On Thin Ice (7 page)

He’d been the one to kill Father Pascal. She’d listened to him brag about it, and he’d known perfectly well that she’d understood enough of what he was saying. How the old man had said his rosary until Carlos had used the machete on his throat. How he would have hacked the old man’s hand off first, the one clutching the beads, but one of the women kept beating at him.

He’d taken care of her as well, ancient piece of tail that she was. As the light in her eyes dimmed she’d known it was Carlos, the boy she’d ordered around and known from infancy, who was fucking her as she died.

Beth had gagged then, listening to his triumphant words. His eyes had gleamed at her, and his mouth had formed the words, “you’re next.”

No, she’d lie down for MacGowan long before she let Carlos near her. It was that simple, and MacGowan knew it.

But it would also be under duress, no matter what the man’s inflated opinion of his own irresistibility was. But it was better the devil you knew . . .

She heard the soft rustle in the underbrush, and she was instantly awake. The afternoon sun was getting low, sinking down behind the mountains, which meant they were heading east. She wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice. She sat up, trying to be as quiet as possible, as she listened carefully to the soft sounds above the rushing water.

It was probably just the wind through the dense growth. She held very still, but the sound of her heart hammering in her chest was louder than the rustle of leaves. She must have imagined it. And then she heard it – a soft, metallic sound. One she couldn’t identify, but it made her skin crawl. Something was wrong.

There were no voices. No sound of footfalls. Nothing but the rustle of the wind through the leaves.

Had he abandoned her? Taken the others and gone, leaving her alone to either survive or end up as one of Carlos’s victims? The thought of being abandoned in this mountainside jungle was beyond frightening, but she refused to let the familiar fear seep through her. As long as she kept putting one foot in front of the other she’d survive.

But if he had left her she needed to do everything she could to catch up with them. She rose to her feet, slowly, her aching muscles screaming in protest. And then she froze.

She was more than average height – just about five-nine in her stocking feet, and the thick jungle growth only came up to her shoulders. She could see them moving through the deepening shadows. Four men, one barely grazing the top of the bushes. Carlos and three others. She ducked down, mercifully silent, praying they hadn’t seen her. They didn’t slow in their determined progress toward the edge of the ravine. They were going after MacGowan.

Had they already recaptured Dylan and Froelich? Most likely. And MacGowan wouldn’t hear their approach over the noise of the waterfall. She had two choices. She could make a run for it, hoping they wouldn’t be able to find her, hoping she’d be able to make her way down the treacherous mountains on her own.

Or she could try to warn MacGowan.

It really wasn’t any choice at all. If she valued her own comfort and safety she wouldn’t have moved heaven and hell to get to this country, to try to make a difference. And despite MacGowan’s rough demeanor and not-so-veiled threats, he was still one of the good guys, at least compared to Carlos. He’d tried to get her away from her kidnappers, even if it hadn’t been his idea in the first place.

She was no fool – she’d paid very careful attention to where MacGowan had settled down to sleep, in case she needed to get to him quickly. The rebels were moving toward the spot, making as little noise as possible, and if she was lucky she could make it there faster, with time enough for him to hide.

If she was unlucky they’d hear her and shoot into the heavy bushes and kill her, but she wasn’t going to think about that. In the last forty-eight hours she’d had to come face to face with the possibility of her imminent death, and she’d faced it calmly enough. Now was no time to freak out.

She moved swiftly through the underbrush, keeping down, doing her best to jostle as few leaves as possible. She could hear their steady progress and she sped up. The waterfall grew louder and louder, and suddenly the clearing was in sight. She reached the edge, just about to break through, when something slammed her to the ground, something huge and crushing, smashing her face into the dirt as a hand clamped around her mouth.

She knew that hand – it had covered her mouth before. She was getting to know the body as well, heavier than the gaunt frame would suggest. “What the fuck are you doing?” His voice was no more than a breath in her ear. “No, don’t answer that. Do you want to get yourself killed?”

She didn’t bother answering that either. She let her body relax, so that he’d know she’d recognized him, wasn’t going to fight him, and he slowly took his hand away from her mouth.

