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  Grace frowned at his back and followed slowly. His manner was no less brusque than it had been before they’d had sex. But what did I expect? she asked herself internally as she hurried to catch up to his long strides. The man was here to do his job, which was to protect her from the cartel as he helped her get back to the US. They had enjoyed a mutual release of tension, had used sex to decompress after some seriously stressful situations. Expecting his attitude to change just because they’d fucked was dumb on her part.

  But…he didn’t look at her like some random woman he’d fucked for fun, and the comment about how he could fuck her everyday was telling. Could have just been a dude’s version of a compliment to a good lover, she thought as she brushed aside branches to avoid scratching her face. She didn’t think so, though. She hadn’t been asleep when he’d been watching her, and she’d peeked more than once and caught him. She let him watch and fell asleep after he’d cuddled with her. When she’d wakened with the insane need to pee, both his arms had been wrapped around her and she’d been laying on his chest. She’d had to extract herself gently from his arms, shocked she hadn’t woken him up. And the morning sex had been outrageously delicious.

  Maybe when this is all over, I’ll ask him if he’d like to have dinner, she pondered, watching his form as he stepped over a fallen tree. She scrunched her nose up because she’d prefer he ask her out, and though she wasn’t the type of chick to ask a man out, this one pulled a braver woman out of her. Technically, she’d made the first move the night before. She reflected that either the jungle or this sexy ass man walking in front of her had encouraged her inner naughty chick to emerge from the depths. A smirk played across her lips as she determined she would have a real date with this man, regardless of who asked who.

  Because she was lost in thought, she nearly ran into him when he jerked to a stop in front of her. “What? Why are you stopping?”

  “Shh,” he hissed, ducking behind a copse of trees and dragging her with him.

  Grace pressed her body against the tree and froze, afraid if she moved their position would be given away. She watched Tony, who stared in every direction without moving his head. Fractionally, he began to swivel until he had looked all around them. He straightened after perusing the entire area and looked at her.

  “Someone was here,” he whispered.

  “How do you know?”

  “Two flat tires on the car,” he murmured.

  Grace frowned and peered around the tree at the car. She could barely see it under the brush they’d covered it with, and from this angle, she certainly couldn’t see the tires. Amazed, she wondered how he’d been able to tell.

  “Cartel?”

  “I don’t know, but someone,” Tony commented, his voice still quiet. He gazed between the branches at the sun. “If I remember correctly, there’s a village or town about fifteen miles east. Not the way we need to go, but we won’t make it to the rendezvous without transportation.”

  “How far is the rendezvous?”

  “Fifty miles west.”

  “Shit.”

  He nodded his agreement with her curse. “Hopefully we can steal a car. If not, horses will have to do.”

  The man was all business, talking more to himself than to her. Grace admired his hard jaw and hawk eyes as he continued to scan the area. She forced her eyes away to look around as well. If the cartel had slit the tires, they would still be close and waiting for them to return to the car. If not the cartel, they could still be in danger from random criminals. Either way, she had to focus not on her handsome companion but on her surroundings.

  “So we walk?” she asked.

  Tony looked at her and nodded. “No choice.”

  “Will we make it to the airport in time?”

  “The pilot won’t fly out until he hears from me, so we won’t miss him. Unless the cartel gets to the airstrip first,” he said darkly, his frown frightening as the scar pulled down on his eyebrow.

  “Guess we better get going then,” she said, standing straight and waiting for him to take the lead.

  Tony was scowling when he looked at her, but his expression cleared when his eyes met hers. “You really are an amazing woman.”

  She smiled, her heart warming. More than just fucking, she thought as she said, “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here to protect me.”

  Without warning, he bent and kissed her hard on the lips. When they parted, he remained close to her, smiling slightly. “When this is over, I would like to take you to dinner.”

  He read my damn mind, she thought drunkenly, her grin so big her cheeks hurt. “I’d really like to go to dinner with you.”

  Tomas nodded at Carlos before glancing distastefully at the body in the trunk of the car. Anna had disappointed him, and Carlos had gone with her with orders to kill her should she disappoint again. Her body was dusty and beginning to smell, so Tomas had met him near the gate.

  “Take care of that,” he said to a couple of men behind them, who hurried to the car and lifted the body out of the trunk. They carried it as if it were garbage, and Tomas turned his back, no longer concerned with Anna or her body. “Where have they gone?”

  “I believe they’re headed to the airstrip near Santa Poco,” Carlos told him.

  “Do you know this, or do you think this?”

  Carlos shrugged carelessly. The man was afraid of nothing, one of the reasons Tomas had hired him. But his fearlessness made him hard to control, a fact Tomas did not like.

  “It’s the closest one within a hundred miles,” Carlos answered. “I’m not positive they’re going there, but that’s where I would go.”

  “Hmm,” Tomas hummed, displeasure dashing through his mind. Besides fearlessness, the man possessed an intelligence Tomas didn’t get to see often in his line of work. He’d often wondered about the man’s background but never bothered to ask. “What would you suggest?”

  Carlos shrugged again, his calm eyes on Tomas’. “Send some men to the airstrip to wait. See if they show up.”

