Reckless

He took her hand and carried it to his waist. “Hang on to my belt.”

She did better than that. Acutely aware of the vast jungle around her, and with only his presence shielding her from the night terrors, she hooked her fingers inside the waistband of his pants in a death grip. She knotted the material so tightly that he muttered a protest, but she wasn’t about to let go of him.

Maybe it didn’t seem very far to him, but to Jane, being towed in his wake, stumbling over roots and vines that she couldn’t see, it seemed like miles before he halted. “We’ll wait here,” he whispered. “I don’t want to go any closer until I hear the helicopter come in.”

“When will that be?” Jane whispered back, figuring that if he could talk, so could she.

“A little after dawn.”

“When is dawn?”

“Half an hour.”

Still clutching the waistband of his pants, she stood behind him and waited for dawn. The seconds and minutes crawled by, but they gave her the chance to realize for the first time that she’d truly escaped from Turego. She was safe and free...well almost. She was out of his clutches, she was the only one who knew what a close call she’d had. Turego would almost certainly return to the plantation this morning to find that his prisoner had escaped. For a moment she was surprised at her own lack of elation, then she realized that she wasn’t out of danger yet. This man said that her father had sent him, but he hadn’t given her a name or any proof. All she had was his word, and Jane was more than a little wary. Until she was actually on American soil, until she knew beyond any doubt that she was safe, she was going to follow poor George Persall’s ironclad rule: when in doubt, lie.

The man shifted uncomfortably, drawing her attention. “Look, honey, do you think you could loosen up on my pants? Or are you trying to finish the job you started on me with your knee?”

Jane felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she hastily released her hold. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” she whispered. She stood stiffly for a moment, her arms at her sides; then panic began to rise in her. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, she couldn’t hear him breathing, and now that she was no longer touching him, she couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t left her. Was he still there? What if she was alone? The air became thick and oppressive, and she struggled to breathe, to fight down the fear that she knew was unreasonable but that no amount of reason could conquer. Even knowing its source didn’t help. She simply couldn’t stand the darkness. She couldn’t sleep without a light; she never went into a room without first reaching in and turning on the light switch, and she always left her lights on if she knew she would be late returning home. She, who always took extraordinary precautions against being left in the dark, was standing in the middle of a jungle in darkness so complete that it was like being blind.

Her fragile control broke and she reached out wildly, clawing for him, for reassurance that he was still there. Her outstretched fingers touched fabric, and she threw herself against him, gasping in mingled panic and relief. The next second steely fingers grasped her shirt and she was hurled through the air to land flat on her back in the smelly, rotting vegetation. Before she could move, before she could suck air back into her lungs, her hair was pulled back and she felt the suffocating pressure of his knee on her chest again. His breath was a low rasp above her, his voice little more than a snarl. “Don’t ever—ever—come at me from behind again.”

Jane writhed, pushing at his knee. After a moment he lifted it, and eased the grip on her hair. Even being thrown over his shoulder had been better than being left alone in the darkness, and she grabbed for him again, catching him around the knees. Automatically he tried to step away from her entangling arms but she lunged for him. He uttered a startled curse, tried to regain his balance, then crashed to the ground.

He lay so still that Jane’s heart plummeted. What would she do if he were hurt? She couldn’t possibly carry him, but neither could she leave him lying there, injured and unable to protect himself. Feeling her way up his body, she scrambled to crouch by his shoulders. “Mister, are you all right?” she whispered, running her hands up his shoulders to his face, then searching his head for any cuts or lumps. There was an elasticized band around his head, and she followed it, her nervous fingers finding an odd type of glasses over his eyes. “Are you hurt?” she demanded again, her voice tight with fear. “Damn it, answer me!”

“Lady,” the man said in a low, furious voice, “you’re crazier than hell. If I was your daddy, I’d pay Turego to keep you!”

She didn’t know him, but his words caused an odd little pain in her chest. She sat silently, shocked that he could hurt her feelings. She didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her—how could his opinion matter? But it did, somehow, and she felt strangely vulnerable.