The soldiers had reached the clearing, and they were arguing, angrily, looking back toward the way they came. She turned her head, just able to see them. “You expect to get out of here, you need to give us MacGowan,” the older man said. “We don’t get him, you go back to the camp.”

“He’s here,” the voice came back. The German accent made it unmistakable. “He must have heard you coming. It’s not my fault if you’re clumsy.”

Carlos was looking at the German out of narrowed eyes. And then, to Beth’s shock, he raised his gun and fired, three times. She couldn’t see Froelich fall, but she heard the thud, just as she saw an older man cuff Carlos along the side of his head. “Stupido! You wait for orders! They could have heard your shots and hidden.”

Carlos looked sullen. “He was of no use to us. He lost us the man and the gringa. Better to leave him here.”

MacGowan levered himself off her body, slowly, and Beth felt a sudden panic. What the hell was he planning to do? She reached out a hand to stop him but he was already gone, circling around the clearing, and she let her face drop against the dirt with a silent groan.

The men kept arguing, only half of the words intelligible to her untrained ears, and she wanted to cover her head with her arms to shut everything out. She could smell death in the thick, hot air, and she wanted to gag. She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, slow, deep breaths, as she tried to shut out what lay in the clearing.

A moment later there was an explosion of sound, gunfire, and she jerked her head up to see MacGowan on the ground with the older man, locked in a furious struggle. Carlos had been knocked back against a tree, and he was lying there, dazed, as the third man circled the combatants, trying to take a shot.

MacGowan’s leg shot out, sweeping the other man, and he went down, hard. MacGowan surged up, leaving the older man unconscious or maybe dead, and leaped onto the second, catching the man’s head in his hands and giving it a quick, vicious jerk. She didn’t need the sound of crunching bones to know he’d broken his neck, killing him instantly.

He rose, looking down at the first man, reaching for the gun in his dead hand, when Carlos came at him, his machete raised high, too quick for MacGowan to stop him.

“No!” Beth screamed, moving on instinct, slamming into Carlos, knocking him off balance before he could hack into MacGowan’s exposed back. Carlos caught her against his skinny body, bringing the machete up to her throat, so tight she could feel it begin to bite into her skin, as MacGowan turned around, the dead soldier’s gun in his hand.

“Let her go, hermano,” he said in rough Spanish. “You can’t win.”

“I’m not your brother,” Carlos spat. “And I think it’s you who are the one who can’t win.”

“Don’t make me kill you. You’re just a kid.” MacGowan’s voice was unutterably weary.

“You shoot me, I go over the falls, and I take her with me. You want to risk that?” Carlos taunted him.

MacGowan shrugged. And pulled the trigger.

Beth felt the recoil of his body before the explosion of sound in her ear, deafening her. The machete dropped, but his grip on her held, and a moment later he sank back, falling into thin air, dragging her with him.

“Shit,” MacGowan said wearily, kicking off the poor remnants of his boots and dropping the gun beside the dead body. And a moment later he dove after her, his body slicing through the heavy rush of water.

It was bitter cold, melted ice from the peaks of the Andes, and the shock took his breath away. He cursed himself all the way down. The force of landing wrong would probably kill her, if she managed to avoid the stone sides of the canyon. The water was so cold she’d go numb in short order and be unable to swim. He was doing this for nothing. Some quixotic gesture that if he’d stopped for a moment to think about it, he would have stayed where he was, mopping up after Froelich.

His body cleaved the water neatly, lessening the shock, though immersion in the icy river was hard enough. He surfaced, looking around him for a body floating face down.

There was one, but it was Carlos, half of his head blown away by the gun he’d taken off the dead rebel. Stupid piece – a nine millimeter was more than enough fire power. He turned in the water, but there was no sign of her, and he dove under, looking for her. She was more than likely dead, but since he’d already done such a damned fool thing he may as well carry through to the end.

He saw her, drifting through the water like a ghost, her long hair loose and flowing behind her, and he kicked out, heading toward her, grabbing her dead arm to drag her body to the surface. Only to find her struggling when he caught her, panic filling her body.

