Thrill Ride Read Online Free PDF Page A

Latina exterior, nobody, not even hardcore operator and world-class comm specialist Vanessa Cordero, wanted to spend the night alone in the middle of the jungle.
    Oui , that was the plan all right. Of course, that plan got shot straight to hell when he went to grab a handhold on the nearest jungle giant just as darkness enveloped him.
    That’s how it was here in the Cloud Forest. Night fell like an axe blade.
    “Zut!” he cursed, glancing around, wondering if she’d be able to find her way back to the trail and out to Santa Elena in the dark.
    Doubtful, considering he could barely see ten feet in front of him and he hadn’t noticed her carrying any gear. No food or water. No flashlight…
    All of that was confirmed a second later when her tentative voice echoed through the thick foliage. “Rock?” She sounded scared and that hit him like an iron-fisted punch in the gut. “I…I can’t see where I’m going.”
    Cursing her, cursing himself, cursing that shadowy bastard code named Rwanda Don who’d gotten him into this mess, he pulled a penlight from one of the pockets on his cargo pants and traipsed back the way he’d come. No sooner had he gone two feet when she called to him again, the fear in her voice now tinged with panic. “Rock? I hear s-something moving behind me, but I…can’t really see what it is.”
    “Just be still!” he yelled. There was no end to the number of four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, and no- legged nasties that could do her serious harm. He dropped his pack in order to turn on the afterburners. The verdant growth of the jungle floor appeared more gray than green in the yellow glow of his flashlight as he raced toward the sound of her voice.
    It seemed to take forever and a day, but he finally managed to cover the distance. Shining the penlight around, he called, “Vanessa? Chere , where are you?”
    Then his light landed on her frightened face, framed by the ropy brown roots of the strangler vines clinging to the tree behind her and the coiled length of a brilliant flash of yellow that could be only one thing.
    Eyelash viper.
    An arctic blast of fear turned his blood icy, because while the snake wasn’t kill-you-on-the-spot venomous, a bite to a hand could certainly result in a lost finger and a bite to a major vein, like, oh, say the one pulsing rapidly in Vanessa’s pretty neck where the snake was poised to strike, could definitely cause some major organ damage.
    He slowly walked toward her, careful to keep his movements non-threatening. “Don’t move,” he hissed when she started to take a relieved step in his direction. “Just be very, very still.”
    She stopped dead in her tracks— good girl.
    “Wh-why do I need to be still?” she asked, her eyes wide and glowing in the beam of his flashlight, her soft voice tremulous.
    “Just…” he inched closer, pulling one of his SIGs from his waistband, “…don’t move.”
    “Rock, I—”
    She didn’t get any further than that because the viper reared up and Rock was suddenly out of time. He raised his weapon.
    ***
    He was going to shoot her!
    She could see his pistol silhouetted against the thin beam of light and for a heartbeat of time, before fear had a chance to kick in, she felt one and only one emotion…
    Indignity. She could not believe he was actually going to—
    Boom!
    His 9mm sounded like a cannon explosion, so loud it rattled Vanessa’s teeth. She waited for the punch of mind-numbing pain, for the specter of death to follow quickly on its heels, but all she felt was something fall into the leaves beside her feet.
    Instinctively she jumped away, glancing down as Rock pointed his flashlight at the forest floor, spotlighting the writhing, yellow body of the fatally wounded snake. He was at her side in two steps, grabbing the snake by one of its bloody coils and neatly severing its head with the 10-inch bowie knife he’d had hidden somewhere on his person.
    “I…” she tried to swallow her heart, which