Tempting Fate

by Meryl Sawyer

  He leaned forward and shut the blackout drape, anticipating some real fun. "Logan and Kelly never returned to the hotel. They haven't been arrested."

  In the shadowy darkness, her blue eyes gleamed with an intensity that was almost feral. If he didn't love her, he would have been afraid of her.

  "What happened?"

  "It's hard to say. When they didn't return, the police put out what amounts to an all-points bulletin. Someone reported seeing a blond woman with a small child getting into the back of a farm truck."

  "So? What did they do?" Her words crackled in the small space.

  "They've sent a patrol car out after the truck. That's all I know. The time difference makes communicating a bit difficult—"

  "If you ask me, the Israeli agent you hired botched things."

  His cell phone saved him from having to argue with her about the Israeli. Avram came highly recommended, but Logan was a whole lot cagier than they had anticipated.

  "Hello," he said while she reached for the chilled champagne in the corner bar and poured herself a glass.

  It was Avram. Squawks and static filled the line. It took several tries before the agent he'd hired explained the situation.

  He punched the "end" button, then hit "power off." Getting another phone call in the next half hour was not part of his plan. He'd told her to forget underwear tonight. Bare pussy in the back of a limo was going to be his treat to himself for sitting through the jazz concert.

  "Avram has an updated report. The two policemen who were sent after Logan and Kelly have been killed."

  "Did Logan do it?"

  He reached under the hem of her dress where it grazed her knees. "Yes. Now the police have put out an all-points, countrywide alert, and they've sealed the borders. They are instructed to shoot Logan on sight."

  "What about his civil rights?"

  "Civil rights? Honey," he said, inching his hand upward, "we're talking about South America. Corrupt cops. Military juntas every six months. Who needs civil rights?"

  "I love it. I wish we lived in a country like that."

  His hand zeroed in on the target, and the sweet spot was ready, hot and melting for him. "The driver of the truck they used was stopped at the Colombian border. They beat the truth out of him."

  She spread her legs for him, and he unzipped his trousers with his free hand. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for hiring a Flagstaff limo service instead of the service in Phoenix that Woody usually used to ferry his guests around Sedona. This man didn't know them from Adam. He wasn't going to blab even if he could see what was going on behind the blackout drape.

  He stroked her, finding the moist, lush smoothness like warm cream. He wanted to ram into her so badly that he could hardly retain a coherent thought.

  She whispered to him, "What about Kelly?"

  "Avram promised the cops they could do whatever they wanted with her, as long as they shot her for trying to escape after they were done with her."

  "What I wouldn't give to be there to watch them with Kelly." He cocked his hips and pummeled into her. Her startled gasp fueled his aroused state and he drove harder and harder, the way he often did.

  She opened her thighs, screeching his name. He slammed his hand over her sweet lips, his other hand on her throat. Pulling backward, a fraction of an inch at a time, he withdrew his penis from her sweet body.

  Then he reared his head, arching his neck backward like one of Woody's magnificent stallions and rammed into her full-force. She gasped, trembling beneath him. She cried out, a mixture of pleasure and pain.

  Shrieking with pleasure, she bucked upward. He seized the opportunity and clasped her buttocks, deliberately digging his nails into her tender skin. She moaned, writhing beneath him.

  He jacknifed his hips, separating his body from hers. She rose upward slightly, reluctant to release his rigid dick. He smiled to himself, then cocked his hips. He slammed into her, harder this time.

  She cried out, but before the sound reached his ears, he covered her mouth with his. Yet he kept ramming into her with all his might, over and over and over.

  * * *

  Chapter 32

  « ^ »

  Logan thought he heard Kelly saying his name and telling him how much she cared about him, how wonderful he was. He struggled to open his eyes to see if he was dreaming. That didn't work, so he tried drawing a deep breath.

  Hot, wet air seeped into his lungs, clearing his head a little. Where in hell was he? Just above him came a pecking sound. Rain.

  His head was resting on something warm and soft. Not a pillow, he decided. Kelly. He knew the feel of her skin, its sweet scent. She was talking to him in an anguished voice.

