“And you were going to leave me to them?”
Now she was getting the point. “Darlin’, it was about me getting out, not saving the fucking world,” he said. “It still is.”
For a long moment she said nothing. “Good to know.” Her voice was cool, emotionless, and he was almost sorry he’d set her straight as to what a total son of a bitch he was. “But you’re committed to see Dylan and me safe now, right? Because we’re worth so much money to you?”
“Exactly.”
“And what are you going to do with all that money?”(“Go back to England and kill the people who left me here,” he said in a cold, uncompromising voice.
He expected her to argue, but she said nothing. “Dude,” came Dylan’s plaintive voice from the backseat.
“Shut up,” MacGowan and Beth said in unison.
Who would have thought the jungle would feel cold, Beth thought as she rubbed her arms. She stared out at the lush greenery as MacGowan drove too damned fast and wondered whether she’d ever feel warm again.
She shouldn’t be surprised by anything Finn had said. So she’d had delusions about him being something noble when he was, in fact, nothing but a mercenary. He’d said as much, from the very beginning,
but at some point along the way she’d wanted to imbue him with nobler principles. She’d been a fool.
She could tell herself she was with MacGowan’s clean-shaven, too-attractive doppelganger. The man who’d saved her life, bandaged her feet, killed for her, kept her warm, teased her, and watched over her had been left behind on the mountain. This cold-eyed man beside her would have left her at the first chance he got if it weren’t for the money. The real MacGowan wouldn’t have, even though he threatened.
Hell, she didn’t know what was what anymore. She only knew she’d had enough of death, and yet it followed MacGowan like a cloud. Once they reached a port city they could part ways, once he was assured of proper compensation for getting her away from La Luz, though what was proper was beyond her. One hundred thousand dollars? Five hundred thousand? A million?
Exactly what was her life worth? Surely not any more than kindly Father Pascal’s.
He made two stops, one in a medium-sized town, coming out of a store with a bag of food and what looked like a cell phone. “Are you going to let me use that?” she asked as she and Dylan drained the canned fruit juices he’d bought.
“Dream on.” He kept it beside him. “We’re not safe until we’re out of this country, and it’s too easy to track cell phones. They’ll be watching your family, and the kid’s.”
“I don’t have any family.”
That made him pause. “What happened?”
“Nothing as dramatic as your story,” she said. “My mother died of an accidental drug overdose when I was seven. Sleeping pills and alcohol, they said. My father was much older, he died in his late sixties. Leaving me, the sole heir to the Pennington fortune.”
“Lucky you.” There was no sympathy in his voice, and she hadn’t expected it.
“Lucky me. So who are you going to call on this dangerous cell phone?”
“I’m going to call in some favors.” He glanced over her in patent annoyance. “Why don’t you go to sleep? We’re heading for Puerto Claro, and it’s going to take most of the day.”
“Why there?”
“Best chance of getting a freighter.”
Dylan popped his head up from the back seat. “Freighter? Dude, I want an airplane! I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this hell hole.”
“The Guiding Light and the army were hand in hand last thing I knew, and I doubt if things have changed. They’re not going to want two such high-profile victims to simply slip out of the country. They’re either going to want to make a big fuss about your escape, or they’re going to want to make you both quietly disappear. Either way, I can’t take any more time making sure you two survive. Either you come with me on the freighter or you’re on your own.”
It was a tempting thought. The sooner she got away from him the happier she was going to be, but she didn’t feel like risking becoming one of the disappeared ones. The idea of a media firestorm was almost as bad.
Dylan spoke first. “Sticking with you, man,” he said, sinking back.
She said nothing. She had no choice, she knew it, and so did he, but she wasn’t going to give him the victory of a quick answer. “You can let me know, Sister Beth,” he said. “If you want I can put in a call to the American Embassy after I’ve finished my phone calls and then drop you in the next town.”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” she said, refusing to be bullied.
She should have remembered she was outclassed and outgunned. “You’re out of time, sweetheart. Either you’re in or you’re out.”