Entangled (Serendipity Adventure Romance Book 2) (2 page)

Stuck in Tucumba, in the highlands. They won’t let me out. Will miss my dead—

The message cut off there. Cara’s parents were frantic — so frantic, that when they found out Tobin was in Panama, they wrote back right away.

Get Tobin!
Get Tobin to help Cara now!

There wasn’t a PS, but he could hear Cara’s father muttering all the same.
And if the bastard fucks this up the way he fucked up everything else, he’s dead meat.

Yeah, her dad was a gem that way. A hard-working pizza parlor owner who probably had a distant connection to the mob — an Uncle Rocco who could wipe Tobin’s ass off the planet with a single shot to the head. Never mind that Tobin’s name had once been embossed alongside Cara’s on a wedding invitation. These days, he was persona non grata. They were only making a temporary exception because he was the closest one.

He gunned the engine and rattled along the single-track road, slaloming between ruts and dips that would have torn the bottom out of most four-wheel drives.

Will not fuck up. Not this time.

The road dipped downhill so steeply, the back wheel left the ground with a lurch that echoed in his gut. He sped around a bend to the approach to the bridge.

His eyes flicked briefly from the ruts in the road to the guards. Still focused on the game.

Back to the road, blurring under the front tire.

Back to the guards, closer now. His heart thumped in his chest.

The road straightened and Tobin opened up the throttle. The engine roared in his ears, but so did the river, and the guards didn’t hear him.

Yet.

Then everything became a blurry rush as he zoomed right past them and onto the bridge.

“Argentina dos, Brazil uno!”
the television commentator cried.
“Gooooooaaaaalllll—”

The goal celebration was drowned out by the shouts of the guards, who’d finally spun into action and reached for their guns. He could see them in the sideview mirror, now that the road was smooth. Smooth enough to hit another gear and gun it for the other side. A hundred feet and he’d be out of range, around the bend.

Eighty. The motorcycle flew off the lip of the bridge and back onto the dirt on the other side. He absorbed the impact with his elbows and knees and hung on for dear life.

Ping!
He didn’t hear the first bullet so much as felt it cut through the air.

Fifty feet to the bend. God, he hated being rushed.

A second shot rang out, and a third, then so many that he couldn’t discern between the rat-a-tat-tats exploding all around him and the jarring of the bike. All he could do was duck — as if that did much good — and speed on.

Crunch!
The sideview mirror shattered.

“Crap.” He’d just had that mirror replaced, too.

Thirty feet. The roar of the river subsided now that he’d reached the other side. The sound of bullets, though, grew louder.
Ping! Ping!

Ten feet. He hunched over the handlebars and leaned into the bend with a hard twist on the throttle. And
zoom!
He was in the clear.

“Shit!” He jerked the handlebars right. The blind turn hid a half-gutted truck, raised on bare axles, and a couple of logs. A wreck of a thing, but still solid enough to kill a motorbiker in too much of a rush. It loomed over him, and he tucked his elbow in tight. Cleared the wreck by an inch, and that was with half his weight stuck way out to one side. Raced on and told his heart to get the hell out of his throat and back to beating something steadier than a frantic bongo beat. Because he was fine. Absolutely fine, right?

He glanced back. The guards didn’t seem to be taking up the chase. Not yet, anyway. The road was empty but for him, Lucy, and a startled old man with a reluctant mule. Tobin puttered past them and around a bend, then screeched to a halt, staring up. Straight up.

The engineers who built the bridge seemed to have called it a day there because the road petered out into a nearly vertical trail more fit for a goat than a four-wheel drive.

The man with the mule caught up with him. Tobin cut the engine and pointed up. “Tucumba?”

“Si, Tucumba.”
The man smiled and plodded on like there weren’t a dozen guys likely to come sprinting around the corner any second. Like there wasn’t raw, ragged jungle on either side. Like the love of his life wasn’t being held captive somewhere up there.

“Tucumba,” he half muttered, half sighed.

Tucumba. If nothing else, there was kind of a high that came with living life this close to the edge.

Kind of.

