Running Wild (7 page)

They ate in silence for a while. Finn killed off his energy bar, which he’d found surprisingly tasty. It just went to show that if you were hungry enough, even girlie food tasted good. He crumpled the wrapper and tucked it in his pocket. He’d dispose of it when he got up. Right now, he planned to just sit here and enjoy a few minutes of peace while he drank the rest of his coffee.

Eventually he drained the last sip. Propping his wrists on his kneecaps, he stared at the empty cardboard cup he held in the gap between his up-drawn knees as he turned it around and around. Then he blew out a breath and looked across the short distance separating him and Magdalene.

She’d removed that fancier-than-average rubber band binding the end of her damp braid and was running her fingers through her hair to separate the strands. And, holy shit. She suddenly had crazy wavy hair that he couldn’t help but stare at.

Who knew blond hair could contain so many different shades?

She seemed more at peace this morning. Yet even seemingly relaxed she projected the same sense of energy he’d noted yesterday.

And, Jesus, had it truly only been less than twenty-four hours since both their lives had been flipped sideways? With everything that had happened, it seemed a lot longer since he’d first clapped eyes on her.

On top of the emotional upheaval of having drug-cartel minions on their ass, every time he looked at Magdalene it was as if he saw a different woman. She went from one appearance to the next, and it was like hanging out with a damn chameleon. Her coloring remained the same, yet somehow she managed to project the
notion
of different women of varying ages, ideologies and sexual natures.

Take last night, when he’d watched her with Frederico the Cretin. She’d come across as someone in her early twenties, which he was pretty certain she wasn’t. And even with her hair covered and minimal makeup she’d seemed more sexual than anything she’d projected up to that point. She’d been friendly and admiring, and yet at the same time somehow slightly aloof, and he’d watched it draw the asshole into her orbit as if she were a one-woman magnetar.

But thinking about the situation that had sent them on the run again placed him squarely back on the hot seat. “Hey, Mags?” he said. She looked over at him and he eased out the breath he’d inhaled. “Look, I just wanna say I’m sorry about my trash talk last night.”

Her apparent relaxation dissipated and her eyes shuttered. “Yes, so you said last night,” she agreed in an nonencouraging tone.

He got that he should respect her obvious unwillingness to discuss it, but he really needed to get this off his chest, so he plowed on. “I know I apologized then, but I want to say it again. You were right, it was an asshole thing to say and forget what I said about the guy gene—I can only plead a long stressful day and not enough sleep. But my mom and sisters and girl cousins and aunts and grannies would be ashamed of me. And on my own behalf I sincerely am sorry.”

“Fine,” she said flatly. “You’re forgiven.”

“That sounded a little less than sincere, but I’ll take what I can get.”

He thought about the way he’d blown her off when she’d told him about her folks shipping her off to boarding school when she was thirteen. The truth was, since then he’d tried to imagine what it would have been like being separated from his family when he was that age.

And discovered he simply couldn’t. There had been times, especially during puberty, when he’d dreamed of vacations away from all his brothers and sisters and the assorted extended-family members who were constantly in and out of their house. But it was his brother Dev who’d had the real problem with the lack of privacy in their family; Finn had merely wanted an occasional break. The thought of being separated from his family entirely was a whole nother kettle of cod.
Her
only family was at the mercy of a drug cartel. Not that she’d exhibited so much as an inkling she wanted to talk about that. Still, it had to be painful and stressful squared for her. The drug trade wasn’t exactly an industry known for its compassion.

Mags was clearly not thrilled with him bringing up last night’s snafu, however, so he’d wait for another time to apologize for his insensitive crack about her being lucky to be sent away from everything she’d known. For now, he rose to his feet.

And got right down to business. “What do you say we break camp and pack up? Then we need to spread out the map and see what we can come up with as a decent alternative to the Pan-Am route.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“J
UAN
C
ARLOS
!” Victor Munoz tucked the phone receiver between his ear and his hunched shoulder. Leaning back in his chair, he swung his feet atop his desk and crossed his ankles to admire the soft gleam of leather in his hand-made Italian sandals. “It is good to hear your voice, cousin. How have our guests settled in during the adjustment period since I sent them to you?”

Silence throbbed over the line for a moment. Then his cousin said, “This is the reason I called, Victor. So I need to know up front—do you want me to say merely what you want to hear? Or do you want the truth?”

That didn’t sound promising. His smile disappearing, Victor steadied the phone with his thumb and two fingers, dropped his feet to the floor and sat erect. He reached for the humidor. “The truth.” He didn’t add “of course,” because this was Juan Carlos he was talking to. And his cousin knew him well—he didn’t always react well to the truth.

“The truth is, the Delucas are a pain in my ass. Maybe not the senor so much. But the senora? Ay-yi-yi! She is showing great signs of becoming the carbuncle on my butt.”

Victor rolled his eyes at the ceiling but didn’t lose his temper. “Believe me, I know precisely what that feels like. I thought the farm would be the best place for her, though. I figured it would be the one place she
couldn’t
make trouble.”

