Storm Warning (Security Specialists International Book 4) (30 page)

“Bloody hell, doll.” Dawn looked around and then spotted her. “You don’t mess around.”

Relief at seeing Dawn had DJ going weak for a split-second, then she rose and joined the petite woman.

“Let’s hide him before anyone else happens by.” DJ picked up Salazar’s arms and began to pull him off the path and under the ferns. Dawn helped by dragging one of his legs.

“Check him for any weapons we might be able to use,” DJ said. “I’m not pulling my knife out of him.” The blood had mostly been contained inside his chest cavity, and she planned to keep it that way. As far as she could tell, she only had a bit of blood splatter on her hand and arm. She wiped that off with some dewy fern leaves.

“Here’s another knife,” Dawn handed it to her. “You need this gun?” She held up a Glock.

“No.” She slipped the knife into her scabbard. “Why’d you follow us?”

Dawn shrugged. “Since I had to go out this way to get to that Crocker person anyway, I thought I would lag behind and make sure Salazer wasn’t just bringing you out here to shag you.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t expecting good things to happen when he led me to an outside exit either.” DJ replaced her Taser in her purse and retrieved her phone. First, she signaled Conn with the code for FUBAR, then pulled up Ace’s tracker signal. “Shit. Ace is well off the resort property and in the jungle proper. They must have a well-hidden facility, because Ace and I saw nothing out there but trees, rocks, and cenotes.”

“Well, let’s go get him and get the fuck out of this place. My makeup is melting.” Dawn pulled at her eyes and tossed something away. “Hate fucking contacts.” Her pale green eyes glittered like cat’s eyes in the low-level path lighting. “What are you waiting for?”

DJ looked back toward the resort, warring obligations tearing her apart. She wanted to get Ace away from O’Riley before the Irishman realized Salazar wasn’t coming, but Ace would want her to cover their asses on their presence here. The stuff in their suite wasn’t important and had nothing that could identify them. Ace’s computer, however, was a dangerous piece of evidence to be left behind.

“Dammit. I forgot about Ace’s laptop.” She looked into the jungle in the direction of Ace’s signal and then again at the resort and then said, “Fuck it.”

Phone in hand with the tracking app live on the screen, she turned and moved quickly away from the building at a lope, thankful she’d worn flats to dinner. “By the time anyone can break the encryption, Keely and Ace will have changed it.”

Dawn trotted alongside her on the path, which was just wide enough to hold two people side by side. “No worries, doll. I sort of removed his hard drive and mine.” She patted a buttoned pocket on the leg of her baggy black pants. “Hope he’ll share his intel with Interpol.”

“He will.” DJ’s phone vibrated. She pulled up the text. “Good news. Conn is already on his way in response to my SOS. He’ll meet us at the coordinates of Ace’s GPS signal. Bad news is, he’ll have to land the chopper farther away from the coordinates than he’d like. He’ll have a hike to meet us.”

“Then we’ll just have to get your Ace and then hike to meet up with this Conn person,” Dawn said.

DJ switched back to the tracking app. She stopped and then turned slightly south. In the filtered light from the full moon, she could see an area that was more trampled than most and looked as if some branches had been trimmed away. Not a groomed path, but one used a lot. It headed off in a direction she and Ace hadn’t explored.

“Ace is two hundred meters, southwest of this main path. The app indicates he’s below ground.” Fear skittered down her spine, then she mentally got a hold of herself. He wasn’t dead since his tracker would cease working if his heart had stopped.

Was he buried alive to scare him into signing on with Oraio? Was he chained up in some cave, hurt and in pain?

Stop torturing yourself. Make a plan to get him out.

DJ looked at Dawn whose expression was grim. Most likely, the Interpol agent was mentally running much the same scenarios as DJ.

“Okay, if he’s being held underground, that means there might be only one way in and out. Much easier for them to defend,” said DJ. “We’ll need more firepower than the two of us have. We need Crocker now. He’s just east of here. We can’t wait on Conn.”

Dawn held up a cell phone with a GPS program on it. “I’ll get the Crocker bloke. I programmed in the coordinates you gave me. Give me the ones where we need to meet you.”

DJ took Dawn’s phone and programmed Ace’s tracker coordinates into it and handed it back.