He stashed Lucy as far off the road as he could. Which wasn’t very far, considering the python-thick vines and tree roots. The jungle crept over the sides of the road, just biding its time before reclaiming stolen territory. The leaves of the nearest bush were each as big as an umbrella, and it didn’t take long to hide Lucy. He slung his backpack over his shoulders, grabbed a water bottle from the saddlebags, and glanced back the way he’d come. No sign of the militia yet. If he was lucky, they’d already given up on him and gone back to the soccer game. If he wasn’t lucky, well…

He took off, trotting up the mountainside.

Forty-eight hours ago, he’d been teaching beginner surfers off an endless sandy beach on Panama’s Pacific coast. Now, he was sweating buckets and making like a soldier on some kind of marathon forced march. A Swiss soldier in an overgrown tropical version of the goddamn Alps. That’s what it felt like after the first hour.

And the second, and the third. By which time he wasn’t trotting, but trudging along. He might as well have poured the contents of the water bottle over his shirt for all that he was sweating now.

Sweating and swearing and slogging along. How the hell did Cara get to a place like this? Why? An image of her socked him so hard, he nearly stumbled. The first time they’d met, her coal-black eyes and long black hair made him think of a Roman goddess. The last time he saw her… Well, he’d rather not think about that.

Ahead, the trail narrowed to a footpath with solid walls of jungle on either side that were alive with a thousand unidentified squeaks, squawks, and screams. A monkey hooted. An angry bird fluttered right over his head. A giant purple-winged butterfly danced through a single shaft of daylight then disappeared.

It was like a movie. Right up to the part when the bushes rustled. A swarm of brown shapes separated themselves from the shadows and surrounded him with a chorus of grunts.

Five compact, bronze men that barely came up to his shoulders. Five pairs of fierce eyes underscored by thick black paint lines. Bare chests, bare feet. Nearly bare everything, except for the loincloths.

That’s not where he focused, though. The sight of five blowguns aimed his way was far more compelling. He gulped, picturing the poison-tipped darts inside, and stuck his hands up high.

“Um…
Hola?”

Chapter Three

Cara stuck on a smile and wandered down the village path.

Maybe this time they wouldn’t notice. Maybe this time she could get away.

Chickens scattered before her feet, and if she didn’t raise her eyes too high, it might seem like any other village in any other Central American town — all familiar to her since accepting the job transfer to Panama two months ago. Barefoot children, pecking chickens, a dirt path. The quiet chatter of voices, the sound of women pounding grain over stone mortars. The mangy dogs, snoring in the afternoon shadows.

The minute she lifted her chin, though, everything changed. This wasn’t like any other village she’d ever been, even in Panama. More like a photo spread in a
National Geographic
magazine, from the painted faces of the inhabitants to the thatched huts and thick jungle all around. The village was a tiny clearing in a vast carpet of living, breathing greenery. It might have been beautiful if she’d chosen to spend the last six days here.

But that hadn’t been the plan. Not the plan at all. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out visit — an afternoon of convincing an aging village chief to sign on the dotted line for a business deal he had no reason to turn down.

Except it hadn’t gone that way. The meeting dragged on and on, and no matter what she tried, no one seemed willing to follow her script. Minutes stretched into hours, and when she finally emerged from the meeting house, shadows stretched over the ground and the guide who’d led her into this backwater had packed up and left.

“He what?” she’d yelped, first in English, then in Spanish, trying to keep her fiery Italian temper under control. “How am I supposed to get out?”

“Don’t worry.” Rodrigo, the chief’s nephew, had just waved an indifferent hand. “We’ll get you a new guide.” He cleared his throat and mumbled. “Eventually.”

Eventually?

She’d looked around for someone else to guide her out, but there was no one. Only the scowling French anthropologist who lived in the village, but he’d stomped away the minute she mentioned her company. No help there.

She’d really started to worry when a woman showed her to the cluster of tiny huts where the villagers put up ecotourists on the rare occasions someone wandered far enough off the beaten track to visit. Bird watchers. Butterfly enthusiasts or scientists of some kind.