  “How long?”

  “A few days,” Carlos said with positivity. “They got a car from Pablo’s house, but the thing was a wreck. I doubt it will get them all the way to Santa Poco.”

  “So they’ll have to find transportation somewhere,” Tomas concluded, his eyes brightening. “What villages and towns are between Pablo’s and Santa Poco?”

  Carlos looked bored as he answered from memory, reciting a dozen names of places Tomas had never heard of, his eyes on the ceiling as he spoke. “Depending on how far they got, they might stop in any of those places.” Carlos returned his eyes to Tomas’. “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Use your network of spies.”

  Tomas scowled and turned away from Carlos to think. He had avoided using the men and women he had all over the countryside. They were paid decently to keep him informed when anything unusual happened, such as two Americans traveling through the villages and towns. His humiliation over losing Grace sat like a heavy weight in his gut, and alerting the network would increase the number of people aware that a damn woman had outsmarted him. However, his choices were slim. If he wanted her back, he would have to suffer the cutting humiliation.

  And she and her friend would suffer doubly for their part in his embarrassment. He waved a hand at Carlos. “I’ll alert the network. You take what men you want and set up at that airfield. I want that bitch and her fucking protector.”

  Chapter 12

  Tony and Grace reached the small town around noon, hot, hungry, and thirsty. The town boasted a well, where they lifted a communal bucket and drank. The place was suspiciously empty, and Grace was apprehensive as she downed what felt like a gallon of water before Tony drank his fill. She stared around the empty street, for there was only one, watching for any movement.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked in a whisper, afraid to raise her voice or attract attention.

  “Not sure,” he answered, glancing in every direction
. “I’m hoping that car over there works.”

  Grace swiveled her head and looked in the direction he indicated. An indistinctive brown car sat near a dilapidated building that didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose. A couple of mongrel dogs lounged on what used to be the porch, but neither of them so much as lifted their heads when Tony walked to the vehicle. With careful steps, he passed them, Grace directly behind him so she could jump in the car should it work. No keys were in the ignition or anywhere in the car, so Tony jerked the panel under the steering wheel open and began attempting to hotwire the car.

  “You know how to hotwire a car?” she asked, awed.

  He glanced over his shoulder, smirking. “In my profession, you pick up certain skills that help you get by.”

  “Stealing cars is a skill you need for your job?” she asked with sarcastic skepticism.

  “Sometimes,” he mumbled as he popped two wires together. Nothing happened, and he cursed before continuing their conversation and his attempt. “I only know how to do it with older cars. The newer ones are computerized.”

  “Ah,” she replied doubtfully as his next attempt was also unsuccessful. She looked around, acting as the lookout for what she was sure would get them in a lot of trouble if someone should see them. Possibly even get them killed, considering they were in Mexico. Eerily, though, not one person had stepped out of or around a building, and she heard no sounds that might indicate a person’s presence. The only living things in the village were the apathetic dogs who hadn’t moved.

  When the car started with a roar, Grace ducked as if she’d been shot at. Tony laughed at her, and she slapped his bicep playfully, her fingers tingling from the impact. “Shut up, ass.”

  “Let’s get going,” he said, and she hurried around the car and hopped in the passenger seat. “We’ve been lucky so far, but somebody has to be around.”

  Grace watched every building as they passed quickly through the town. “I still don’t see anybody. It’s weird.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  A man of few words, she thought with a roll of her eyes. She looked over her shoulder out the back window as they left the town behind them. “Nobody’s following us.”

  “Good.” He kept checking the mirror despite her assurance. He saw her watching him and smiled. “Old habit. I have to check for myself.”

  “I understand that,” she said, adjusting her position to remove the gun from the waistband of her pants as they put the village behind them. “This is terribly uncomfortable.”

  “Better with a holster,” he informed her as he pushed the gas pedal harder.

  “I’m sure.”

  They lapsed into silence, and with nothing else to do, Grace enjoyed a little replay of their fucking while she stared at the empty landscape around them. As her thoughts continued to arouse her, she squirmed in her seat because her pussy had become wet and warm. She glanced over her shoulder to the back seat and wondered if it was big enough for a fun few minutes, but she chastised herself for thinking like a horny teenager. And as that thought left her brain, another comparison to a stupid teenager came to mind.

  He hadn’t worn a condom either time they’d had sex. Her birth control was with her luggage in the hotel in Matamoros, meaning she hadn’t taken it since she’d been kidnapped nearly five days ago. Oh shit, oh shit, she rambled internally, her eyes sliding to him. Before he noticed her freak out, she forced herself to breathe quietly and dropped her hand. Her anger at her own stupidity was mounting, though. She reminded herself that her sister had been off birth control for nearly six months before she got pregnant. Certainly, certainly, she wasn’t more fertile than her sister.

  But twice in a twenty-four-hour period, both with full coming inside her body…she’d put herself in a position to get pregnant with a relative stranger because of an adrenaline surge that caused horniness. Furiously, she glared out the window, willing herself to think rationally. If she ended up pregnant, she wouldn’t know for sure until she was home in the States. She couldn’t get a pregnancy test in the middle of nowhere Mexico, though her period should start in the next two or three days.

