Hush (14 page)

ZAK HAD DROPPED BACK
again, letting them move ahead. Acadia knew he was walking two steps for their every one as he kept circling around to make sure they weren't being followed.

She picked up her pace to catch up with Gideon, who was wielding the enormous machete to clear a path.
Feeling a little queasy, she pressed a hand to her roiling tummy as she walked. Nerves. Stress. Heat. Too much action. No food … The list went on. Since the two men were in exactly the same boat, worse because they'd both been hurt, she didn't bitch about the situation. Now that they were relatively safe, or as safe as humans could be in an animal's natural habitat, the adrenaline overload was seeping away. She was dying of thirst and would have killed for gallons of ice-cold Diet Coke. Gideon pulled aside a large branch he'd just cut, and a spider with long, skinny legs and a black, hairy body practically leaped onto his shirt. He flicked it off with barely a glance. She felt it prudent not to point out that it was an aggressive and highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider. Acadia shuddered as she took a giant step to avoid it as it scurried into the thicket.

“That Visine thing was damned well brilliant,” Gideon told her, his voice low. “You're a font of useful information.”

“I'm the manager at Jim's Sporting Goods. It helps to remember all the warranties, and the inventory levels, and when to reorder and what bills to …” She paused as she caught herself rambling. “Anyway, having a good memory is my superpower. That and being crazy organized.”

“Well, we wouldn't be here if you weren't. Thank God for your organizational skills, Jennifer would've—”

“Jennifer? Zak's wife? What was she like?” Acadia looked over her shoulder to make sure Zak wasn't behind her.

“Beautiful, fearless … Jesus, that woman went where
grown men feared to tread.” Gideon paused. “She was also fucking bat-shit crazy.”

Poor Zak. “Mentally ill? Or just … you know?”

“As far as I know, there wasn't a medical diagnosis,” Zak's brother admitted as he ruthlessly sliced away a dense tangle of vines blocking their path. “But she was loud, theatrical, and a congenital liar. One never knew if she was acting or not, she was that good at BS. I've never met a more selfish, self-serving woman in my life. Jennifer wasn't just fearless, she was reckless, and she endangered anyone stupid enough to try to protect her from herself.” He paused for a moment, breath rough as he had to use more muscle to cut through a large branch. “Zak never saw any of it. For some inexplicable reason she was the love of his life. I never got it.”

Acadia helped him drag aside the branches he'd cut. “You didn't like her.” She stated the obvious. She felt sorry for Zak, because even loving his wife as much as he had, it couldn't have been easy living with someone like that.

“I didn't like who
Zak
was around her. He—” He abruptly stopped talking. His shoulder-length dark hair snagged on a branch as he turned to flash very white teeth in her general direction. But he was looking behind her. “You okay back there, Zak-attack?”

Zak put a finger to his lips and motioned for Gideon to continue walking and lower the volume of their conversation. Acadia didn't speak Starkese, but she didn't need to. Someone was behind them.

That was why Zak had insisted his brother lead. With
Gideon hurt, he'd intentionally placed himself between them and anyone coming up behind them. All right, maybe he didn't want to be a hero, but he was watching out for his brother.

Despite his snarling sarcasm, that knowledge made her estimation of his character climb a few notches. The fact that he'd lost the love of his life was really sad. Gideon might not have liked Zak's wife, but the brothers were obviously close. They watched out for each other. Cared. Like family was supposed to.

Like her family used to, before everything went to hell.

She'd always wanted a sibling. A brother, maybe, like Gideon. Staff Sergeant Dad would've loved having a son instead of the girlie-girl daughter who'd had zero interest in wilderness survival or combat training. Although, come to think of it, both skills would have come in pretty damned handy right now.

Gideon took her arm and propelled her forward, slashing the machete faster and bringing her along in his wake. “So you know all about sports equipment and camping, right?” He kept his voice low, but if it seemed like nonsense to her, Acadia suspected it was to give Zak time to fall behind whoever was following them.