“You going to do the smart thing and wait for backup?” Dawn asked.

As much as DJ wanted to rush into where they held Ace and free him, she knew that was the surest way to get both of them killed. “I’ll wait. I’ll reconnoiter the area. Find the entrance. Make note of the security measures.” Which translated to, take out perimeter guards to make ingress and egress easier.

“Take the fuckwits down hard, DJ.” Showing Dawn knew exactly what DJ planned on doing while the agent made her way to Crocker’s camp. “Me and this Crocker bloke will be back soon. At least, I’m dressed for tromping through the jungle.”

DJ grimaced at the long skirt, now torn and dirtied. “That can be fixed.” She used Salazar’s knife to cut off the dress at her knees. She tossed the extra cloth into the underbrush.

Dawn laughed harshly. “That’ll work. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Be careful,” DJ said.

Dawn waved a hand before she blended into the jungle.

DJ wished she were wearing all Goth black and motorcycle boots like the petite brunette, but arm candy didn’t get to look like a punk rocker. She wished she had something to darken her exposed skin so she could blend into the jungle more easily. She’d use dirt, but was concerned about the poisonous insects that lived in the jungle floor detritus. She wouldn’t do Ace any good dead.

Ignoring the branches pulling at the remnants of her designer silk dress and scraping her exposed skin, she moved into the undergrowth to lessen the chance of someone spotting her pale skin on the rough pathway. She had her knife in one hand.

With her inborn sense of direction leading her, DJ moved as swiftly and steadily as the terrain and filtered moonlight allowed toward the coordinates on the tracker. She’d placed the cell phone with its tell-tale lit screen into her purse slung across her chest. As she moved around trees and clambered over limestone rock formations, she pulled the phone out several times to make sure Ace’s tracker hadn’t moved.

The night jungle was noisy with bird calls, insects buzzing—and wasn’t she glad Ace had insisted on refreshing her DEET before the open-air dinner—and the coughing cries of jaguars hunting a meal. She also kept a close lookout for snakes of both the two-legged and reptile kind.

When she stopped once again to check coordinates, she smelled a sign of humans. Cigar smoke. A raspy cough of a heavy-duty smoker sounded like a gunshot in the night jungle and alerted her in which direction and approximately how far ahead the smoker was.

Had to be a perimeter guard—a careless one at that. Her Army trainer would’ve put any soldier on report who gave his position away by something as stupid as smoking.

DJ stopped moving and hunkered down. Motionless, she slowed her breathing, ignored the dive-bombing insects, the skittering of some small creature she’d disturbed, and focused all her senses in the direction of the cough. There it was again. Now, she spotted the glow of the thick ash on the end of the man’s cigar as he moved closer to her position.

Before eliminating the guard from the equation, she needed to confirm he was alone. The knowledge that with each second she and the others delayed was one more second that Ace was held in captivity twisted her up inside and made her want to howl. Then the words of one of her drill sergeants came to her: “You don’t rush in and throw a teacup of water on a fire. You wait for your team and pour gallons of water on the fucking fire.”

Still it was hard to sit still.

He’s alive. Oraio needs him alive and able to work.

That fact was the only thing that kept her somewhat sane. If they’d hurt him, she’d go Rambo on their asses.

Hell, who was she kidding? She’d go Rambo on their asses for daring to take him from her. She hadn’t gone through her whole life, waiting for the perfect man, to lose him to a bunch of criminal assclowns.

The guard hacking up his lungs walked her way.

Come to momma.

Every sense and her gut told her he was alone—for now. She clenched and unclenched the hilt of her knife and waited.

The guard came closer. Now she could see his face in a beam of moonlight. It was Rossi!

The Albatross carelessly balanced an AK-47 in one arm as he used his other hand to hold his cigar to his lips. Though totally inept as a guard, the bastard was huge and wouldn’t be easy to take down without a fight. Plus, she had no idea of how many other perimeter guards might be on patrol and how far apart they were spaced. She needed to take him down as fast and as quietly as possible.

She’d be taking a huge risk, but the Albatross had to be eliminated from the equation. Not only because he was between her and getting Ace back alive, but also because he was an abomination and a danger to all women everywhere.