  In a dizzying rush, flashes of images bombarded his groggy brain. The truck being stopped. Rafi jumping out of the back. Taking a bone-crushing shot in the upper arm.

  Kelly's beautiful face taut with fear as she removed the bullet.

  He tried to lift his good arm, but it was a dead weight. His whole body tingled, yet it felt heavy, lifeless. Maybe the friggin' frogs had mummified him forever. The only thing that seemed to be working were his ears, and they weren't doing too good.

  "Come on, Logan. You're a fighter. Don't die on me, please, darling," Kelly was saying.

  He couldn't open his eyes, so he tried to tell her that he was awake, but his hot, thick tongue refused to budge. Panic gripped him, then tightened like a steel vise.

  He despised being powerless, not the one in control. It was an achingly familiar feeling, one he hadn't had in years. Not since The Last Chance Camp. He'd been young then, vulnerable—at their mercy.

  Come on! Get a grip.

  That was then, and this is now. His muzzy brain managed to focus on the present. They were in deep shit. He had to wake up and get on the computer. It was his responsibility—his mission—to get Kelly and Rafi to safety.

  Battling hard for what seemed like minutes, he finally managed to crack one eye open enough so a slit of light blinded him.

  "Logan? Logan? Are you awake?"

  She tenderly kissed his forehead, brushing back his hair. The other eye popped open, and he gazed up at her, amazed. Kelly's lashes were beaded with tears, and her lower lip trembled. She cared so much that it frightened him.

  "Thank God. I've been so worried about you."

  He forced himself to concentrate on her face. She'd been out in the rain, and her hair was plastered in damp banks around her head. Her luminous brown eyes usually appeared to be glazed by candlelight, making them almost amber in color and full of life.

  Now Kelly's eyes were flat brown and bleak, a testament to the hours she'd spent nursing him, worrying about him. Something warm unfurled deep in his chest. Sensation was returning to his body, he thought.

  Wrong. What he was experiencing existed solely in his head. A wild yearning to make Kelly care even more deeply about him.

  Once his carefully honed, tough edge would have told him Kelly's concern was for her own safety. But the bullet or the damn frogs must have altered his perceptions, stripping away his emotional baffler.

  Unusual thoughts jammed his foggy brain, and he tried to sort them out, to understand himself. He needed Kelly. Not just to help him now, but he need her in a way that he'd never needed another woman.

  He expected admitting this to weaken him in some way, diminish his power, but it didn't. Instead, he felt stronger—at least emotionally.

  "Logan can you understand what I'm saying?"

  His tongue wouldn't move, so he fluttered his eyelids to let her know he was coming to, but slowly.

  "You can't talk yet, can you?" When he blinked again, she continued, "I think when I untied the tourniquet the blood started circulating, it took the poison through your entire system. I was terrified you would go into cardiac arrest and die."

  That makes two of us. He seemed to be sprawled across her lap, his head propped up against what? Rolling his eyes to the side, he recognized his spare T-shirt on Kelly.
>
  "You've been out for hours. I had to feed Rafi. I couldn't get him to eat the freeze-dried stuff, so I gave him the Twinkie. I wasn't sure about taking it. Everything in your pack is so lightweight and has a special purpose. Don't tell me Twinkies are used for burns or something."

  Or something. Let the kid have it, anything to make this ordeal easier on Kelly. If he lived to get his sorry hide out of this jungle, he would never forget her strength and courage.

  His concentration was returning, and he automatically shifted his gaze to take in his surroundings.

  Sharp as always, she answered his unspoken question. "I made a shelter with the Kevlar that Rafi was sleeping on. It started to rain not long after you passed out. I had to drag you over to the rise where the loggers had left a pile of wood chips. I didn't want you to be in water."

  He tried to ask her the time. His lips parted, but his bloated tongue refused to cooperate. All that came out was, "Ti—"

  Kelly misunderstood. "Rafi's right here." She scooted aside so he could see the boy playing with her checkbook. He was drawing on a blank check with her lipstick.

