He moved so quickly that she didn't even have
time to blink. His hand snaked out and caught her drawn back fist, while the
fingers of his other hand laced around her wrist, removing her grip from his
shirt.
"Damn it, can't you keep quiet?
I
didn't name you
Priscilla,
your parents did, so if you don't like it take it up with them. But until then,
climb!"
Jane climbed, even though she was certain at
every moment that she was going to collapse on her face. Grabbing vines for
hand holds, using roots and rocks and bushes and small trees, she squirmed and
wiggled her way through the foliage. It was so thick that it could have been
swarming with jaguars and she wouldn't have been able to see one until she
stuck her hand in its mouth. She remembered that jaguars liked water, spending
most of their time resting comfortably near a river or stream, and she swore
vengeance on Grant Sullivan for making her do this.
Finally she scrambled over the top, and after
pushing forward several yards found that the foliage had once again thinned,
and walking was much easier. She adjusted the pack on her back, wincing as she
found new bruises. "Are we heading for the helicopter?"
"No," he said curtly. "The helicopter
is being watched."
"Who are those men?"
He shrugged. "Who knows? Sandinistas,
maybe; we're only a few
klicks
from the Nicaraguan
border. They could be any guerrilla faction. That damned Pablo sold us
out." Jane didn't waste time worrying about Pablo's duplicity; she was too
tired to really care. "Where are we going?"
"South."
She ground her teeth. Getting information out
of this man was like pulling teeth.
"South
where?"
"Limon, eventually.
Right now, we're going due east."
Jane knew enough about
Costa Rica
to know what lay due east, and she didn't
like what she'd just been told.
Due east lay the Caribbean
coast, where the rain forest became swamp land.
If they were only a few
kilometers from the Nicaraguan border, then Limon was roughly a hundred miles
away. In her weariness, she felt it might as well have been five hundred miles.
How long would it take them to walk a hundred miles?
Four or
five days?
She didn't know if she could stand four or five days with Mr.
Sunshine. She'd known him less than twelve hours, and she was already close to
death.
"Why can't we just go south and forget
about east?"
He jerked his head in the direction from which
they'd come.
"Because of them.
They weren't
Turego's
men, but
Turego
will
soon know that you came in this direction, and he'll be after us. He can't
afford to have the government find out about his little clandestine operations.
So… we go where he can't easily follow."
It made sense. She didn't like it, but it made
sense. She'd never been in the
Caribbean
coastal region of
Costa Rica
, so she didn't know what to expect, but it
had to be better than being
Turego's
prisoner.
Poisonous snakes, alligators, quicksand, whatever… it was better than
Turego
. She'd worry about the swamp when they were actually
in it. With that settled in her mind, she returned to her most pressing
problem.
"When do we get to rest? And eat? And,
frankly, Attila, you may have a bladder the size of
New Jersey
, but I've got to go!"
Again she caught that unwilling twitch of his
lips, as if he'd almost grinned. "We can't stop yet, but you can eat white
we walk. As for the other, go behind that tree there." He pointed, and she
turned to see another of those huge, funny trees with the enormous buttressed
roots. In the absence of indoor plumbing it would have to do. She plunged for
its shelter.
When they started out again he gave her
something hard and dark to chew on; it tasted faintly like meat, but after
examining it suspiciously she decided not to question him too closely about it.
It eased the empty pains in her stomach, and after washing a few bites down
with cautious sips of water, she began to feel better and the rubbery feeling left
her legs. He chewed a stick of it, too, which reassured her in regard to his
humanity.
Still, after walking steadily for a few hours,
Jane began to lose the strength that had come with her second wind. Her legs
were moving clumsily, and she felt as if she were wading in knee-deep water.
The temperature had risen steadily; it was well over ninety now, even in the
thick shelter of the canopy. The humidity was draining her as she continued to
sweat, losing water that she wasn't replacing.
Just when she
was about to tell him that she couldn't take another step, he turned and
surveyed her with an impersonal professionalism.
"Stay here while I find some sort of
shelter for us. It's going to start raining in a little while, so we might as
well sit it out. You look pretty well beat, anyway."
Jane pulled her cap off and wiped her
streaming face with her forearm, too tired to comment as he melted from sight.
How did he know it was going to start raining? It rained almost every day, of
course, so it didn't take a fortune-teller to predict rain, but she hadn't
heard the thunder that usually preceded it. He was back in only a short while,
taking her arm and leading her to a small rise, where a scattering of boulders
testified to
Costa Rica
's volcanic origin. After taking his knife
from his belt, he cut small limbs and lashed them together with vines, then
propped one end of his contraption up by wedging sturdier limbs under the
corners. Producing a rolled up tarp from his backpack like a magician, he tied
the tarp over the crude lean-to, making it waterproof. "Well, crawl in and
get comfortable," he growled when Jane simply stood there, staring in
astonishment at the shelter he'd constructed in just a few minutes. Obediently
she crawled in, groaning with relief as she shrugged out of her backpack and
relaxed her aching muscles. Her ears caught the first distant rumble of
thunder; whatever he did for a living, the man certainly knew his way around
the jungle.
