Dead Man's Curve

“How’d you find out about the kidnapping?”

“I heard the sirens.” Reliving that heart-sinking moment when he’d realized all those lights and sirens had been headed for the motel where his sister was staying, he struggled to breathe. “I’d seen a write-up in the local paper about a visit from a previous bass tournament champion. Her husband, Gabe. There was a picture of the two of them, right on the front page of the sports section.”

Alicia had looked so beautiful in that photo, he thought. So happy. The guy she’d married seemed solid, too. Quinn had told him a few things about the Coopers, whom Quinn knew through prior dealings with the family. Gabe Cooper had been among the family members who’d done battle with a South American drug lord seeking vengeance against one of the Coopers. Sinclair prayed he’d be just as strong in protecting Alicia.

Of course, Cabrera’s men might have executed him the first chance they got. They were nothing if not ruthless.

“They’re keeping her alive,” Ava murmured. “There’s no point in killing her if they want to use her to smoke you out.”

“I may have done the job for them.”

“Three dead and we’re still at large. That’s not nothing.” Her voice had grown progressively more strained. That wound she’d suffered was probably hurting like hell by now.

“I need to take a look at your wound.”

“It’s okay.”

“It needs to be cleaned out and disinfected. The longer we wait to do that, the more likely infection will set in.” It might not be possible to avoid infection even now, but it wouldn’t hurt to clean her up. “I have first aid supplies.”

“We can’t risk a light.”

“The Ghillie cover will block most of it, and the woods should take care of the rest, unless they stumble right on us. And if that happens, the light will be the least of our worries.”

She released a gusty sigh. “Okay. But be quick.”

He grabbed his bag from the back of the tent and pulled out the compact first-aid kit. Fortunately, he’d stocked up a few days ago when he’d made a run to Bentwood to charge his burner phone. Using a penlight to see what he was doing, he pulled out disinfectant, gauze, tape and a couple of ibuprofen tablets to help her with the pain. The kit also offered a bigger pair of tweezers. One look at the messy furrow ripped into the fleshy part of her hip suggested he was going to have to do some careful work to get all the singed fabric out of the wound.

“I’d offer you a bullet to bite,” he said, keeping his voice light, “but we may need to conserve them.”

“Just get it done.” She pushed down her trousers, wincing as the fabric stuck to the drying blood at the edges of her wound.

He handed her the penlight. “Can you hold this for me?”

She positioned the light over her hip, turning her head away and burying it in the elbow crook of her other arm.

He worked quickly, wincing at her soft grunts of pain. The wound was about five inches long and at least a half-inch deep, grooving a path right through the flesh of her hip. It had missed the bone, fortunately, and she had enough curves for the bullet to have also missed most of the muscle. “Looks like it mostly injured fatty tissue,” he commented as he dabbed antiseptic along the margins of the wound.

“I’m suddenly feeling less guilty about that chocolate-covered doughnut I had for breakfast,” she mumbled.

“We need to get you somewhere cleaner than these woods,” he said as he bandaged up the wound.

“I’m counting on that,” she answered. “You’ll be coming, too.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You don’t get a vote.”

He looked down at her bared hip, the utter vulnerability of her current pose. “You’re in no position to make demands at the moment.”

She moved as quickly as a cat, the grimace on her face as she whipped up to face him betraying the pain the move caused her. Still, she had her Glock in his face before he could put down the first aid kit. “Want to bet?”

He couldn’t stop a smile, even though he knew it would only make her angry. “You’ll have to shoot me, then.”

Her lips pressed to a thin line. “Why aren’t you dead, Solano?”

“Because I never walked into that warehouse in Tesoro with the rest of the crew.” He tamped down the memories—the thunderous bomb blast, the sickening knowledge that people he knew, people he’d lived with and sometimes even liked, were gone, martyrs to a cause he’d once embraced and now despised.

“The authorities in Sanselmo accounted for your body.”

“There were ten bodies. Mine just wasn’t one of them.”