  Aw, hell. Logan's fine-tuned skills kicked in. How much more time did they have before the powerful flashlight drained its battery?

  "Papi," Rafi said to him with a heart-melting smile. "Mi nuevo papi."

  New Papa? What in hell was going on?

  "Obviously, you're not the man in the picture Rafi has. He doesn't seem to really remember Daniel or his mother. He just knows what he's been told. Now he thinks you are his new father."

  Great! Just exactly what he needed, the cutest kid on the planet, believing he was his father. And Kelly. His Kelly.

  Since when had she become 'his'? Thinking back he'd wanted her since the very first night in the hogan, but he hadn't felt a fierce sense of possessiveness until they'd had dinner with the Stanfields. When Tyler had dared to strip Kelly with his eyes, Logan had experienced his first surge of jealousy.

  From then on, the feeling had gradually escalated. He cared about her, and more than anything, he wanted to protect her. So why was he flat on his back, letting her cradle him like some damn baby when he should be getting Kelly and Rafi to safety?

  "Time." The word shot out of his mouth, taking him by surprise.

  "It's almost midnight. You've been out for almost twenty-four hours."

  Shit! They'd be hot on their trail by now. He thought a moment, his normally acute reasoning powers still not up to speed. Rain turned roads to rivers. The police would wait until the rain stopped.

  The thought bolstered him, then let him down the next second with a crash. Choppers wouldn't come into the rain forest during a storm either.

  "Light … out."

  "It's only been on a few minutes. I've been saving the battery." She turned to Rafi and reached out her arm. "Aquí."

  With a smile, the little boy catapulted himself into Kelly's embrace. She took her hand away from Logan's head and turned off the light. In the darkness, the patter of rain on the Kevlar, Logan rested in Kelly's lap. She was singing some damn song about an ittsy bittsy spider who didn't have the smarts to know it couldn't crawl up the waterspout.

  Judging from Rafi's delighted giggles and the motions he sensed in the air around him, Kelly had sung that song dozens of times. Rafi even managed to say "up the waterspout" in passable English.

  Yes, sir. He'd made the right choice. No matter what happened to him, Kelly and Rafi belonged together.

  He drifted off, not quite asleep, yet not fully awake. Kelly continued to sing, encouraging Rafi to sing along with her. By degrees Logan's body regained sensations, raw aches and jabbing pains replacing the tingling.

  The last area to return to normal was his injured arm. When it did, his arm was an inferno. He had to look down to make certain flames weren't leaping from his upper arm.

  "Kelly, what did you do with the frogs' remains?"

  "They're stilling hanging from that bush. Why?"

  "Please go get them. I need them."

  "Logan, you're delirious—"

  "No, I'm not—at least not yet. Trust me."

  Without a word, she clicked on the light. A quick kiss for Rafi and she dove under the edge of the tarp.

  "Mami! Mami!" wailed Rafi.

  "Rafi," Logan called. "Aquí."

  The child scrambled toward the sound of his voice. Logan grabbed his little hand and managed to maneuver him to his uninjured side. He spoke slowly to him in Spanish, telling him to be a good boy and do exactly what he was told. He wanted to prepare the child for the skyward climb on the ladder from hell.

  Light stabbed into the lair Kelly had made. She returned, head first.

  "You look like a drowned rat." He tried to joke, but it sounded stupid, considering their plight.

  A spark of humor lit her eyes. "And to think an hour ago I was praying to hear the sound of your voice again."

  Down on all fours to avoid the low hanging Kevlar, she held her panties in one hand. They sagged at the bottom, telling him the remains were still there, but blood no longer dripped from the cloth. The rain had washed it away, leaving nothing more than a pinkish tint to the silky fabric.

  "My arm's infected. I need you to change the bandage. When you do, I want you to put as many maggots as you can on my wound."

  Silence filled the makeshift tent, magnified by the incessant spike of rain on the Kevlar. She tried to smile, but he wasn't fooled. "I read about this somewhere. Maggots consume the infected flesh, but not the good tissue, right?"

  "Yes. Think you can stand to touch maggots?"