He eased himself to a sitting position, and when she didn’t say anything, he sighed. “Why did you jump me like that?” he asked in resignation.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” she said with quiet dignity. “I couldn’t hear you breathing, and I can’t see a thing. I panicked. I’m sorry.”

After a moment he said, “All right,” and got to his feet. Bending down, he grasped her wrists and pulled her up to stand beside him. Jane inched a little closer to him.

“You can see because of those glasses you’re wearing, can’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah. There’s not a lot of light, but enough that I can make out where I’m going. Infrared lenses.”

A howler monkey suddenly screamed somewhere above their heads, and Jane jumped, bumping into him. “Got another pair?” she asked shakily.

She could feel him hesitate, then his arm went around her shoulders. “Nope, just these. Don’t worry, Pris, I’m not going to lose you. In another five minutes or so, it’ll start getting light.”

“I’m all right now,” she said, and she was, as long as she could touch him and know that she wasn’t alone. That was the real terror: being alone in the darkness. For years she had fought a battle against the nightmare that had begun when she was nine years old, but at last she had come to accept it, and in the acceptance she’d won peace. She knew it was there, knew when to expect it and what to do to ward it off, and that knowledge gave her the ability to enjoy life again. She hadn’t let the nightmare cripple her. Maybe her methods of combating it were a little unorthodox, but she had found the balance within herself and she was happy with it.

Feeling remarkably safe with that steely arm looped over her shoulders, Jane waited beside him, and in a very short time she found that she could indeed see a little better. Deep in the rain forest there was no brilliant sunrise to announce the day—the sunrise could not be seen from beneath the canopy of vegetation. Even during the hottest noon, the light that reached the jungle floor was dim, filtered through layers of greenery. She waited as the faint gray light slowly became stronger, until she could pick out more of the details of the lush foliage that surrounded her. She felt almost swamped by the plant life. She’d never been in the jungle before; her only knowledge of it came from movies and what little she’d been able to see during the trip upriver to the plantation. During her days at the plantation she’d begun to think of the jungle as a living entity, huge and green, surrounding her, waiting. She had known from the first that to escape she would have to plunge into that seemingly impenetrable green barrier, and she had spent hours staring at it.

Now she was deep within it, and it wasn’t quite what she’d expected. It wasn’t a thick tangle, where paths had to be cut with a machete. The jungle floor was littered with rotting vegetation, and laced with networks of vines and roots, but for all that it was surprisingly clear. Plant life that lingered near the jungle floor was doomed. To compete for the precious light it had to rise and spread out its broad leaves, to gather as much light as it could. She stared at a fern that wasn’t quite a fern; it was a tree with a buttressed root system, rising to a height of at least eight feet, only at the top it feathered into a fern.

“You can see now,” he muttered suddenly, lifting his arm from her shoulders and stripping off the night vision goggles. He placed them carefully in a zippered section of his field pack.

Jane stared at him in open curiosity, wishing that the light were better so she could really see him. What she could see gave wing to hundreds of tiny butterflies in her stomach. It would take one brave hombre to meet this man in a dark alley, she thought with a frightened shiver. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, but they glittered at her from beneath fierce, level dark brows. His face was blackened, which made those eyes all the brighter. His light colored hair was far too long, and he’d tied a strip of cloth around his head to keep the hair out of his eyes. He was clad in tiger-striped camouflage fatigues, and he wore the trappings of war. A wicked knife was stuck casually in his belt, and a pistol rode his left hip while he carried a carbine slung over his right shoulder. Her startled eyes darted back up to his face, a strong-boned face that revealed no emotion, though he had been aware of her survey.

“Loaded for bear, aren’t you?” she quipped, eyeing the knife again. For some reason it looked more deadly than either of the guns.

“I don’t walk into anything unprepared,” he said flatly.

