Beyond Sunrise (6 page)

India felt her body tense up, tighter and tighter, in anticipation of what would happen next. She'd been wondering for the last ten minutes what she would do if he ordered her, too, to strip. She'd finally decided he could slit her throat with his machete if he wanted; she wasn't removing so much as a handkerchief.

"You may leave now," she heard him say. "One at a time. Just turn around and walk back down the trail single file. No, not you," he added softly in her ear, his voice deepening with amusement and his hold on her tightening when India would have moved away from him.

She was no longer bothering to keep her gaze carefully trained on the tangle of vivid green vegetation overhead. Suddenly, the men's nakedness was of far less importance than what was about to happen to her. She could see them scurrying away, one after the other down the trail, their unshod feet slipping in the muck, their bare bodies glowing a discordant bluish white in the jungle gloom. Only Simon Granger stood his ground, his hands no longer shielding his groin but clenched instead into two fists at his sides. "And Miss McKnight?" he said, his head held high, his voice strained but crisp.

Jack Ryder's reply was slow and taunting and laced with a smile. "She's coming with me."

Chapter Eight

India let out a gasp that brought the strained sinews of her neck into uncomfortable proximity to the machete's sharp edge. She went instantly, quiveringly silent. Captain Granger said, "You can't be serious." Jack Ryder let out a low, mean laugh. "When she's the only thing standing between me and a hangman's noose? Of course I'm serious."

"You want a hostage?" The Englishman spread his arms wide in a gesture of surrender. "Take me. But let the woman go, Jack."

The despicable fiend holding her laughed again in what struck India as an unnecessarily hearty—and heartless— manner. "Nice of you to offer, Simon. But you're not exactly dressed for a jungle trek."

A muscle bunched along the Englishman's clenched jawline. "I never thought I'd see you hiding behind a woman."

"Yeah?" The rollicking tone vanished, leaving in its place a cold, lethal timbre that sent a chill through India's veins. "Well, there was a time I thought I'd never see you
killing
women, which just goes to show how wrong one man can be about another."

"I was only following orders, and you know it."

A dangerously volatile hum of anger coursed through the man behind her. India knew a stab of raging panic, then felt him relax, his voice sounding unutterably sad and weary as he said, "Just get out of here, Simon."

For a long, silent moment, the two men stared at each other. Simon Granger said, "I won't quit. You know that, Jack."

"I know it."

The Englishman turned to leave, and it was only by sheer force of will that India managed to hold herself still, her jaws clenched together to keep from crying out,
No! Don't leave me here with him!
She watched in sick, stomach-wrenching despair as Simon Granger maneuvered his way with rigid care down the slippery, narrow trail, his tall, naked white body flickering ghostlike through moss-covered tree trunks and vivid green creepers. Then an outcropping of rough volcanic boulders hid him from her sight, and she was alone in the jungle with a mad, machete-wielding Australian renegade and an unknown number of watching cannibals.

Jack kept his grip on Miss McKnight's wrist, the weight of his arm across her rib cage holding her back pressed tightly to his chest, his machete at her neck. He waited until Simon had disappeared from sight and the only sounds to be heard were faint jungle whisperings and the labored breathing of the woman he held in his arms, her full breasts rising and falling with each intake of air. Then he let her go and stepped back warily.

He wasn't sure what he expected her to do. Faint maybe, or fall into hysterics, or maybe even try to make a frightened run for it. He should have known better.

She stood rigidly erect, her back still to him, one hand rubbing the wrist he'd held so tightly, the other hand coming up to touch fingertips to her neck. When she finally turned, it was to show him a pale but composed face. "So, Mr. Ryder," she said in that tart, Sunday-school teacher voice of hers. "What do we do now, given that a return to the
Sea Hawk
is obviously no longer an option?"

Jack let out a soft laugh and drove his machete back into its scabbard. What now, indeed? When Simon and his bluejackets had appeared below them on the trail, Jack's only thought had been to get himself out of a tight situation alive and with as much of a chance of getting away as he could manage. It was only now, as he stared at the pith-helmeted woman who stood before him, her shoulders determinedly straight, her fine gray eyes flashing scorn and contempt, that the magnitude of what he'd let himself in for burst upon him.

