The gun. What had he done with his gun?
Or… oh, God. The gun he’d given her! She’d stuffed it underneath her seat before they left Bogotá, sure it would be of no use.
Audrey looked toward the Jeep, where two other men—boys—were ripping through the contents of the basket Armando’s wife had given her. They stuffed the buñuelos and empanadas in their mouths like they were starving and filled their pockets to bulging with the fruit. When they found the sheet with Bryson’s itinerary, the smaller of the two called out to Mr. Interrogator, who stopped frisking Gabe to read it. They’d called him Cocodrilo. She could see how he came by the nickname. He had dark, beady eyes, a long nose, and a prominent brow that resembled the ridges over a crocodile’s eyes.
Cocodrilo scowled at the printout, then at Gabe. “Who are you?”
“No hablo Español,” Gabe repeated, even though she was certain he knew enough Spanish to understand the question.
“No hablo Español, no hablo Español, no hablo Español,” Cocodrilo mocked and jabbed the butt of his rifle into Gabe’s stomach with enough force that he dropped to his knees, grunting in pain. But he didn’t stay down. Almost as soon as he touched the ground, he was back on his feet. Or foot. He hadn’t used his cane once since leaving Bogotá and was favoring his right side a little, but not enough that the guerillas noticed or else Audrey was sure they’d attack that weakness.
“What if I kill your woman?” Cocodrilo motioned with one hand and a guerilla grabbed Audrey by the wrist and dragged her over. He drew a long blade, dirty with mud and God knew what else, from his belt and made a show of pointing it at her pounding heart. “Will you speak Spanish then?”
Gabe’s jaw tightened. Apparently, he didn’t need to speak the language to understand the intent. “No, wait. Stop. Don’t hurt her. Hablo…un poco, pero…no hablo…lo suficiente…ah, goddammit.” He rubbed a hand over his head. “…mantener una conversación.”
Listening to him struggle through the sentence to save her tugged at her heartstrings and tapped into a store of courage Audrey didn’t know she had. Anger replaced fear. She refused to be the stereotypical damsel in distress, not when knowing the language gave her a distinct advantage over her wannabe knight in shining armor. She turned to face off with Cocodrilo, startled to realize she was taller by a good four inches and older by nearly ten years.
“He doesn’t know enough to have a conversation,” she said in Spanish. “I do.”
“Audrey,” Gabe said softly in warning.
“Shut up.”
His eyes widened in surprise. She imagined not many people talked back to him like that and he’d be licking the wounds to his male ego for the next week. Well, too bad. This situation didn’t call for his particular dictatorial brand of management.
“Talk to me,” she urged Cocodrilo. “I’ll translate for him.”
Cocodrilo eyed her up and down. “Who are you?”
“My name is Audrey. That’s Gabe.”
“Why are you in my jungle?” Cocodrilo demanded.
“We were just visiting some friends up the road.”
“What friends?”
“I’m sorry,” she said as gently as she could, thinking of Armando and his sweet wife and their five kids. “I won’t tell you that.”
She expected to be shot on the spot, or at very least hit with the butt of the rifle like Gabe had been. Instead, Cocodrilo gave a toothy smile that did his namesake proud.
“Are you American?” he asked instead.
“Yes.” She thought it better not to lie.
He nodded, looked at the printout again. “What is this?”
“My brother’s itinerary. He’s been taken captive.” She hesitated and looked at Gabe, searched his unreadable expression for help. He wouldn’t approve of what she was going to say next, but what if this was their shot at finding Bryson?
She drew a fortifying breath and turned back to Cocodrilo. “I want to make a deal for his release.”
…
Gabe didn’t like that he had no idea what they were saying. The few key words he caught, though, made him curse.
Hermano. Brother.
Cocodrilo looked interested. Then got that glint in his eye, the one that says cha-ching in any language, and Gabe knew Audrey had made a possibly fatal mistake. He glanced toward the brush alongside the road where he had tossed his gun as the guerillas yanked him out of the Jeep. Luckily, Cocodrilo was distracted by the itinerary before he found the extra clip in Gabe’s leg pocket. The clip wouldn’t do him much good without his gun, and he didn’t think he’d be able to get to the weapon without one of the guerillas noticing. But the cell phone in his boot had GPS. His team would be able to track him as long as the phone’s battery held out.