  Absolutely nothing you can do about it right now, she thought, and no need to tell Tony. Best to just let it go for now.

  Looking sideways again at Tony, she wondered what he would do should the thought of their carelessness occur to him. He didn’t live a life —or so it seemed— conducive to parenthood. And she didn’t either. She wasn’t even sure she was willing to give up her job as a world-traveling photographer at this point in her life to have a baby. He’d mentioned retiring from his job, but that didn’t mean he wanted to take care of a child while the mother gallivanted across the world.

  With a sigh, she sent a silent prayer to the gods that her body wasn’t reproducing as they drove through the barren countryside of Mexico, running from the cartel. Nausea crept into her stomach, and she felt like vomiting. She’d thought this situation couldn’t possibly get worse, but throw a pregnancy into the mix, and the game certainly changed. If she was pregnant, she would fight to live so her baby would. Her life became insignificant, which meant regardless of whether she was sure or not, she had to survive this.

  “You okay?” Tony asked suddenly, ending the silence abruptly and jarring her into the present.

  “What? Yeah, fine,” she answered quickly, her tone harder than intended. She cleared her throat and said, “Mind if I take a nap? I’m exhausted.”

  “Not at all. We’ll be on the road for at least an hour,” he commented, tossing a smile in her direction. “Hopefully we’ll be able to find some food.”

  “Yeah, that’d be good,” she murmured, turning so she faced the passenger window. She met her eyes in the reflection and felt like crying. She reevaluated her previous thought. She could one hundred percent stop traveling to dangerous places, whether she was pregnant or not. She didn’t want to have to survive another ordeal.

  Her eyes wouldn’t close; sleep eluded her, but she pretended to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to face the reality that she had made multiple mistakes that had put her in this position. She’d do whatever Tony told her to get out of this, but the thought of pregnancy weighed on her.

  “This place we’re going, does it have a store?”

  “A store?” Tony repeated, looking at her strangely. “Why?”

  Grace thought quickly and responded in the best way to make a man stop prying. “I’m probably going to need some tampons…”

  “Oh.” Tony looked straight ahead, not looking at her as if he might be embarrassed. She rolled her eyes again as he said, “I bet in Santa Poco there will be something. I was planning to send the message to the pilot and go straight to the airstrip, but we can stop at a store.”

  “We need food anyway,” she reminded him, and he nodded. They fell into another silence. She was grateful.

  If Santa Poco had a store, they might have pregnancy tests available. If she knew for sure, one way or the other, she could move forward. This is dumb, she griped. It’s not really important if you know right this second if you’re pregnant. But she had to know, and know she would, hopefully that afternoon, assuming a store in small town Mexico would have the quick response kind of test.

  By the time they reached Santa Poco, around three in the afternoon, Grace had somewhat made peace with the idea of being pregnant. She was thirty-two, and she’d given herself until the age of thirty-seven to have a baby or go without. This wasn’t the ideal situation, but she’d figure it out, always had. Her life motto was “I’ll figure it out.”

  Santa Poco was more like a small city, with a downtown area, hotels, stores, and lots of businesses, restaurants, and homes. Grace was so grateful to see some type of civilization she nearly sobbed.

  Tony drove as if he knew his way around, and Grace asked, “Have you been here before?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know where to go?”

  “Knew we’d end up here, so I memorized the map,” Tony said,
turning into the parking lot across the street from a library.

  “Do you have a photographic memory?” she asked, astonished. More than once, he’d mentioned he’d memorized something.

  “It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close.”

  “Amazing,” she murmured and glanced at the windshield as he turned the car off. “Why are we at a library?”

  “Safest place to send a message to the pilot.” He alighted from the car and grabbed his backpack to carry with him. He glanced her way and said, “Tuck the pistol into the back of your pants at the small of your back. Less obvious there.”

  Grace nodded and felt like she was the bad ass star in a bad ass movie. She made sure her oversized shirt covered the gun, then wiped her front to rid herself of some of the dirt. “We look awful,” she criticized.

  “Probably don’t smell too good, either,” Tony commented. She scowled at him, and he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll send the message, and we’ll see if we can find a motel that rents by the hour.”

  “Food,” Grace reminded him as they hurried across the street.

  “Yes.” He reached for and clasped her hand in his as they entered the library, a gesture that surprised her.

  The man at the counter in the library looked them up and down, a small look of distaste on his face before he evened his expression. “Americans?”

  “Yes,” Tony asked, his voice pitched higher and less threatening. He glanced at a nameplate on the desk. “Senor Garcia, I’m so glad you speak English.”

  “I’m also American but returned to my family’s roots to open this library,” the man said proudly.

  “That’s amazing,” Tony said, and his voice sounded like he meant it rather than didn’t care, as Grace suspected.

  She stared at him. This was a different person holding her hand and speaking to the librarian. Amazed by his acting ability, she made sure she smiled with an exhausted expression as the librarian’s eyes flitted to her.