Night Rescuer

“Uhh, yes,” the guy answered, startled.

“Then take me to him right away. Some idiot bandits are out here chasing me around. We need to get to Huayar’s camp right away where we’ll be safe.” She commenced dragging him in the opposite direction from the camp.

“Where are you going, lady? The camp’s this way.”

She gave him her best surprised look. “Really? No wonder I couldn’t find it.” She let a complaining tone creep into her voice. “I’ve been wandering around out here in this godforsaken jungle all day trying to find him. You’d think if he wanted me to visit him he’d have given me better directions than just some latitude and longitude coordinates.”

“Uhh, right. This way.” Her captor took the lead, falling easily into the role of guide to her.

Perfect. No way did she want to enter Huayar’s turf dragged in by his men like some helpless prize. She was walking in, head held high, free and on her own terms. It was a small victory, but every win would count against her adversary.

Light began to flicker between the trees. Shouting voices converged around her. Two dozen bandits all toting rifles emerged from the woods as word spread that she’d been found.

The trees gave way to a clearing ringed by shacks in various stages of disrepair. A bonfire burned in the center of the space, and a bloody, battered man lay by it, his arms tied behind his back. She couldn’t make out his features clearly, but he was small and wiry and dark-skinned…thank God…not John or Mike or her dad. The man pacing, lionlike, on the far side of the fire caught and riveted her attention. How could that be anyone but Huayar himself?

Rage and power rolled off the man in waves that seemed to bodily hold his people back from him. Or maybe they were just scared of the bastard. Show no fear. Show no fear…

All of a sudden, the bandits crisscrossing the woods around John reversed direction like a school of fish darting away from a predator. They turned as one and streamed back toward Huayar’s camp.

Hell. They’d captured Melina.

Terror blossomed in his chest, and a desperate need to leap up and save her all but gave away his position to the last of Huayar’s men. A steady stream of curses flowed through his mind, and he beat back the litany by force of will, grinding his brain into gear in spite of the panic choking it.

He couldn’t rush after her. Huayar’s trap had caught one of his prizes, but not both of them. If Melina was to have any chance at all of surviving, he had to remain out here. To bide his time. Wait for his chance. It was their only hope.

Using every trick of stealthy movement he’d ever learned, he eased back toward Huayar’s camp. He had to see what was going on, get the lay of the land, look for further traps. It took him only a few minutes to work his way to the edge of the trees where they dissolved into the limestone face of the cliff behind the camp. He peered out from behind the trunk of a massive fir tree at the scene below.

A groan rose in the back of his throat and he only barely managed to prevent it from escaping his lips.

“You’re late,” Huayar growled.

“You give lousy directions,” Melina retorted.

The bandit’s head jerked in what looked like equal parts offense and surprise. He studied her more closely. “Where’s your soldier boy? He should have been able to bring you right to me.”

She shrugged. “I got rid of him after the last village. He didn’t want to hike in here on foot. Told me it was too dangerous. So I told him to get lost.”

Huayar’s intelligent gaze drilled into her, measuring the truth of her words. She crossed her arms and assumed a waiting stance. John had warned her not to be rude or belligerent with the guy, and she schooled her face not to show her thoughts. He strolled over to the bloody man lying on the ground and kicked him viciously in the kidneys. The guy didn’t flinch. Unconscious. “Take this sack of garbage out in the woods and shoot him. Nobody steals from me.”

Two of Huayar’s men ran forward and grabbed the bound man by his armpits. Every fiber in her being screamed for her to beg for the man’s life, to do something to save the guy. But there was nothing she could do. Huayar held all the cards. All she had going for her were her wits and the desperate hope that John could figure out some way to help her and her family against these overwhelming odds.

Where are you, John? She prayed silently that he was safe and well away from this fiasco. But somehow, she didn’t think that was the case.

She started as Huayar’s voice cut across her thoughts harshly. “So, you are here now. You will show my men how to make this new drug you have invented.”

“Look. I’ve tried to tell you people over and over that the formula is not perfected. It’s not anywhere near refined enough for human consumption. It will take months of lab work to finalize the recipe.”

“You will tell me the formula now. My people will do any necessary refining.”

Yeah, she’d bet. They would randomly screw around with the mixture until they found one that didn’t immediately kill the victims they tried it on and would call it good. How many people would die before they stumbled on the right mix of ingredients? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand, maybe?

“That’s not the deal we made. My family goes free. They walk out of here and I receive confirmation that they are back home safe and sound before I tell you a thing.”

Huayar’s hand flashed out. He slapped her viciously across the face almost before she saw it coming. Her cheek exploded in fiery pain and her neck ached from the unexpected snap of her head to the side. Ohgod, ohgod. Show no fear.

She straightened, checking her teeth on that side with her tongue to see if any were loose. She tasted blood. “Slapping me around does nothing to endear me to you, Geraldo. If we’re going to be colleagues, we’re going to have to establish some ground rules, here.”

“Coll-” Huayar broke off, obviously startled. He glared at her as if he wanted to rip her skin back and peer directly into her brain.

She did her damnedest not to give away a thing beneath the intensity of his scrutiny. “That’s right. Colleagues.” Time to drop a whopper on the guy and shake him up a little. “You don’t seriously think you’re the only person who’s approached me with some sort of business proposition, do you? I studied the market and analyzed you and your competitors long before you resorted to a sophomoric stunt like kidnapping my family.”

Jaws dropped all around the fire. Huayar looked skeptical, but rattled. Definitely rattled.

“I had narrowed it down to you and one other…corporate entity…already.”

“Who was the other?”

She gave him the name of one of Colombia’s most notorious drug lords. The only reason she knew the man’s name at all was because she’d heard it dropped at a security meeting within her pharmaceutical firm as someone who would kill to get the formula she was developing. Too bad the same security meeting hadn’t included implementation of protective measures for her family. If it had, none of them would be in this pickle now.

Huayar’s eyes narrowed in hatred. He must know the drug lord she’d named.

“I will have the formula from you. Now.”

She answered evenly. “You will have the formula when my family is out of here. And it’s not like you can’t continue to use them for collateral against my continued cooperation. Your people can kill them just as easily in Mexico City as they can here.”

Huayar actually seemed to consider that. He paced back and forth on the far side of the fire for several minutes.

A gunshot rang out in the woods. She jumped about a foot in the air, then said a silent prayer for the soul of the nameless man. At least he wasn’t in any more pain. Perhaps death wasn’t the worst fate out here.

Thank goodness she’d talked John out of handing himself over to Huayar to be tortured to death. The thought of having to endure John being mutilated, to hear him screaming in pain like that…nope. She wouldn’t have been able to do it. She cared for him far too much for that.

“I need a show of good faith. Give me the list of ingredients for this new drug you have designed.”

Her attention swung back to Huayar. Score two points for the guy. He was capable of being reasonable. She weighed how far she dared push him. “Do you have a chemist here?”

“You said the ingredients were readily available. Over the counter.”

“They are. But several of them, if handled improperly, could blow this place into last week.”