Well, he certainly looked prepared for anything. She eyed him again, more warily this time; he was about six feet tall, and looked like...looked like... Her mind groped for and found the phrase. It had been bandied about and almost turned into a joke, but with this man, it was deadly serious. He looked like a lean, mean, fighting machine, every hard, muscled inch of him. His shoulders looked to be a yard wide, and he’d carried her dead weight through the jungle without even a hint of strain. He’d knocked her down twice, and she realized the only reason she wasn’t badly hurt was that, both times, he’d tempered his strength.

Abruptly his attention left her, and his head lifted with a quick, alert motion, like that of an eagle. His eyes narrowed as he listened. “The helicopter is coming,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

Jane listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. “Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully.

“I said let’s go,” he repeated impatiently, and walked away from her. It took Jane only a few seconds to realize that he was heading out, and in the jungle he would be completely hidden from view before he’d gone ten yards. She hurried to catch up to him.

“Hey, slow down!” she whispered frantically, catching at his belt.

“Move it,” he said with a total lack of sympathy. “The helicopter won’t wait forever; Pablo’s on the quick side anyway.”

“Who’s Pablo?”

“The pilot.”

Just then a faint vibration reached her ears. In only a moment it had intensified to the recognizable beat of a helicopter. How could he have heard it before? She knew that she had good hearing, but his senses must be almost painfully acute.

He moved swiftly, surely, as if he knew exactly where he was going. Jane concentrated on keeping up with him and avoiding the roots that tried to catch her toes, she paid little attention to their surroundings. When he climbed, she climbed; it was simple. She was mildly surprised when he stopped abruptly and she lifted her head to look around. The jungle of Costa Rica was mountainous, and they had climbed to the edge of a small cliff, looking down on a narrow, hidden valley with a natural clearing. The helicopter sat in that clearing, the blades lazily whirling.

“Better than a taxicab,” Jane murmured in relief, and started past him.

His hand closed over her shoulder and jerked her back. “Be quiet,” he ordered, his narrowed gaze moving restlessly, surveying the area.

“Is something wrong?”

“Shut up!”

Jane glared at him, incensed by his unnecessary rudeness, but his hand was still clamped on her shoulder in a grip that bordered on being painful. It was a warning that if she tried to leave the protective cover of the jungle before he was satisfied that everything was safe, he would stop her with real pain. She stood quietly, staring at the clearing herself, but she couldn’t see anything wrong. Everything was quiet. The pilot was leaning against the outside of the helicopter, occupied with cleaning his nails; he certainly wasn’t concerned with anything.

Long minutes dragged past. The pilot began to fidget, craning his neck and staring into the jungle, though anyone standing just a few feet behind the trees would be completely hidden from view. He looked at his watch, then scanned the jungle again, his gaze moving nervously from left to right.

Jane felt the tension in the man standing beside her, tension that was echoed in the hand that held her shoulder. What was wrong? What was he looking for, and why was he waiting? He was as motionless as a jaguar lying in wait for its prey to pass beneath its tree limb.

“This sucks,” he muttered abruptly, easing deeper into the jungle and dragging her with him.

Jane sputtered at the inelegant expression. “It does? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Stay here.” He pushed her to the ground, deep in the green-black shadow of the buttressed roots of an enormous tree.

Startled, she took a moment to realize that she’d been abandoned. He had simply melted into the jungle, so silently and swiftly that she wasn’t certain which way he’d gone. She twisted around but could see nothing that indicated his direction; no swaying vines or limbs.

She wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs and propped her chin on her knees, staring thoughtfully at the ground. A green stick with legs was dragging a large spider off to be devoured. What if he didn’t come back...whoever he was. Why hadn’t she asked him his name? If something happened to him, she’d like to know his name, so she could tell someone—assuming that she could manage to get out of the jungle herself. Well, she wasn’t any worse off now than she had been before. She was away from Turego, and that was what counted.

Wait here, he’d said. For how long? Until lunch? Sundown? Her next birthday? Men gave such inexact instructions! Of course, this particular man seemed a little limited in the conversation department. Shut up, Stay here and Stay put seemed to be the highlights of his repertoire.

