Sharpshooter

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Pinpricks of heat shot across her cheeks. “Is that what you did? Because I thought we’d been making love.”

Her mistake.

“We need to finish scouting so we can secure the area. “Now isn’t the time to talk about this.”

Right. Of course. But would there ever be a time when he wanted to talk? “It was more to me,” she said, and turned away.

That was when she realized…all of the chirps and calls had stopped. The jungle was eerily silent around them, and clouds were starting to drift across the surface of the moon, making the shadows even darker.

Sydney brought up her weapon, and she knew Gunner was doing the same. She stepped forward, her body tensing now. Something had changed in the jungle. Shifted.

She and Gunner had been hunting before, but now she had the feeling that they were the prey.

The rebel camp should have been about a mile away. No one should be in their immediate area.

But the brush was so thick and heavy.

Sweat coated Sydney’s back and slicked her fingers as she held her weapon.

Then she heard it. The snap of a twig. Twenty feet to the left. She swung around with her gun.

Another twig snapped.

That snapping came from thirty feet to the right.

Trouble.

She felt, rather than saw, Gunner’s movements as he swung to the right. One word whispered through her mind: surrounded.

Her breath barely left her lungs. She reached up with her left hand and tapped the communicator near her ear. “Alpha One…” Her words were a whisper as she signaled Logan. “We’ve got movement in our perimeter. There’s—”

Footsteps thundered toward them, coming fast and hard. She took aim, ready to shoot, but then she saw the hostage. A man who was being pushed through the jungle, with some kind of brown sack over his head. His hands were bound in front of him, and a gun was pressed to the top right side of that sack, just where his temple would be. A flashlight was held on the man, the better for them to see just what trump card the captors held.

“Deje caer sus armas!” The shout came from the man who held the gun. Drop your weapons.

Sydney took aim at him. “Deje caer sus armas!” She snarled right back at him.

He wasn’t alone. There was another armed man who’d come out from the right side. Sydney had heard his rushing footsteps. Gunner hadn’t fired on him, because, like her, he had to be worried about the hostage.

An innocent getting injured in a firefight wasn’t on the agenda.

But neither was getting captured.

A radio crackled behind her. The other man was calling for backup. If they didn’t do something, soon, this mission was about to go bad.

I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. This is my fault. I should have kept walking, kept searching the area. But I was too caught up in Gunner.

Now they were both in trouble.

The man near the hostage laughed and shook his head. “Voy a disparar contra él.”

I will shoot him. Yes, she’d just bet that he’d shot plenty of men in his time.

“Please!” The broken cry came from the hostage. “Help me!”

“We will,” Sydney promised him, but she wasn’t dropping her gun yet.

Only…a weapon did hit the ground. She turned at the thud. Gunner had tossed away his gun. His hands were up. What was he doing? Surrender wasn’t the way the team operated.

“Sydney?” It was Cale’s voice in her ear. If she could hear him, Gunner could, too. They were all on the same comm link. “We’re coming for you.”

But would he come soon enough?

Gunner walked forward, putting his body before her. Sydney didn’t know if he was protecting her or blocking her shot, but either way, the result was the same.

“No dispare,” Gunner said, voice loud and carrying easily. With the transmitter so close to his mouth, Cale would hear every word and understand exactly what was happening to them. “Puede tener tres rehenes en lugar de dos.”

Don’t shoot. You can have three hostages instead of two.

That was a terrible plan.

But then she felt the cold metal of a gun being shoved against the base of her neck.

It looked as though it was their only plan, for the moment.

Sydney let her weapon drop, and she lifted her hands in surrender.

Cale, hurry up, she thought.

Because she wasn’t sure how much time they had.

HE’D MADE A deadly mistake.

Gunner sat in the old chair, his hands tied behind him, his ankles lashed to the wooden chair legs. A heavy black sack covered his head. When he strained his eyes, he could just make out a form across from him. The shadowy outline of—“Sydney?” he rasped.

“Yes.”

He’d been distracted by her in the jungle. Too aware of her every move. He should have been on the lookout for the enemy, but they’d gotten the drop on him.

On Sydney. As if they were both rookies.

Now the hostage was gone, taken to another tent, and he and Sydney were about to be interrogated.

The last time he’d been interrogated in a South American jungle, he’d had to spend six hours getting enough stitches to close all of the wounds in his body.

Those stitches had been given to him by a relief worker on the edge of a river. There’d been no anesthesia. He’d roared at the pain.

And called Sydney’s name.

Something he’d never told her. What would have been the point?

“It was his voice,” Gunner growled as he yanked against his bonds. “You know it was him.” There were guards right outside their tent. Guards who’d foolishly thought that they’d taken all of his weapons.

Not that Gunner needed a weapon to kill. He was very good with his hands.

As his last interrogators had discovered.

