Out of Control (52 page)
“Well, maybe it should have.”
“I really have to go,” she told him.
“Hey,” he said, catching her by the wrist. “No way. You’re staying here with Blondie. I’m going after Ken to drag his ass back here.”
“Wherever he went, he’ll be back,” Molly said. “He’s not leaving here without her. Didn’t you see the way he looks at her?”
“You mean, like he wants to fuck her?” He said it just to get a rise out of her.
Being Molly, she didn’t even blink. She just looked at him, and he was the one who caved.
“Sorry. Yes, I noticed. He’s obviously crazy about her. You’re right. But there’s got to be close to a hundred grand in that case. Love’s all fine and good, but money like that transcends human emotions.”
“He didn’t take the knapsack with the supplies,” Molly pointed out. “Just watch. He’ll be back.”
“Ken!” The shriek echoed inside the Quonset hut, followed by the unmistakable sound of pounding on the door.
Jones swore. “The son of a bitch locked her in.”
Savannah couldn’t believe it. “Kenny, you . . . you . . . asshole!”
He’d left.
He’d taken the money and left her here alone.
There was no note, no explanation. Just a serious lack of Ken.
He’d locked her in, the jerk. How could he do that to her? She threw herself again against the door, but it wasn’t going to budge. And there was no other way in or out. All of the windows in this place were barred.
“Ken!”
Yes, her feet were a mess. But she hadn’t complained, she wouldn’t complain. She’d keep up—somehow.
“Kenny!” She was screaming in vain. She knew it, but she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop pounding on the door, either.
How could he have left her?
How could she have been so wrong about him? It didn’t seem possible—like watching Ghandi kick a puppy.
Okay, so maybe Kenny wasn’t Ghandi, but he’d been so careful to reassure her. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was in this with her until the bitter end.
So why would he leave her now? Unless he somehow thought she’d be better off here, with Jones and Molly.
“Kenny!”
The door opened midscream. Just like that. And there he was. Standing in the sunlight on the other side. He hadn’t left her.
“Whoa,” he said. “You’re pissed. Sorry about that. I was only gone for a few minutes. You were sleeping, so I—”
Savannah burst into tears.
It finally happened.
Savannah had a meltdown.
Ken had finally—although this time quite unintentionally—pushed her past her point of tolerance, beyond the edge of her usually tightly held control.
She launched herself, crying, into his arms.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed. “Don’t ever, ever leave me!”
“Oh,” he said, completely nonplussed. “No. Babe, I wasn’t. Did you really think—”
She was crying with great huge, noisy sobs. “I thought you were being an asshole and that you left me behind!”
He had to laugh.
She lifted her head to look at him accusingly. “Don’t you laugh at me!”
“I’m not,” he said quickly. “I’m laughing at me. I’m . . . I should have written you a note.” He cupped her face with his hand and tried to brush away her tears with his thumb. But he couldn’t do it. They were falling too fast. His heart clenched—he actually felt it tighten. It freaking hurt and he knew it was so over—his trying to pretend that he didn’t give a shit about her. “I’m so sorry, Van. Honest. I was hiding the attaché case so we wouldn’t have to carry it. I would never leave you. Never. I swear to God. I would die first.”
Savannah kissed him.
One second she was gazing up at him with those eyes swimming in tears, and the next she was kissing him as if there were no tomorrow.
She was salty and sweet and ferocious. And she nearly knocked him right on his ass.
It was an amazing kiss. The heavens rumbled and the earth shook, and it wasn’t until the second blast that he realized Tunggul and his posse had begun clearing the road to Port Parwati.
He pulled out of Savannah’s arms. “Motherfucking idiot! Not you,” he quickly added. The third charge went off. “The villagers are blasting. I asked them to wait twenty-four hours—nothing like shaking the mountain to draw unwanted attention. Zdanowicz is going to be back in this neighborhood in a freaking flash. We better make sure we’re good and gone.”
She was standing there staring at him, wide-eyed, her face still streaked with tears, her mouth all but begging him to kiss her again. But there was no time to do anything but grab their stuff and run.
“Savannah, I need you to be tough for me, okay?” Ken said, praying she had just a little bit more of that awesome control left in her. “Can you do that? Can you hang on just a little bit longer?”
She nodded, quickly wiping her eyes and her face with the heels of her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Which? Cry or kiss him? This wasn’t the time to ask.
“Pay attention,” Ken said, “because this is important. I buried the attaché case in the jungle, fifteen paces from the southwest corner of this Quonset hut. And they’re my paces. They’ll be longer than yours. You got it?”
“Fifteen,” she said. “Paces.”
“Get your sandals on,” he ordered. “We’ve got to move. As fast as we can.”
He grabbed the knapsack, and she was back beside him in a heartbeat.
“You know the drill,” he reminded her as he locked the Quonset hut door. “I say get down, you get down. I say run—”
“I run,” she said. “I know.”
Her nose was red, and several tears still hung on her eyelashes, but otherwise she was back together. Ready to run on feet that would have had half the big tough SEALs in Team Sixteen bitching and moaning.
“If you want, I can carry you—”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go.”
He’d said that wrong. He should have said, “I want to carry you.” Or, “I’m going to carry you now.” She took orders amazingly well for a control freak—she might’ve actually let him carry her if he’d used the right words.
Ken led her into the jungle, trying to focus completely on heading north and hiding their tracks.
