Torched: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t summon the will.
    Her eyes flooded
and she clamped them shut against the tears, gulping the moist air deep into
her lungs to quell the sobs rising in her chest. She pictured Sheldon’s remains
(what little the searchers had been able to find), collected there in that
pitiful pile at the morgue.
    She thought
again about Erin and Mike, and all the troubles they’d had in the last few
months.
    “Shit,” she
whispered. She opened her eyes, her mouth set in a grimace.
    “ Shit !”
she screamed.
    She turned and
charged back to the top of the dune, where she paused for an instant before
catching a glint of sunlight on glass. A man, just a speck on the banks from
her vantage point, stepped out from behind a bush and waved a red bandana.
    “You have to do
this, Terri,” she muttered. “No backing out now.”
    She plunged
forward, making a steep descent to the floor of the sandy basin created by the
mighty river. A man, dark-skinned and grinning, wiped his hands on the bandana
as he walked over to meet her. “Ms. James?”
    “That’s right.
You must be Chaco?”
    He offered his
hand and she shook it. “One and the same,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet
you.”
    “You too. Thanks
for being here.”
    “No problem. You
ready?”
    She nodded and
he took her duffle and began to head west, up the river. She followed and,
after about a quarter mile, she saw the little aluminum johnboat tied up on the
banks of the river.
    “It’s a fine day
to cross. Go ahead—grab a seat.”
    She climbed in.
The boat was empty—no life jackets. Nothing else at all, it seemed.
    Chaco smiled at
her. “Payment?”
    “Oh. Yes, of
course.” Terri replied. She began to unzip the duffle, and that’s when she
noticed the pistol balanced on the man’s knee. His grin was hard, his eyes
flat—the brown irises the same color as the water in the river.
    “Don’t do that, Ms. James. You’re going to Mexico, my dear. Payment is always due after services are rendered. Not until then.”
    Her mouth fell
open, her heart hammering in her chest.
    He put the gun
away, the lesson delivered.
    “But you could
just…you could have just taken it . Why are you telling me this?”
    “Because it’s
clear to me that you’re out of your element, Ms. James.” He splashed a boot in
the water, pushing the johnboat away from the bank. He pulled the cord on the
outboard, and it sputtered to life in a cloud of blue exhaust. “I’m trying to
give you an outside chance to make it back here alive ,” he shouted. “You
know you’re a target, right?”
    She sighed,
shoulders slumped. “I suppose. I mean, yes, of course I know it. But I can’t…I
can’t not do what I came here to do.”
    Chaco nodded as
he throttled down and the little engine settled into a quiet purr. “You’re on a
mission, aren’t you?”
    “You could call
it that.”
    He swung the
outboard and the boat squirted out into the current. The water pushed them
rapidly toward the Gulf of Mexico, and Chaco was content to let it carry them
in that direction. “Lesson one, then. Pay after —not before.”
    He throttled up,
the noise effectively ending their discussion, and fixed his gaze on the far
banks. True to his word, the passage was smooth. Fifteen minutes later, he was
tying the boat to a gnarled clutch of juniper root. Terry watched him
expectantly, her pulse pounding.
    He was handsome.
He wore cargo shorts and scuffed work boots and a threadbare Texas Rangers
tee-shirt. He had thick black hair and a boyish grin; she thought he was
probably in his thirties—maybe a few years her junior.
    When the boat
was secured, he motioned for her to follow him. They disappeared beneath a
tropical canopy. On the Mexican side, the brush was much thicker. It pushed
right to the edge of the riverbank.
    “So,” he said,
“tell me—were we observed just now?”
    Terri shook her
head. “I don’t think so. I…I didn’t see anybody.”
    He chuckled.
“Don’t believe that for a