“You killed someone to fake your own death?”

“He was already dead. John Doe from the local morgue.”

“You knew those men would die when they went in there. Why would you betray your own comrades that way? I never thought you were amoral. Wrong? Absolutely. Following a fool’s path? Certainly. But to kill nine men to fake your own death?”

“It wasn’t my doing,” he said, not sure how much he should reveal to her about what he’d done all those years ago. Some of it was probably still classified. He and Quinn had never discussed what he would have to tell the world if he were ever caught.

“Don’t get caught” had been Quinn’s oh-so-helpful advice.

Besides, she had already dismissed the truth as a possible explanation. What good would it do to tell her at this point?

“If it wasn’t your doing, whose was it?”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t say. There are other people involved. Some of them might still be in dangerous situations.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you’re going with the ‘secret CIA double agent’ story after all? Really?”

He looked away from those sharp eyes, his gaze falling to her midsection, where her unbuttoned trousers were riding down perilously, revealing black panties, the luscious curve of her hips and the sleek plane of her flat belly. His body responded fiercely, a white-hot ache settling low in his groin. It had been a damned long time since he’d been this close to a woman. And this woman, in particular, had gotten under his skin in record time once before.

Clearly, in the eight years since, he hadn’t developed an immunity.

He cleared his throat and waved his hand toward her open fly. “You’re about to lose your britches.”

As she glanced down, he grabbed her wrist, moving the muzzle of her Glock away from his face. Her gaze flew up to meet his, her expression shifting between mortification and anger. But not fear, he noticed. For whatever reason, she didn’t seem to fear him.

Lust flared like fire in his belly.

He let go of her wrist. “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you. But I don’t like having a gun in my face.”

She jerked back from him, but she didn’t aim her gun his way again, he noticed with relief. When she spoke, her voice was soft and raspy. “How did you get out of Sanselmo without being caught? How did you make it back here to the States, for that matter?”

“Same answer to both questions. I had help.”

“From whom?”

“The good guys.”

“Good guys in whose eyes?” Her tone was acerbic.

“Interesting question, that.”

“CIA, I suppose?” She looked disappointed that he wasn’t coming up with a different story.

Too bad, he thought. You may not like it. Hell, I didn’t like it much myself. But the truth is what it is.

“I’m going to take a look outside. I think it’s dark enough to risk it.” He turned in the narrow confines of the tent and started crawling toward the exit. As he neared the flap, he felt the heat of her body scrambling up behind him. She nudged her way to his side, her body soft and sizzling hot against his. Another flare of desire bolted through him, making his arms and legs tremble.

He turned to look at her. Her small, heart-shaped face turned toward his, her eyes large and dark in the faint ambient light coming from outside. “This doesn’t require us both,” he murmured.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

She was going to make his quest to find his sister a little more difficult, he realized. Because if there was one thing he’d learned about Ava Trent during that week they’d spent together in Mariposa, it was the depth of her sheer, dogged determination. She attacked every task she took on with the same pedal-to-the-floorboard pluck.

She wouldn’t be easy to shake. And he wasn’t going to hurt her.

So how did he plan to proceed?

The easy answer would be to somehow make her an ally rather than an enemy. But short of spilling a boatload of long-held state secrets, how was he supposed to do that? And would she believe him even if he told her every little piece of the truth?

He needed to talk to Quinn, which meant heading for the closest town to charge his burner phone. And the closest town was Poe Creek, about a mile through the El Cambio–infested woods. Poe Creek, where cops still swarmed about the motel crime scene. Where Ava probably had fellow agents beginning to wonder where the hell she’d disappeared to and whether it was time to call for reinforcements to go looking for her.

“How many people are with you?” he asked.

She frowned. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

“They’ll be looking for you. Don’t want to shoot the wrong people.”

“You won’t be shooting anyone,” she said firmly.

“We’ve already shot three people trying to kill us. I’m not going to stop trying to defend myself—or you—just because you’ve decided to make your name as an FBI agent on my bounty.”

