Chapter 17

The dark, damp forest was quiet for a long moment. Did they expect me to believe they hadn"t heard my challenge?

"Really?" I shouted. "That"s it? I get in a couple of good shots, and the big bads with automatic weapons, jungle gear, and bulletproof vests run screaming home to Mommy?"

"I"m good over here." The man sounded calm. Even a little bored.

"Oh, yeah? How good is your friend?"

"He"s good."

"Why don"t he speak for himself? He had plenty to say ten minutes ago."

A pause. Was it really necessary for the guy with all the toys to spend so much time thinking? It seemed a little unfair.

"Ask him," I yelled. "Let"s hear him say how good he"s doing."

"He don"t owe you any answers," was what came back.

OK. This was officially weird.

Good weird, maybe? Could I have possibly gone two for two with the knock-out shots?

Noah took hold of my elbow like he was pulling me back from the edge. "What"s going on? You didn"t knock out that second guy. Why does he want to make us think he"s out?"

"Don"t know," I said. "Probably so we"ll underestimate them?"

"Or he"s sneaking up on us."

"He can only sneak so far. We"ll hear if he tries to climb this tree."

Noah shrugged. He couldn"t figure it out either.

"Hey, you know what?" the voice called out. "You guys need to chill. Simmer down a minute and think about what you"re doing."

"Back atcha," I said. "Maybe think about what you"re doing."

Dude talked right over me. "Throwing all this shit around isn"t helping your cause. Nobody wants to hurt you, but there"s a limited amount of fuckery I"m inclined to tolerate from a couple of bad-attitude prisoners."

"This is illegal detention. You have no right to take us prisoner in the first place." Should I really have to point that out?

"Yeah, buddy, tell it to the judge."

"You"re not police," Noah said. "There"s no legit judge. C"mon, man. You know this is wrong."

"All I know is I"m not taking career advice from two skells on the run."

Skells? Who says skells? "You need to drop that Netflix subscription," I said.

"I"m not taking viewing advice from you guys, either."

My blood chilled as that calm voice in the dark kept lobbing back ever more ridiculous conversational softballs. This debate was a deliberate waste of time.

"Seriously, dude," I said. "You know this isn"t cool. I"m a student. I"m supposed to be in class right now."

"In the middle of the night? What, are you majoring in vampire studies?"

"I"m studying comedy with a minor in improv, and you flunk. Seriously, man, we need to fix this. Tell me what we can do to get you to help us get home. There"s got to be a huge reward for my return."

"I"m happy with my current compensation program." And yet he was still talking. Why? Was he waiting for backup to arrive?

"What is this?" I whispered to Noah.

His bare shoulders lifted in a brief shrug. "Keep going with the bribe stuff. Maybe that"s what he"s angling for. He has to figure we"re valuable if his bosses want us alive. Maybe he"s trying to see what we"ve got to offer."

It was a theory. All right. I inhaled a calming pre-game breath all the way down to my toes.

"Listen to me, my dude." Another deep breath. "You can"t win this game. You know that, right? I"m carrying a GPS tracker for the FBI. They were using me to infiltrate your, um, operations. You gotta know the feds are right behind me."

"Yeah, I"ve never heard that one before." The guy deployed an offensively deep belly laugh.

"I"m not messing around here. They let it go a little longer than I would have liked to make their case airtight, but you know and I know they"re going to swoop in to make the arrest at any minute." Breathe deep. Project sincerity. "You don"t need to go down when your bosses do. Help us, we help you."

"Yeah, like I"m supposed to believe you speak for the feebs. Also, and you might not have noticed, but that tree you"re perched in like a bird happens to be outside the FBI"s jurisdiction."

"You"d be surprised," Noah said. "They do go international when they have to. That"s a misconception that they never operate outside the US borders. They have links in the CIA, they have a joint task force."

They do? Or was Noah just making up this stuff on the fly?

Either way, I knew how to pick up the ball and start running. "And they"re not just working with other US law enforcement agencies. There"s international stuff too. Like Interpol and, um, NATO and, um, all them. I was helping them get it set up when you guys took me. Terrible timing. You"re going to have so many international agencies crashing down on your head. There won"t be a corner of the world where you can run and hide."

The laugh only got louder. "Fucking NATO? Who the fuck you think you are? You think fucking NATO cares about some college kid who plays American football? And not even for the NFL?"

Way to kick a guy right in the ego.

Noah squeezed my arm. "He"s an ass."

"He"s having too much fun," I grumbled. "We"re amusing him."

"He obviously wants more incentive than a promise to put in a good word for him with the FBI."

Unfortunately, I could see the guy"s logic. "Immunity from prosecution isn"t worth much if he thinks he can"t be prosecuted."

"You still there?" the voice called. Was he getting closer? I hadn"t realized he"d started moving again.

"We"re here," I said. "Why don"t you just tell us what you want, and we"ll tell you if we can get it?"

"Unh-uh," said the voice. "You tell me what you got to offer, and I"ll decide if you"re serious."

My heart sank. We weren"t offering this guy a bribe. We were offering to stick ourselves in his trap.

He was trying to talk some information out of us that they hadn"t been able to get at with their drugs. The trouble was we didn"t have any information to trade.

Or I didn"t.

And if Noah did, they surely extracted it already.