by Rachel Lee
“I’d suggest you stay healthy until Che gets back,” Jake drawled. “He left you in charge of the camp, remember? And me in charge of the woman.”
Enrique didn’t miss the unsubtle reminder. He eyed the man opposite him lazily, as if debating whether or not to challenge him. Jake didn’t alter his own easy stance, but the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. His .45 was nestled in the holster attached to his web belt. He’d left his automatic rifle propped against the wall inside the hut, however. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Have you heard from him?” Jake asked casually. “Che said he’d radio in as soon as he arranged a new drop.”
“No, but we should hear from him soon. Unless the patrón was not there when he arrived. Then Che must wait until he returned.”
Jake’s mouth twisted. For too many years, the great landowners had oppressed the people of this region, paying them slave wages for backbreaking labor on their coffee and banana plantations. Now a new generation of powerful barons had gained financial dominance—the drug lords who operated the processing plants hidden in Cartoza’s deep, protected valleys. They were slowly gaining a stranglehold over the economic fabric of the country that was more pervasive, more devastating, than that of the old landowners. Even Che, a man dedicated to overthrowing the current government in favor of a people’s democracy, depended on a “patrón” for funding. So much for the revolutionary’s political purity, Jake thought cynically.
“Let me know when you hear from him. I’ll be around.”
“So will I, gringo,” the man replied, his eyes on the nun.
Pig-face would take some watching. Close watching.
Jake shepherded the sister back toward the children. “I think we need to review a few of the ground rules here, Sister Sar—” He stopped himself, remembering her objection to the way he said her name.
She waved an impatient hand. “Oh, just call me Sarah. It’s…it’s permitted in most orders now, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
Jake frowned, not at all sure he wanted to drop her title. He hadn’t realized that he’d been so patronizing when he used it, but at least it had kept a nice, neat barrier between them. Sarah sounded far too…human.
“Why don’t you just join the kids by the stream?” he suggested curtly, uncomfortable with this business of names. “I’ll go see if I can find something other than beans for lunch.”
He recrossed the clearing some time later, juggling two cans of tuna fish that had cost him an infrared starlight rifle scope. The scope’s loss wasn’t critical, since Jake had another that slid onto the special grooves in the barrel of his .45. With a little modification to the mounting, it could be fitted to the automatic rifle, as well. Still, he was running through his equipment at almost as fast a clip as Sis—as Sarah was running through his personal possessions.
He tossed a can in the air, then almost missed catching it as he halted in midstride. Eyes narrowed, Jake searched the shadowed spot beside the stream where he’d left his charges. They weren’t there.
Spinning on his heel, he strode to the hut and yanked open the door. Even before his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior, Jake knew they weren’t inside. No little girl’s giggles echoed in the silence. No little boy demanded that Sarita take him in her lap. Tossing the cans aside, Jake grabbed his automatic rifle. In a movement so swift and instinctive it took less than three seconds, he pressed the magazine release, checked that the clip carried a full compliment, then snapped it back in place. Jaw clenched, he headed back out the door.
He hadn’t heard any screams. There hadn’t been shouts. Any muted laughter or disturbance among the men. A swift, gut-wrenching fear rose in him that Sarah had decided to carry her unexpected streak of independence to the extreme. Despite his warnings, she might have taken the children and tried to slip out of camp. It would be easy enough. The rebels didn’t mount much of a guard. They didn’t need to. One of the skills Jake had “sold” them was how to arm the ultrasensitive intrusion detection devices that now ringed the camp’s perimeter. The motion sensors concealed tiny built-in computers that differentiated between sizes and shapes and body heat. Small animals wouldn’t set the sensors off, but humans would. Even humans as slender and slight as Sarah….
A cold sweat chilled Jake’s body. If detonated, those devices wouldn’t leave a whole lot of Sarah and the children for the jungle scavengers to feast on. He cursed silently, savagely. He shouldn’t have left them alone. Even for a second. He shouldn’t have—
“Señor Creighton! Señor Creighton!”
At the sound of Teresa’s high-pitched shriek, Jake dropped into a crouch and whirled. The scampering girl stumbled to a halt a few paces away, her mouth dropping at the sight of the gun leveled at her. A short distance behind her, three other faces registered varying degrees of surprise and shock.
Jake’s breath hissed out. He raised the barrel skyward and straightened slowly. His eyes blazed at Sarah, searing her small, delicate face, her incredible eyes, her high cheeks and full, pink lips, into his mind, to replace the image that had knotted his stomach just moments before.
“Where the—?” He bit off the blistering words he would’ve used with any other person in similar circumstances and tried again, spacing each furious syllable for maximum emphasis. “Where…in…the …hell…have…you…been?”
She blinked, clearly taken aback at his vehemence. “We’ve been with Eleanora. At her lean-to.”
“With Eleanora. At her lean-to. Who in the hell is Eleanora?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. What’s gotten into you?”
Jake rubbed his hand down his mouth and chin, feeling the rasp of bristles against his palm. He couldn’t tell her what had gotten into him. Not yet. The stomach-twisting, heart-pounding fear he felt for her had been too raw, too intense. Too far outside the range of emotions he’d allowed himself to experience for too many years. Jake wasn’t quite sure how his emotions, not to mention his life and his mission, had seemed to spin out of control from the moment he parted those damned palmetto bushes and found her crouched behind them.
