Show No Fear - By Marliss Melton Page 0,41

The realization loosed the lock that kept Lucy’s older memories contained, and they spilled free, rushing through her mind in streaming video.

The friends who’d studied in Valencia with her, Amy, Melissa, and Dan, had been put in closed caskets, their bodies mutilated by the roadside bomb. She’d attended every one of their funerals, watching as family members and loved ones mourned their loss.

Since then, she’d done everything in her power to give their deaths meaning—befriending scum, risking her life for information. She was still at it, even here in Colombia. She did it for Mike and Jay’s sakes. Only she was too late.

Mike was dead.

Suddenly, just sitting in this stiflingly humid little hole of a building, stuck under the watchful eye of fanatics like Buitre, was more than she could tolerate. Unwieldy emotion kept her in a chokehold. She could not escape it.

She could feel her poise slipping away like granules of sand through her fingers. PTSD was here to stay, apparently. Even Lucy Donovan had her limits. There was only so much of this hellish work that she could take.

* * *

SENSING TENSION IN THE woman next to him, Gus glanced over. Lucy’s face was, as always, serene as a marble statue’s. He slid his gaze to her lap and realized with an unpleasant start that she was digging her nails into her palms, leaving little purple crescents in her flesh.

Howitz’s death was freaking her out. She needed to get away from these people before she lost it.

With Fournier still drawing negotiations to a close, Gus thrust back his seat, stood, and weaved uncertainly. Everyone gaped up at him.

“Gustavo!” Lucy cried, snatched from her self-absorption.

“I don’t feel so well,” he confessed. “Mr. Fournier, please excuse me and my wife.”

“Of course.” The Frenchman dismissed them with a frown of concern.

S¸ ukruye rose to help.

“I’ve got him,” Lucy reassured her.

Together they staggered from the building to find Buitre seated at a crude field table, erected in the shade of the orange tree, inspecting rebels’ weapons. A growing pile of discarded rifles lay at his feet.

“We need to talk,” Gus whispered.

“The bungalow?”

He spied Marquez sitting by a crackling fire, looking tired and grizzled. “Ask Marquez if you can take me to the waterfall,” he suggested. It was a long shot, but the man had shown some compassion; perhaps he’d show some more.

As Lucy steered him toward the fire, the commander looked up, his expression not without sympathy as it touched on Gus’s ravaged face.

Lucy’s voice sounded strained as she made her request. “The stinging is too much,” she added, and Gus hung on her, showing every indication of a man suffering from an overdose of insect venom.

To Gus’s surprise, Marquez conceded. He swung a thoughtful look toward the rebels, then waved David over. “Take these two to the salto,” Marquez ordered him. “Do not let them out of your sight.”

“Sí, comandante,” said the youth, shouldering his weapon and gesturing for them to precede him.

Giving Marquez no time to change his mind, Gus and Lucy hastened across the field toward the vertical path that disappeared into the jungle.

LUCY COULD TELL THAT GUS was on to her. Somehow, some way, he’d intuited her need to escape, to flee the rebel camp and every horrible, violent thing it represented. Her impulse was so unprofessional, showed such weakness, that she tackled the incline at a near-run, furious with herself.

Gus tugged her back, slowing her down.

From the corner of her eye, she could read his concern. The fact that he was worried about her at all was as unpalatable as this alien feeling that she might burst.

“Luce, I’m sorry about Mike,” he apologized.

David had evidently fallen far enough behind that he felt safe speaking in English. English made his words seem all the more final, the more painful. Regret stabbed Lucy in the heart. “Fucking bastards,” she choked out.

“Talk to me, Lucy,” he demanded as they struggled up the hill.

“There’s nothing to say. Mike’s dead. People die.” A recollection of the bombing in Valencia streaked through her mind.

Glancing back, she was alarmed to find David practically upon their heels. Shit! Why were they speaking in English?

“I’m just lightheaded,” she added in Spanish. “Probably dehydrated.” She increased her speed, pulling Gus with her.

The roar of the waterfall grew louder. They came upon the little slice of paradise abruptly. As Gus threw himself onto a log to remove his boots and socks, Lucy stared at the sheet of rushing water, soothed by its endless flow.

“You coming in?” he asked,