Show No Fear (7 page)

“Not like that. Sit between my legs.”

His legs were long and strong and bare, and dusted with light brown hair. Lucy swallowed hard.

Could she touch him and not get lost in the past? It would be a test of her professionalism, that much was certain.

Maybe he
was
testing her, in which case, she had better surpass his expectations.

With a careless-looking shrug, she kneeled between his slightly spread thighs and braced her hands on his smooth back. His
clean skin exuded a familiar scent that made her head spin, made her insides melt with remembered pleasure.

With a tremor in her fingers, she dug in, instantly intrigued by the interplay of muscles and sinew.

Gus gave a low groan of pleasure, the sound of which seemed to vibrate inside her. The impulse to lower her lips to the expanse
of bare back had her swimming in her desire.

Of their own will, her fingers trailed lower, drifting just under the elastic band of his shorts toward his firm buttocks.
Even as his muscles loosened under her flexing fingers, a different tension invaded his body.

She could take this as far as she liked. The realization filled her with bittersweet triumph. She was still in control. She
still had what it took to turn a potential recruit into an asset. Only Gus wasn’t a recruit. He was her partner, the first
she’d ever had, and probably the last.

Slapping his butt with a playful swat, Lucy jumped from the bed.

He cracked an eye. “Where are you going?”

“To brush my teeth.” His groan of disappointment made her smile. She would have loved to have kept it up, enjoying reciprocal
treatment in return. But even Gus knew better than to go that far.

People who fell in lust got stupid. Lucy was too smart to be stupid, especially now, when the stakes were so high.

CHAPTER 4
      

L
ucy saw Gus glance at his watch, the only indication that this unforeseeable delay was getting to him. It sure as hell was
getting to her.

In the rear seat of a stuffy little van chartered to drive them to the edge of civilization, they sat motionless on Highway
40, just one link in a chain of vehicles heading into the tunnel that burrowed through the side of a mountain.

Thanks to an avalanche of rock that had strewn debris across the road, the tunnel was blocked. Lucy could see highway workers
under the vigilance of Colombia’s equivalent of the National Guard scrambling to remove the obstruction.

If sitting in a stuffy van doing nothing could get her stomach churning, then how the hell was she supposed to come face-to-face
with guerrillas and not embarrass herself?

Her slowly drawn breath caught Gus’s attention. “
¿Estás bien?
” he asked her.
You okay?

“
Claro.
”
Of course.
Why wouldn’t she be?

She tried to focus on the scenery. To the east, Bogotá sprawled like a patchwork quilt, its lush green parks breaking up squares
of steel and concrete. With the mountains looming protectively behind, the megalopolis looked downright picturesque, till
one looked more closely and saw the shanties pushed up onto the sides of the mountains.

A high-pitched whistle snatched her attention forward. At last, the road was clear! Engines roared to life and their van inched
toward the tunnel. But then a national guardsman waved them down.

Fournier swore under his breath, and a guard leaned into the passenger window demanding to see their passports.

One by one, the peacekeeping team was scrutinized. Lucy fought to hold the guardsman’s gaze as he looked up from her passport
to scrutinize her. Her heart sank as he stepped from the vehicle to confer with his companions, taking all the passports with
him.

While a ripple of excitement seemed to pass through the ranks of the guards, Lucy sat in a cold sweat, wondering where her
composure had flown.

“
Mon Dieu,
” Fournier muttered, looking as ill at ease as Lucy felt. Cars honked impatiently behind them. If they were detained much
longer, they might miss their rendezvous with the FARC tomorrow.

At last, the guardsman returned with their passports. “Where are you headed?” he demanded inscrutably.

“To Villavicencio, to see how the peace is being kept,” said Fournier, answering in a half-truth.

The man nodded. “You may proceed,” he announced, handing back the passports and waving them on.

As the window closed, the entire UN team, Lucy included, heaved a sigh of relief.

With horns urging them to hurry, their driver lurched forward, eager to make up for lost time. They surged into the dark,
unlit tunnel, and Gus pinned Lucy against the seat with his shoulder, bracing her with his arm in the absence of a seat belt.

Lucy snapped her eyes shut.
Please don’t do that,
she wanted to tell him, recognizing his attempt to save her life in the event of a head-on collision.

The tunnel ended abruptly, spilling them onto lush, rolling plains called Los Llanos, where Gus’s vigilance relaxed. Their
first destination, Villavicencio, stood less than thirty miles away.

With a squeal of brakes, the van stopped for lunch. Seated at an outdoor café, the team enjoyed a midday meal under the watchful
eye of soldiers patrolling the industrial city. Once terrorized by the FARC, Villavicencio was now occupied by the Colombian
army.

“Eat well,” Fournier murmured to them. “We have no way of knowing if the FARC will be able to feed us.”

While Gus slipped away to place a call to the JIC, Lucy watched the soldier standing guard across the street. As they boarded
their van to continue the journey, he spoke into his walkie-talkie. The suspicion that the army was tracking the team’s movements
congealed into certainty as a motorcycle, driven by two more soldiers, pulled out of an alleyway and started chasing them.
Lucy met Gus’s eye and he nodded toward the Frenchman.

“Monsieur Fournier,” Lucy called up to him. “I believe we’re being followed.”

With a grimace, Fournier looked back at the motorcycle, then gave directions to their driver to outrun it. “The last thing
we need,” he grumbled, “is to lead the army to the FARC and start a war.”

In the end, Mother Nature got rid of the soldiers for them. The sky darkened abruptly. Leaden clouds opened up and rain poured
down. The motorcycle floundered. Soon it was just a speck behind them, eventually disappearing altogether.

The team members smiled at one another in relief. Their van slogged on, traveling over a highway that went from asphalt to
gravel, to a muddy trail riddled with potholes of deceptive depth.