But his brain wanted to multitask, and he couldn’t stop thinking of the look on Savannah’s face as she’d finally melted down. Her words repeated over and over with the cadence of their feet. Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!
And then, god damn, she’d kissed him. She’d freaking kissed him. It was a no hesitation, high power, heavy tongue action, full body slam kind of kiss. The kind that screamed, “I want you, I need you.”
Ken stumbled over his own feet, somehow managing to thwack himself in the face with a low hanging branch. God, he was a freaking moron.
Yes, she wanted and needed him—to keep her safe.
After he successfully did that, then and only then should he start considering any of her other potential wants and needs. And potential was the big word here. So what if she’d kissed him. It might’ve been simply from intense relief.
If a helo carrying Sam Starrett and Johnny Nilsson were to suddenly appear overhead and lower a rope to pull them aboard to safety, he’d certainly give them each a big wet kiss.
“Are you okay?” Savannah asked.
“Yeah, I was just . . . thinking about how glad I’m going to be when this is over,” he told her.
“Me, too.” Her words were heartfelt and Ken knew that she probably couldn’t wait to get out of here.
Don’t leave me.
Chances are she wouldn’t sing quite the same song once he got her safely back to Jakarta.
Another misstep, and another branch hit him in the face. And he made himself focus by thinking about Otto Zdanowicz finding Savannah and shooting her in the head.
“I’m going to carry you now,” he told her, “so we can move even faster. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Any response from you is unnecessary and unwelcome.”
She didn’t say a word as he picked her up. Her life was now literally in his hands. His focus was clear and his footing sure as he moved swiftly through the dim jungle.
It took ten minutes to find where Ken had hidden the attaché case.
Really, the only reason Jones found it so quickly was because he’d seen exactly where Ken had gone into the jungle, and because he was a lucky son of a bitch.
Digging it up took about two minutes, popping the lock—thirty seconds.
And then there it was.
Holy mother of God.
“See?” Molly said. “Money. Savannah wasn’t lying.”
No, she most certainly wasn’t. The inside of the case was slightly smaller than he’d imagined, still there had to be well over two hundred thousand dollars here.
Molly closed the case and began reburying it.
“You know, there’s a finders-keepers rule in the jungle,” Jones pointed out.
“You said you wanted to dig it up to make sure Ken hadn’t hidden something here that was going to bring the demons of hell down upon you.”
Yeah, those had been pretty much his exact words. Still . . . “Do you know what I could do with that much money?”
She shook her head. “It’s not yours.”
Except she was just reburying it. Right where it had been. Right where he could easily come and unbury it after she went back to the village.
What did she think? That he would just sit here and ignore the small fortune hidden here on his land?
Well, sure, it wasn’t really his land. He was just a squatter, but still . . .
“If they don’t come back for it in, say, a month,” Molly told him, “then you can keep it. But you know they’re going to come back for it. People don’t just forget about that much cash.” She wiped off her hands and stood up. “Walk me back?”
Jones stood, too, glancing around, memorizing the place that the case was buried. “Sure. I’m not going to go into the village, though. And I better skip tea. That blasting is going to bring Otto Zdanowicz back here, and it’s better if people don’t see us together.”
She didn’t say anything, but he knew she was disappointed. And even though he’d given her more of an explanation than he’d ever given any woman as to why he couldn’t see her, he kept going.
“See, I have an agreement with the Zdanowicz brothers—I don’t fuck with them, they won’t fuck with me. By selling those supplies to Ken, I was officially fucking with them, Molly. This is not a good thing. You need to return to the village and tell everyone that I refused to help Ken and Savannah, and that they pushed on. Then when Otto shows up and starts throwing his weight around again, you can let it slip that you sent them up to me. He’ll come here, and I’ll tell him I’m pretty sure they headed down the mountain toward the port.”
“But they didn’t.”
Jones held up both hands. “I don’t know where they went, and I don’t want to know. But I do know they didn’t take the mule trail. That’s a definite.”
“So you’re planning to double-fuck Otto Zdanowicz,” Molly observed. “First by helping Ken and Savannah, and then by pointing Otto in the wrong direction.”
She was looking at him like he was some kind of a hero, and he shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal. I fuck with everyone, every chance I get.”
She nodded, but he could tell just from looking that she knew he was lying. She kissed him. Sweetly. Tenderly.
He thought about that money buried back behind his Quonset hut. That money would buy him damn near everything he’d ever wanted.
Except the one thing he couldn’t have.
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Sixteen
“The word on the street is that there’s an unusual amount of interest in ParwatiIsland,” Max Bhagat said, drawing a red circle around the island in question on the big map that lay on the FBI conference table. “Talk is of a large amount of money up for grabs—which makes us think if the money survived the helo crash, then Karmody and your granddaughter probably also survived. We sent a SEAL team out there—dressed as tourists in one of those commercial rent-a-choppers—to see what they could find.”
“And . . . ?” Rose said.
“They’ll be contacting us via radio, ma’am. They should be checking in any minute, at which point I’ll be notified. I’ll put the call on the speaker phone.”
“Thank you.” The frustration was nearly overwhelming. Rose had to resign herself to the knowledge that no matter what happened, Jakarta was as far as she was going to go.
Both Savannah and Alex might be running around on ParwatiIsland, but it would be up to the teams of professionals to find them. Her job now was to sit and wait. And waiting had never been her strong suit.
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