Free Killing Time by Cindy Gerard Page B

sleep.
    •   •   •
    Eva awoke slowly. Worked the kinks out of her neck and yawned. The cabin was dark. Only a few reading lights and the exit lights diffused the darkness. The engines were a soft, reassuring drone as she shifted and stared down at the vast expanse of the Caribbean through a thin cloud cover. Dawn broke over the horizon, slow and true and absolute. Death, taxes, sunrise, sunset. About the only things she felt she could count on these days.
    And then there was Brown.
    He was stretched out as far as the seat would allow, his long legs sprawled, his head turned toward her, snoring softly. She felt an odd little clutch in her chest as an unwelcome wave of tenderness washed through her.
    He looked exhausted and tortured even as he slept.
    And she didn’t have a clue why she cared.
    She turned back to the window. Guilt, maybe?
    Yes, she’d flown to Peru to bring him back to the States. Yes, she’d used extreme measures to coerce him. And no, she hadn’t planned on being so . . .
    You hadn’t planned on being so what, Eva? she asked herself.
    Affected, she supposed. By his physical presence. By his smart-ass sense of humor. Or by the vulnerability that he tried to hide behind everything from anger to sick humor to a don’t-give-a-damn swagger.
    “The hell I did.”
    She still got chills thinking about the conviction and despair in his voice . . . and the tears he’d tried desperately to hide.
    She swallowed hard and told herself it was because she was exhausted. Or, hello, terrified? When she closed her eyes she could still see the pillow exploding as round after round from the MP5K pumped into it.
    Her head had been in that exact same spot seconds before the gunman had opened fire. If Brown hadn’t had a change of heart, if he hadn’t cut the flex cuffs, hadn’t heard a suspicious sound on the terrace outside the room, she’d be dead.
    He’d saved her life . . . and she wasn’t even sure yet if she trusted that he’d told her the truth about OSD. She didn’t have one solid shred of evidence to convince her that he wasn’t in league with whoever was behind it and possibly so much more.
    Maybe he’d been coerced. Maybe he’d been init for the money—he’d sure changed his tune about helping her once she’d mentioned paying him. If he was innocent, then she needed to corroborate his story and enlist his help in figuring this thing out.
    If he was guilty, well, she still needed him to help her ferret out the rest of the truth. And when it was over, then she’d level her own kind of justice.

10

    Mike woke up with a stiff shoulder and a pain in his neck.
    The pain in his ass was awake, too, responding to the flight attendant’s request for her to move her seat to the upright position and prepare for landing in Bogota.
    He yawned and stretched and shook the cobwebs from his head. “How long is our layover?”
    She reached into her bag and checked her ticket. “Couple of hours.”
    “Good. That’ll give us time to grab something to eat. We’ll have a nice little chat and chew. It’ll be fun. You can fill me in—no excuses, no stalling this time, clear?”
    Her glare had plenty of bite to it, but she finally nodded. “Clear.”
    The El Dorado International Airport in Bogota was a major Central American hub, and the terminal teemed with travelers. Giving a more-than-passing glance at a bar two doors down, Mike stood in line at a fast-food café where he grabbed sandwiches, a couple of apples, and two sodas.
    “I took a guess and went for the ham.” He tossed the to-go bag on the table she’d found in a relatively quiet corner of the terminal and dropped into a chair across from her. After digging inside for a sandwich, he shoved the bag across the table to her.
    “Start from the beginning,” he said after taking a huge bite. He was starving.
    She gave him a look. “Can I at least eat my sandwich first?”
    He popped the top on a soda, wishing it was a beer, and passed it