Sharpshooter. Cynthia Eden

good with his hands.

      As his last interrogators had discovered.

      “I—I can’t remember his voice.” Her words were soft. Sad. “It’s been too long for me, Gunner.”

      He stilled. That had been his brother’s voice, hadn’t it? Because if it hadn’t, then he’d dropped his gun for no damn reason.

      I could have taken them out. But he wouldn’t have been able to do it without hurting the hostage. If that had been his brother, then Slade had already been hurt enough. Gunner wasn’t going to add to the man’s pain.

      Gunner cleared his throat. “Are you bound?”

      “Tied like a pig, with a sack over my head.”

      He’d thought so, but they’d been separated on the way to the camp. Then he hadn’t heard her voice for a while, and he’d…worried. “We’re gonna get out of here.” His comm transmitter was gone. Taken and smashed in the jungle, just as hers had been.

      But this camp wasn’t in the location that they’d been told of. Either Logan had been given bad intel or the group had a second and, from the sound of things, much larger base. Because they’d walked east. Been dumped into the back of a vehicle, and they’d zigged and zagged through the jungle before they’d stopped.

      Good thing he and Sydney were both equipped with a special GPS locator, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They both had trackers inserted just beneath their skin. Cale and Logan would be able to find them; it was just a matter of time.

      “We’ll get out of here,” Gunner told her as he twisted his wrists. The ropes were rough, and he could feel them tearing into his skin. So what if he got cut? The blood would just make it easier for him to break loose.

      Then he heard voices outside. The group leader’s voice—that would be the one who’d come for them in the jungle. The one who’d held the hostage and laughed as he stared into Gunner’s eyes.

      “Sounds like the fun is about to start,” Sydney said. There was no fear in her voice. She could have been terrified, and he wouldn’t have known. She was in her mission mode now.

      “We’ll get out of here.” He needed her to understand that.

      He heard the rustle of the tent’s opening. Footsteps came closer. He listened carefully and counted the tread of those footsteps…two men.

      One man went to stand behind him.

      The other—“You shouldn’t have come into my jungle.” Heavily accented English, and Gunner knew it was the leader. The guy was standing right in front of him. He could make out the outline of the man’s body through the fabric of the sack that covered him.

      He could see the guy’s body and see the weapon that the man lifted and pointed toward Sydney. “Coming here was a terrible mistake for you both.”

      “Stop!” Gunner barked, heart racing.

      Laughter. Low. Sinister. From the man with the gun. The rebel behind Gunner didn’t make a sound.

      Rebels…what cause were they fighting for? As far as he could tell, Logan thought this group was little more than drug runners. Weapons dealers.

      “I am not going to shoot the señorita yet. Not just yet.” But he still had the weapon near her head. “First, you talk, sí? You tell me all about your team. About the men who think they can come into my jungle and take what is mine.”

      The rope cut deeper into Gunner’s wrists. “There is no team. Just us.”

      Silence. Then, “I can start by shooting her in the knee, if you want.”

      “There is no team!” Sydney snapped at him.

      But Gunner didn’t speak. The man’s words were replaying in his head. “I can start by shooting her in the knee.”

      “You both wore…what are they? Ah…transmitters of some sort. That means you were talking to someone else.”

      “There is no team,” Gunner said woodenly, because that was the response he had to give. When the enemy caught you, you didn’t turn. You didn’t reveal your intel, and you didn’t jeopardize the others still out in the field.

      “So sad.” Now the man’s voice had deepened. Behind him, Gunner heard the other rebel shifting from foot to foot. “He must not care for you at all, señorita.”

      Gunner yanked on the ropes. They weren’t giving. Not yet.

      “I don’t like hurting women. It’s not in my nature, but…” A regretful sigh drifted in the air. “If I do not learn what I must know, there will be no choice for me.”

      “Let her go!” Gunner demanded as fury swirled inside him. “That’s the only choice you need to make.”

      “No, I need to know about your team. About your…EOD.”

      Gunner’s mind whirled. The rebel—no way should he have known about the Elite Ops Division. They were off the books for a reason.

      Classified cases. Classified kills.

      “How many EOD agents are in Peru?”

      “I don’t know what the EOD is,” Gunner told him.

      A growl broke from the man behind him, and Gunner felt the blade of a knife slice through the sack and press right against his throat.

      “Ah…I’m afraid my companion is more impatient than I am.”

      The companion…he’d moved quickly but wasn’t getting a reprimand of any sort by the guy Gunner had pegged as the leader. Unusual. Very unusual. Leaders didn’t usually like it when someone jumped the gun.

       Maybe he isn’t the leader.

      Maybe the real leader was the man getting ready to slice open his throat.

      The man with the knife hadn’t said a word, but the other guy kept talking, throwing out, “Her life doesn’t matter to you, but what about your own? Care to tell us about the EOD…now?”

      “We don’t know what you’re talking about!” The angry words came from Sydney. “We can’t tell you when we don’t know!”

      Sydney had been trained not to break, too. They’d both learned how to hold out against torture.