Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(34)
Is he innocent? Or is he guilty?
She’d gone back and forth so much on the issue in the last sixteen hours she felt like a yo-yo.
But even when she caught up with him, she couldn’t ask what he meant, because it took everything she had to keep pace as he wound his way through the jungle. She stepped where he stepped, avoiding the things he avoided, stopped to grab a quick drink from the iodine-laced water in the canteen when he stopped to do the same.
For an hour, maybe two—she’d lost the ability to accurately gauge the passing of time—they fought their way through the undergrowth, the rain steadily falling all around them but doing nothing to mitigate the heat. Vines clung to clothing and hair, shrubs grabbed ankles, and tree roots jumped up to snag the unsuspecting toe. Her muscles began to ache, her empty stomach began to make itself infuriatingly known by grumbling and growling, and the headache she’d awoken with that morning remained stubborn as a mule, kicking her in the cranium every couple of minutes.
She was just about to call for a break—her legs were Jell-O, and she’d tripped three times in the last five minutes—when suddenly the rainforest opened up and she found herself on the side of a mountain. The ground dropped off in a steep decline that was traversed some thirty feet below by the long, snakelike track of an old jungle road.
Without the protection of the canopy, the rain came down in sheets, running into her eyes and mouth, but she didn’t care. It felt so good to be at the edge of the jungle, to be out in the open. She drew in a deep breath and spread her arms wide, reveling in the freedom of being able to stretch out without touching vines or ferns or bushes or trees or—
“What are you?” Rock shouted beside her, the heavy patter of raindrops on foliage muffling his voice and obscuring his face, but she could still make out his lopsided smirk. “Queen of the World?”
She scowled up at him, in no mood to joke—even if the reference did include the oh-so-delicious Leonardo DiCaprio—just as the ledge of dirt she was standing on gave way. And then it was yeehaw! She flew down the mountainside on the jungle’s version of a Slip N’ Slide. Only there was no smooth, plastic sheet beneath her bottom. Oh, hell no. It was just a river of mud and root-balls and the occasional rock.
She bounced and skidded and bounced some more. And every time she landed back on her ass, her teeth clacked together causing her headache to grow to the relative size and shape of an aircraft carrier.
By the time she hit the flatness of the roadway with her stomach, arms and legs all akimbo, mouth full of mud and M4 gouging into her side, she was thinking it might’ve been easier, and certainly less painful, if she’d just stepped in front of one of those rounds aimed at her head last night.
“Blech,” she hacked, repeatedly spitting until most of the mud that’d been in her mouth was sitting on the road in front of her in a wet, disgusting heap. Then, she managed to—painfully—heave herself onto her back, keeping her eyes closed as the rain pelted the dirt from her face and filled her open mouth.
She turned to spit just as Rock landed with a humph beside her. Slowly, as if every bone in his body ached, he pushed into a kneeling position, raking the rain and mud from his face with an ungentle swipe of his hand.
“Mon dieu,” he breathed, shaking his dark head until dirty water flew from the spiky tips of his short hair. “That was unexpected.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, still flat on her back, wondering if she’d ever be able to move again. “And it looked a lot more fun in Romancing the Stone.” She blinked the water from her eyes only to have it replaced by more.
“You okay?”
She lifted her chin—and, yep, the ol’ noggin weighed in at a cool metric ton—and shot him a look that not only questioned his intelligence, but his sanity.
He winced. “Sorry. Stupid question. Let me rephrase; is anything broken or irreparably damaged?”
“My pride?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she insisted, slowly pushing into a sitting position. The horror of the last day combined with the worry of the past six months caused unexpected tears to pool in her eyes.
Oh, great. Perfect time to have a breakdown.
She hoped he couldn’t tell, not with it raining so hard. But then her stupid lip began to quiver and suddenly she was back in his arms.
“Ah, hell, chere,” he crooned, rubbing a gentle hand over the back of her head. “I’m so sorry to put you through all this.”
All? Did that include last night’s rejection? Did that include his declaration that he’d never—capital N—love her?
Oh, great, and now she was crying—again, she was crying again, for Pete’s sake!—for a whole new reason. He must think her a total pantywaist. Here she was, supposed to be helping him, and so far all she managed to do was lead the guys who were after him right to his door and break down in his arms. Twice.
Geez, Van, pull yourself together!
But try as she might, she couldn’t stop the tears that slipped down her cheeks, hotter than the raindrops. And that’s when it occurred to her—as she sat covered in mud on a remote jungle road while being chased by government agents who’d been given orders to kill her—that there was no other place she’d rather be.
Because no matter how badly she hurt, or how much she longed for a shower, or how scary it was to actually get shot at, nothing mattered as long as she was with Rock.