She made a low, growling sound thick with frustration. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

“Good to know.”

“But you’re a fugitive from justice, and bringing you in is my job.”

“Why don’t we concentrate on getting out of these woods alive first?” he suggested, trying to sound reasonable. The grumble that escaped her throat at his words suggested he hadn’t entirely succeeded.

But she gave a short nod toward the tent flap in response. “Think they’re still out there, then?”

“Somewhere,” he affirmed. “But now that we know they’re looking for me, we can be more careful moving through the woods. I think we can stay a step ahead of them until we get back to civilization.”

At least, he hoped they could. Because one way or another, he needed to get word to Alexander Quinn. The spymaster had warned him something like this might happen.

Every man’s sin sooner or later came back to haunt him.

* * *

HER HIP WAS burning like fire, the pain as effective as a cup of strong coffee to keep her heart pounding and her adrenaline pumping. Without the pain, she might have been tempted to hunker down and wait for daylight, because sneaking through the woods at night was harder than she remembered.

She had grown up in a rural area, traipsed through her share of woods and mountains, but rarely at night, and never with five inches of bullet-grazed flesh playing a symphony of agony with each careful step. But, as she reminded herself in a silent litany as she followed Sinclair Solano through a tangle of underbrush, each step took them closer to civilization. Closer to a clean bandage, prescription antibiotics and painkillers.

Closer to the safety of numbers.

She had come to the conclusion that Sin was being honest about one thing—he didn’t intend to kill her, even if she tried to take him into actual custody instead of this parody of custody they were playing out at the moment. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to stop her.

He’d been at this fugitive thing a long time. Clearly, he was good at it.

So the ball was in her court, she supposed. He might not be willing to kill her to maintain his freedom, but was she willing to kill him if he resisted her attempt to keep him in her custody? Was she willing to let Cade Landry shoot him? Or one of the local cops?

This shouldn’t even be a question, Trent. You’re an FBI agent. Taking criminals into custody is part of what you do.

But Sinclair Solano had saved her life. Put his own life at risk to do it. And when he swore he wasn’t the man she thought he was, he seemed to believe what he was saying.

Her boot tangled with a thick root somewhere beneath the mass of vines, scrub and decaying leaves underfoot, tipping her off balance. She stumbled forward, grabbing for something, anything to break her fall.

She slammed into the hard, solid heat of Sin’s chest as he moved quickly to catch her. His arms roped around her body, holding her close, lifting her back to her feet.

He didn’t let go immediately, his breath hot against her cheek. Despite the pain in her side, despite the adrenaline still flooding her body, she felt an answering rush of heat racing through her veins to settle, heavy and liquid, in the juncture of her thighs.

She wasn’t twenty and carefree, enjoying her last taste of freedom before law school and the FBI career she’d chosen for herself. These woods weren’t the cool, lush rainforest surrounding the soaring peak of Mt. Stanley.

And Sinclair Solano had long since ceased to be just some sexy, brooding fellow tourist who’d made her pulse race and her toes tingle with a few hot kisses under the Mariposa moon.

He let her go slowly, his hands sliding down her arms, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he released her. “You okay?” he whispered.

Her voice felt trapped in her throat. She nodded without attempting to free it.

For a long, electric moment, he continued gazing at her. Apparently, Poe Creek had not yet folded up its streets for the night, for faint light glowed in the west, edging his features with a hint of gold. He had tawny skin and dark, dark eyes, and eight years past their brief entanglement, his compelling magnetism still tugged at her unwilling heart.

“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, and she realized with a shiver those exact words were echoing in her own troubled mind.

“Tell me the truth.” She couldn’t stop herself from taking a step closer, as if he’d tugged an invisible cord between them. “If you tell the truth, I’ll know it. And I’ll know what to do. Why did you join El Cambio? And why did you leave?”

For a tense moment, he stared at her, his expression unreadable. Then, as he opened his mouth to answer, a loud crack sounded from close by.

