Rebels...what cause were they fighting for? As far as he could tell, Logan thought this group was little more than drug runners. Weapons dealers.
“I am not going to shoot the señorita yet. Not just yet.” But he still had the weapon near her head. “First, you talk, sí? You tell me all about your team. About the men who think they can come into my jungle and take what is mine.”
The rope cut deeper into Gunner’s wrists. “There is no team. Just us.”
Silence. Then, “I can start by shooting her in the knee, if you want.”
“There is no team!” Sydney snapped at him.
But Gunner didn’t speak. The man’s words were replaying in his head. “I can start by shooting her in the knee.”
“You both wore...what are they? Ah...transmitters of some sort. That means you were talking to someone else.”
“There is no team,” Gunner said woodenly, because that was the response he had to give. When the enemy caught you, you didn’t turn. You didn’t reveal your intel, and you didn’t jeopardize the others still out in the field.
“So sad.” Now the man’s voice had deepened. Behind him, Gunner heard the other rebel shifting from foot to foot. “He must not care for you at all, señorita.”
Gunner yanked on the ropes. They weren’t giving. Not yet.
“I don’t like hurting women. It’s not in my nature, but...” A regretful sigh drifted in the air. “If I do not learn what I must know, there will be no choice for me.”
“Let her go!” Gunner demanded as fury swirled inside him. “That’s the only choice you need to make.”
“No, I need to know about your team. About your...EOD.”
Gunner’s mind whirled. The rebel—no way should he have known about the Elite Ops Division. They were off the books for a reason.
Classified cases. Classified kills.
“How many EOD agents are in Peru?”
“I don’t know what the EOD is,” Gunner told him.
A growl broke from the man behind him, and Gunner felt the blade of a knife slice through the sack and press right against his throat.
“Ah...I’m afraid my companion is more impatient than I am.”
The companion...he’d moved quickly but wasn’t getting a reprimand of any sort by the guy Gunner had pegged as the leader. Unusual. Very unusual. Leaders didn’t usually like it when someone jumped the gun.
Maybe he isn’t the leader.
Maybe the real leader was the man getting ready to slice open his throat.
The man with the knife hadn’t said a word, but the other guy kept talking, throwing out, “Her life doesn’t matter to you, but what about your own? Care to tell us about the EOD...now?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” The angry words came from Sydney. “We can’t tell you when we don’t know!”
Sydney had been trained not to break, too. They’d both learned how to hold out against torture.
But would he really be able to sit there, while Syndey was hurting? If he heard Sydney in pain, Gunner was afraid that his control would shatter.
The ropes began to give way even as the knife blade pressed deeper into his skin.
“We have intel...that is what you call it, sí? We have intel of our own, and we know who you both are. We lured you to us because we have...interests...who are after the EOD.”
Interests? Would that be the same interested party who had sent out hits on the EOD agents in the U.S. a while back?
“You cannot tell, señorita, but your friend’s throat is bleeding. There’s a knife against his jugular, and if I don’t learn what I must know, then I will tell my associate to kill him.”
Gunner heard the sound of Sydney’s sharply indrawn breath. Then... “Gunner?”
“It’s a scratch,” he told her, keeping his voice flat. “I do worse than this when I shave in the morning.”
The knife pressed harder.
Gunner laughed. “You think this is torture? You boys need to up your game.”
“Perhaps we will,” the man said, voice snarling. “But I do not think that we need to keep both of you. We already have one hostage, why keep two more?”
Hell. He’d been afraid of this.
Logan and Cale need to hurry the hell up.
“So, which will we eliminate? The lovely lady or the man who thinks he can laugh at death?”
Gunner knew exactly what choice they needed to make. So he laughed again, mocking them, wanting to draw their attention and do anything necessary to ensure Sydney’s survival. “You aren’t killing us. You’re all talk and—”
Blood slid down his neck.
“—and when I get out of here,” Gunner continued, voice roughening, “you’ll be the ones to die.” The words were a promise. “So, what you need to be doing is running, while you still can.”
Was the gun still pressed to Sydney’s head? He hoped not. He wanted that gun—and the attention of the two men—focused just on him.
He’d buy Sydney as much survival time as he could. Cale and Logan would come, sooner or later. She just had to live until then.
My fault. I dropped my guard in the jungle. I got distracted by her. She won’t be dying for my mistake.
“Who is your hostage?” Sydney’s voice came, louder and sharper than he’d expected. She should have stayed quiet. Didn’t she realize what he was trying to do?
“You come into my jungle,” their captor said, “trying to rescue a man you don’t even know?”
“It’s my job,” Sydney snapped.
“You shouldn’t have done this job. You should have just left him to die.” There was the rustle of clothing, and Gunner saw the shadow of their captor’s body shift. He thought the man was coming toward him, but—no. He heard the man step closer to Sydney.
And the knife was suddenly gone from Gunner’s throat. The guard’s footsteps shuffled behind Gunner as the man moved back.
They were told, “It’s time to lose a hostage. Do you want a moment to say your goodbyes?”
Both men were near Sydney now. He could see the dark outlines of their bodies through his mask. “Don’t you even think of killing her!”
“As if you could stop us...”
“It’s all right, Gunner,” Sydney said at the same time. “It’s all right.”
No, it wasn’t. They should be turning their attention on him. Not her. “What kind of coward holds a woman prisoner like this?”