“I’ll take this one.” She gripped the pistol in two hands and sighted down the barrel, sending Killian’s eyebrows up again.
“Where’d you learn to shoot?” Chase asked.
“Ecuador. Our village sat at the edge of the bush. Learning how to handle a gun seemed like a good idea.”
Chase was still trying to wrap his head around it. He had imagined her in some Ecuadorean preschool taking care of little kids, not working in a remote village with no toilets or running water.
Harper was a far different woman from the one he had imagined. There was no way the woman standing in front of him ready to fight a rebel army to rescue her brother was the cold fish her ex-boyfriend and half the men at the country club believed.
This was a woman of courage and passion. Chase felt a rush of heat just looking at her. He wanted to unlock that passion, taste the fire, feel the heat. He turned away before his hunger became obvious, didn’t miss the faint tilt of Kil Dawson’s lips or the knowing look in his eyes.
“What about personal gear?” Dawson asked. “It’s rain forest. Gets wet and muddy, cold at night up in the mountains. We’ll need to be prepared if we have to go in.”
“I’ve got gear in my bag,” Chase said. “Harper, what about you?”
“I’m all set.”
This time he wasn’t surprised. He’d been underestimating Harper from the start. He wouldn’t do it again. “Let’s load up,” he said, and Killian nodded.
They grabbed their bags and headed out the door, following Dawson to a newer-model white Toyota Land Cruiser that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. Stowing their gear in the back, which had WASH ME drawn on the windows, Chase climbed up in front with Dawson while Harper slid into the seat behind him.
It was ninety kilometers to Punta Gato. As Kil fired up the engine, Chase settled back in his seat. They were on their way.
He had no idea what they were going to find when they got there.
He hoped to hell it wasn’t two dead bodies.
Chapter Thirteen
As the Land Cruiser rolled along the highway, Harper tried to relax, but worry nagged her. She didn’t like the big, dark-haired man with the obsidian eyes and scarred face. With his hard features and powerful, muscular body, Killian Dawson made her more than a little uneasy.
Even his name set her on edge. Killian.Kil, he called himself. She wondered if he spelled it with twol’s.
She couldn’t imagine how a man who hadn’t cut his hair in months, hadn’t shaved in days, could possibly be handsome, but somehow Dawson was. She thought that a man who exuded that kind of masculinity wouldn’t have any trouble attracting women, though his crude brand of sexuality didn’t appeal to her and only made her dislike him more.
It didn’t matter what she thought of him. They needed his help to find Michael, and Dawson clearly knew what he was doing. She would follow his orders, do whatever she had to.
Besides, she was armed and so was Chase. In a different but equally masculine way, Chase was Dawson’s equal. He was smart, his body hard, all lean-muscled power and strength. She could count on Chase to protect her, believed that in every cell of her body.
Maybe it was because she was Michael’s sister, or that she was a woman, but she didn’t think so. Something was happening between them. She had begun to see it in Chase’s eyes whenever he looked at her and thought she wouldn’t notice.
Something hot and sexual that neither of them wanted—Harper revised the thought—or at least something Chase didn’t want. Harper was growing more and more certain having sex with Chase Garrett was exactly what she wanted.
Whatever the truth, at least for now both of them were doing their best to ignore it. They were there to save Michael and Pia. That was all that mattered.
An hour and a half after they left Santa Marta following the GPS coordinates Tabitha Love had given to Chase, Kil Dawson pulled the Land Cruiser off the Mingueo–Santa Marta highway onto a two-lane road headed directly toward the ocean. The road quickly narrowed to a single dirt track, and a few miles later, the sea appeared in front of them, an endless expanse of blue.
The road turned slightly south and ran along the edge of a cove. Farther on, a few weary structures appeared, a gas station with only a single pump, and what passed for a restaurant with rooms above. A permanent vacancy sign swung in the breeze on a pole outside the entrance. Next to it, the door to Las Palmaras cantina stood open.
The village was mostly deserted, just a kid on a rusty bicycle and a couple of older women in ankle-length gathered skirts walking along the dirt street. A black-and-white mongrel sniffed a trash can in the alley beside the restaurant, looking for something to eat.
It was the sleek white sailboat bobbing at a long wooden dock on the west side of the cove that captured Harper’s attention. Her heart leaped as she recognized her brother’s beautiful yacht,BUZZ Word.
“There it is!” She pointed excitedly over Chase’s shoulder. “Michael’s boat. That’s it!”
Dawson pulled the vehicle off the main road onto an even narrower dirt track that wound into deep green foliage, traveling north on the west side of the U-shaped bay. Reaching beneath his seat, he pulled out a pair of binoculars and began to scan the dock, the village and the area around it for what seemed the longest time.
“Looks deserted,” he finally said. “No way to know for sure till we check it out.”