DJ didn’t fool herself. Rossi wouldn’t go down as handily as Salazar. Her knife while the more quiet method was more dangerous for her. There was a lot of fat and muscle to get through on Rossi’s torso, and she didn’t think she could easily hold him and manage to slit his throat. The man was a beast and could easily turn her weapon against her, using his superior strength.

The best weapon for the job would be the Taser. Yeah, it was noisier, but far less so than a gun. She’d seen Tasers take down far bigger guys than Rossi. He’d be helpless and then she could use her knife.

Even as the alternatives flew through her mind, her body prepared for battle. The adrenaline rush had her heart pumping. She took deep breaths to focus her mind and to oxygenate her blood for the burst of energy she’d need to take the bull of a man down. She slipped the knife back into her thigh scabbard and carefully pulled the Taser from her purse.

When Rossi was less than a meter away from her, he paused, looked around, then unzipped his pants and aimed his cock into the undergrowth. His back was mostly to her. He was as vulnerable as a man could be at that moment.

DJ aimed for a fleshier part of his back and shot. Rossi must’ve sensed something since he turned just as she depressed the trigger. The barbs missed his huge back. One barb lodged in the biceps on one arm; the other barb missed him completely.

Rossi’s roar of rage sounded like that of a grizzly bear on a rampage. The electrical shock while enough to piss him off and cause him some impaired motor skills hadn’t taken him down.

Shit, shit, shit.

As she rose, DJ dropped the Taser and pulled her knife, then lunged for the angry, disoriented giant. She leapt onto his back and wrapped one arm around his thick neck and hung on as he twisted and turned in an attempt to dislodge her. She sliced at his chest and arms; his blood coated her skin. But he only fought harder.

Her attempt to cut off his oxygen wasn’t working. His neck was too thick, and she had a hard time keeping the needed pressure on his carotid. She couldn’t slice his carotid since every time she raised her knife, he moved and threw off her aim.

However, thank you Jesus, she got enough pressure on his throat to mute his shouts of rage. Now, he merely snorted and snarled as he used his one good arm to attempt to pry her arm off his neck.

In one violent motion, she was thrown to the ground. She fell on her back, momentarily stunned, as the jungle swam in and out of her vision above her.

Stay conscious. Stay conscious
.

With a harshly muttered “fucking bitch,” Rossi staggered over, then fell on her. He covered her like a living avalanche. For a second or a minute or maybe longer—she couldn’t tell she was too busy attempting to breathe—he lay on top of her, his fetid breaths coming in ragged gasps. His weight was intolerable. She wanted him off her … now. Then his cock, still exposed from his interrupted call of nature, moved over her mound thinly covered by the remnants of her dress and a silk thong.

A dark whirlwind from the depths of her mind took her over. The past became the present. The Belizean night jungle became the banks of a West Virginian creek on a hot summer night. Rossi’s hips moved and became Varney’s.

A mewling cry made it past her lips. Her stomach heaved. She went still beneath the mass moving on top of her, hiding in her mind. Her body frozen into inactivity just as it had all those years ago.

When Rossi used his one good arm to tear open the bodice of her gown and grab a breast, she turned her head to the side and retched.

Rossi cursed and moved away from her. She could now move her arms. Could catch a breath. Could think again.

Fuck this. Fuck the past.

Ace needed her. She refused to be a victim, and she sure as hell wouldn’t let a specter from her past cause harm to her Ace.

As Rossi knelt over her, his feral gaze took in her torn gown and her now-bared breasts. She used his distraction and swung up her hand still holding the knife. Praying she could do enough damage to take the big man down, she shoved the blade under the ribs and into his chest cavity as far as it would go and then ruthlessly twisted.

A look of surprise on his face, Rossi grunted as he grabbed for her knife-arm, but he couldn’t hold on. Her arm was too slippery with his blood as it ran down from the wound in his torso. From the amount of blood spilling from around the knife’s entry point, she’d hit one of the heart’s arteries.

Face pale with shock and pain, Rossi began to weave from side-to-side.

DJ let go of the knife and found enough energy to shove him, just as he tilted. She managed to wiggle out from between his thighs as he tipped over, away from her. When his body hit the jungle floor, she swore she could feel the vibrations, just as she might from a giant tree being felled. She lay for a second or two, silently crying from a mixture of pain and relief and gasping for each and every breath.