Eye of the Storm (A Gray Ghost Novel, ebook 2)

Chapter One

Tilting his head back, against gravity, proved too taxing. Pain lanced the side of his head and numerous other places, too many to count. With difficulty, he tensed his legs, testing for injury. Stirrings of alarm spiked through his blood at the slow rocking motion, and he refocused on controlling his breathing while he pieced all the information together.

He hung upside down.

Insects buzzed, and wind whispered through the trees. His foggy brain worked to sort through the noises and analyze the one that was out of place. The sounds clicked—some of them, anyway. He was outside, and everything hurt. His head throbbed as he fought to stay conscious. He dismissed the bugs, birds, the call of a monkey, and the croaking frogs, and was left with a sound that made him uneasy. The occasional slow creak stood out loudly and clearly. A gust of wind shifted his body and rattled the leaves around him. The groaning and creaking increased. He’d yet to open his eyes.

Something was definitely wrong.

The pounding in his head intensified, and his lethargic mind balked as he tried to connect the dots. Every part of his body throbbed with discomfort, but pain was one thing he could block out. What he couldn’t ignore was his bewilderment at how he’d gotten there.

The agony lessened. A small, smooth, repetitive touch bumped against his cheek, filtering into his awareness. He sensed no threat. With great effort, he peeled open one eyelid and tried his best to focus his blurry vision on what it was. A strand of tiny metal beads? A sense of familiarity teased the edges of his mind, and his pulse increased as he tried to remember the strand’s significance. Shapes and images danced around the edge of his mind, but every time he attempted to concentrate, to draw them in, they dissipated. His efforts brought blinding agony, because nothing was there. Where his memory should be, a void existed.

Blood pounded in his head, and when he tensed his muscles again, the tether around his legs, arms, and back filtered in. What did I do last? Why would I be here? At each question, his mind drew a complete blank. He ruthlessly shoved away the hysteria that tried to overtake him and instead concentrated on his breathing, inhaling slowly and lengthening his exhales. As his body somewhat relaxed, he mentally rehearsed what he needed to do—figure out where he was, why he was there, and how to get to safety. He observed what was around him with the small amount of focus he could gather. Leaves. Lots and lots of leaves.

Something dripped down his face and quietly plopped on the leaves below him. Sweat? His mouth was swollen and as dry as the desert. He tried to clear his throat, but the pounding and dizziness that swept through him stopped him. The humidity suffocated and sucked him dry at the same time. Where am I? Confusion sent zings of panic through his densely cloudy mind. Still, he pushed past the nausea and impending darkness that pressed against the edges of his consciousness.

He pried open his other eye and instantly regretted it when shards of pain sliced through his skull. With several measured breaths, he forced both of them wide. Greens and browns swam in front of his blurry vision. As he rocked back and forth from the wind, the object that had bumped his cheek swung from his neck. The small silver beads tugged at his memory once more, but what they were escaped him. Whatever the chain symbolized would be there for him to investigate later. The immediate problem was the predicament he was in. He hung upside down in a tree and couldn’t remember how the hell he’d gotten there or anything from the moment he’d opened his eyes. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he couldn’t even remember his name.

* * *

Mari

Branches slapped and battered Mari, stinging her arms and face. Her heart thudded against her breastbone as she gasped, dragging thick, sticky air into her lungs. Damn this jungle, and the stupid transporter who’d swindled her out of her weapons. She needed a gun, a blade, anything. Then she’d turn the tables and show what an armed Colombian woman was capable of.

Her breath sawed in and out with each slap of her feet against the slick leaves, twigs, and branches that caught at her pants legs. The last months of her freedom looped through her mind. She’d been so close, having fled Colombia before they’d realized she was gone. She’d sought shelter in rented rooms until the day the Ramirez cartel marched through the streets, leaving destruction in their wake. She knew who sent them—her childhood friend turned worst nightmare. Defying him would enact retribution from the cartel. It was inevitable unless she could manage to escape.

Against all odds, she would. Her life would be her own.

Roots snagged her feet, seemingly determined to capture her. She ran for her life through a dangerous and hostile jungle that teemed with insurgent guerrillas, drug-traffickers, and kidnappers. But none of that mattered. Her options for escape had been limited before and had grown even more so.

A Colombian guerrilla chased her, closing in fast. Wiry, quick, and used to the conditions and terrain, he stood a good chance of outrunning, outmaneuvering, and overtaking her. A new surge of adrenaline pumped through her veins, probably the last of it, so she took advantage of the rush.

The heat sapped her strength. Must make it. Her desperate fingers grabbed roots that stuck out in the slippery, mud-coated incline, as she fought to stay ahead.

Her thighs convulsed, and the stitch in her side threatened to take her down. She sweated by the bucket load, and dehydration was inevitable. She wondered how much longer she could really go at this pace, in this environment. Beautiful but deadly, the jungle had her at a disadvantage. Nausea cramped her stomach. Thick foliage trapped her and slowed her down. Without a machete, she had no choice but to dive through the mass of green, praying for a trail on the other side. Maybe going it alone in the wild wasn’t the best of ideas. But she hadn’t had another means, or anyone to help her.

Cruel fingers scraped along her head, yanking out some hair. Bastard. Her fury spiked, and she whirled around, her arm extended. Using the momentum, she flung her arm against the side of his face. His head snapped back, and he stumbled. Spinning around, she pushed herself to run, to take advantage of the small gain. If he touched her again, she’d make him pay.