He hauled her to the surface, clamping an arm around her shoulders to keep her above water as he headed toward shore. She took a deep, harsh gulp of air and then began puking water, and he tilted her so she wouldn’t suffocate. He was more than ready to clock her one if she struggled, but even in her panic to breath she seemed to recognize he wasn’t going to hurt her, and by the time he’d hauled them both onto grass she’d stopped coughing up water and had begun to breathe more normally. No mouth to mouth, he thought reluctantly, sprawling on his back while he tried to slow his own labored breathing. The cold water had been bad enough – dragging her body had just about done him in.

He stared up into the late afternoon sky, then closed his eyes again. He’d killed three men today. Izzy, Ramon the sadist, and the new kid who’d arrived yesterday with Miss Priss. It had been a long time since he’d killed anybody, and he may never have killed anyone as young as the one he’d just shot in the head, thanks to the woman lying beside him. He owed her for that. He’d felt the kid coming at him, and he’d been perfectly ready to stop him when she’d interfered. And why the hell had she done it?

 The sky was dark, overcast. November was a month of rains – that was all he needed to make this day perfect. A bloody rainstorm with mudslides. And Hans Froelich’s backstabbing had cut his profit in half. He was going to have to climb back up the cliff and find Dylan, when he’d been secretly hoping he could dump the little monster. It was beginning to look like Beth Pennington was going to end up paying cold hard cash.

He wanted to laugh. As if a piece of ass was worth the kind of rescue money someone like Beth Pennington could afford to pay him. He didn’t need to let her know that. Things worked better if he kept her scared enough to do what he told her to.

That didn’t mean he might not still get a piece of her. If he just put a little effort into it he could have her eating out of his hand. Saving a woman’s life was a powerful aphrodisiac. And he could be down-right irresistible if the mood struck him, for which he thanked his Irish heritage. Not his da, that murdering braggart. But the friends and neighbors who’d tried to look after him when his da went to prison for knocking his wife about once too often, just a bit too hard.

There were times when he wondered if she were still alive. Last time he’d seen her she’d been hooked up to machines, only kept alive because it was a Catholic country, his father locked up in Maze prison. A real republic hero, his da was, dying during the hunger strikes, so that people forgot why he was put in prison in the first place. He still couldn’t hear the accidental clang of trash can lids without being covered in a cold sweat.

Ah, but that was in the past. What mattered was now. He sat up, glancing over at her, wondering if he was going to have to fend off her teary gratitude.

Not likely. She was glaring at him, bless her. “You could have killed me,” she said, her voice raw from the water she’d puked up.

“You’re welcome.” He shoved his mattered hair away from his face and narrowed his eyes. Bloody hell. The icy cold water had plastered her loose shirt against her body, and her nipples were hard, pushing against the cloth. He could warm them, he thought, wondering what she’d do if he tried it. “You’re alive, aren’t you? That little piece of shit would have taken your head off with that machete in another moment. What did you do to make him hate you so much?”

“Nothing. I was his teacher.”

He laughed without humor. “That explains it then. He was too fucking young to die. I owe you for that.”

“He killed Father Pascal. As the old man was praying. And he raped and killed Tia Maria, who helped with the laundry and the cooking. She was in her fifties, a grandmother, and the last thing she saw was him, a child she’d known from infancy. He died too quickly.” Her voice was cold and bitter, and she drew her legs up, pressing her face against her knees.

He could thank her for that, but he wasn’t in the mood to be grateful. The sun had set, the temperature dropping, and his wet clothes were cold and clammy against his skin. “And what the hell were you doing, wandering around in the jungle like that? I told you to stay put. They could have killed you if I hadn’t gotten to you first.”

Faint color stained her pale face. “I was trying to warn you.”

“What?”

“I said I was trying to warn you. I saw them coming and I thought the waterfall would be too loud for you to hear them, and I was trying to find you.”

He stared at her in amazement, not sure what to say. “I hate to tell you this, darlin’ one, but I can save my own life. Next time stay put and wait for me to come for you. I’m not one of your orphans to be rescued.” The color on her face darkened, and he felt a moment’s regret. He pushed it away. “I’m going to need to climb back up and see if I can find Dylan. He’s a pain in the butt but he’s worth too much to leave behind. Unless you have any objections.”