“Roger that,” Oliver remarked.
Beckett slowly lowered his arm only to hook it around Sydney’s waist again, this time in a protective manner.
“We’re clear, thank God,” Mya rasped once they were far enough away from the snake.
“Hold on,” Sydney said before they started moving once more, noticing a text flashing on her Apple watch. She read the message quickly, then faced the others. “Natasha’s fast. She must have already watched the security cameras and saw what happened because Gray’s instructing us to find somewhere to hide and wait.”
“Wait for an extraction? They can’t get to us in time,” Oliver commented, scanning the terrain, 9mm still in hand. The rifle hung across his chest.
“No, Gray said Carter has contacts here. He called in a favor. But he said Carter’s friends were already aware of our situation and en route. They’re here somewhere.” She did a three-sixty, feeling a chill creep up her spine.
“Weird,” Mya said while copying Sydney’s moves.
“Gray will ping my watch to get a location when it’s safe, and he said these guys will escort us back to the hotel,” Sydney added after reading Gray’s next text.
Gray: Confirm transmission.
Sydney: Copy.
“Carter sure as hell has a lot of contacts all over the place,” Beckett said as she looked up from her watch. “Lucky for us, I guess.”
Before Sydney had a chance to respond, she twisted around to follow where Beckett’s gaze had jumped, narrowly missing a bullet before he tackled her to the ground.
Three more shots followed, and Beckett remained on top of her a few seconds longer. He had his forearms on each side of her, and he lifted the weight of his crushing chest from hers so she could breathe before twisting to the side in one fast movement. Once on his back, he took two shots, and Oliver announced, “Tango down. But there’s probably more guys on the way.”
Beckett shifted into a crouched position and offered Sydney his hand to help her up.
“Thank you,” she murmured, a bit stunned she’d overlooked that shooter.
“Uh, yeah, we’re going to need to pick up the pace and run,” Oliver stated the obvious when shots rang out again, and they started in a new direction, heading east.
Beckett cleared the way for her by staying in the lead, which was helpful and not necessary. She could handle herself.
“I think I know where we can hide,” she announced when an idea hit her. Cenotes. There are a few thousand smaller ones, so we have to come across one of those sinkholes soon. Without losing speed, she switched her watch to waterproof mode so she didn’t destroy her line of communication with Falcon.
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve a hole in the ground,” Mya said while trying to keep up with Sydney’s pace.
“You gotta face your fears at some point, right?” It was their best option. “We can hide underground. And if it’s possible, use the rivers down there to swim to a new location and find dry ground while we wait for another text from Gray,” she explained once the shooting had ceased, which meant they’d placed enough distance between themselves and the gunmen.
“There, you see that?” She pointed toward a slight clearing in the woods up ahead. “I think that’s one of the cenotes.”
“Yeah, I think so,” Beckett confirmed after jogging ahead of the rest of them.
She came up alongside him and peered down the hole. It was more like a jagged dirt circle in the ground. Wide enough for two adults to squeeze in at the same time. Nothing nearly as big or touristy as the ones she and Mya had viewed yesterday.
Beckett crouched to get a better look and tossed a small rock into the opening. A faint splash followed a second later. “There’s water there. Maybe a thirty-foot drop.”
Sydney turned and held her hand open, inviting Mya to jump with her. “The water will cushion our fall. You’ve got this.”
Mya stared at Sydney’s palm and took a hesitant step backward. “And if they follow us down into the hole?” Panicky brown eyes met hers a beat later.
Jumping into this pit frightened her more than the men chasing them. Only Mya.
“Then we pick them off one by one as they drop in. We’ll have the advantage,” Oliver calmly said.
“I can’t.” Mya started to back up even more. Sydney shot Oliver a quick look, a silent message of what she needed him to do.
Oliver gave her a slight, barely noticeable nod, then tucked his gun into his waistband, and shifted the sling of the rifle so the weapon went to his back.
Their weapons would suffer water damage if submerged for too long and more than likely shoot like shit or misfire, but it was a chance they’d have to take.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said just before grabbing hold of Mya. One arm around her waist and a hand over her mouth, having the foresight to muffle her screams, he forced her into the hole with him.
“You ready?” she asked Beckett. He extended his palm, offering to hold her hand while they jumped.
And for whatever reason, she took it. She let him take the lead once again.
Guess I’m getting my way after all. I wanted to swim down here, she thought with a shake of her head, right before they jumped.
CHAPTER NINE
“They’re up there, I can feel it.” Mya’s voice was soft and shaky as she huddled against the limestone wall inside the cenote while Oliver stood at her side, looking somewhat annoyed. Sydney was pretty sure he was still pissed off that her friend had risked her life and, by extension, all of theirs, by agreeing to meet with her cartel contact on her own.
Sydney looked away from the two of them and fixed her attention on the opening they’d all jumped through five minutes earlier. Soaking wet and utterly exhausted, they were lucky to have found a small ledge of dry land off to the side of the river while they waited to see if they’d be followed.
“Maybe it’s not them up there,” Oliver whispered, keeping his voice quiet to prevent any echoing inside the cave. “It could be those Mayan ghosts Beckett mentioned earlier.”
Sydney was in a lunge-like position, bow in hand, prepared to send an arrow if anyone dropped through the hole. The idea of shooting a weapon while treading water was less than ideal, but at Oliver’s joke, she stole a look at him from over her shoulder.
Was Oliver looking to usurp Jack’s position as comedian of Falcon, or simply using comic relief to cut through a tense situation like she’d witnessed a lot of the guys do during her time in the Army?
Yeah, that’s probably it. In his own weird way, Oliver’s trying to calm Mya. Especially given that their current situation was at least an eight out of ten on the whiskey-tango-foxtrot meter—military-speak for WTF.
As Sydney swiveled her gaze back to the hole, she couldn’t help but think of Levi. He knew she hated hearing him curse, so whenever they had a disagreement, rather than saying the acronym, he’d protest, whiskey-tango-foxtrot, Mom. She shook her head and smiled as she pictured her son. He knew damn well it was hard for her to keep a straight face and be upset after that.
“What do you think? Is it the baddies or our ghosts?” Oliver asked playfully, wiggling his fingers toward Mya.