This was quite a tree he’d parked her by. The bottom of the trunk flared into buttressed roots, forming enormous wings that wrapped around her almost like arms. If she sat back against the tree, the wings would shield her completely from the view of someone approaching at any angle except head-on.

The straps of her backpack were irritating her shoulders, so she slid it off and stretched, feeling remarkably lighter. She hauled the pack around and opened it, then began digging for her hairbrush. Finding this backpack had been a stroke of luck, she thought, though Turego’s soldiers really should be a little more careful with their belongings. Without it, she’d have had to wrap things up in a blanket, which would have been awkward.

Finally locating the hairbrush, she diligently worked through the mass of tangles that had accumulated in her long hair during the night. A small monkey with an indignant expression hung from a branch overhead. It scolded her throughout the operation, evidently angry that she had intruded on its territory. She waved at it.

Congratulating herself for her foresight, she pinned her hair up and pulled a black baseball cap out of the pack. She jammed the cap on and tugged the bill down low over her eyes, then shoved it back up. There wasn’t any sun down here. Staring upward, she could see bright pinpoints of sun high in the trees, but only a muted green light filtered down to the floor. She’d have been better off with some of those fancy goggles that What’s-his-name had.

How long had she been sitting there? Was he in trouble?

Her legs were going to sleep, so she stood and stomped around to get her blood flowing again. The longer she waited, the more uneasy she became, and she had the feeling that a time would come when she’d better be able to move fast. Jane was an instinctive creature, as sensitive to atmosphere as any finely tuned barometer. That trait had enabled her to hold Turego at bay for what seemed like an endless succession of days and nights, reading him, sidestepping him, keeping him constantly disarmed, and even charmed. Now the same instinct warned her of danger. There was some slight change in the very air that stroked her bare arms. Warily, she leaned down to pick up her backpack, slipping her arms through the straps and anchoring it this time by fastening the third strap around her middle.

The sudden thunderous burst of automatic weapon fire made her whirl, her heart jumping into her throat. Listening to the staccato blasts, she knew that several weapons were being fired, but at whom? Had her friend been detected or was this something else entirely? Was this the trouble he’d sensed that had made him shy away from the clearing? She wanted to think that he was safe, observing everything from an invisible vantage point in the jungle, but with a chill she realized that she couldn’t take that for granted.

Her hands felt cold, and with a distant surprise she realized that she was trembling. What should she do? Wait, or run? What if he needed help? She realized that there was very little she could do, since she was unarmed, but she couldn’t just run away if he needed help. He wasn’t the most amiable man she’d ever met, and she still didn’t exactly trust him, but he was the closest thing to a friend she had here.

Ignoring the unwillingness of her feet and the icy lump of fear in her stomach, Jane left the shelter of the giant tree and began cautiously inching through the forest, back toward the clearing. There were only sporadic bursts of gunfire now, still coming from the same general direction.

Suddenly she froze as the faint sound of voices filtered through the forest. In a cold panic she dove for the shelter of another large tree. What would she do if they were coming in this direction? The rough bark scratched her hands as she cautiously moved her head just enough to peer around the trunk.

A steely hand clamped over her mouth. As a scream rose in her throat, a deep, furious voice growled in her ear, “Damn it, I told you to stay put!”

CHAPTER THREE

JANE GLARED AT him over the hand that still covered her mouth, her fright turning into relieved anger. She didn’t like this man. She didn’t like him at all, and as soon as they were out of this mess, she was going to tell him about it!

He removed his hand and shoved her to the ground on her hands and knees. “Crawl!” he ordered in a harsh whisper, and pointed to their left.

Jane crawled, ignoring the scratches she incurred as she squirmed through the undergrowth, ignoring even the disgusting squishiness when she accidentally smashed something with her hand. Odd, but now that he was with her again, her panic had faded; it hadn’t gone completely, but it wasn’t the heart-pounding, nauseating variety, either. Whatever his faults, he knew his way around.

