“Here, put these on,” he ordered.
That blank stare was back—he saw it take over the stunning blue of her eyes—and he sighed. She seemed to retreat into some hidden corner of her mind, somewhere he couldn’t reach. Right now, he didn’t have the time or the patience to try.
“Look, we’re in for a wild ride to Matapalo if we want to make it before Rafferty and his goons find us. Unless I miss my guess, we’re going to have rain in a few minutes and even with the canvas top on the Jeep, you’ll be soaked. You’re going to need something else to wear.”
This would be a hell of a memory from her honeymoon, he thought, as he finally just grabbed the T-shirt and pulled it over her head. She cooperated enough to push her arms through the sleeves.
If her husband had left her at Rafferty’s to go fishing knowing he owed the bastard money, Ren hoped the idiot was impaled by a marlin and then stung by a couple thousand jellyfish.
He grabbed a pair of shorts and yanked them up over her hips. She flinched when he touched the bare skin at her waist.
“If I had evil designs on you, don’t you think I’d be taking your clothes off instead of putting more on?” he growled.
That seemed to pierce the haze of panic around her and he watched some of the blankness recede. He didn’t have time to be grateful for it as he suddenly remembered one more item that might come in handy. He hurried to his closet and dug for a moment, emerging a moment later with a large shoe box.
In the distance, he thought he heard the throb of an engine and he swore harshly. “Come on. We’ve got to haul ass.”
He half dragged, half carried her to his Jeep and threw her inside, tossing the box and a few other items he’d grabbed on the way out the door into the back seat, alongside the emergency survival pack he always kept there in case he found himself stranded on some remote beach somewhere by weather or tides.
He quickly reached across the seat to buckle her shoulder belt, earning a quick ragged breath for his trouble. As her chest expanded with the sharp inhalation, the movement pressed her voluptuous breasts to his arm and he felt the hairs there rise—along with other parts of him that had no business noticing her in the middle of running for their lives.
He had been too damn long without a woman.
His beat-up old Jeep started immediately—a minor miracle—and he gunned the engine down the rutted, bumpy dirt track.
At least the afternoon rains had dried somewhat so the roads were at least moderately passable for now, until the evening rains hit.
The few roads in this primitive part of Costa Rica were unreliable at best. This was the only route between Puerto Jiménez and Carate, the gateway to Corcovado National Park.
In the relatively dry summer months from December to May, he could usually count on being able to make it to Jiménez in only an hour, but in the rainy season—the green season, they called it to keep from scaring away the tourists—when it rained at least an inch or two every day, it could take him three times as long.
And he usually just counted on being stuck at the station for the entire month of October, with its near constant deluge, unless he caught a flight out of the airstrip at Carate.
Here in late September, he still had a possibility of making it safely. All he had to do right now was get them to the small police station in Matapalo. But if the rains hit while they were en route, this dirt road would become a slick, dangerous mess.
He just had to hope that didn’t happen.
* * *
As her captor gunned the rattletrap Jeep’s engine and sped away from his lair with his tires spitting mud and gravel, Olivia held on to the grab bar and divided her time between clamping her teeth together to keep from crying out and whispering a fervent prayer that her pitiful life would be spared.
She wanted to be numb, to tune it all out. It was taking every ounce of concentration to keep her emotions contained.
Instead of the blessed oblivion she would have vastly preferred, every sense seemed accentuated, as if the world had suddenly come sharply into focus. She was acutely aware of each jostling rut in the road, the throb of the engine, the heavy, humid air pressing down on her.
She was especially aware of the man beside her—his overwhelming size and strength.
For the last hour since he stepped out of the jungle, machete in hand, he had been simply a shadowy, threatening hulk of a man. She hadn’t caught a clear glimpse of him until he turned on the lights inside his spartan concrete research station.
Though he was no doubt at least six feet tall, he had not been quite as large as her imagination had conjured up, more lean and lithe than she expected.
During that hideous kayak ride as he had swiftly propelled them through the waves, she had tried not to look at him. It was the only way she could keep from letting the panic completely overwhelm her.
Her impression then had been only of some dark, terrifying stranger. The light inside his dwelling had revealed a man of extraordinary good looks. Her friends in Fort Worth would have drooled over someone like him, with those chiseled features, the dark, intense eyes, full mouth, and eyelashes so long they looked fake.
He looked nothing like any scientist she had ever seen. He looked more like some kind of Latino pop star, and she could easily imagine him on a stage somewhere crooning to thousands of screaming girls.
She wasn’t at all reassured that he wasn’t the hideous monster her imagination had conjured up. Somehow this man seemed far more dangerous to her peace of mind.
He was wild and rugged and beautiful, just like this isolated part of the world, completely out of her realm of experience.
Ren Galvez was exactly the kind of man she would have avoided in Dallas, someone strong and masculine and…and sensual.
She caught the word and grimaced at herself. What did she know if the man was sensual or not? Most likely, he was cold and analytical, more interested in facts than figures, at least the feminine kind.