Grant ducked under the shelter, too, relieving
his shoulders of the weight of his own backpack. He had apparently decided that
while they were waiting out the rain they might as well eat, because he dug out
a couple of cans of field rations.
Jane sat up straight and leaned closer,
staring at the cans. "What's that?"
"Food."
"What kind of food?"
He shrugged. "I've never looked at it
long enough to identify it. Take my advice: don't think about it. Just eat
it."
She put her hand on his as he started to open
the cans. "Wait. Why don't we save those for have-to situations?"
"This
is
a have-to situation," he grunted. "We
have
to eat."
"Yes, but we don't have to eat
that
!"
Exasperation tightened his hard features.
"Honey, we either eat this, or two more cans exactly like them!"
"Oh, ye of little faith," she
scoffed, dragging her own backpack closer. She began delving around in it, and
in a moment produced a small packet wrapped in a purloined towel. With an air
of triumph she
unwrapped
it to expose two badly
smashed but still edible sandwiches, then returned to the backpack to dig
around again. Her face flushed with success, she pulled out two cans of orange
juice. "Here!" she said cheerfully, handing him one of the cans.
"A peanut butter and jelly
sandwich,
and a can of
orange juice.
Protein, carbohydrates and vitamin C.
What more could we ask for?" Grant took the sandwich and the pop-top can
she offered him, staring at them in disbelief. He blinked once,
then
an amazing thing happened: he laughed. It wasn't much
of a laugh. It was rather rusty sounding, but it revealed his straight white
teeth and made his amber eyes crinkle at the corners. The rough texture of that
laugh gave her a funny little feeling in her chest. It was obvious that he
rarely laughed, that life didn't hold much humor for him, and she felt both
happy that she'd made him laugh and sad that he'd had so little to laugh about.
Without laughter she would never have kept her sanity, so she knew how precious
it was.
Chewing on his sandwich, Grant relished the
gooiness of the peanut butter and the sweetness of the jelly. So what if the
bread was a little stale? The unexpected treat made such a detail unimportant.
He leaned back and propped himself against his backpack, stretching his long
legs out before him. The first drops of rain began to patter against the upper
canopy. It would be impossible for anyone to track them through the downpour
that was coming, even if those guerrillas had an Indian tracker with them,
which he doubted. For the first time since he'd seen the helicopter that
morning, he relaxed, his highly developed sense of danger no longer nagging
him.
He finished the sandwich and poured the rest
of the orange juice down his throat, then glanced over at Jane to see her daintily
licking the last bit of jelly from her fingers. She looked up, caught his gaze,
and gave him a cheerful smile that made her dimples flash,
then
returned to the task of cleaning her fingers. Against his will, Grant felt his
body tighten with a surge of lust that surprised him with its strength. She was
a charmer, all right, but not at all what he'd expected. He'd expected a
spoiled, helpless, petulant debutante, and instead she had had the spirit, the
pure guts, to hurl herself into the jungle with two peanut butter sandwiches
and some orange juice as provisions. She'd also dressed in common-sense
clothing, with good sturdy boots and green khaki pants, and a short-sleeved
black blouse. Not right out of the fashion pages, but he'd had a few
distracting moments crawling behind her, seeing those pants molded to her
shapely bottom. He hadn't been able to prevent a deep masculine appreciation
for the soft roundness of her buttocks.
She was a mass of contradictions. She was a
jet-setter, so wild that her father had disinherited her, and she'd been George
Persall's
mistress, yet he couldn't detect any signs
of hard living in her face. If anything, her face was as open and innocent as a
child's, with a child's enthusiasm for life shining out of her dark brown eyes.
She had a look of perpetual mischievousness on her face, yet it was a face of
honest sensuality. Her long hair was so dark a brown that it was almost black,
and it hung around her shoulders in snarls and tangles. She had pushed it away
from her face with total unconcern. Her dark brown eyes were long and a little
narrow, slanting in her high-
cheekboned
face in a way
that made him think she might have a little Indian blood. A smattering of small
freckles danced across those elegant cheekbones and the dainty bridge of her
nose. Her mouth was soft and full, with the upper lip fuller than the lower
one, which gave her an astonishingly sensual look. All in all, she was far from
beautiful, but there was a freshness and zest about her that made all the other
women he'd known suddenly seem bland.
Certainly he'd never been as intimate with any
other woman's knee. Even now, the thought of it made him angry. Part of it was
chagrin that he'd left himself open to the blow; he'd been bested by a
lightweight! But another part of it was an instinctive, purely male anger,
sexually based. He'd watch her knee now whenever she was within striking
distance. Still, the fact that she'd defended herself, and the moves she'd
made, told him that she'd had professional training, and that was another
contradiction. She wasn't an expert, but she knew what to do. Why would a wild,
spoiled playgirl know anything about self-defense? Some of the pieces didn't
fit, and Grant was always uneasy when he sensed details that didn't jibe.