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“Where’s the convoy!” Cole shouted.
“Thereisno convoy,” Joshua countered. “They sent in the fucking air cavalry inste—”
“Therehasto be a convoy,” Cole growled back. “Ferrera wouldn’t let this go down without being a part of it, and we both know he’s too scared to fly.”
Another rifle retort ended the conversation. Something hit the jeep that sounded like a giant rock, and I gasped at the size of the hole it made.
“Pull over!” cried Joshua.
They’d miscalculated, that much I knew. They’d expected to ambush whichever cars or trucks showed up in the desert, and they’d been ambushed themselves.
Shit, I could read it in the bitter look on their faces.
“At least slow down enough to get her out!”
As I opened my mouth to protest Cole slammed the brakes, sending me hurtling into the seat back. The wind was knocked from my lungs. Something in my neck cracked. Before I could recover, the door flew open, and I was dumped unceremoniously against the hard ground, my body spinning helplessly into a rolling cloud of reddish-yellow dust.
Coughing, still on my hands and knees, I watched helplessly as the jeep raced away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to leap to my feet and chase after them.
But I was too busy covering my ears, as the chopper roared over me.
Fuck!
As the safe anonymity of my dust-cloud dissolved away, I began looking for cover. Yes, I was alone. Yes, they’d ditched me — just as I’d feared they would.
But I also knew they’d done it to protect me, too.
I sprinted to the closest rock formation, which really wasn’t that close at all. In the meantime, the chopper swept even lower. The pilot adjusted its speed, maneuvering once again to come up behind them. Cole was still swerving wildly, trying to make his movements as unpredictable as possible.
That’s when I saw the man in black hangingoutsidethe chopper, attached to it by some kind of harness. He had a long rifle pressed tightly against his shoulder. His hands moved along the length of it, lining up his next shot.
NO.
I was scrambling in the dust, searching for something that could help, when the sound of another vehicle caused me to whirl. My heart soared, thinking it would be Evan. Instead, it dropped straight into my feet when I saw what it actually was.
A convoy of three big SUVs rolled up in single file. At one time they may have been black, but at the moment they’d been blasted by so much desert sand they blended almost completely into the landscape. If it weren’t for the plumes of dirt they kicked up, as well as the noise they made, they might’ve been invisible.
And right now they were headed directly for me.
I crouched in the rubble, watching intently, dividing my attention between the incoming convoy and the helicopter still chasing Cole and Joshua. I sat there praying the vehicles would rumble on past me. Instead they arrived at the exact place where I’d been ejected from the jeep, and skidded to an abrupt stop.
Dust swirled. It hung there for a moment before the wind picked it up and swept it away, just as six pairs of doors swung open and men began stepping out from both sides.
They were South Americans, that much was certain. It was in their mannerisms even more than the way they spoke so fluently to each other, in a language I only partially understood. As they fanned out, it became obvious they didn’t know exactly where I was. But it wouldn’t be long. Especially considering just how many—
I gasped sharply into a thick palm, as a hand slid over my mouth. It pressed hard, stifling my cry as I tried twisting away from the captor who’d so suddenly come up from behind me.
“Shhhhhh!”
I froze, and the hand over my mouth relaxed a little. I felt the hot breath of a mouth very close to my ear.
“I’m taking my hand away,” a strange voice whispered. “But if you make so much as even a whimper, they’re going to hear us.”
Forty-Six
QUINN
Against the rhythm of my pounding heart, I forced my body to relax. Precious seconds ticked by, and the hand over my mouth was slowly taken away. The one clamped over my wrist let go as well.