She dropped, grabbing his arm and dragging him down with her. Adrenaline spiked, sending her heart into a wild gallop as she tried to find cover in the underbrush, her gaze darting around the darkened woods in search of the intruder.

“That wasn’t a gunshot,” Sin whispered, his face close enough that his breath tickled the tendrils of hair curling on her forehead.

“What was it?”

Before he could answer, a flurry of sound and movement broke the tense quiet of the woods. Thirty yards to the north, two men burst into view out of the underbrush, scrambling and stumbling as they went, throwing fearful looks behind them.

A few yards behind them, a large black bear loped after them, moving with surprising speed.

“I thought black bears didn’t attack unprovoked,” she whispered, watching the animal crash through the forest after the two fleeing men.

“She may have a cub around here somewhere.”

One of the men seemed to finally remember he was armed. He swung his gun hand toward the bear and fired a shot. It missed the bear, the bullet whipping through a thicket only ten yards away from where Ava and Sin crouched.

Sin grabbed her around the waist and hauled her with him behind a nearby tree trunk. The sudden movement pulled at her injury, and she hissed with pain.

“Sorry!” he whispered in her ear, sliding his hand up to her rib cage.

But he didn’t let her go.

Another gunshot rang in the woods. Another bullet missed the bear and whizzed harmlessly past their hiding place by a dozen yards. The next time Ava peeked around the tree trunk, the bear was circling back around, heading away from where they crouched. The men were two diminishing shadows in the woods, still on the run.

Ava released a long breath. “That was close. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait,” Sin murmured, catching her arm as she started to move.

She looked up at him, jerking her arm free of his grip. “What?”

He met her gaze, his eyes burning with fierce intent. “We have to follow those men.”

Chapter Four

Clearly, she thought he was crazy. Hell, maybe he was—those men were probably better armed and equipped than either of them, and he had no idea how many of them might be roaming the woods at the moment.

“We need to go back to the motel and report those guys,” she said firmly, starting westward.

He caught up with her, taking care not to touch her this time. “The bear scared the hell out of those guys. I’d bet they’re heading back to wherever Cabrera has set up camp in these hills. This could be our best chance to find out where that is.” His voice went raspy as emotion tightened his throat. “They might lead us to my sister.”

Her gaze softened. “They’re already out of sight.”

“I can track them. I’ve had a lot of experience in the past few years.”

Pinching her lower lip between her teeth, she gazed toward the darkness where the two men had disappeared. She released a huff of breath. “Okay, you’re right. We can’t let this trail go cold. But we don’t do anything but observe when we get there, understand? We find the place, then memorize the trail back for when I have reinforcements.”

He wasn’t sure he could agree to her stipulation, not with his sister’s life at risk. But if he didn’t agree, she would dig in her heels and make it next to impossible for him to tail those men. “Understood.”

She looked bone-tired briefly before her spine straightened and her chin came up to jut forward like the point of a spear. “You can track them? Then you lead.”

He suspected she wanted him in front as much to keep an eye on him as to let him lead the way. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to run from her.

Not yet, anyway.

“Let’s pack up the tent. We may need to set up camp later.” He accomplished the task quickly, and they were underway in minutes. The men hadn’t covered their tracks while they were running, but about a mile from where they’d encountered the bear, they stopped blazing an obvious trail through the woods. In the dark, trying to figure out what was evidence of human passage and what was normal woodland wear and tear became a hell of a lot harder, especially with clouds scudding overhead, blocking out most of the moonlight. At least the rain had finally stopped, leaving the ground wet enough for footprints to show up in the softened soil underfoot.

“There.” Three miles out, Ava spotted the faint tracks of their human prey. “Aren’t those footprints?”

He studied the tracks. “Good eye,” he murmured with approval.

“You’re not the only tracker around here,” she answered bluntly. But she sounded pleased. He spared her a quick look, struck by how pretty she was, even rain-drenched and weary. What makeup she’d been wearing back at the motel had washed away completely, leaving her looking more like the dewy-faced girl from Kentucky he’d found so fascinating when they’d met on the beach in Mariposa eight years earlier.