Juan Carlos snorted.

“What the fuck is she doing?”

His cousin’s sigh filtered down the line. “The question is more what isn’t she. She’s talking to people about their working conditions or the compensation they should be getting for a hard day’s work. She’s talking to them about
medical
coverage. I don’t even know what that is, but the fact that they don’t have it is sure as hell getting everybody all hot under the collar. Worse, it’s causing insubordinate mutterings.”

“Sh-h-hit.” Victor selected a cigar, clipped the end and fished his lighter out of his pants pocket. He took a moment to light up, then said flatly, “That woman could only benefit from a bullet in the back of her head.”

“My thought exactly. If Tia Augustina didn’t scare the crap out of me, I’d dump the pair of them in the jungle and let nature do its job.”

“I have a line on the Delucas’ daughter, who’s down here to visit them. Unfortunately the story we strong-armed the neighbors into telling anyone inquiring about them sent her away, but I’ve got my men out looking for her. Once we find her we’ll have the leverage we need to keep the parents in line.”

“Let’s hope to hell that happens soon,” Juan Carlos said sourly. “Or I fear we’ll have a revolt on our hands.”

* * *

T
HE
RENTAL
CAR
started making suspicious noises around hour four of their drive south. When Finn gave it gas, it leaped forward for a second, then started cutting out, accompanied by an almost cartoonish coughing and wheezing. Neither of them was laughing, however, when he finally eased the vehicle to a stop at the side of the road. Mags had been taking deep, even breaths to keep from grumbling aloud since the first sign of trouble. But why did cars always have to choose the middle of freaking nowhere to stage their breakdowns?

Because, while she could roughly pinpoint their location on the map, there wasn’t a single dot to designate a town anywhere in the vicinity of where she believed them to be. She hadn’t even seen a few huts huddled together recently, let alone a community sizable enough to be helpful if they needed car parts. It had been a good hour since she’d seen signs of any habitation at all.

The best they could probably hope for was to stumble across a village that wasn’t large enough to be marked on the road map. “Maybe my idea to leave the Pan-American wasn’t such a hot one after all,” she said gloomily.

“Let me take a look at the engine before you start to panic,” Finn advised, leaning down to pop the interior hood latch. The driver’s door creaked when he opened it to climb from the car.

“Where do you get panic from a simple observation?” she coolly inquired of his retreating torso—the only thing she could see from this angle. “I don’t frighten that easily.”
And if I say it loud enough I may even come to believe it
.

But, damn him, hadn’t he neatly hamstrung her? She understood her stupid pride was her problem and not his. But she also knew that if she were choking on so much panic it threatened to wring every last breath from her body, she’d likely allow it to do precisely that before she’d let him see she was drowning in it.

Her spine went rebar straight.
Oh, for God’s sake, girl, buck up
. Reassuring herself his advice was sound, that panicking before they even knew what the problem was wasn’t a productive use of her time, she, too, got out of the car.

The midday heat promptly wrapped itself around her like a combination straitjacket/burial shroud. And the air was nowhere near as humid as it was going to get in the rain forest, but she reminded herself this would help her adapt. The cloud of gnats hanging in the area didn’t add to the comfort level, however, and she had to mouth breathe through her teeth to keep from inhaling them.

But, hey, no panicking here, Mr. I-wouldn’t-lose-control-if-my-big-balls-of-steel-were-caught-in-a-flaming-vise. “Huh,” she muttered under her breath, momentarily entertained by the visual. “Bet you would.”

“You sure talk to yourself a lot,” he said from under the hood he’d raised.

And you have the hearing of a barn owl, so I guess we’re a match made in Nirvana
. She bit back the urge to say it aloud and contented herself by observing, in an even tone, “Well, if a girl wants to have a decent conversation...”

She walked around to peek at the engine as if she actually had an inkling what anything under the hood was. Okay, she recognized the radiator since she’d just seen it yesterday. But that was about it. “Can you tell what the trouble is?”

“Going by the way we got a surge of power when I jumped on the gas, only to have it cough and cut out immediately after, I figure it has to be fuel-related. So I’m checking out the—”

His voice trailed away and she was debating whether it was worth asking him
what
he was checking out when he abruptly said, “An-n-nd, here’s our problem.”

She leaned over him. “What is it?”

He craned his head around and she suddenly found their faces so close together, they were practically kissing. She pulled back a little.

Finn’s mouth tipped into a slight smile before he turned his attention back to the engine compartment. “See this?” he demanded and she looked over his shoulder to where he’d thrust one long finger, indicating...something or another. Then she saw the tube thingy he pointed out and nodded.

“This is the fuel line and it’s loose.”

“Oh, goody. Tighten it up.”

“That might be easier said than done. My pliers are back in Seattle in my toolbox.”

Her stomach flip-flopped. “Can’t you use some more of that silicone tape stuff?”

“No, darlin’. It’s not a split in the tubing, it’s a loose connection that’s allowing air in the line. But before you start to—”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You do
not
want to say
panic
again,” she instructed clearly. “Not if you know what’s good for you.”

