Page 51 of Chasing Paradise

Gut instincts and adrenaline were valuable assets in my profession.

And they were both to thank for how quickly I moved when I first saw it.

The muzzle of a semiautomatic peeking out from between some greenery.

“Down!” I yelled, pushing Wick right off the damn steps, then jumping with him.

He landed a split second before me, just as the bullets rang out in the woods.

Somewhere above, a red parrot took flight, squawking his objections to the very human intrusion of his home.

Off in the distance, strange shrieks and hoots sounded.

Monkeys, maybe?

“What—”

“We have to run,” I said, getting into a squat. Wick followed as another couple of shots fired off.

“Shouldn’t we stay put?”

“No. It’s hard to hit a moving target. We have to run.” His face said he wasn’t convinced. “Look, when it comes to guns, just trust me, okay? Those have tons of rounds. Our only chance of survival is running as far and fast as we can.”

He held my gaze just a second as a bullet whizzed right past my head to lodge in the tree behind me.

Then he held out his hand.

I slipped mine in.

And we ran for our freaking lives.

Gone were thoughts of beetles the size of small automobiles, or spiders so large that I could probably count their eyelashes.

All there was in the world was survival.

Adrenaline surged through my system, making me oblivious to the burn in my thighs as I pushed myself harder and faster, trying to keep up with Wick as he kept a few steps ahead of me with his long-ass legs.

The gunshots hailed for the first moment or two before stopping as, I imagined, the shooters came to the same conclusion that I had—it’s too hard to hit a moving target. Especially if you were moving too.

Their best bet for a kill shot was to hold their bullets, chase after us, and take a shot when we stopped to catch our breath or drink water.

The only problem with mine and Wick’s plan, of course, was that it led us deeper and deeper into the unfamiliar rainforest.

And Marco was missing.

I hadn’t even seen him when we’d been coming down the steps.

We had no idea where we were going, how far from the Jeep we were getting, or if there was any hope of getting back to civilization.

But none of those things mattered when you were running from men with guns.

Sweat poured down my chest, back, scalp, and face. Even my damnarmswere sweating as we tore through the jungle, vines and branches slapping us in the face or scratching our arms as we went.

It wasn’t long before my chest felt like it was burning, my face hot, and my stomach sloshing from nothing but water inside it.

But we couldn’t stop.

There was no way of knowing how close the men were.

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