But that night, it had been just her. The hut held a bed with a mosquito-net canopy, a basin and bowl for water, and not much else.

“Buenas noches, señorita.”
The woman set a plate of food on the rough-hewn table, and then let herself out.

Buenas noches?
Since when was she spending the night here?

Since five nights ago.

The jungle rose around the village like the walls of a prison, and the only way out was the road. She strolled down the village path, aiming her camera this way and that, trying to look like a tourist and not a jail-breaker as she edged toward the road. Or what passed for a road in this part of the world.

She’d made it as far as the second bend on the second day. Far enough for one bar to light up under the antenna symbol of her phone if she held it high in the air.

“Come on, come on.” She’d coaxed the cell phone along. “Please, one more bar…”

The display flickered to two bars for an instant, then went back to none.

“God, please, just one message. Let me send one message. One little message.…”

The signal had popped in and out, and she hit
send
each time, desperate to contact the outside world.

But then a gang of women had come along, clucking like a flock of hens and herding her back to the village. By the next day, it was obvious the villagers weren’t just stalling, but downright refusing to let her leave. Every time she made a move for the road, they’d block her way. She even got up in the middle of the night and made a break for it, but the jungle noises had spooked her back into the village. The only thing she’d accomplished was getting out a backup message to her sister, if it went out at all.

She paused at a bush and pretended to sniff the pink blossoms, hiding her darting eyes behind the curtain of her long black hair. She sidestepped toward the road. Maybe today she’d make it far enough to get a signal, possibly receive a reply. Maybe she’d make it far enough to—

“Going somewhere,
señorita
?”

She whipped around so fast, her camera nearly clipped the man on the chin.

“Rodrigo.” She narrowed her eyes on the proudest five foot four inches of tribal warrior she’d ever seen.

“A beautiful day in the village, no?” The chief’s nephew stepped into her path, blocking the road.

The American English he’d picked up while studying abroad always caught her off guard, given his native garb. He spoke perfect English and Spanish, as well as the chirpy native language used here. The chief’s nephew was a bridge between two worlds — one of those rare backwoods types who’d made it out into the big bad world before coming home to his roots. Cara could picture him picketing for indigenous rights in front of a courthouse, giving reporters catchy sound bites for the evening news.

She stuck her hands on her hips. “I was thinking it must be a beautiful day back in Panama City.”

He scowled. “The city is never beautiful. No cities are. I’ve been there. I know. New York, Washington, Panama City: they’re all the same.” He shook his head. “It is only in the jungle that a person can truly breathe.” His bare chest rose on a long inhale as if to illustrate his point.

“Rodrigo, I have to get back to work. Why don’t you let me go?”

“Don’t worry,
señorita
. On Sunday, you can go.”

“Sunday is too late!” She had to present the plan to the national telecommunications authority on Friday at three. Without their okay, her company’s plan was toast. Her job was toast.

“Señorita
, enjoy the village. The beautiful rain forest. What they say in New York: kick back and relax.”

She’d worked in New York for four years and had never met anyone who kicked back and relaxed.

“If I wanted to relax, I would have brought a change of clothes. A book. My diary.” The one full of business deals gone right and personal things gone wrong. Badly wrong. “Rodrigo, why won’t you let me leave?”

Rodrigo made a little sound that told her nothing. “Enjoy the village,
señorita
,” he said and wandered away.

She plopped down on a log that served as a bench, kicked at the dirt, and spent the next quarter-hour contemplating her fate. She’d gotten one brief text out to work, but that was outside office hours. If the wrong person got to the messages first — like that skunk, Enrique, who’d been gunning for her job all along — well, who knew what he might be capable of. Such as conveniently hitting
delete.

Somehow she had to get out, and soon. She had forty-eight hours to bust her way out of the back of beyond.

But how? She had a pair of sandals, a dying cell phone, and half a bottle of insect repellent. No Swiss Army Knife, no compass, no clue. She hadn’t come to Tucumba for jungle adventures; she’d come to seal a deal. And Friday was only three days away!