Forced Disappearance (10 page)

He turned to his side to face her, rustling the bamboo bedding. “Was your daughter sick? Abby?”

The question startled her, but then she remembered his younger brother who had had leukemia and passed away at ten or eleven. She pressed her lips together. Gloria had already lost a child. And now she thought she’d lost Glenn. Even if Miranda had still carried some resentment toward the woman, she would have let it go in this moment. She never thought she was like Gloria in any way, but they did have losing a child in common.

She drew a slow breath, conscious that Glenn was still waiting for her answer. “Abby was kidnapped. Killed.” The words scraped against her throat as if they had claws.

He pulled her into his arms without notice, his chin coming to rest on the top of her head, the gesture making her want to cry for some reason, even as he said, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it.”

Good, because she was pretty much incapable of that. Her losses were her own. She didn’t discuss them with anyone, ever.

His warmth and strength wrapped all around her and offered precious comfort. This was the friendship that she’d missed. Matthew had been gone by the time she lost Abby, so she’d borne that burden alone.

And she’d been alone since, for the most part.

She’d dated twice since she’d been widowed, but it never felt right. Glenn’s embrace was familiar and somehow easier to give in to. She snuggled against him. Tilted her head up so she could look into his eyes, as much as she could in the darkness. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being the kind of guy that you are.”

“A preppy mama’s-boy nerd?”

She winced. She might have said that when she’d broken up with him. “I didn’t mean it. I was mad and embarrassed because I had to leave college. And I hated that your mother was right about me. We would have never fit long term. I wasn’t what you needed.”

“It would have been nice if the two of you let me decide that for myself,” he said mildly.

She relaxed against him. “I missed this,” she said on a sigh, without meaning to, without knowing what she meant exactly.

But before she could take it back, Glenn dipped his head and brushed his lips against hers.

Chapter 9

MEMORIES HIT GLENN
so hard, they nearly knocked him off the sleeping platform. Good thing he had Miranda to hang on to.

He wasn’t sure how he’d meant the kiss. She was distressed and his head simply dipped into the familiar gesture. He’d meant to comfort, he supposed, but the second he pressed his lips against hers, instant lust raced through him.

He felt like a horny eighteen-year-old, wanting to plow forward with abandon, without restraint. But since he had the control of a man now, he exercised some much-needed restraint and brushed his lips against hers slowly.

Don’t scare her.

He kissed the groove in the middle of her bottom lip, then the corners, one after the other. He wanted to taste her next, so he rubbed his nose against hers in a long-forgotten gesture, and nudged her until she opened her mouth to him.

He was already hard against her, his erection nestled against the V of her legs. He only got harder when his tongue swept inside to fully taste her.

After a moment of hesitation, her fingers dug into his hair. She didn’t play coy, didn’t hold back. She never had, one of the things he’d loved about her. With Miranda, what you saw was what you got, and it was plenty: a keen mind, a warm heart, and unbridled passion.

At the moment, he was most interested in the unbridled passion part.

His hand slid down to cover her butt. She had a lot more muscle definition in interesting places than she used to have. He wanted to discover her anew, learn every inch of her all over again. He shifted so he was half on top of her.

Her hand slid up his chest, but not to push him away. She ran her fingers over his pecs. “You’re not as nerdy as I remembered.”

He gave a bark of a laugh. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He could barely make out her face in the light of the glowing embers of the fire, but he saw her lips stretch into a smile.

She held his gaze. “Funny how everything comes right back after all these years.”

“I hardly think we’re old enough for memory loss.” But he knew what she meant. Just now, he felt almost as if the past ten years had never happened.

“It’s just the circumstances.” She gave a soft sigh. “Adrenaline rush. We’re thrust together in a survival situation, dependent on each other.”

He paused. Watched her. “Sounds like you’re trying to talk yourself out of something here.”

“Maybe I am.”

He eased his hand from her butt to her lower back with regret. As far as he was concerned, using one condom now would have left plenty for other emergency survival purposes, but he didn’t want to pressure her. “Sorry if I pushed.”

“You didn’t. I’m just saying, under the circumstances, we might not be exercising our best judgment.”

His body vehemently disagreed. But he wasn’t going to argue with her. He hadn’t really recovered yet from her exploding back into his life again.

