“Get ready!” He yelled, as he tapped the brakes and yanked at the steering wheel.
Peta didn’t understand, but threw her hands out at the dashboard, anyway. Then, she saw a second vehicle moving out from her side of the jungle, blocking the road.
Somehow, Jason realized the ambush was coming, but it wasn’t soon enough. It had been set up to occur in the middle of a sharp curve, and as he attempted to avoid the obstacle, they were forced to veer toward a massive tree.
They were already braking, and the tires locked up as they went into a wild skid. Jason turned into it and would have brought them to a controlled stop…but they were out of room.
The impact was sudden and crushing. The air was knocked from Peta’s lungs as the space was filled with the sounds of screams and tortured metal. She was aware of the rifle cutting into her hands, braced against the dash. The seatbelt felt like it was tearing her in half. She lost all orientation, and the sense of weightlessness overcame her as the Jeep left the ground and rotated, taking them all with it.
She was upside-down. Suspended, her face pressed into the frame of a window.
Drip…drip…drip.
Moans. A grunt from somewhere further away.
Drip…drip…drip.
Peta was conscious, but the simple sound tore her from the present and thrust her back into the scene from her nightmares with enough force to disorient her. She was trapped back there. In the wreckage of her memory.
Drip…drip…drip.
The blood. So much blood, pooling beneath her face.
She tried to turn her head. Couldn’t.
Whimpering, Peta forced herself to look over toward the driver’s side of the crushed car. Where her fiancé had been. Where she should have been that night, if it hadn’t been for a penchant to celebrate too much.
A hand.
His hand. With the silly mood ring she’d bought him earlier that day still on his thumb.
The coppery smell of blood filled her nostrils, mixed in with hot oil and gasoline.
She had to look.
Crying out from the pain it invoked, Peta turned her head just enough to follow the hand to his arm, and to…
Gasping, Peta closed her eyes against the imagery of what was left of his face, entangled with the steering wheel in impossible ways.
Drip…drip…drip.
The darkness was a welcome escape. The darkness into the deep recesses of her mind where she didn’t have to think about anything. Her lips moved as she accepted the truth that he was gone. “Ken.”
“Peta!”
Ken? No, that wasn’t his voice.
A banging and then grinding sound as things were pulled and shoved.
That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what happened. She had lain there, trapped in the wreckage with his body for hours before someone found them.
“Peta!” Someone was touching her face. She tried to open her eyes, but the layers of reality were thick and hard to navigate. Were they open? She thought she saw shadows.
A barking dog.
“Devon!” A boy’s voice.
The pressure against her chest was relieved, and someone was holding her shoulders. “Ken?” No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be Ken, he was—
“Peta, listen to me. Listen to my voice and breathe with me.”
She knew the voice. It wasn’t Ken, but Peta trusted him. She breathed.
“There you go,” he encouraged.
Hands on her face again, touching her scar. The scar. From the past. From over five years ago. Then how—
Peta opened her eyes then, and saw Jason staring earnestly at her, blood smeared across his forehead. She wasn’t in Australia, on a backcountry road. She was in Suriname, South America. They’d been driving—
Gasping, she reached up and clasped the hands on her face, further grounding herself.
“Peta,” Jason urged. “I need you to move. Can you do that?”
Move. They were being chased. Taking another shuddering breath, the recent memories came flooding back and her vision sharpened. The ambush. The accident.
Adrenaline coursed, and Peta pulled at his hands as her eyes widened. “Is everyone okay? What—” His hands fell away and she looked around, searching for the others.
She was outside the Jeep, draped against Jason’s bent knee and cradled protectively. She could move. Pain radiated from her right arm and chest, but she thought she could move.
“They’re okay,” Jason whispered, helping her to sit up on her own. He pulled at something, and she saw the AR drag across the ground toward him. “You have to get to the trees.”
Marty ran up to them, followed closely by Tyler and Devon. Peta couldn’t tell how badly they were hurt in the muted light of the shattered headlights from the Jeep, but Devon was limping.
“They’re coming,” Eddy barked, from where he was kneeling by the wreckage, holding the other rifle.
Half-dragging her, Jason led Peta behind the tree they’d crashed into and pushed her down behind it. “Stay here and don’t come out, no matter what happens.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer before he sprinted away in a low crouch. As Peta watched him run toward the approaching danger, she knew with certainty that her past was finally buried where it belonged. That woman was gone, that life was gone, and the man had been gone for a long time.
Reaching behind her, she felt along the waistline of her jeans until her hand encountered the holster she’d gotten used to wearing, nestled in the small of her back. The Glock was still there. Unholstering the gun, she pushed away from the tree and crept forward until she had a clear view of the road. She wasn’t about to hide while the only people left in her life came under fire.
The only people she cared about.
Chapter 29
JASON
Libi Nati Preserve
Suriname, South America
Jason grabbed
