“Good point,” she admitted, turning to see Yonus standing between two of the huge brown roots of the jungle giant growing next to the one she and Carlos were hiding behind. He was flattened face-first against the mammoth trunk, his arms spread, his fingers desperately gripping the bark like he was afraid the thing might suddenly decide to fly away.
“What is h-happening?” he asked, his voice low and raspy, yet perfectly audible given the two loud, obnoxious gun blasts had resulted in an eerie, almost malevolent silence descending over the jungle. The buzzing insects, chirping birds, and calling monkeys were quiet, as if they knew lives were hanging in the balance and waited breathlessly to see what the outcome would be.
“We’re being targeted by JI militants,” she said, sorry as hell to see the sweet young man dragged into her own personal shitstorm. And add one more item to my long list of Things to Feel Awful About. Luckily, Carlos was standing next to her, no doubt formulating some sort of brilliant, super-secret spy-guy plan to foil the militants.
“But Carlos here is a special operations warrior,” she added. “He’s like Superman, Batman, and Captain America all rolled into one.”
“That may be pushing things,” Carlos muttered, taking a peek from behind the trunk, only to duck back quickly when a loud pop and a whiz sounded right before a bullet slammed into the road in front of them.
Yonus tried licking his lips. But the way his tongue stuck told her he had that whole high-noon, desert-dry mouth thing going on. Weird how terror and confusion had that effect on the human body. “I th-thought you said he was a doctor,” he hissed.
“He’s that, too,” she assured him, comforted, despite their current predicament, by the feel of Carlos’s back muscles flexing against the fingers she’d tucked into his waistband. “A man of many talents.”
The whites of Yonus’s eyes blazed in the dark shade of the overhead canopy, and it was obvious he didn’t share her confidence that Carlos would be able to get them out of their current predicament alive. But that’s only because he didn’t know Carlos. If he did, he’d know that Shadow Man was a few minutes away from being turned into crap on a cracker.
“What do the Jemaah Islamiyah want with both of you?” Yonus asked, his chest rising and falling with rapid-fire breaths.
“Not Carlos,” she whispered. “Just me.”
“What do they want with you?”
“Leverage,” she said, taking a page from Carlos’s Book on Brevity.
Yonus frowned. “How could they possibly use you as leverage?”
“Because I’m the daughter of the president of the United States.” I mean, she figured it was only fair Yonus knew exactly what he’d gotten involved in.
“Oh, no,” he husked, but didn’t have time to elaborate because right then, Shadow Man called out from his hiding spot.
“Give us the woman and no one has to die!”
Alrighty then. Sure. And where had she heard that before? Oh, yes. It was a line in every B-rate thriller movie. The kind where everyone—or nearly everyone—ended up dead by the closing credits regardless of any promises made by the villain.
“The only one who’ll be dying here, pendejo,” Carlos called back, “is you and any rat-faced fucker you brought with you!”
Rat-faced? Hmmm. All right, so given Shadow Man’s beady black eyes and long, skinny nose, she could maybe see the resemblance.
“Your one gun,” Shadow Man retorted, a hint of arrogance in his tone, “against my four!”
A second passed. Then two. “Did he really just give away how many men he has with him?” Carlos whispered incredulously, almost to himself.
“And I have more men coming!” Shadow Man quickly added, forcing Abby to wonder if that was the truth or if he’d simply realized his mistake and was looking for a way to cover it. “Send out the woman now, and no one gets hurt!”
Carlos listened to the response with his head cocked in such a way that she knew he was busy getting a bead on Shadow Man’s location. See…straight up superhero stuff. “I don’t believe you!” he yelled back. “You already tried to kill her by the river! You were shooting at us with everything you had!” Again he cocked his head, waiting for the response.
“A mistake made by my overzealous compatriots, I assure you!”
“And when you took a shot at her now?”
“Not her!” Shadow Man called. “You! You know as well as I that the woman is no good to me dead! Just send her out!”
She swallowed, curling her fingers more tightly around his waistband. He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, cariño. I’ll get you out of this.”