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The whole time we’d been marching through the jungle, I could feel Gabriel’s eyes on me. I knew he wanted me. And I’d spent so long wanting him. Now he was out of prison and I wasn’t his doctor, in theory there was nothing stopping us.
Except…he was still a criminal. A legendary thief, a master of the con and the underhand plan. It’d be stupid to fall for him…right?
After the meal, the men sat around talking, while Colton quietly moved around the circle grabbing any desserts that had gone uneaten. They talked about the Colorado town where the team was based: Cal already had a place there and the others were discussing where to rent or buy. From how they described it, it sounded beautiful, and I said so.
“It is,” said JD, smiling. “Kinda old-fashioned. Might be why I like it.”
“Good place to raise a family,” I threw in.
And then I watched in horror as JD’s face froze. Then his jaw set and he looked away. Shit! What did I say? I opened my mouth to apologize, but Danny caught my eye and gave me a tiny shake of his head. I nodded and we changed the subject, but I was twisting inside with guilt. What happened? Did JD not have a family?
Or worse…did he lose one?
Something else I noticed: Gabriel didn’t take part in the conversation about finding a home. In fact, he didn’t seem to take part much at all in the jokes and camaraderie. Almost like he didn’t want to get too close to the others.
As we were about to turn in, JD and Cal, who were taking first watch, fueled themselves with coffee. Danny, who’d brought his own teabags, sat carefully brewing a mug of tea. “Something’s been bothering me,” he said as he watched the liquid change color. “Bradan and I went through that whole cartel camp, end to end. And you know what we didn’t see any of?”
“What?” asked Gabriel.
“Drugs.”
Everyone went quiet. It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but Danny was right. I’d been in the cage for a week and I hadn’t seen drugs arriving or leaving. But if it wasn’t drug-related, what were the cartel doing there?
JD and Cal took up positions to watch over the camp. The rest of us bedded down in a circle around the embers of the fire. I lay down but found I couldn’t sleep. Out in the open, I just didn’t feel…safe. Whenever I closed my eyes, I was back in the cage. We were still in the middle of cartel territory and one of their patrols could find us at any time—
I heard a sound I’d never heard, a leathery flapping, right above me. My eyes snapped open and—
It was hovering maybe a foot from my face, so close that I could feel the powerful downdraft as its wings beat the air. Black eyes gleamed in the moonlight. I filled my lungs to scream but then bit it back: a scream could carry for miles in the quiet of the night, I could alert a patrol and get us all killed—
Suddenly, Gabriel was there, shooing the thing away. It fluttered off into the trees. “Just a bat,” he whispered. He bent low over me so that he could talk without waking the others. “Can’t sleep?”
I silently shook my head.
Gabriel nodded towards the edge of the camp. I followed him.
A little way into the trees, he found a fallen tree and sat straddling it. I did the same and sat facing him. Maybe it was because I was looking into his eyes, but suddenly, I was very aware of being alone with him. I swallowed. Had this been a plan? Get me alone and seduce me?
No. I could see the need in his eyes but there was concern there, too. This was a genuine attempt to calm me down and help me sleep. I smiled at him, grateful, and that made him look away as if embarrassed.
Doing the right thing bothered him.
“One thing you never told me,” he said, “was how you wound up at the prison.” Then he cocked his head to one side. “Unless you don’t want to tell me.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell anyone. That day was still a fresh crack in my mind that separated my old life from my new one. The edges were razor sharp and just touching them was painful. But…
I realized I did want to tell him.
“I was an ER doc,” I told him. “At a hospital in Phoenix. A good place. The people I worked with were the best…we were like a family, you know?”
He nodded and from the way his lips pressed together, he understood what that felt like.
“The job was my life. You might have noticed I’m a little…” I sighed. “I kind of take work…”