“I'd better. I've worked at the store since junior high.” She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “Are you sure we should be talking?”

“They heard us already,” Gideon whispered in return. “If we stop, they'll know we're on to them. Keep talking. Zak will deal with them.”

“For a guy who claims not to be a hero, he's doing a fair impersonation of one.” How many men were back there? Had Piñero returned early to find her men dropped and her prisoners gone? Acadia's adrenaline did a sharp spike. Zak was back there alone …

Gideon slashed at thick vegetation, jungle sap clinging to the blade. “He had a … situation a few years back. Doesn't want anyone to depend on him.”

“His wife was killed in Haiti, right?”

As much as she wanted to hear all about Zakary Stark and what made him the man he was—hell, as much as she wanted to hear about anything that took her mind off this mess—her ears were tuned to the sounds around them. The rustle of the leaves, a scratch of claws on bark as small animals scurried nearby, bright eyes watching their progress.

Waiting for the sound of automatic gunfire to erupt behind them, every cell in her exhausted body was braced for the impact of a bullet in her back. “She was a war correspondent for CNN, right?” she continued, shoving a tangled clump of leafy vines aside like a curtain.

“She took unnecessary risks … Look, if you want to know, ask Zak. He was the Jennifer Stark expert.”

Acadia wasn't Zak's type. Gideon didn't have to say the words aloud for her to get that message. Putting up his hand, he stopped.
Thank God
.

It didn't seem right, anyway, to talk about her one-night stand's dead wife in the middle of a jungle escape. Or maybe ever. She lifted her hand to shove aside another thick green vine, and it reared up and looked her in the
eye, then opened its yellow mouth and flicked its tongue at her.

“I'll wait here,” Acadia whispered after she'd jumped back, hand over her heart, and managed to get her breath back. Her heart was beating overtime with fear. As much as she didn't relish being left alone, she said softly, “Go back and help him.”

She stomped her feet as a winding army of red ants started an organized march over the toe of her boot.

“He doesn't need help, sweetheart. Zak can handle himself just fine.”

“But why should he when we're here?” she asked reasonably, scraping the last four clinging ants off her boot with a leaf.

“Know how to use that?” he asked, voice very low. She glanced up from her feet to see he was indicating the Uzi slung over her shoulder. “It can be a bit unruly.” Not waiting for an answer, Gideon pulled one of the handguns out of his belt. “Know how to use this?”

Acadia accepted the gun. Her father had always meant to take her to the range, but never had. And it was one thing to show a customer a gun's features in the store, another to shoot someone in cold blood. She swallowed hard. “I'm a crack shot,” she lied through her teeth. In this instance,
in theory
was good enough, and she figured motivation would help her aim considerably. “Go.”

He reached over and clicked off the safety, then used the blade of the machete to lift the barrel to chest height. “Not Zak or me. Point and fire.” One minute he was
beside her, the next just the movement of the foliage indicated he'd been there at all.

Indecisively, Acadia stood dead still for several minutes. She listened intently, her palms growing damp and slick. Every crack of settling branches, every whisper of moving foliage, even her own heartbeat, gathered like a slick knot of paranoia and fear in her gut.

A six-inch, emerald green lizard watched her from a nearby branch. The red ants marched in a wide, serpentine swath up the rough trunk of a nearby tree. A bird called. Leaves rustled as some small, unseen animal darted over and around protruding roots.

It sounded like … nature.

No voices. No gunshots.

God. Acadia's heart almost stopped. Were Zak and Gideon dead? The locals must know of ways to kill their prey without making a sound. The very thought that the two men were dead, and that she might be all alone, with no one close by to call upon but raping, pillaging guerrillas, chilled her to the bone. And the small scared part of her brain wanted to yell, “What about me?”

Because being
alone
in this vast greenness terrified her, and her panic level was escalating by the second.

Stay? Go?

She hefted the gun and cautiously followed the path of slashed branches back the way she'd come, struggling not to imagine feral hunting cats or—worse, probably—sweaty guerrillas behind every shrub.

