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“Fuck,” Oliver seethed. “Time to run.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
JACK
“You’re crushing me. I can’t breathe.” Charley planted her hands on my chest, pushing me away from her, but until I knew we were one hundred percent in the clear, I’d be keeping my body on top of hers.
We’d successfully made it back to the jungle after crossing the area destroyed by deforestation, but not before I’d had to shoot two people who’d come at me with machetes. Over a decade as a Green Beret, and a fucking dating show gave me my most Rambo day ever.
With the immediate threats expunged, we were forced to get far too cozy in our tight spot—a patch of tamped-down vegetation where an animal, hopefully a small one with no teeth, no doubt lived.
Angry and frustrated with her, but not wanting to suffocate her, I did my best to shift the brunt of my weight to my forearms. A brutal reminder of our intimate moments from the night before.
Carter and Oliver were the only ones exposed, holding sentry at the edge of the jungle with the rifles they’d snatched from the dead bodies, ensuring no one else was on our ass before we began to move again.
To track us using Gwen’s bracelet, Gray would need to get word to Gwen’s dad. Wyatt could be under enemy fire, but I knew he’d still answer a call about his daughter. Then Gray would be faced with the problem of stopping Papa Bear from up and leaving his current op to come join us, knowing Gwen was being hunted by narcotraffickers.
“It’s not what you think,” Charley whispered, drawing my attention. Her tone was like a soft caress over my heated, sweat-slicked skin.
Why was she risking her life by talking right now just to try and clear the air? Because screw the air. It was cloudy and confusing, and I highly doubted she’d be clearing shit for me now.
You killed a Fed. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. I’d spent the entire morning (before we’d been shot at and Carter had to play slice and dice with Mason’s pocketknife) running possible scenarios through my head as to why she’d murdered an FBI agent, attempting to make sense with the limited intel I had.
If the men on her heist team were undercover, maybe it’d been a mistake? She thought they were bad guys. Not that it changed the fact she took a life—a good guy’s life.
And hell, why were you committing crimes in the first place? A getaway driver, seriously? Yeah, you said back in Cape Town you used to be a good driver, but what the fucking fuck?
I grunted, forgetting she couldn’t hear my spiraling thoughts.
Of course I fell for a wanted woman. Wanted for too many speeding tickets was one thing. Murdering a Fed and being the getaway driver for heists? Damn.
I dipped my chin to find her eyes, which wasn’t easy to do given our proximity and lack of natural light in our hiding place.
“You keep saving my life. I’m wearing blood from a man you shot ten minutes ago to prove it.” Her hand on my chest became a little fist, but she left it resting between us. “Why? Am I worth more brought in alive than dead? Is there a bounty on my head you’re now considering going after?”
“You’ve got to be kidding?” I snarled. She was really pissing me off. “And for someone who’s clearly done a good job at avoiding authorities, you’d think you’d be better at keeping quiet, so you don’t expose us to the real bad guys.”
“I think I hate you,” she bit out, and the attack felt false and flimsy at best.
“No, you don’t. You want to hate me, but you don’t.” And same. I was pretty sure my anger earlier had been more with myself than with her. Mad that I couldn’t look at her and feel anything even remotely resembling hate. And considering she killed a Fed . . . I felt all kinds of bad about that.
“How much do you wish you had cuffs on you right now?” she shot back, her raspy tone slipping under my skin.
My dick twitched at the idea of binding her wrists, proof my head was off. The steel rod between my legs didn’t understand we were in hiding and not preparing to fuck like animals in the wild.
“I don’t know what to think about you.” I wanted to make up any excuse possible to absolve her of her sins. I’d become her Michelangelo and paint any ceiling with any number of reasons why killing a Fed and being a getaway driver for a heist crew was “just fine and fucking dandy.”
Then my mom’s words popped into my head, and I had to mull them over. Chew on them. Take a minute to think about them before I finally spoke to the woman I couldn’t stop wanting. “Forgiveness doesn’t mean letting the enemy into your heart, it means letting him out of it,” had been Mom’s favorite saying, and I’d never understood what it meant.
I still don’t. Because surely, she wasn’t saying to forgive Charley for murder, right? “I’m struggling to believe you could—”
“We’re safe,” Carter cut through my lame attempt to express my chaotic thoughts to Charley. “Time to go.”
I rolled to the side, allowing Charley her freedom. Once she was clear from our temporary hiding spot, I stood. Spying my hat on the ground a few feet away, I bent over to snatch it and groaned at the pain in my back. Yeah, forty is the new thirty my ass. My joints disagree.
Stretching my back while positioning my hat on face-forward, I spotted Charley rushing over to her sister, hooking a protective arm around her.
You’re not a killer. There’s just no way. The report must be wrong. It has to be. Or the Fed was crooked. I’d take anything. Any scraps that got this woman off the hook since she’d so swiftly hooked my heart. “What’s wrong?” I asked, catching the worried look in Mya’s eyes. Something was definitely on her mind, and based on how her eyes flicked from me to Charley, it had less to do with the chaos we’d just endured and more to do with my personal hell.