With every hundred meters, the road seemed to narrow until it was just wide enough for one car. Windshield wipers beat a frenzied
tempo but never succeeded in clearing the fogged glass up front. The music on the radio crackled and faded into static. The
driver turned it off.

A somber silence descended over the occupants of the van. Lucy dragged air into her tight lungs and wondered if the others
were thinking what she was thinking: They’d come this far; now there was no going back.

Staring out a fogged window, all she could see were coca fields and banana groves. A swollen brown river ran parallel to the
road for a while, then veered away. With every hundred meters, she felt their isolation deepening.

“There’s La Montaña,” Fournier finally announced.

Peering up the length of the van, Lucy felt her mouth go dry. The ominous-looking mountain had planted itself squarely before
them, its twin peaks buried in rain clouds. Somewhere in the looming mass of vegetation, Howitz and Barnes remained hostages.

If she didn’t screw her courage on tight, they might never make it home.

It was dusk when they arrived at the last outpost of civilization, Puerto Limón, a tiny pueblo at the foot of the mountain.
In the single-story
ranchita
advertised as an inn, the UN team was warmly greeted by their indigenous hosts, offered bread and goat’s cheese for supper,
and dismissed to private bedrooms.

“Sleep well,” called Fournier, instructing them to awaken early for another dawn departure.

Lying on a twin-sized mattress made of straw, Lucy realized that, while thoughts of sharing a queen-sized bed last night had
unsettled her, she was looking forward to the feel of Gus’s arms around her tonight, a circumstance that secretly worried
her. She wasn’t growing reliant on him, was she? Of course not. All she needed from him was his body heat.

Beneath the glow of a naked lightbulb, she could feel the mountain’s looming proximity. Anxiety sat like a heavy weight on
her chest. How was she supposed to throw it off?

Lucy Donovan operated alone. She was utterly self-reliant.

Or had the experience in Venezuela robbed her of her self-sufficiency? What then? It was her job to combat terrorists. She
didn’t know any other kind of life—didn’t want to. She couldn’t afford to be
afraid.

The door groaned suddenly inward. Gus ducked into the room, his damp head nearly touching the ceiling. At the sight of her
cowering in the bed with the blanket pulled to her chin, his jaw hardened. He whipped off his glasses, set them by the bed,
and bent low to whisper, “You can’t fight fire with fire, Luce.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re trying to scare off your PTSD. That’s not the way to cure yourself.”

“I don’t have PTSD,” she insisted rigidly. “And I am not scared,” she added.

“Jesus, Luce,” he swore in disgust. Reaching for the string, he snapped off the light. “Make room,” he warned her shortly.

Her senses clamored in anticipation of his touch. As he stretched out next to her she fitted her body to his, swallowing a
sigh of relief as his warmth seeped into her limbs, his strong arms drove back the demons chasing her.

But then she imagined what tomorrow would bring. Soon she’d be sharing a campfire with guerrillas who blew up people in the
name of
libertad
and exploited innocent children, forcing them to fight. A fresh wave of anxiety rolled through her.

“Relax, dear. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Lucy snorted at the macho assertion. At the same time, she hoped it was true.

She listened to him lapse into sleep, his soft snores deepening by degrees. With her head on his rising and falling chest,
she waited for hours for sleep to claim her.

The FARC made them wait, choosing not to arrive in Puerto Limón until 10 a.m.

The UN team had been up since dawn, waiting tensely under the
ranchita’s
covered porch, listening to the rain drum the red-tiled roof. For hours now they had stared up the muddy track that wound
into the dense vegetation of La Montaña.

The mountain rose straight up. Lushly green, its glacial peaks remained hidden in rain clouds that moved sluggishly overhead,
pushed by a wet, jasmine-scented breeze.

Nothing happened quickly in Colombia, Lucy reflected.

Seeing the jungle, smelling it, she envisioned how Howitz and Barnes had to feel, cut off from the world, chained like dogs,
starved and humiliated. Ten months had to seem like a lifetime. God, she hoped she would never discover that for herself!

Gus’s last communication with the JIC this morning had echoed that same sentiment. “Don’t lose us out there, guys,” he’d murmured
into the sat phone. At his teammate’s reply, he’d raked his fingers through his hair. “Well, damn it, sir, we don’t want to
be caught in the middle of that,” he’d hissed.

Sensing a problem, Lucy had leaned closer, hoping to overhear.

“Will do, sir. You, too, sir. Out.” He’d severed the call.

“We don’t want to be caught in the middle of what?” Lucy had questioned him once he hung up.

“Intel says a battalion of Colombian infantry are headed this way.”

“Oh, hell,” she’d breathed. “I thought we lost them yesterday.”

“Evidently not. Our guys are busy working through the right channels to get them called off. Don’t worry.”

He’d powered down his cell phone and stowed it in his left boot. Later, he’d given his watch with the compass to the innkeepers’
thirteen-year-old son. Lucy had felt a tug of pity for him. For a man used to relying on his gadgets, it couldn’t be easy
to let the watch go.

Other team members had left their belongings with the innkeepers for safekeeping, but Lucy clung tenaciously to her backpack,
hopeful the FARC would let her keep a change of socks, her toothbrush, and her anti-malaria pills, at least.

“This isn’t a camping trip,” Gus had reminded her.

“Good. I hate camping.”

Hours had passed since then. Lucy was considering the possibility that the FARC had stood them up when Gus looked up sharply.

“Here they come,” he said, squinting up the road.

She had to look twice. Dressed from head to toe in camouflage, the guerrillas remained virtually invisible against the backdrop
of the jungle till they were less than a hundred meters away.

“We should greet them,” suggested Fournier, urging the team to step out into the middle of the street. “Come. Show them your
hands,” he urged, “palms facing out.”