  "After butchering two frogs who were in love, it'll be a piece of cake." She sounded like his Kelly, but the look on her face told a different story.

  He kept his arm around Rafi and told him in Spanish to hold the flashlight steady while his mother cut away the old bandage. The incision she'd made had closed, but his livid crimson skin was swollen and puffy.

  "I saw antibiotics in your backpack. I think—"

  "I'll take them, but they won't be enough with this severe a wound. Slather as many maggots as you can against the incision. They'll eat their way inside and consume the deadly bacteria. At least that's how it's supposed to work."

  "Papi," Rafi whispered, then jabbered something. It took a second before Logan understood what he was saying in baby talk.

  "He's asking why you talk so funny."

  Kelly was preparing the last of the gauze for the new bandage. He was dead certain she was working up courage to take a handful of maggots. Smiling to assure Rafi that talking funny was a good thing, he explained to the little boy.

  "Bueno," Rafi said, but the flashlight wavered and Logan understood the reappearance of his "mother" and a new father and a new language was a lot to throw at a kid all at once.

  "I told him that you learned another language, and you'll be teaching it to him."

  "Thanks," Kelly muttered.

  She picked up the panties and gingerly opened them. He heard a sharp intake of breath, then she clamped down hard with her teeth, trapping her lower lip. Suppressing a cry of disgust. Gingerly, she dipped her fingers into the bag she'd made of her panties and withdrew dozens of squirming maggots.

  "Gusanos," cried Rafi.

  Worms? Okay, close enough for government work. Maggots would look like worms to a young child. "Gusanos blancos," Logan said to reassure him. White worms.

  He lifted his arm, a piercing blade of pain arcing through him as he brought his arm up to a level position so as many maggots as possible could be heaped on his skin.

  Kelly patted the maggots across the incision. "What does it feel like?"

  "It tickles. That's all." Actually, it hurt like hell. Just holding his arm up took all the strength he could muster.

  She applied another handful of maggots, her lower lip still firmly anchored in place by her teeth. Already several maggots had writhed their way into his wound, eating the dead flesh along the incision—just the way the survival manual described.


  "Gusanos? Gusanos?" asked Rafi when Kelly began bandaging his arm, trapping the maggots against his skin.

  "Sí mi chiquito." Logan knew "worms" on a person's arm was beyond anything this child had experienced. Rafi had to be confused, so Logan kissed his cheek.

  In the backwash of the flashlight, Logan saw the little boy's thrilled smile. Rafi leaned into Logan, letting the weight of his young body rest against his. It was a trusting, lovable gesture that sent a surge of something Logan could never have described through him, easing the pain for a moment.

  Kelly secured the bandage with tape. Her relieved sigh filled the tent, and her eyes met his. They shared a smile that became more intimate with each passing second. Logan felt as if he'd crossed some invisible bridge.

  As if he'd become one with her, he felt her sense of accomplishment, a certain pride that empowers a person, taking them beyond themselves into another world that once might have frightened them. But the challenge had been met—conquered.

  "Mice, spiders, maggots," Kelly said with a laugh. "Somehow they're scarier than a submachine gun."

  Wanna bet?

  "It must be a girl thing."

  "You did great," Logan assured her. He released Rafi, his whole body suddenly weak from pain, and rested his head against Kelly's tote. "Give me the antibiotics and a pain pill, please."

  "It's the last pain pill."

  Logan didn't tell her how much he needed it. White lightning. He'd been wounded several times. Twice in the highlands of Peru and once in Chile in the dead of winter. He'd never experienced White Lightning until now.

  Others in the Cobra Force had been wounded in the tropics and suffered virulent infections. Deadly bacteria multiplied at an astonishing rate in this type of climate. The pain from such infections radiated out from the wound with the white-hot, blinding intensity of lightning.

  "Papi." Rafi dropped down beside him and snuggled up, making Logan smile despite the pain.

  He took the capsules and washed them down with the nutrient enriched solution developed for Desert Storm. A modern version of the canteen, the lightweight plastic cylinder contained not just water, but additives to restore vital fluids to his body. He took two swigs, knowing he needed to conserve for later.