He moved off her and lay back next to her, his body twitching with disappointment. He had no idea what he was doing here with her like this. But he couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened.

“How do you feel about giving a try to figuring things out once we’re back in D.C.? We’ll be back in a couple of days. We’ll sneak into Santa Elena tomorrow, then onto an airplane.” He paused, his ardor cooling as he remembered their predicament, the fact that they weren’t out of the woods yet, literally or proverbially. “You really think we can manage sneaking on a plane without security catching us?”

She took a long time answering. “We’ll have to. As far as Roberto and DISIP are concerned, we’re capitalist spies in a communist country. They’ll make us disappear forever, faster than you can say, ‘Hail to the commander.
’
 ”

Miranda ate a couple of handfuls of trail mix for breakfast, sharing some with Winky, who dropped by in the early morning to serve as their alarm clock, jumping on their makeshift roof and scaring the bejesus out of her.

“Do that again, and no more breakfast,” she warned.

The animal shoved a pretzel into his mouth and winked at her.

“Hey, your monkey is flirting with me,” she called back to Glenn.

“Don’t get too excited. He used to do that whenever I was in the torture chamber. Maybe he winks at people he thinks are doomed.” Glenn climbed down one of the trees that supported their sleeping platform. He’d hidden her rifle up in the branches. They couldn’t take that into the city without drawing attention.

All through their morning preparations, they talked about their options and what they needed to do, neither of them mentioning the kiss they’d shared the night before.

Well, if Glenn could forget about it, she certainly wasn’t going to bring it up, not even if her lips tingled every time she looked at him.

She kicked dirt over the fire. “Let’s go.”

They’d agreed to once again follow the road from the woods until they found a break in perimeter security. Except, what if they couldn’t find a break? They hadn’t so far.

“How did you keep hidden for all that time before I found you?” she asked as they headed out.

“I spent most of the time in the back of a giant logging truck.”

If only that could work here. She shook her head. “Even if we see trucks on the road, we can’t get on unless one stops and the driver walks away long enough for us to come out of the woods and hide in the back. Without being seen by the perimeter guards.”

Glenn grunted his agreement as he jumped over a fallen log full of termites. She vaulted over right behind him. The monkey stopped to snack. They plodded forward, watching out for danger. Winky caught up after a while, screeching his support in the trees above them.

Glenn swatted at the little black flies that buzzed around his head. “How about the tourists?”

She’d already thought about that. “We can’t join them. The guide would know we weren’t with the group. Twenty people are not so many that two extra wouldn’t stick out. Even if we didn’t look like this.”

Their clothes were wrinkled and dirty. They definitely looked like they’d spent the last couple of nights in the jungle and not at the nearest tourist hostel.

Glenn slowed his steps as he turned to her. “Do you think the tourists we saw yesterday walked all the way from the city?”

“I doubt it.”
Oh.
She grinned. God, she could have kissed him all over again. Excitement leaped to life. “I bet a bus brings them to the edge of the jungle.”

“Let’s find out.” Glenn changed course immediately, picking up pace as he hurried toward the path where they’d seen the tourists the day before.

They found what they were looking for in about an hour, but the path stood silent. Either today’s tour group had already passed through here or they hadn’t arrived yet.

Glenn and Miranda stayed in the cover of the woods, following the path toward the city, until they reached the end of the forest and found a dirt parking lot with two tour buses, one dark blue and the other one red, already waiting there.

The shot of hope was more than welcome. Almost as good as coffee.

“You’re a genius,” she whispered to Glenn and gave his hand a quick squeeze.

“I spent years trying to tell you that,” he deadpanned, making her smile.

Which she appreciated, since her body was buzzing with nerves. If they messed this up, they might not get another chance. They needed to come up with a workable plan for getting on one of those buses.

Obviously, the tourists were on their jungle trek already, unlikely to return for hours and hours with their assigned guards. The bus drivers, who stood between the vehicles smoking and joking around with each other, presented a problem, however.

Her Spanish wasn’t great, but she could make out the gist of the jib-jab. Sounded like the taller was one telling a mother-in-law joke. The men both laughed when he finished.

Miranda flashed a
now what
look to Glenn. Yesterday’s distraction trick wouldn’t work here. The drivers wouldn’t go into the woods to investigate some strange noise. If anything, they’d get into their vehicles.