But there had been that moment back on the beach when he had tackled her and his hard, muscled body had pressed her into the sand. Through her fear and the adrenaline pumping violently through her system as she tried to escape, she could swear she had detected definite interest from the man.
She thought for certain he would attack her there, press his obvious advantage in size and strength to overpower her. Instead, he had helped her to her feet and guided her to his utilitarian quarters, where he had proceeded to find clothes for her.
What on earth did he want with her? He continued to assure her he wouldn’t hurt her, but if rape wasn’t on his mind, what other motive could he have?
Was he after money? He had asked her name but maybe that was only to reassure himself he’d snatched the right heiress.
She had heard about prevalent ransom kidnappings in some Central and South American countries, but everything she had read about Costa Rica assured her the country was safe. Ticos were proud of their stable government and their relative prosperity, and the country went out of its way to eagerly welcome visitors.
Her imagination buzzed with possibilities. He said he was a scientist. The equipment in his dwelling certainly backed up the assertion. There had been that carved turtle on the porch and the sign over the door that said Playa Hermosa Turtle Institute.
Maybe he was looking for funding and had hit on a rather unorthodox method of raising support. It seemed ludicrous in the extreme, but for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
Why else would a turtle researcher snatch a guest from a neighboring estate, just to rush off through the night with her?
It all seemed so surreal. Things like this—mysterious strangers grabbing her at machete-point—didn’t happen to her.
Everything about this situation terrified her. Most of all, she hated not knowing what was happening and Ren Galvez—if that was his real name—seemed in no hurry to explain.
She desperately wanted to trust him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her. B
ut then again, she had a lousy habit of fooling herself into believing the best in people.
Just look at her choice of erstwhile fiancés. For six months, she had convinced herself Bradley loved her. How many warning signs had she ignored, just to avoid stirring up the waters?
She had been so caught up in the unaccustomed sensation of pleasing her father, for once, that Bradley and her misgivings about him had almost seemed superfluous.
Not that any of that mattered right now while she was in the hands of a madman who was going to drive them both over a cliff into the Pacific. She swallowed a scream as the Jeep slid toward the edge, but her captor yanked it back to the middle of the track that passed for a road.
Her heart was still pounding when the sky unleashed the nightly rains he warned about.
Rain seemed like such a benign term for this. Growing up in Texas, she thought she knew about precipitation, but this was like nothing in her experience. It was as if someone had suddenly turned on a hot high-pressure shower and let it loose on the countryside.
Buckets of water gushed off the trees and cascaded down the road. The canvas roof of the Jeep offered some protection but not much. In only a few moments, Olivia was soaked.
The Jeep slid again, moving inexorably toward the side. This time she didn’t bother to contain her scream.
“I’ve got it,” he assured her. “Hang on.”
He muscled out of the skid, then downshifted for the next hill. She didn’t know how he managed it—years of experience, probably—but he managed to get them up the next hill, and they plowed through mud and muck and rivers of rain rushing down the road.
As abruptly as it started, the rain ceased, as if someone turned off that imaginary tap somewhere.
She thought she saw lights ahead and the impression was verified a moment later when he pulled up to a small cluster of buildings—two or three with what looked like a small general store and a couple of ram-shackle houses.
He parked in front of the store, where Olivia was surprised to see a sign tacked to the window of the little storefront that said Policía. An odd destination for a would-be rapist, she had to admit, and found some degree of comfort from that.
Galvez turned off the engine. “This won’t take long. In a minute, this will all be over and you’ll be safe, I promise.”
Hope and confusion warring within her, Olivia watched him open his door and start to climb out.
CHAPTER 3
For half a second, Olivia wasn’t sure what was happening. It sounded like firecrackers going off somewhere or a car backfiring, but then she hadn’t seen any other vehicles on the road.
Before the reality had really soaked in that those were bullets flying around, her captor suddenly leaped back into the Jeep and started the vehicle’s engine.
“Get down,” he yelled, driving with one hand and reaching the other across the Jeep to shove her head to her knees when she only stared blankly at him.
The Jeep slithered in the slick mud, then the rear wheels engaged. She heard a ping ricochet off the metal skin as bullets continued to rain around them. Miraculously, none hit the tires. A blowout in these conditions would be disastrous, she knew.
She huddled there, her hands over her head, numb with fear and certain that any moment now, Galvez could take a hit and the vehicle would go careening out of control.
Her breathing hitched and she fought hysteria, wanting nothing so much as to curl into the fetal position and disappear. She heard sirens behind them and could see the strobe of lights piercing the darkness as the Jeep rattled and shook its way down the trail.
She didn’t know how close the pursuers were—and she wasn’t completely sure whether she wanted to evade them or have them catch up. She wanted out of this situation now and at this point she was willing to take any rescue offered.
On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she was really crazy about turning herself over to police officers so willing to shoot first and ask questions later. They didn’t seem particularly concerned about her safety while they fired a barrage of bullets at the Jeep.
“Hang on,” Galvez ordered.
