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speech?”
    He shook his head. “I’m capable of a lot of things. Don’t test me.”
    Maisey rolled her eyes. “I’ve survived attack dogs, gators and gun-toting bad guys. You, Nash Adamson, don’t scare me one iota. In fact, I think behind your tough guy routine, you’re a big soft—”
    Before she finished her sentence, Nash pitched his meal to the ground. He clamped his hand over her mouth, whispering into her ear, “Not another word.”
     
     

9

     
     
    THE WHOLE TIME Maisey yammered about feelings, Nash sensed they were being watched.
    It wasn’t until he detected a metallic glint in the sun that he forcibly shut Maisey the hell up. Had she forgotten where they were? Who wanted them dead? At this point, he wouldn’t put it past Vicente to carve out his son and leave Maisey’s remains for the gators. She needed to get a clue and realize how grave their situation actually was.
    She breathed hard against him. Her every forced inhalation burned his lungs. As much as he hated the fact, he couldn’t deny the two of them still shared a soul-deep connection. He’d assumed with the passage of time, the thread binding them would have frayed, but it had held surprisingly strong, making him all the more confused about what he felt for her when he should have remained focused on the task at hand.
    He’d screwed the pooch by tipping his hat to the fact that he knew Vicente’s men were out there. He should have let her rattle on while silently waiting for his chance to pop off whoever lurked in the shadows. He hadn’t been prepared for how much her poking at old wounds would throw him off balance. He never should have charged to her rescue—not when he was already screwed in the head. If he hadn’t been pissed about her bringing up his wife again, he would have noticed sooner that they had company.
    “Real slow,” he whispered, working overtime to ignore how familiar and right her soft curves felt against his hard angles, “we’re going to move around to the other side of this cypress. Nod if you understand.”
    She did.
    The seconds it took to get her to the marginally safe place lasted an eternity.
    He tried not to be rough about pushing her into the buttress formed by the ancient tree’s roots. Assuming Vicente’s men weren’t smart enough to attack from above, she’d be safe on three sides.
    “Take this.” He handed her his best knife. “Whatever you hear, don’t move unless you’re directly threatened. Understand?”
    Wide-eyed with silent tears forging streams down her dirty cheeks, she nodded.
    Nash hated leaving her, but had no choice.
    The stench of cigarette smoke rose above the musky swamp.
    A cough reached through the impenetrable vines and grasses, making the sound seem to come from everywhere all at once. Judging by where Nash had seen the glint of sun on metal, the bastard couldn’t have been out more than twenty yards. The bigger question—was he alone?
    After one last glance at Maisey, he raised his dry and ready-for-action Glock, then crept east of their temporary camp. With sun streaming through low-hanging Spanish moss, birds chirping and a woodpecker going to town on the rotting carcass of a dead cypress, the scene might have been idyllic were it not for the cottonmouth slithering into black water five feet off to his right.
    Needing to draw out their latest enemy, Nash knelt to grab a rock, then pitched it up and over his current locale as far as possible, given the dense foliage. The plan worked. The dufus fired a few rounds in the wrong direction.
    Now that Nash had his location, he doubled back, placing himself behind the guy for a swift, silent slit of his throat.
    Nash helped himself to his M16 and supply pack that was near bulging with bug spray, bottled water, granola bars, beef jerky and Cheetos. Score. Wasn’t exactly nutritious, but it beat the hell out of grubs.
    “Buck?” a voice called from the green gloom. “You okay?”
    Shit. Buck had company.
    Buck’s