Full Throttle(22)
“You bet your ass,” she told him, although, truthfully, she wasn’t exactly sure. She was reeling from the events of the last hour, all inside out and topsy-turvy. And it was the fact that her head was absolutely spinning that accounted for the tingling sensation in her bicep when he gently grabbed her arm to escort her from the room.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…
Chapter Six
The northern Perak region of Malaysia
Seven hours later…
The rising sun baked the dense jungle air. And with every breath along the mile hike back to the spot where Steady had hidden the sport bike he’d appropriated off the street in Kuala Lumpur, he felt like he was dragging hot soup into his lungs.
Oh, cry me a river… That was Ozzie’s retort the last time Steady complained about the heat while they were slogging through the waterlogged rainforests of Colombia, evading a group of FARC guerrillas bent on introducing the sharp edges of a couple hand-hewn machetes to the blunt parts of his and Ozzie’s necks.
Ozzie…Dios! His best friend was probably on the operating table right now, and how he wished he could be there.
But that was not his mission.
His mission was Abby. And, saints be praised, he’d succeeded in his task because he’d found her. Unconscious and tied to a filthy bed—which was bad enough and made him seriously consider going all John Rambo and taking the entire terrorist encampment, plus the twenty-three men occupying the ramshackle huts, by storm—but she was blessedly, wondrously alive. So he’d forgo the bloodletting in order to hold his position, keep a weather eye on the kidnappers, and wait for the cavalry to arrive and assist him with her rescue. But in order to do that…
He pulled his cell phone from the side pocket of his cargo pants, checking to see that, sí, he still had ten percent battery life and two teensy-weensy bars. Good thing on both counts because the thing he’d forgotten in his haste to get to Abby was his satellite phone. He’d managed to remember the portable charger for his iPhone—which he’d completely used up while downloading the maps and topo charts Boss had emailed him while simultaneously tracking the signals emitted from Abby’s earrings—but the sat phone? It was a classic case of head/desk. If there was a desk around this hellaciously hot jungle on which to slam his head, that is. And he suspected it was all thanks, in part, to Abigail Thompson and the fact that she’d been making him forget himself, his name, everything since day frackin’ one.
The memory rolled over him…
“You know who her father is, right?” he asked his sister as they walked slowly across Georgetown’s Healy Lawn toward the South Gatehouse where they were meeting Rosa’s brand-spanking-new Mini-Me…otherwise known as her protégé for the next two years while the girl was an undergrad.
Jesús Cristo, he was happy he hadn’t signed on for a similar position. Four semesters playing nursemaid and mother to a snot-nosed teenager sounded like his version of the Seventh Circle of Hell.
“Of course I know who he is.” Rosa slid him a look that questioned the validity of his MCAT scores. The warm, early autumn wind blew in over the Potomac, playing with the ends of her jet-black ponytail. “I may have spent the last semester with my head buried in advanced pharmacology texts and pulling forty-eight-hour shifts during clinicals, but I wasn’t hiding under a rock.”
“They say he’s poised to win his party’s nomination,” he continued, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “And if he does, he’ll likely take the whole kit and caboodle, which means you’ll be mentoring the president’s very own daughter.”
Onyx-colored eyes exactly matching his own—except for the application of eyeliner and mascara, of course—turned in his direction. “Do you really think that’s escaped me?”
His chin jerked back as he stopped in the middle of the walk. A young man in a corduroy jacket, Buddy Holly glasses, and carrying a Cordovan-colored shoulder bag mumbled “excuse me” as he darted around them.
“You sly minx,” he laughed. “You agreed to the position because she’s poised to be the next first daughter. And how great would a recommendation from POTUS look on job applications, eh?”
Rosa shrugged and tried to appear innocent. It didn’t work. Then her expression changed, became more somber. “Well, there’s that and the fact that after having spoken to her on the phone a few times, she seemed like a nice kid. Funny, too. She didn’t make my back teeth itch by using the word ‘like’ ten times in one sentence.”