He was on her tail, literally, his hard shoulder against the back of her thighs, pushing her onward whenever he thought she wasn’t moving fast enough. Once he halted her by the simple method of grabbing her ankle and jerking her flat, his urgent grip warning her to be quiet. She held her breath, listening to the faint rustle that betrayed the presence of someone, or something, nearby. She didn’t dare turn her head, but she could detect movement with her peripheral vision. In a moment the man was close enough that she could see him plainly. He was obviously of Latin ancestry, and he was dressed in camouflage fatigues with a cap covering his head. He held an automatic rifle at the ready before him.

In only a moment she could no longer see or hear him, but they stayed motionless in the thick tangle of ferns for long, agonizing minutes. Then her ankle was released and a hand on her hip urged her forward.

They were moving away from the soldier at a right angle. Perhaps they were going to try to get behind their pursuers, then take off in the helicopter while the soldiers were still deep in the jungle. She wanted to know where they were going, what they would do, who the soldiers were and what they wanted—but the questions had to remain bottled up inside her. Now was definitely not the time for talking, not with this man—what was his name?—practically shoving her through the undergrowth.

Abruptly the forest cleared somewhat, allowing small patches of sunlight to filter through. Grasping her arm, he hauled her to her feet. “Run, but be as quiet as you can,” he hissed in her ear.

Great. Run, but do it quietly. She threw him a dirty look, then ran, taking off like a startled deer. The most disgusting thing was that he was right behind her, and she couldn’t hear him making a sound, while her own feet seemed to pound the earth like a drum. But her body seemed cheered by the small amount of sunlight, because she felt her energy level surge despite her sleepless night. The pack on her shoulders seemed lighter, and her steps became quick and effortless as adrenaline began pumping through her veins.

The brush became thicker, and they had to slow their pace. After about fifteen minutes he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and pulled her behind the trunk of a tree. “Rest a minute,” he whispered. “The humidity will wipe you out if you aren’t used to it.”

Until that moment Jane hadn’t noticed that she was wringing wet with sweat. She’d been too intent on saving her skin to worry about its dampness. Now, she became aware of the intense humidity of the rain forest pressing down on her, making every breath she drew lie heavily in her lungs. She wiped the moisture from her face, the salt of her perspiration stinging the small scratches on her cheeks.

He took a canteen from his pack. “Take a drink; you look like you need it.”

She had a very good idea what she looked like, and she smiled wryly. She accepted the canteen and drank a little of the water, then capped it and returned it to him. “Thanks.”

He looked at her quizzically. “You can have more if you want.”

“I’m okay.” She looked at him, seeing now that his eyes were a peculiar golden-brown color, like amber. His pupils seemed piercingly black against that tawny background. He was streaked with sweat, too, but he wasn’t even breathing hard. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was damned good at this. “What’s your name?” she asked him, desperately needing to call him something, as if that would give him more substance, make him more familiar.

He looked a little wary, and she sensed that he disliked giving even that much of himself away. A name was only a small thing, but it was a chink in his armor, a link to another person that he didn’t want. “Sullivan,” he finally said reluctantly.

“First or last?”

“Last.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Grant.”

Grant Sullivan. She liked the name. It wasn’t fancy; he wasn’t fancy. He was a far cry from the sleekly sophisticated men she usually met, but the difference was exciting. He was hard and dangerous, mean when he had to be, but he wasn’t vicious. The contrast between him and Turego, who was a truly vicious man, couldn’t have been more clear-cut.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We need to put a lot more space between the hounds and the foxes.”

Obediently she followed his direction, but found that her burst of adrenaline was already dissipating. She felt more exhausted now than she had before the short rest. She stumbled once, catching her booted foot in a liana vine, but he rescued her with a quick grab. She gave him a tired smile of thanks, but when she tried to step away from him he held her. He stood rigid and it frightened her. She jerked around to look at him, but his face was a cold, blank mask, and he was staring behind her. She whirled again, and looked down the barrel of a rifle.