But looks could be deceiving. No matter how much he might wish those intervening eight years had never happened, he couldn’t deny they had. He’d changed. She’d surely changed as well.

And she was right. They weren’t friends. They couldn’t be.

“We need to be careful. Now that they’re covering tracks, we risk running right up on them. We have to watch for an ambush.”

She nodded, her expression grave. “It’s not too late to go back. We can come back in daylight. Track them when the light is better.”

His instincts rebelled against the idea, but he didn’t trust his decision-making skills at the moment. Right now his gut was too full of fear for his sister to provide any objectivity. Tracking two well-armed men in the dark woods was clearly risky.

But was the risk worth taking?

He looked at her. “What do you think?”

She nibbled her lip again. “We keep going. By now they may realize they’re missing three of their men. When those guys get back to camp, they could decide to bug out to somewhere else. If we wait until morning, we could follow this trail straight to a dead end.”

He loosed a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

They followed the trail another hour, moving with extreme caution as the trail rose upward into the mist-veiled mountains. The climb became steeper and more treacherous, and as they neared a particularly vertical rise, Sin stopped and offered Ava a drink from a water bottle in his backpack.

She drank the water gratefully. “Don’t suppose there’s any way to go around that hill?”

“Not without losing at least a half hour.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Then up we go.”

“You go in front,” he suggested. “You’ve got the bum hip. I’ll be able to catch you if you lose traction.”

She eyed him with caution, clearly weighing her options. No snap judgments from the Kentucky belle, he thought with a hidden smile. He’d always rather liked that about her, if he was remembering correctly.

“Okay.” Turning, she reached for a handhold in the steep incline, closing her fingers around a rocky outcropping.

Sinclair stayed close behind her, distracting himself from the gnawing anxiety eating a hole in his gut by enjoying the sway of her curvy backside as she climbed the trail in front of him. She’d filled out a bit in the eight years since he’d last seen her, her once lithe, girlish body developing delightful curves in all the right places. She had the kind of hips that made a man want to sink into her and stay there forever. His hands, gripping a rough-edged rock jutting out of the hillside, itched to close around her round, firm breasts instead....

Don’t get too distracted, he warned himself sternly.

The hillside started to level out, the climb less of a strain. Ava stumbled as they reached flatter ground, going down on her hands and knees. She stayed there for a moment, breathing hard.

Sinclair knelt beside her, laying his hand on her back. Her back rose and fell quickly as she caught her breath. “Sorry,” she rasped.

He rubbed her back lightly. “We can take a break. How’s your hip?”

She pushed herself up to a kneeling position and slid down the waistband of her pants to check the bandage. “I think it’s okay.”

“May I look?”

Her eyes met his, wide and wary in a shaft of pale moonlight peeking through the clouds. But she shifted, giving him better access to her injury.

Gently easing the trousers away from the bandage, he checked more thoroughly. There was a little blood seeping through the gauze, but not enough to worry. She wasn’t in danger of bleeding to death.

Infection was still a major risk, however, and the longer she stayed out here in these woods without professional medical treatment, the greater the likelihood of sepsis.

He should have insisted they go back to the motel instead of chasing these men, he realized with a sinking heart. He’d been selfish and, if he was honest with himself, a little bit afraid of facing justice after so long on the run. “We should go back to the motel.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Go back down that hill after we just climbed it? Are you kidding me?”

“The longer you and that bullet wound stay out here in these woods, the more likely you’ll get an infection. That’s nothing to play around with.”

“I think I’m good for a few more hours.” She pushed to her feet. “Let’s go. We’re wasting moonlight.”

His heart still stuck in his throat, he rose and followed her lead.

Ten minutes later, Sin heard voices. He grabbed Ava’s wrist as she continued forward, dragging her back against his chest.

She started to struggle, but he tightened his hold and whispered in her ear, “Voices.”

She froze, her head coming up as if to listen.