Sharpshooter

Pinpricks of heat shot across her cheeks. “Is that what you did? Because I thought we’d been making love.”

Her mistake.

“We need to finish scouting so we can secure the area. “Now isn’t the time to talk about this.”

Right. Of course. But would there ever be a time when he wanted to talk? “It was more to me,” she said, and turned away.

That was when she realized…all of the chirps and calls had stopped. The jungle was eerily silent around them, and clouds were starting to drift across the surface of the moon, making the shadows even darker.

Sydney brought up her weapon, and she knew Gunner was doing the same. She stepped forward, her body tensing now. Something had changed in the jungle. Shifted.

She and Gunner had been hunting before, but now she had the feeling that they were the prey.

The rebel camp should have been about a mile away. No one should be in their immediate area.

But the brush was so thick and heavy.

Sweat coated Sydney’s back and slicked her fingers as she held her weapon.

Then she heard it. The snap of a twig. Twenty feet to the left. She swung around with her gun.

Another twig snapped.

That snapping came from thirty feet to the right.

Trouble.

She felt, rather than saw, Gunner’s movements as he swung to the right. One word whispered through her mind: surrounded.

Her breath barely left her lungs. She reached up with her left hand and tapped the communicator near her ear. “Alpha One…” Her words were a whisper as she signaled Logan. “We’ve got movement in our perimeter. There’s—”

Footsteps thundered toward them, coming fast and hard. She took aim, ready to shoot, but then she saw the hostage. A man who was being pushed through the jungle, with some kind of brown sack over his head. His hands were bound in front of him, and a gun was pressed to the top right side of that sack, just where his temple would be. A flashlight was held on the man, the better for them to see just what trump card the captors held.

“Deje caer sus armas!” The shout came from the man who held the gun. Drop your weapons.

Sydney took aim at him. “Deje caer sus armas!” She snarled right back at him.

He wasn’t alone. There was another armed man who’d come out from the right side. Sydney had heard his rushing footsteps. Gunner hadn’t fired on him, because, like her, he had to be worried about the hostage.

An innocent getting injured in a firefight wasn’t on the agenda.

But neither was getting captured.

A radio crackled behind her. The other man was calling for backup. If they didn’t do something, soon, this mission was about to go bad.

I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. This is my fault. I should have kept walking, kept searching the area. But I was too caught up in Gunner.

Now they were both in trouble.

The man near the hostage laughed and shook his head. “Voy a disparar contra él.”

I will shoot him. Yes, she’d just bet that he’d shot plenty of men in his time.

“Please!” The broken cry came from the hostage. “Help me!”

“We will,” Sydney promised him, but she wasn’t dropping her gun yet.

Only…a weapon did hit the ground. She turned at the thud. Gunner had tossed away his gun. His hands were up. What was he doing? Surrender wasn’t the way the team operated.

“Sydney?” It was Cale’s voice in her ear. If she could hear him, Gunner could, too. They were all on the same comm link. “We’re coming for you.”

But would he come soon enough?

Gunner walked forward, putting his body before her. Sydney didn’t know if he was protecting her or blocking her shot, but either way, the result was the same.

“No dispare,” Gunner said, voice loud and carrying easily. With the transmitter so close to his mouth, Cale would hear every word and understand exactly what was happening to them. “Puede tener tres rehenes en lugar de dos.”

Don’t shoot. You can have three hostages instead of two.

That was a terrible plan.

But then she felt the cold metal of a gun being shoved against the base of her neck.

It looked as though it was their only plan, for the moment.

Sydney let her weapon drop, and she lifted her hands in surrender.

Cale, hurry up, she thought.

Because she wasn’t sure how much time they had.

HE’D MADE A deadly mistake.

Gunner sat in the old chair, his hands tied behind him, his ankles lashed to the wooden chair legs. A heavy black sack covered his head. When he strained his eyes, he could just make out a form across from him. The shadowy outline of—“Sydney?” he rasped.

“Yes.”

He’d been distracted by her in the jungle. Too aware of her every move. He should have been on the lookout for the enemy, but they’d gotten the drop on him.

On Sydney. As if they were both rookies.

Now the hostage was gone, taken to another tent, and he and Sydney were about to be interrogated.

The last time he’d been interrogated in a South American jungle, he’d had to spend six hours getting enough stitches to close all of the wounds in his body.

Those stitches had been given to him by a relief worker on the edge of a river. There’d been no anesthesia. He’d roared at the pain.

And called Sydney’s name.