost three years – I want the good life when I get back to civilization.”
“Three years?” She didn’t bother to hide the shock in her voice. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“And I don’t need your bleeding heart fixating on me. Money will soothe my wounded soul just fine. And if you feel like throwing in a mercy fuck on the side I’d be grateful.”