Page 61 of Wicked Suspicion

She worried too much—she had since she was a kid—but when her dad was away, no one else in her family worried enough. Her mom never seemed to have a plan, and that always increased Nyx’s anxiety.

Case would be ready for anything. She could count on him.

She needed to prepare to take care of herself if the worst happened.

Was there anything she could use as a weapon?

The hut was all but barren. They had two chairs, a hammock, and a plastic bucket that she suspected was their latrine. There wasn’t one other thing in here with them. She checked the chairs, but they felt solid and she’d have to smash one to break it. That was guaranteed to get the guards inside to find out what the noise was about. The chairs were out unless it was an emergency.

Nyx checked the hammock. The hooks were embedded deeply into the wooden support poles. To reach them, she had to go up on tiptoe. Even if she had better leverage, she didn’t have enough strength in her hands to pull them out. Not without a tool.

There were gaps in the walls of the hut where the bamboo stalks didn’t quite meet. She took the opportunity to look out each side. The guards surrounding the hut were on the ground because there was no decking around the structure, despite it being on stilts. It was the dry season, though, and while it still rained often, the rivers weren’t flooding.

There was one staircase to the ground, and it was more ladder-like than actual stairs. There was a guard positioned at the bottom of them. When they’d been brought in, her head had been above the floor of the hut. Since she was five-foot-eight, she estimated the drop from the floor to the ground at about five feet. Maybe four and a half. The worst she could do to herself was sprain an ankle if she landed wrong.

Case said he’d escaped the first time he’d been taken captive.

The rebels would have determined how he’d done it and taken steps to prevent that from happening a second time. Nyx studied the hut again, but she couldn’t figure out how he’d managed it. Of course, he would have been at a different encampment, one that had been abandoned after they’d noticed his absence.

She couldn’t find any way to escape here unless the guards fell asleep in the middle of the night. But that meant sneaking into the rainforest in the dark, without an NVD. Again, that fell in the only-in-an-emergency category.

Next, she measured the length and width of the room. Eight paces to the door. Eleven paces on the long side of the hut. Nyx walked the space over and over until she had every inch of it memorized—door, windows, hammock, and chair placement. If she had to move in the dark, it could be the difference between getting out and being caught.

When she was satisfied there was nothing else she could do, she sat and started thinking. Case had said these men were kicked out of the rebel army. That meant more than looting. It meant they’d likely raped, maimed, murdered, and committed other atrocities. She couldn’t remember exactly how he’d phrased it, but he’d said the two of them were safer with Vargas. That told her more than she wanted to know.

Nyx shook the thought off. Ignorance wasn’t bliss. Ignorance got people killed.

Case had ordered her to sit tight, but what would he want her to do if things went to hell and he wasn’t around?

Before Case, it had always been: What would Dad want me to do? She’d never even replaced Dad with Dylan, but she?—

Shit, Dylan. She’d forgotten to tell Case she was Dylan’s sister.

Or was her subconscious playing deliberate tricks on her?

Everything would change between her and Case once he knew she was Pickle. She was aware of the code. Guys didn’t romance their friends’ sisters. And Case was principled. There’d be no more hot kisses, no more heated looks. Maybe her brain had blanked out?

She frowned as she realized she was overthinking again. The way she’d been raised, honor was more than a concept. Doing the right thing was expected of her, and even if it was difficult, she lived up to her dad’s ideals. Nyx would have told Case who she was if she’d thought of it when they were free to talk.

There was nothing she could do about it now, though. The same reasons she’d kept quiet in the drug lord’s hacienda applied here. It endangered them, especially Case.

It probably wasn’t a good thing that he made her forget about everything except him.

Nyx shook her head. She wasn’t going to waste energy worrying about their relationship or if they really had one. She’d fallen for him, but Case might want nothing more than a hookup.

It was easier to obsess about him because, if the worst happened, she didn’t think she could defend herself for long if these men decided to rape and murder her.

Case waited. Ramirez called this meeting, he could start it.

The man didn’t seem to be in any hurry. If he thought the stare down was going to rattle Case, Ramirez had miscalculated. Case had been through this before. More than once. It would take a hell of a lot more than a dispassionate gaze to shake him.

The main army of rebels was fighting for a cause—to oust the politicians steeped in corruption. They’d taken up arms because they felt they’d exhausted all other avenues.

Then there was Ramirez. The colonel and his men had looted towns and villages, raped women and children, murdered the people who dared defend their loved ones, and burned homes to the ground when they were done.

They hadn’t joined for any noble reason. The colonel was a war profiteer, as corrupt as the politicians running Puerto Jardin. Maybe he hadn’t actively taken part in the horrifying acts his men carried out, but he sure as fuck didn’t rein them in.

Ramirez leaned one elbow on the chair arm, the pose one of relaxed indifference. He still didn’t speak.

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