His teeth flashed white. “All righty, then.” He turned back to check out some more crap under the hood.

She stepped away. “I’m guessing this might take a while, so I’ll go slap together some sandwiches from the groceries we bought.”

“Sounds great.” He straightened from the hood and headed around to the trunk. “Here, I’ll set this in the front of the trunk so you can get to it,” he said and she looked over to see him hauling forward the little cooler they’d bought in one of the bigger stores in San Vito.

Finn dived back into the trunk and she could hear him rummaging through it as she carried the cooler over to a downed tree that had a length of reasonably flat surface. She got out a package of tortillas, a container of pulled pork, a jar of salsa and the little container of marinated julienned veggies she’d scored in a bodega down the street from the store where they’d found the cooler. She had all the makings for lunch, but nothing to put it on.

She glanced over at Finn. “Is it okay if I look through your backpack for something to use as plates?”

“Help yourself.” Making a sound of satisfaction he backed away from the trunk with an incredibly rusty pair of pliers in his hand and headed back to the front end of the car.

He’d left the trunk open and she walked over to grab his bag. She opened it up and moved aside some clothing, the fuel bottle and—whoa—a good-sized baggie full of condoms before she located a melamine plate. Knowing that he’d packed for one she figured they could share the latter, but as she was trying to put everything back the way she’d found it, she knocked the lid askew from the largest pot of his nesting pans. She had it half back on the set when she realized it was probably intended to double as a fry pan.

And that there was no reason it couldn’t triple as a plate. “Score!” she whispered.

“Heard that.”

She leaned around the edge of the car to look up its length at him. He stood on the same side, bent so far into the engine compartment that he was mainly a muscular profile of lower torso, long legs and that really nice butt as he did whatever it was he was doing to the fuel line. “Of course you did.”

She returned to her rudimentary tree-trunk kitchen and slapped together tortilla wraps for both of them. She plated them, then remembered the mangos she’d bought yesterday and sliced one up, arranging the segments next to the wraps. Then she glanced back at Finn again. “Lunch is ready whenever you are. You want one of your beers?”

“God, yeah.” His voice was fervent. “I’m just about done here.”

She took their plates over to a stand of trees. After checking the branches overhead to make sure no snakes or nasty oversize insects were going to drop on her head and give her heart failure, she set the plates on the ground and went back for her drink. A moment later she sat on the ground in the shade of a tree and found a level patch of ground where she could set her can of soda. She picked up the pan-lid plate and rested it in her lap. Then, leaning back against the tree trunk, she used both hands to scoop up her tortilla. She inhaled its aroma for a moment, then took a bite.

A multitude of flavors exploded in her mouth and she moaned in ecstasy.

Across the way Finn swore in a low voice.

“I heard that,” she said and grinned, tickled with the opportunity to give him a little of his own medicine. But then she considered the way he was giving up his vacation for her and the fact that he was probably parboiling in his own sweat by now and added with more graciousness, “Come and have something to eat. I guarantee you’ll feel better for it.”

“Yeah, I’m a-l-l-most there.
Yes!
Here we go.” He unfurled from his bent posture over the fender and stretched to his full height. Digging his fists into the small of his back, he arched over them to get the kinks out. “I’m done. I didn’t even get my hands that dirty.”

“Good. Grab your beer out of the cooler and come have your lunch.”

He dropped down next to her a moment later and raised his beer bottle to his lips. He chugged down a quarter of it in one long swallow before coming up for air. “Damn,” he muttered, looking at the bottle in his hand. “I probably should’ve drank some water to slake my thirst before I opened the beer.”

“No, you know what?” she said. “Screw it. It’s been a hellacious two days that feels more like a hellacious two weeks. So if you kill off your beer too soon, drink another. You earned it and I can drive the next leg.”

He butted his shoulder against hers and his was hot, damp and solid. It was also there and gone between one moment and the next as he reached for his plate. He picked the tortilla wrap up and took a huge bite. “Omigawd,” he muttered with a full mouth.

“I know,” she agreed. “Freaking hits the spot, right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Wait until you taste the
ajiaco
,” she said. She had been so psyched to find the rich chicken-and-potato stew she remembered fondly from childhood. “I thought we could heat that up for dinner tonight.”

“Sounds good. Where’d you get the mango?” He ate the remaining slices on his plate.

“I bought a couple outside the cantina yesterday, but with everything that went on after that I forgot all about them.”

He took another big bite of his wrap, but after he’d chewed and swallowed it, he positioned himself to look over at her without having to twist his head around at an unsustainable angle. “About the car,” he said slowly.

“Oh, no! You didn’t get it going?”

“No, I’m sure it will hold. But I had to reassess my assessment from yesterday. I wasn’t kidding when I told you it’s in remarkable shape for its age. But I have a bad feeling that it’s reached the stage where all kinds of little shit starts going wrong. If I had my toolbox and we were in a city where we could find replacement parts, that wouldn’t be a problem. But in the middle of goddamn nowhere?”

“Problem,” she said glumly.