Glenn scanned the clearing and the men. “We could take them,” he said under his breath.

She stared. Okay, that was so unlike Glenn. But maybe not unlike the new Glenn. He definitely had survival instincts and all kinds of strengths.

She didn’t want to think about how much she liked that.

Right. So they could take the drivers. Take the drivers’ uniforms. But then what? Drive an empty bus back into town? That’d be suspicious. And the guardsmen at the checkpoint would likely have her and Glenn’s pictures. They’d be recognized if they tried to return out in the open.

She scanned the two vehicles again, carefully, inch by inch. “What if we got under one of the buses and hung on?”

Glenn considered. “As a last resort. Looks pretty dangerous.”

Yeah. The road that led from the parking lot was a dirt road, uneven and full of rocks. They could get brushed off and flattened under one of the back tires.

She discarded that idea for the moment and moved on to the next. She eyed the luggage compartments on the side of the blue bus that stood the closest to them. From what they’d seen the day before, the tourists had small backpacks for their daytrip. Small enough to pile in the back of the bus and in the overhead luggage compartments. It seemed unlikely that they’d be stored under the bus for a short trip.

“Storage,” she whispered, even as her shoulders tensed. The small space wouldn’t have been her first choice, or even second.

Glenn narrowed his eyes as he scanned the bottom part of the bus. “Wouldn’t they be locked?”

The compartments were tightly closed, except . . . Was there a small gap in the door on the last one? She looked closer. Maybe it had a broken lock.

Glenn whispered next to her ear, his warm breath fanning her neck. “How do we get in without getting noticed?”

She ignored the tingles. “From behind.”

The buses faced the forest. With the drivers chatting in front, if she and Glenn approached on the road from the city side, they wouldn’t be seen.

Unless the drivers moved. Or, unless another bus came.

“Are you sure?” Glenn asked.

She knew what he meant. Once they entered the city, if things didn’t work out, they might not be able to return to the jungle through perimeter security. Once they were inside the loop, they could become trapped there.

She filled her lungs. “It’s a chance we have to take.”

They pulled back and, staying in the woods, skirted the parking lot, walked back along the road, then left the cover of the trees and hurried forward in a crouch, keeping the vehicles between themselves and the drivers.

Glenn reached the blue bus first, tilted the compartment door up without trouble and let her climb in, then came in after her. She swallowed her unease as she shifted to the back to accommodate his large frame. There’d better not be a poisonous snake or a giant spider hiding in there with them.

Once Glenn closed the flap, they were enveloped in nearly complete darkness, other than the narrow strip of light that edged the door. They both remained silent. They could hear the guards talking, which meant the guards would hear them.

God, she hated small, dark places. Every muscle in her body clenched.

Half an hour passed before she leaned toward his ear to whisper, “Maybe we got in too early.”

“We might not have been able to slip in later,” he whispered back.

He was right. If the drivers walked around or moved to a different spot, approaching the compartment unseen might have become impossible.

An hour passed, then two. Miranda tried to sleep, but she was too wired and the sheet of metal under her too uncomfortable. To distract herself from the dark memories that tried to muscle their way into her head, she shared the rest of the remaining trail mix in her pocket with Glenn. They ate in silence, then drank sparingly. The bus might not head back into Santa Elena for hours yet, and they couldn’t go to the bathroom.

She tried to breathe slowly, evenly, but anxiety crept into her chest little by little.
No big deal
, she told herself. Nobody was chasing them; nobody was shooting at them. They just had to stay still and quiet. They weren’t in any real danger. Yet the stupid anxiety spread, squeezed her lungs tighter and tighter.

By the fourth hour, the walls began closing in on her. The men talking outside in a foreign language, the heat, the darkness, and the small space . . . Cold sweat ran down her back. Her entire body was tense, from her toes to the top of her head. She shifted, trying to relax.

Glenn put his hand on her arm. “What is it?” he asked under his breath.

She didn’t want to talk about it.
Oh hell.

“I was captured once when I was deployed in Iraq,” she whispered.

Maybe talking would distract her from the crushing sense of claustrophobia. Dialogue would keep her firmly in the here and now, keep the past from pushing into the present. “We were on patrol, going through burned-out houses to make sure nobody was hiding there, setting up an ambush for a convoy that was supposed to come through later in the day.”