For the next two days, he was going to be tramping through a cannibal-infested jungle in the company of the most aggravating, sharp-tongued Amazon he had ever had the misfortune to encounter. And as if that weren't bad enough, he'd be willing to bet his machete that as soon as Simon and his men scrambled into new clothes and rearmed, they were going to be hot on Jack's trail. Simon would have been after him in any case, but it didn't help that to his already long list of crimes, Jack had just added the offense of kidnapping a popular lady travel writer.

"What we do now," said Jack, taking her by the elbow and propelling her with gentle insistence down the path, "is move. Very quickly."

She removed her elbow from his grasp, but kept walking. "And precisely what is our destination?"

"La Rochelle."

"La Rochelle?"
She stopped abruptly and swung to face him. "But... that will take
days."

"Two, by my reckoning. If we move it."

"Two?"
She drew back her shoulders and crossed her arms beneath her impressive breasts in the manner of a Valkyrie preparing to do battle. All she needed was a sword and a skull cup flowing with mead, Jack thought, and the image would have been complete. "I'm not going."

Jack eyed the statuesque, strong-jawed woman before him. A smaller, weaker female he might have bullied, but this one was almost as tall as he was—besides which, he didn't think anyone had ever successfully bullied Miss India McKnight in her life. He tried a different tack. "You want me to leave you here, do you? Alone?"

"I am not afraid of being alone."

"You're forgetting about the cannibals."

Her lip curled in scorn. He'd known men who could do that, but never a woman. "Do you really think me such a fool as to fall for that tale twice?"

"Tale? You think it's a tale? And who do you think left that footprint?" He jabbed a pointed finger toward a muddy patch on the trail, where the imprint made by a bare human foot showed clearly.

"Obviously, one of those poor unfortunate men you forced to disrobe."

"Their feet were bare going
down
the hill, not up it."

She gazed at him with cool disbelief. "You realized you might need a hostage, and—"

"A hostage?" Jack leaned into her. "Bloody hell. If I hadn't been so bloody worried about you getting yourself eaten, I wouldn't need a hostage now."

He swung away from her, his head falling back, his gaze taking in a whirl of vibrant, tangled greenery before he spun back suddenly to pin her with a hard, suspicious stare. "Exactly what do you think I'm planning to do to you, anyway? Drag you off into the jungle and rape you?"

He watched a flush of maidenly modesty color her cheeks, her breath hitching in an unmistakable betrayal of fear.

"Jesus. You do." He set his jaw, one pointed finger coming up to waggle beneath her thin nose. "Well, let me tell you something, lady. I'm not that hard up. This is the bloody South Pacific, remember? These islands are full of naked, willing women. A man doesn't need to resort to kidnap and rape to get a little around here." He paused, his gaze sweeping over her to linger just a shade longer than he meant it to on her full, heaving breasts. "And even if I did, I wouldn't pick some frigid, supercilious, bloody-minded Englishwoman!"

She stared at him, her color becomingly high, her breath coming hard and fast through parted lips. But all she said was "I am Scottish, not English."

A breeze blew up suddenly, rustling the leafy canopy overhead with a movement that must have brought down a coconut somewhere nearby, for the crash of it echoed and reechoed through the jungle. Jack threw a quick glance up at the patch of sky just visible through the overarching mass of branches. From the sounds of things, there was a squall blowing in. Smothering a crude oath, he drew his machete from its scabbard and straightened his arm until the point rested against India McKnight's breast, just above her heart. "Look, Miss McKnight, I don't give a rat's ass if you're English, Scottish, or Transylvanian. Just move."

She went a shade paler, but she didn't move. "You're bluffing. If you kill me, you won't have a hostage, so what would be the point?"

"You willing to bet your life on that?"

They stared at each other. The wind died, and in the sudden stillness the steamy heat seemed more oppressive than ever. He watched a bead of sweat form on her forehead and roll down her temple. Just when he thought she was going to call his bluff, after all, she blinked and looked away.

"Very well, Mr. Ryder. You may put away your machete." Turning on her heel, she stalked off down the path ahead of him, her shoulders pulled repressively back, her pith-helmeted head held high. "But when they hang you, I intend to be there."

Jack swiped one forearm across his hot, sweaty face, and followed her. "They need to catch me first."

He'd expected her to dawdle along, deliberately trying to delay him, but she kept pace with him easily, her long legs matching his stride for stride. Watching her, Jack came to the conclusion she was one of those women with a naturally long, mannish gait. He suspected she was constitutionally incapable of walking slowly, no matter how much she might have wanted to. The thought brought an odd smile to his face, a smile that faded to leave a lingering, unexpected ache that was both wistful and sad.