As if she could do anything else, besides pray. She gripped the roll bar with one hand and braced one hand against the dashboard to steady herself against the wild jostling of the vehicle.
“What are you doing?!” she gasped when he suddenly turned off the headlights, pitching them into darkness.
“Trust me,” he said.
Before she could tell him how absolutely ludicrous such a statement was under the circumstances, he jerked the wheel off the road into what looked like impenetrable jungle. There must be some kind of track here, but for the life of her, she couldn’t see anything. How did he know where he was going? she wondered, as rain-soaked branches whipped the Jeep.
At least the shooting stopped, but she fully expected them to ram headlong into a tree any moment now. Some moonlight filtered through the thick trees, but he couldn’t possibly see more than a few feet in front of them.
She was not cut out for wild moonlit rides through the rain forest. She had been known to have panic attacks in rush hour traffic, for heaven’s sake.
After several heart-pounding moments—each one that seemed to last a lifetime—he turned the Jeep again, this time driving over plants and around trees until they were off even that narrow track, swallowed up by the rain forest.
He shut off the engine and turned to face her, and she saw the gleam of his teeth in the pale moonlight.
“End of the road, sweetheart. I think we lost them for now.” He climbed out of the Jeep and reached behind the seat for a backpack.
She gazed blankly at him. “You’re…you’re just going to leave me here?”
He gave a short laugh. “Do you want me to?”
Some creature screeched in the night and Olivia shivered. She wanted to think she could find her way back to the main road, but she wasn’t completely certain.
The alternative—huddling here all night on the off chance that someone might come along and find her—was not at all appealing.
“What’s happening?” She hated the thin note of panic in her voice but seemed unable to keep it at bay. “Why were the police shooting at us back there?”
He pulled a few more items out of the back of the Jeep and set them on the ground, then opened her door and reached a hand to help her out—or rather, he didn’t really give her a choice in the matter, just tugged her out of the vehicle.
He had his machete out again, she saw with a spurt of fear. But as soon as she climbed down from the high-profile vehicle, he turned around and started scything away at the underbrush.
“My fault,” he finally answered, dragging several of the branches he cut over the Jeep. “I should have taken into consideration that Rafferty probably owns every officer of the law between here and Puerto Jiménez. There’s only one halfway decent road around the Peninsula to the Golfo Dulce and the bastard has probably already got roadblocks all along the way.”
He was trying to conceal the vehicle from their pursuers, she finally realized as he continued to cut branches and huge, leafy ferns. She stood with her arms wrapped around her, watching him work.
“I guess Rafferty and your groom—what’s his name?”
For a moment, she couldn’t think how to answer him. “Uh, Bradley,” she finally said.
“Right. Bradley.” He said the name with thinly veiled scorn. “I guess Jimbo and Bradley aren’t going to let me just run off with you after all.”
“Did you really think they would?”
“I wasn’t thinking, if you want the truth. If I had been, I would have realized that with one phone call, Rafferty has probably got his people up and down the whole damn coast, all the way to Jiménez, roadblocks in every one-donkey town from Agua Buena to Plataneres. He’s probably told the rural police some cock-and-bull story, all about how I stormed onto Suerte del Mar and kidnapped one of his guests.”
“The nerve of the man.”
Her sarcasm came out of nowhere, surprising the heck out of her. In the moonlight, she saw his teeth widen into an appreciative grin. She blamed her sudden breathlessness on the lingering adrenaline buzz.
“Exactly,” he said. “I am not going to let the bastard pin this on me. He knows exactly why I rescued you from Suerte del Mar, but you can bet the house he’s not going to share that bit of information with the policía.”
Rescued? Is that what he called scaring the life out of her, dragging her down the beach at machete-point and paddling her across the open ocean with sharks circling them?
“The chief of police in Puerto Jiménez and I go way back,” he went on.
Somehow she didn’t find it surprising that this man had had brushes with the law before, given his criminal record so far. Ren Galvez’s name was probably engraved on a cell somewhere, at the very least.
“He’s a good man, a rare breed among officials down here who can’t be bribed. If we can make it there, I know I can convince Mañuel Solera of what really happened.”
He smiled again, looking entirely too cheerful under the circumstances. “Good thing I brought you some decent shoes.”
He rummaged through a box and held up a pair of hiking boots.
The sight of them filled her with dread. “Uh, why do I need decent shoes?”
“There’s a trail through the Gulfo Dulce Forest Reserve to El Tigre. We can hook up with it back on the track we were just on. The good news is, it’s only ten miles or so. Once in El Tigre, we can catch a ride into Jiménez.”
She did not like the sound of this. Ten miles or so? He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t really expect her to walk ten miles through the jungle, could he?
“Um, I’m not much of a hiker. I should probably tell you that up front. You’re obviously in a hurry and I’m afraid I’ll only slow you down. Why don’t you just go on ahead? I’m sure I can find my way back to the road.”
Maybe.
“Nice try. Trust me, sweetheart. You don’t want to wait for Rafferty to find you. He won’t be in a pleasant mood.”
Rainforest Honeymoon Page 3