“I—I can’t remember his voice.” Her words were soft. Sad. “It’s been too long for me, Gunner.”

He stilled. That had been his brother’s voice, hadn’t it? Because if it hadn’t, then he’d dropped his gun for no damn reason.

I could have taken them out. But he wouldn’t have been able to do it without hurting the hostage. If that had been his brother, then Slade had already been hurt enough. Gunner wasn’t going to add to the man’s pain.

Gunner cleared his throat. “Are you bound?”

“Tied like a pig, with a sack over my head.”

He’d thought so, but they’d been separated on the way to the camp. Then he hadn’t heard her voice for a while, and he’d…worried. “We’re gonna get out of here.” His comm transmitter was gone. Taken and smashed in the jungle, just as hers had been.

But this camp wasn’t in the location that they’d been told of. Either Logan had been given bad intel or the group had a second and, from the sound of things, much larger base. Because they’d walked east. Been dumped into the back of a vehicle, and they’d zigged and zagged through the jungle before they’d stopped.

Good thing he and Sydney were both equipped with a special GPS locator, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They both had trackers inserted just beneath their skin. Cale and Logan would be able to find them; it was just a matter of time.

“We’ll get out of here,” Gunner told her as he twisted his wrists. The ropes were rough, and he could feel them tearing into his skin. So what if he got cut? The blood would just make it easier for him to break loose.

Then he heard voices outside. The group leader’s voice—that would be the one who’d come for them in the jungle. The one who’d held the hostage and laughed as he stared into Gunner’s eyes.

“Sounds like the fun is about to start,” Sydney said. There was no fear in her voice. She could have been terrified, and he wouldn’t have known. She was in her mission mode now.

“We’ll get out of here.” He needed her to understand that.

He heard the rustle of the tent’s opening. Footsteps came closer. He listened carefully and counted the tread of those footsteps…two men.

One man went to stand behind him.

The other—“You shouldn’t have come into my jungle.” Heavily accented English, and Gunner knew it was the leader. The guy was standing right in front of him. He could make out the outline of the man’s body through the fabric of the sack that covered him.

He could see the guy’s body and see the weapon that the man lifted and pointed toward Sydney. “Coming here was a terrible mistake for you both.”

“Stop!” Gunner barked, heart racing.

Laughter. Low. Sinister. From the man with the gun. The rebel behind Gunner didn’t make a sound.

Rebels…what cause were they fighting for? As far as he could tell, Logan thought this group was little more than drug runners. Weapons dealers.

“I am not going to shoot the señorita yet. Not just yet.” But he still had the weapon near her head. “First, you talk, sí? You tell me all about your team. About the men who think they can come into my jungle and take what is mine.”

The rope cut deeper into Gunner’s wrists. “There is no team. Just us.”

Silence. Then, “I can start by shooting her in the knee, if you want.”

“There is no team!” Sydney snapped at him.

But Gunner didn’t speak. The man’s words were replaying in his head. “I can start by shooting her in the knee.”

“You both wore…what are they? Ah…transmitters of some sort. That means you were talking to someone else.”

“There is no team,” Gunner said woodenly, because that was the response he had to give. When the enemy caught you, you didn’t turn. You didn’t reveal your intel, and you didn’t jeopardize the others still out in the field.

“So sad.” Now the man’s voice had deepened. Behind him, Gunner heard the other rebel shifting from foot to foot. “He must not care for you at all, señorita.”

Gunner yanked on the ropes. They weren’t giving. Not yet.

“I don’t like hurting women. It’s not in my nature, but…” A regretful sigh drifted in the air. “If I do not learn what I must know, there will be no choice for me.”

“Let her go!” Gunner demanded as fury swirled inside him. “That’s the only choice you need to make.”

“No, I need to know about your team. About your…EOD.”

Gunner’s mind whirled. The rebel—no way should he have known about the Elite Ops Division. They were off the books for a reason.

Classified cases. Classified kills.

“How many EOD agents are in Peru?”

“I don’t know what the EOD is,” Gunner told him.

A growl broke from the man behind him, and Gunner felt the blade of a knife slice through the sack and press right against his throat.

“Ah…I’m afraid my companion is more impatient than I am.”

The companion…he’d moved quickly but wasn’t getting a reprimand of any sort by the guy Gunner had pegged as the leader. Unusual. Very unusual. Leaders didn’t usually like it when someone jumped the gun.

Maybe he isn’t the leader.

Maybe the real leader was the man getting ready to slice open his throat.

The man with the knife hadn’t said a word, but the other guy kept talking, throwing out, “Her life doesn’t matter to you, but what about your own? Care to tell us about the EOD…now?”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” The angry words came from Sydney. “We can’t tell you when we don’t know!”

Sydney had been trained not to break, too. They’d both learned how to hold out against torture.