Cindy Dees - Night Rescuer

The ride went from horrendous to epic in its discomfort. Amusement park rides had nothing over the pounding she was taking back here! She lay down in the backseat for a few moments, but got so sick so fast that she had to sit up again. She braced a hand against the ceiling to protect her head from banging into the metal roof. How John could see where he was going, she had no idea. It was pitch-black outside, and he’d turned off the headlights. A few more cracks sounded, from behind them this time. She thought she heard faint shouts, but she couldn’t be sure.

After a few minutes, the ride smoothed out some, which was to say it went back to merely terrible. A splash of water slammed the window beside her, startling her badly. However, it also washed most of the sticky mud off the window. They were running along the bed of a river-size gully, a high clay wall looming outside the window. Periodically, they crashed into pockets of standing water, some as deep as the front fenders. But the sturdy Land Rover plowed right through them.

Eventually, the vehicle slowed down. John began peering outside, obviously looking for something.

“Can I help? What are we looking for?” she asked breathlessly.

“A low spot in the bank so we can get out of here.”

Lovely. They were trapped down in this canyon? What if it ran out on them? Then what? “You’re sure no one’s following us?” she asked quickly.

“I’m fairly certain they’ve given up by now. None of them have vehicles with the suspension this one has. They’d be hard-pressed to keep up with us.”

“Thank God.”

“You can come up here if you like. The ride’s smoother than back there, over the rear axle. But you’ll have to hold the guns in your lap.”

In immense relief, she climbed back into the front seat, managing to get all tangled up in her own legs and arms and seat belts and gun straps. But eventually, she got it all sorted out. She glanced over at John and he was grinning at her.

“What?”

“Having fun yet?” he asked lightly.

“Fun? Fun! You think fleeing armed bandits is fun ?” she exclaimed.

“Nah, that’s just another day at the office. Watching you try to climb into a seat full of firearms-now that’s fun.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. And realized, suddenly, that he’d effectively broken her tension. She’d bet he hadn’t done that by accident, either. “What’s next, assuming we can get out of here?”

He shrugged. “We’ll get out eventually. It’s just a matter of how dicey the maneuver will be. After that, we’ll find someplace to hunker down for the night. In the morning, we’ll figure out where we are and proceed toward our destination from there.”

He made it all sound so easy. She shuddered to think what would have happened to her back there if he hadn’t been with her. She’d have driven straight into that ambush. And she had no illusions about how a good-looking, relatively wealthy, foreign woman would have faired at the hands of a bunch of bandits.

“Bingo.”

She jumped at John’s sudden outburst. He slammed on the brakes and backed the Land Rover up, turning it ninety degrees to face the riverbank on their left. A solid wall of dirt loomed in front of them. “You don’t expect to drive up that, do you?” she asked in dismay.

“Sure. No problem.”

“That’s a vertical wall! We’ll flip over.”

“Nah, this is a tough old bird. It’ll climb that. Hang on, and lean forward when we hit the wall.”

Oh my God. She grabbed the bar across the dashboard in horror as he gunned the motor and the Land Rover leaped at the riverbank. The vehicle bucked and slid, its tires clawing at the bank, finding purchase, slipping, then finding purchase again. The vehicle did, indeed, stand up almost on its hind end as the engine roared and the tires threw mud wildly in every direction.

“Lean forward!” John yelled.

She flung herself forward in her seat and John did the same. Whether or not it helped, she had no idea, but at the last moment before she thought the Land Rover had to flip over on its back, its rear wheels caught, and it surged up the last six feet or so of the bank. It burst up and over the edge, skidding sideways as it hit level dirt and the squealing tires caught solid ground.

John stopped the vehicle. He peeled his fingers carefully from around the steering wheel. She noticed they were clawed from the effort and took several seconds to straighten once more. “Well,” he panted. “That was fun. You okay over there, Mel? You look a little pale around the gills.”

“Near-death experiences have that effect on me,” she replied dryly.

He grinned and put the vehicle into gear once more. Driving at a much more sane pace, he eased across the wide pasture they found themselves in. A farmhouse blinked with light on the mountainside above them, but John gave it wide berth and drove past it. On the other side of the dwelling, he let out a quiet exclamation of satisfaction.

She peered outside to see what so pleased him. A dirt road stretched away in front of them. Little more than a parallel pair of gravel tire tracks, it was, nonetheless, a vast improvement over the past half hour’s worth of terrain. She sighed in relief as he guided the Land Rover along the crude road.

“Well. That was interesting,” she commented.

“More interesting than I was hoping for, but not as interesting as I expected,” he replied calmly. What kind of work had he been in before this, that nearly dying at the hands of bandits had barely fazed him? And the way he’d handled the Land Rover-no normal person could’ve done that. He had some special sort of training. Had he been a policeman, maybe? It would explain his familiarity with guns, too.

“Who were those guys back there?” she asked.

He glanced over at her grimly. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I don’t have any idea!”

He sighed. Brought the Land Rover to a stop. Turned off the ignition and lights. Alarmed, she saw him studying her in the dark, his eyes no more than shadowed hollows of blackness in the night. “True confessions time, Melina. Someone just tried to kill us, and that changes the rules of this game. It means you owe me the full truth and nothing but the truth. Now.”

She closed her eyes in despair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry we got shot at, or sorry that you didn’t tell me everything up front?” he prodded.

“Both.”

A pause stretched out between them until it became awkward. Still, he waited, some of that stubborn pigheadedness of his apparently kicking in. There was no help for it. She absolutely wasn’t going to answer his question. She jumped when he abruptly got out of the vehicle and walked around in front of it toward her side of the car. Cringing, she waited as he jerked her door open. She was surprised when he merely held a hand out to her to help her out of the car. She’d pegged him for bodily dragging her out of the vehicle in his current state of irritation.

But he did back her up against the side of the Land Rover in no uncertain terms, his hands on either side of her shoulders, trapping her in place. “What the hell’s going on, Melina?”

“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked lightly. It was a feeble attempt to remind him of the closeness they’d shared back in the hotel-okay it was a blatant attempt to distract him by reminding him of the great sex they’d had in Lima.

He considered her for several seconds in stony silence. Then he surprised her by answering. “Remember those two legitimate reasons I thought of for you coming out here to meet someone?”

She nodded.

“I think we’ve pretty much ruled those out as possibilities.”

She couldn’t help but smile. But as he continued, her humor evaporated.