Catherine Coulter – FBI 4 The Edge

I told them what I thought had happened to make Jilly drive off that cliff. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Jilly was on that drug. I think the night she went over the cliff she was trying to get away from Laura. Laura was in her head, just like Marlin Jones is in Sherlock’s head, just like when I relived being in Tunisia. But there’s a big difference here. Sherlock will come out of this, like I did. Maybe Jilly took too much of the drug, maybe she was really hooked, because she was still obsessed with Laura when she woke up in the hospital.

“Did she run out of the hospital herself because she didn’t want to see me again? I don’t know. Maybe. When we find her, we’ll get the answer.”

“The truth is,” Savich said, “we don’t have a clue about what the long-term effects of the drug are.”

“I’m afraid that even Paul doesn’t know that,” I said. I saw a beetle, black and orange and green, pause a moment, wiggle its antennae at me, then hurry behind some small orange leaves. I saw several other leaves move. Critters everywhere, I thought, all of them hungry. Everything was alive in this place, everything was hungry, everything was hunted by something else, that or dead and instantly rotting or eaten.

I turned to Laura and lightly stroked my fingers over her mouth. “Since you’ve been cooperative, I’ll give you some more water.”

She drank down a good bit. I looked at the half-dozen bottles. Should we conserve? I wondered how long we’d have to survive in this place. Laura was shivering. I started to take off my shirt, but she stopped me. “Not here, Mac. You’ve got to keep as much of you covered as possible. There are lots of nasty things around here to bite you. And there are leeches too.”

Leeches. Good lord. She was right. I doubled one sex-scented blanket and tucked it around her chest and neck.

“We’ve got to be very careful,” she said. She paused, then frowned. I knew she was trying to get her thoughts together.

“It’s okay, Laura. Take your time. We’re not going anywhere.”

“I was just thinking about my boss, Richard Atherton, wondering if the DBA is all over Edgerton.” She stopped then. I knew she was in pain. I couldn’t stand it. I gave her another pain pill.

After a few minutes, she opened her eyes, smiled at me, but her face was flushed. From fever or the heat or the tremendous weight of the humidity, I didn’t know. “Breathe deeply, Laura,” I said. “Think about that mar-garita I’m going to make for you. Think of me rubbing oil on your back, massaging your shoulders until all the knots are out. Now won’t that feel good?” I lightly stroked my fingers over her cheek.

I smoothed the hair back from her face. After a few minutes she looked woozy. I didn’t want to kill her with too many pain pills. I looked down at my watch. Nearly eight o’clock in the morning. No more pills until noon. I said, “Just be quiet for a while, Laura. You can tell us all this stuff later, after you feel better. Are you warm enough?”

She thought about it but didn’t say anything.

Sherlock was far off in a stupor, no doubt troubled by visions of Marlin Jones.

“How long has it been since they drugged her the last time, Savich?”

He thought a moment. “Actually, she was back with me only about thirty minutes before you and Laura arrived with Molinas.”

“So it’s only been about six hours.”

Savich was staring up into the canopy of trees over our heads. I heard monkeys shrieking, a bird’s wings flapping wildly, and other sounds I’d never heard before.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I hear something,” Savich mouthed to me. “Someone’s coming this way. We knew they’d come after us. I wonder if they found Molinas.”

I squeezed Laura’s hand to keep her quiet and listened. Yes, someone was coming, several someones. They were searching blind, not too far away now. Savich had lifted one of the AK-47s. I eased the Bren Ten out of my waistband. “Don’t move,” I whispered against Laura’s ear. She looked at once alarmed, then almost instantly quite calm again. “I might be down, Mac, but I’m not out. Give me a gun.”

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