She forced her body to move faster, harder. It was more a mental challenge than a physical one, and she could do it. An opening loomed ahead, and she dashed forward. The freedom of movement gave her false hope. She’d pushed too hard and too fast in the heat, and her energy stores were depleted. Her body slowed, and she pressed her mouth into a tight line. I can do this. Even with an iron-willed determination to live, she knew she couldn’t outrun him. The tangled branches and leaves had worked against her. He did too. It wouldn’t be long. He’d be on her in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

The small pack on her back felt as though it weighed ten times what it had when she’d left her last hiding place. It thwacked her back in rhythm while her feet pounding across the slippery forest floor. Twice, she’d fallen and dropped to a knee as the slick ground worked against her.

The sound of his boots slapping behind her shifted along her side—he was trying to force her to turn, to head down a narrow path that begun at the base of a muddy incline.

In a split-second decision, she lunged to the left, avoiding the steep hill she knew he wanted her to travel in exchange for a thicket of spindly trees, heavy with green leaves. She was smaller and thinner than he was, so she could slip through them more easily. There, she could maintain her speed for a while longer. The incline would have sapped her strength. It would have been her end.

She’d escaped from the town she’d grown up in, working her way to cross the border and to start a new life. Knowledge of her imminent fate counteracted the optimistic hope she’d once had. He continued to pound along behind her, closing in once again. After running and hiding, she’d thought she was almost free, but it wasn’t meant to be. She’d found a new enemy.

She did have one weapon, sort of, the pack that slammed into her back. If he caught her—and he would—she’d go down swinging.

As she sucked in each breath, she almost faltered, and something changed. The odor of foul decay permeated the stifling air, and she tried to veer away, stifling a cry. The sight that greeted her was gruesome. The stench took residence in her nostrils. Five decapitated heads rotted on spikes. This is not good.

He was too close, and she had no choice but to sprint past the putrid heads on pikes. Shit. Cartel territory.

He was herding her.

Her adrenaline reached uncharted heights when she risked a glance over her shoulder and saw his arms pumping, a gun gripped tightly in his fist, and his gaunt face, which held cruel lips and cold, dead eyes. Another few inches, and he’d have her. Why he didn’t simply shoot spoke volumes. She’d be his toy before he killed her.

The muddy ground sabotaged her again, and she fell to a knee. Jumping up, she cursed at the lost time. More than anything, she wished she had her knives. She’d bury one in his throat and dance in his blood as he died.

A pop echoed in the dense jungle, and she felt the displacement of air by her left ear. Mari jolted right. A dull thunk hit its mark behind her—the man—and then she heard the thwap of a body hitting the forest floor. She sprinted to take cover behind a tree, then she stopped to rest with her hands on her knees, panting in a desperate attempt to slow her breathing. Squinting, Mari searched for the safest way out. Who shot him?

With a new enemy somewhere out there, she feared taking the risk of moving, but the danger of staying still in one place while he advanced on her was great, too. Like a rabbit caught in an impossible trap, she waited, calculating her next move.

Trading one pursuer for another wasn’t good. It might be preferable to other alternatives, but freedom—safety—was the ultimate goal.

“Come out.” The quiet command of a female voice cut through the dense foliage.

Mari was immobile with shock while her rescuer came into view, training a gun on her head. Maybe she’s not a rescuer. The woman had steady, pale-blue eyes and blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. The woman’s voice and coloring made her stand out—she obviously wasn’t a Colombia native. Odd. Why is she here? She was dressed in ill-fitting clothes, wearing the same style of the guerrilla insurgent who’d chased her. She’d spoken English. Is she with his group?

“What do you want?” Even though this woman had helped, Mari wouldn’t trust her blindly.

Her lips pressed into a hard slash, the woman jerked her head at the prone body. “Check the body.” She kept the gun trained on Mari’s chest.

Digging her fingernails into the tree’s rough bark, she attempted to put it in between her and the mystery woman. She lifted her chin and snapped, “You shot him, you find out.”

Brows raised, the woman lowered her gun a notch. “You’re not really in a position to argue. Check the body, and I won’t shoot you in the leg.”

She had a point.

Seconds ticked by, and Mari took a step away from the safety of the tree. When no bullet came, she moved to the man sprawled on the ground. A single hole bloomed crimson in the center of his forehead. The woman was a good shot.

Unwilling to turn her back on the blond woman, Mari squatted beside him, her fingers finding the spot by his neck where a pulse would flutter if he was alive. She felt around to be sure then pulled her hand away when nothing moved beneath her touch. “He’s dead.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Running.” Willing to risk being shot, she searched the man for his weapons. The gun had flown to where it rested on his other side. If he had other weapons, she needed to find them—and take them.

“In the Darian Gap, the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere? So close to a guerrilla camp? You do realize people who come here usually die, right?”

Mari took a breath, feeling her temper rise, and counted to five before she stated the obvious. “This was my best option to get out of Colombia undetected. As for the guerrilla camp, I didn’t plan to cross into it. He chased me.” Maybe it was just apparent to her what’d happened. She didn’t know who the woman was.

“Drove you, more likely.”

No kidding. Mari stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She knew the man had been attempting to corral her in the camp, but what choice did she have at the time? The additional rush from the shooting seemed to bring out the worst in her. “It hasn’t really been a good day for me. At least tell me your name.” Her words slurred, and she bit her swollen tongue in an attempt to curb her runaway mouth. God, she needed water.

The woman gave a tight nod. “Hannah.”

“Look, Hannah, I appreciate you saving my life, but this isn’t really the time to have a chat, considering where we are.”

“No, it isn’t, is it?” A few seconds passed, and Hannah’s head tilted to the side and her shoulders relaxed. “I need a little more information before I decide if I want to kill you or not.”

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