Off the Map by Sierra Dean

Author:Sierra Dean [Dean, Sierra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sierra Dean
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Diego couldn’t decide if this was adding insult to injury or injury to insult, but either way it seemed extra cruel to have an arrow pointed in his face right after getting caught in a giant man-sized net.

The men were quiet. None of them had said a single word, they kept their arrows trained on them, giving Diego the notion they weren’t in the mood to make friends.

All six of them were dressed identically in loose fitting pants with braided red belts. They had matching tattoos on their chests depicting a stylized jaguar. The design looked familiar, but he was too busy looking at the thin-tipped arrows to think too much about the tattoos.

They were different ages, two had silver hair, and must have been in their sixties or older, with tough skin that showed the wear of years spent in the sun. Three others were middle aged, either in their late thirties or early forties. One, the one who seemed most interested in Harper, was much younger, maybe a teenager or in his twenties at the oldest.

They wore thick black makeup—probably charcoal or mud—over their eyes, giving them a fearsome, blackened glare.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Diego said, hedging his bets that they’d speak Spanish. “We’re lost, we’re hungry, and we just want to go on our way.”

The eldest of the men stood under Diego, pulling the bowstring back as if he intended to fire.

“No threat,” Diego said again. “Please let us go.”

After the longest moment of Diego’s life, the man lowered his arrow. “What is your name?”

Hearing him speak was such a shock Diego damn near jumped out of his skin. He spoke in Spanish, but there was something different about it, something old. This wasn’t the same Spanish Diego had heard on the streets of Bogota, or back home in California. This was like antique Spanish, with a burnish layer than made it rare and hard to pin down.

“My name is Diego Morales. My friend is Harper Barton.”

“Hi.” Harper waved her fingers meekly through the netting upon hearing her name. The young kid still had an arrow leveled at her, giving her a suspicious stare-down.

“How did you come here?” the man asked.

“We were on a boat, it sank. We don’t know where we are.”

“You are very far from home,” another man said.

Diego almost laughed at that. “I know.”

The man who was evidently the leader lifted his hand and the other five men lowered their weapons, though Diego noticed the youngster was hesitant to do so right away.

At first Diego had thought he was keenly interested in Harper because she was a woman, but the boy’s attention had nothing to do with attraction, from what Diego could tell on further observation. There was a bare distrust on the young warrior’s face, and it was clearly leading him to dislike Harper in an openly hostile way.

However, he’d been told to drop his weapon and so he angled the arrowhead and the ground and took a few steps backwards. Harper let out a breath.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.