the safety on his pistol, and the sound of a round slipping into a well-oiled breech made her legs quake. “Any last words?” he sneeringly inquired.
Lucy’s entire life flashed through her mind, freeze-framing on moments spent with Gus—the only moments that really seemed to matter.
With a vulgar crack, the pistol discharged, flinging her headlong into the wet pit, her senses smacked out of her, her thoughts scattered to oblivion.
Waiting for death to claim her, she overheard the mirthless chuckles of her keepers. Second by second, she realized her heart was still pumping. Painful little gasps inflated her collapsed lungs.
It was just a prank. She was still alive.
Alive! Oh, thank you! Thank you, God!
A sob of relief burst from her chest. She knew in that instant that nothing—neither starvation nor frigid temperatures nor unending incarceration, not even the cruelest violations—could prevent her from surviving.
Somehow, some way, she would reclaim her life to wring from it every drop of pleasure still left to her.
CHAPTER 17
The squeak of Buitre’s screen door roused Gus from a light slumber. Snatching his head off his arm, he gazed uphill at the first sight of Buitre wandering from the camp to the tree line to relieve himself, unwitting of the fact that Navy SEALs lay waiting for him.
Following a high-altitude, low-open insertion three nights ago, they had questioned and killed half a dozen trail scouts, only to discover that Arriba’s whereabouts was a closely guarded secret—hence the X on the map Gus had stolen. Only the highest-ranking FARC knew where it was.
Buitre was one of them, Gus was certain. He’d convinced Luther to snatch the deputy from Cecaot-Jicobo, which was crawling with Elite Guards. Once caught, they would bear him away for questioning. Gus had a suspicion the hardened rebel was a coward at the core.
Dark anticipation pooled in his gut. At last, at the break of dawn, after eighteen hours of endless waiting, Buitre descended through a thin mist into the jungle alone.
With a whistle that resembled a birdcall, Harley alerted the others that action was imminent. He and Gus crept to their appointed positions near the area where the men relieved themselves.
Buitre had no idea he was being watched. He sauntered toward a tree, unzipping his trousers as he went. He was still wetting down the bark when Gus leapt up behind him, clapped a hand over his mouth, and injected him with a tranquilizer prepared in advance by Vinny.
Buitre struggled briefly, disturbing the loam under his feet. But then he collapsed, and Sean rounded the tree from the other side to help Gus shoulder his limp body. Together, they carried the rebel into the jungle, his fly still gaping.
Buitre’s bleary and confused gaze rose from Gus’s boots, to the knife clasped lightly in his hands, to his hard and merciless stare, illumined by a beam of morning sunlight. With dark satisfaction, Gus watched the blood drain from the deputy’s swarthy face as he assessed his helplessness. Dangling from a tree by his wrists, he struggled in panic. His eyes widened further as four more SEALs, bristling with weapons, their faces savagely painted, stepped from the shadows.
“There’s no escape,” Gus informed him coldly. “Today is the day you die.” A monkey screamed high overhead, echoing the fear etched on Buitre’s now-pallid face.
“No!” he gasped, sweat beading on his forehead.
“Your Venezuelan comrades will never find you.” They had carried him ten kilometers from Cecaot-Jicobo, covering their tracks as best they could.
“Your only concern,” Gus added, twirling the blade in his hands, “is whether your soul will burn in hell for all of eternity.”
Most guerrillas had been raised Catholic and were deeply superstitious. Buitre was clearly no exception, but he clung tenaciously to bravado. “I will tell you nothing!” he asserted, hacking a wad of spit at Gus’s feet.
Gus stood up and reached for one of Buitre’s fingers, intending to cut it off, when the deputy cried, “Wait! Wait!” He immediately began to blubber. “Have pity,” he begged.
Gus ran the sharp edge of the blade he’d stolen over Buitre’s good cheek. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, holding it up for him to see.
“My knife!”
“I sharpened it for you,” he whispered, grappling with the urge to plunge it into Buitre’s belly as images of Lucy, tortured and battered, clawed at his heart.
Tears began to gush from Buitre’s eyes. “Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered.
“Were you the one who cut the microchip from Luna de Aguiler?” Gus asked, feeding on cold fury to keep rage from overcoming him.
“No,