Zak met her halfway, Gideon behind him. The relief she felt at seeing the two men was profound. She searched Zak's face and body for any signs of injury. Other than the bruise on his temple, he looked like the same cranky, hot and sweaty, preoccupied guy. And, God help her, incredibly sexy. He'd taken off his shirt and stuffed it in his waistband. Sweat trickled down his broad chest and sparkled like diamonds in his chest hair, which narrowed in a line down toward—

Acadia dragged her attention back to his face. “What happened?”

“Just a jaguar.”

She let out a huff of a breath. “Oh, if only you were referring to the car, and not some ravenous wild animal looking at us as a potential snack.”

Gideon barely hid a smile. “She was just curious. More scared of us.”

Acadia took another deep breath, the arm holding the gun shaking. “No one from the camp is following us?”

“Not yet,” Zak said flatly. “But they will. If Piñero does come back tonight, you can bet your ass she'll be on us like white on rice. The more miles we can push between now and dusk, the better our chances will be.”

He glanced at the gun in her hand. “Know how to use that?”

“I work in a sporting goods store. What do you think?”

His eyes said exactly what he thought. He made a twirling motion with his hand and said to her back when
she spun on her boot heel, “Just don't shoot yourself in the foot. I'm not carrying you.”

Maybe the jaguar would get him.

TWO GRUELING HOURS LATER,
Zak called a break. Gideon clearly needed medical attention, and Acadia was flagging, although neither had complained. He consistently checked their direction, both on his watch GPS and on the small handheld GPS Acadia had brought with her. At the rate they were going, they had six or seven grueling hours still to go before they reached the river. Zak knew they couldn't continue after dark. He added the time for them to stop and make a rudimentary camp. But the longer they were in the jungle, the higher the risk of the guerrillas' catching up with them.

How much longer could Gid go on? Skin gray, he was clearly in a lot of pain, and favoring his side more and more. Cracked ribs were bad enough. But what if one was broken? Gid could puncture a lung before they reached civilization. And the more time Zak spent with the ever prepared Acadia Gray, the more he realized just how fucking scared he was that this would go south at any second. That Piñero's men wouldn't be given the same constraints to stay away from her a second time. They were out here, hundreds of miles from civilization, with determined bad guys closing in, in a jungle filled with deadly animals, snakes, and insects. They were fucking lunch on the run.

The only thing ensuring Gideon's and Acadia's safety was himself.

He didn't fucking want the job.

“There's water here.” He indicated a fast-running trickle of golden-brown water running through a mossy crease and disappearing into the foliage. “Let's drink our fill, and catch our breath.”

Acadia hesitated. “I have a SteriPEN to purify the water, but I don't have a container big enough for all of us to drink out of.”

Of course she did.
“Then I guess we'd better hope our shots protect us, because this is the only game in town.”

“I also have iodine tablets.”

“If we want to wait around thirty minutes for them to take effect? Take a risk, or go without a drink. We're not hanging around here that long.”

She drew in a breath. “Right.” Then she sank to the ground and leaned over, cupping her hands. The long golden swath of her ponytail fell into the water beside her face, but she didn't seem to care, just kept drinking.

Jennifer wouldn't have touched that water without someone ensuring it was purified, and preferably bottled and chilled. His wife had thrived on danger and difficult conditions, as long as someone made sure she was safe and had all her creature comforts. She'd sought out filthy places, but hated getting dirty. It was a strange dichotomy Zak had never understood.

The difference between the two women, he thought, feeling a heavy sense of disloyalty, was that Jennifer, while wanting to be here, would've expected someone else to tote her shit, expected someone else to protect her, and expected that when she was tired, Zak—or someone—would make a comfortable camp for her.

Acadia just assessed the situation and kept going.

She was wise to have low expectations with him around. And he knew those expectation were at ground level … for now. Give her a few more hours of trudging through impenetrable vegetation with the very real possibility of getting shot, and the bitching would start. She was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, Zak thought sourly.