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“Advise them to leave before I do worse.”
Her voice shook as she relayed the message. The men fled without picking up their guns. Once they’d gone, before she could process what had happened or decide if she needed to run, too, he swayed hard and then caught himself with his left hand. His right, he cradled against his chest, his face bone white and sweaty.
“I don’t understand what just happened . . . but you don’t look so good.”
“Take a look around,” he bit out. “I’ll be fine by the time we need to move.”
So he wasn’t going to explain. Against all logic, it really seemed like he’d broken their gun arms. With a flick of his wrist. And he’d said he could do worse. Was she safe with him? It seemed best to do as she was told, at least for now. Juneau hurried away to poke through the rubble, looking for usable supplies. Conveniently, the two men who’d arrived before them had gathered things into a pile.
When she came back to tell him, he was sitting in the shade with his head tilted back, his mouth still compressed into a pained line. He spoke without opening his eyes. “If you don’t want to go further with me, I understand.”
Do I? First instinct—hell no—but neither did she want to travel alone. If she had confronted those men without him, she might’ve ended up shot, raped, kidnapped, or some heinous combination of the three. Whatever his deal—and she wasn’t convinced he hadn’t hypnotized them all somehow—he offered more protection than she could afford to discard. And he seemed to be on her side, at least.
“This isn’t the time to talk,” she said, “but I’m going to have questions later.”
He considered and then: “That’s fair. I’ll answer. Did you find anything?”
“I think we’re set.”
Silas pulled himself to his feet, still favoring his right arm. “If we follow the road, we should be fine.”
“How far are we going?”
“Eight kilometers, give or take.”
She did the conversion and came up with an answer of about five miles—in addition to the distance they’d already traveled—and with no guarantee of an end in sight. It might not be any better in Puerto Rico. Damn. Her feet already hurt. She was in decent shape, but hiking with an injured knee on inadequate food took a toll. Then again, staying here wasn’t an option. Not with those guns going off and two inexplicably injured men who might be running for backup even now.
“I can make it. What about you?”
“My legs are fine.”
As they set off, she noticed he set a slower pace. He could take three steps to each one of hers, if he wanted, effectively forcing her to run. But she couldn’t tell if it was kindness or weakness. His face was still pale, still clammy with sweat, and he held his arm as if it were fractured, though she saw no swelling or injury.
The sun blazed down, reflecting off the broken pavement, and sweat poured down her back. She had been wearing these clothes for four or five days now. In fact, she’d lost count.
“So how did you end up here?” he asked eventually.
She recognized the tactic as a calculated move. He wanted her at ease again. But since she appreciated the gesture, she went along with the conversational gambit.
“After college, I did a stint in the Peace Corps. When I got out, I went for TEFL certification because I still wanted to travel, just with more freedom than I had in the Corps.”
“That’s Teaching English as a Foreign Language?” At her nod, he asked, “Do you have a regular degree in education as well, then?”
She laughed. “No. Sociology, actually. The pay isn’t great in developing nations, but I don’t like being locked into a two-year contract like many schools in Europe demand. Here, they’re content with a handshake agreement that I’ll stay for one school term.”
“And it lets you see the world.”
“Exactly.” It was rare someone got it right without asking a hundred more questions about her motivations.
God knew, her loving, well-intentioned family never tired of telling her she could do so much more with her life. Her mother couldn’t stand that her youngest taught English in Ecuador for the equivalent of three dollars an hour while her middle son had become a surgeon and her eldest son the partner in a law firm. It wasn’t that Melva Bright didn’t love her; she just wanted her to achieve great success and be happy. She didn’t get that the two didn’t go hand in hand, where Juneau was concerned.
“I used to teach theoretical physics.”
Holy crap. He must be hella smart. Juneau glanced at him in surprise, although she ought to know better than to judge a man by his hair, which he’d caught up in a tail, or because he had a few tatts. “Not anymore?”
“No.”
“How come?”