At first, she stomped along in an angry, detached silence, no doubt indulging herself with satisfying images of his lifeless body twisting at the end of a hangman's rope. But it wasn't long before her interest in her surroundings reasserted itself, and several times he had to prod her on when she would have stopped to investigate a peculiar form of mushroom growing on a moldering log, or to watch a red parakeet flitting through the branches of a giant breadfruit tree. He supposed it was inevitable that she would, eventually, turn her overly well-developed sense of curiosity to him.

"Why are you wanted by the British navy?" she asked as they pushed through a stand of enormous old native pines mixed with native oaks and laurels and tree ferns.

He glanced back at her in surprise. "Didn't you even bother to find out, before you agreed to help Simon capture me?"

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Then she said, "I was having difficulty finding someone willing to take me to Takaku, and Captain Granger suggested you. I didn't know what he intended."

He didn't want to believe her, but studying her half-averted profile, Jack thought she was probably telling the truth. She was too determinedly straight-laced and bloody-minded to ever lie convincingly. He wondered idly if he would have drawn his machete on her and taken her hostage if he hadn't thought, in that first rush of blind fury, that she'd deliberately set him up. He was still pondering the question when she said, "Were you actually an officer in the British navy?"

The way she said it, one would think it the most unimaginable thing in the world. He grunted. "Once."

"Did you jump ship?"

"Not exactly."

"So what happened?"

"My ship sank."

She turned her head to look at him. "Was it your fault?"

"The Admiralty thinks so."

She kept her gaze leveled on his face. "Was it?"

He gave a low, harsh laugh. "In a sense, yes."

"In what sense wasn't it?"

It was a perceptive question, but not one he intended to answer. A silence dragged out between them and lasted so long that Jack decided she'd forgotten the subject. She hadn't. All of a sudden, she said, "He told me he was once your friend."

"Simon? He was."

"It was a vile thing, what you did, forcing him and his men to walk back to their ship in such a state."

"Natives spend their entire lives running around the jungle bare-assed. Why not Simon and his bluejackets?"

"Because they're white men."

"What's the matter? Never seen a naked white man before?"

"Of course I have."

Jack laughed. "I guess you saw me, all right."

"I wasn't referring to you."

He turned to stare at her, and was surprised to discover a faint hint of color staining her cheeks. If he hadn't known better, he'd have said Miss Indomitable McKnight was blushing. "My dear Miss McKnight, you are full of surprises. Where?"

Her gaze met his, then veered away. "I don't see how that is any of your business."

"How old was he? Two?"

Instead of answering him, she continued to stare off into the jungle until her toe caught on a root and she tripped.

"It helps if you watch where you're going," he said pleasantly, but she simply threw him a withering glance, and kept walking.

India had formulated and discarded four different plans for her escape before she finally settled on the only course of action that promised any reasonable chance of success.

They had long since veered away from the trail she had originally followed and onto a narrower path that snaked its way toward what she supposed must be the northern end of the island. At first, the path ran along the steep side of the volcano's slope, then plunged down into a jungle-filled glen that separated Mount Futapu from the craggy heights of the next, even higher volcanic peak. With every step she took, India was painfully conscious of the growing distance that separated her from the
Barracuda
and the safety it had come to represent. But if she were to have any chance of escaping this vile, machete-wielding madman, she would need to pick her moment very, very carefully.

Her chance came at the base of the glen, where they ran across a small stream, gurgling clear and sweet between moss-covered, fern-draped banks. Jack Ryder knelt on a flat stone to cup his hands in the burn and splash water on his face, his worn cotton shirt pulling taut against the muscles of his chest as he shut his eyes and let the water run in glistening rivulets down his tanned cheeks and corded throat. But India hung back, her voice tight with an embarrassment that was only half feigned as she said, "I need a few moments to myself behind those rocks there."

He glanced up at her, his dark brows drawing together as he regarded her thoughtfully. "You wouldn't be so stupid as to try to run off, now would you?"

She let out a short, mirthless laugh. "How far would I be likely to get?"

"Before who caught you? Me, or the cannibals?"

Not even bothering to dignify that remark with a reply, India moved toward the pile of massive, moss-covered basalt boulders that effectively hid the trail that led back to the bay from his sight.