“I take it Eleanora is the woman who gave Teresa her red dress?” he managed, in a more moderate tone. “The one whose husband sold me those clothes for you?”
It was a pretty safe guess. The only other female in camp was Che’s comrade cum mistress, who was with him on his little trek to the patrón’s hacienda right now. So much, he thought, for keeping Sarah and the kids away from the camp’s other female residents.
Sarah nodded. “She offered to share her lunch with us. It was delicious. Some kind of fresh meat I didn’t recognize, with nuts and rice, all mixed together.”
Jake had a pretty good idea what the meat was. Except for wild pigs and small, bear-like kinkajous, few mammals inhabited the wet floor of the rain forest. Eleanora had probably cooked up a nice lizard or snake casserole. Before he could tell Sarah so, however, Teresa stepped forward to tug on Jake’s pant leg.
“Look, Señor Creighton.” Her face regained the excitement it had held before the momentary fright the gun had given her. “Eleanora gave me a dress for the doll you made for me. Look. Look!”
Jake hunkered down and looked. The mango root he’d found beside the stream earlier this morning and carved into a somewhat squash-faced baby now sported a frilly little skirt and kerchief. After duly admiring the root’s new wardrobe, Jake straightened. Teresa and Ricci scampered off. Eduard followed more slowly.
Sarah tilted her head, eyeing him thoughtfully. “It was kind of you to make Teresa that doll.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just a root.”
“You’re very good with the children.” She hesitated. “Do you have a family waiting for you at home? A daughter Teresa’s age, perhaps?”
Jake thought of the series of empty, echoing apartments, sparsely filled with rented furniture, that he’d called home since his divorce so many years ago. He hadn’t needed or wanted anything more, hadn’t h
ad time for anything more.
“No, there’s no one waiting,” he answered with a shrug. “And it’s easy to be good with these kids. They expect so little of life that they’re grateful for whatever crumbs fall their way.”
She nibbled on her lower lip for a minute, processing the bits of information he’d given her. “You’re a man of many talents, Señor Creighton.”
“Look,” he said with a tight smile, “if I’m going to call you Sarah, you have to stop laying that Señor Creighton bit on me.”
“Then what shall I call you…other than gringo?”
“Try Jack.”
“Jack.” She rolled it around on her tongue experimentally. “Jack. It suits you. Is that your real name?”
His smile eased into a grin. “No, but it’s close enough.”
“Someday I’m going to find out just who you are.”
She’d said it lightly, in jest, but the words seemed to hang between them. A troubled expression crossed her expressive face, as though she’d belatedly realized that knowing too much about him might not be too wise. A man on the wrong side of the law in at least two countries wouldn’t want many people walking around who knew his identity.
“Why don’t you show me what medical supplies the camp has on hand?” she said quietly, turning away. “And tell me what I can expect to encounter when the patrol returns.”
All in all, Sarah thought later that night, she’d handled her first face-to-face encounter with the scruffy band of guerrillas pretty well. She’d kept her head down, her eyes on her work, and her conversation to a minimum. Jack had augmented her sketchy Spanish, translating for her when she couldn’t fully grasp the explanation of the symptoms. Luckily, she hadn’t been presented with any scabrous sores or debilitating injuries. She didn’t have anything more serious than a severe case of warm-water foot immersion to deal with.
Despite its innocuous name, warm-water foot immersion was a potentially dangerous disease. It occurred frequently in areas with a lot of streams or creeks to cross. Sarah had been briefed on it during the first aid course she took as part of her Peace Corps training. Since so much of Cartoza was covered by soggy rain forest, Sister Maria had been particularly knowledgeable about the condition. If left untreated, it was painful and could eventually lead to permanent crippling. But if the sufferer’s white, wrinkled, bleeding feet were kept dry and dusted with powder regularly, the condition would soon clear up. Sarah passed her instructions through Jack to her patient, a thin, stoop-shouldered rebel named Xavier, who seemed more interested in her blue eyes than her medical skills.
Now, after sharing another meal with Eleanora, Sarah had cleansed Eduard’s cut, rebandaged it, and settled her charges for the night. Shielded by the stack of crates, she’d changed out of the sweaty habit and once more wore the loose cotton blouse and skirt. She sat on her bedroll, knees drawn up, and plucked at the bright pink-and-green material of her skirt.
“Did you see the bruises on Eleanora’s arms?” she asked quietly.
Jack’s hand stilled momentarily on the shiny nickel-plated revolver he was cleaning. His eyes were shadowed as he sent her a glance across the dim hut, which was lit only by the tiny flame dancing over the Sterno can beside him.
“I saw them,” he said.
Sarah crossed her arms on her knees and rested her chin on them. “I don’t think that evil little man she’s with is really her husband. She doesn’t speak much, except to Teresa, but from something she let slip, I think her father sold her, sold her, to him when she was just thirteen or fourteen.”
“From your work with the church, you must know that it happens a lot down here, especially in the interior. Crops fail, a family has too many children to feed—”
“Knowing about it doesn’t make it any more acceptable!”
He refused to be drawn into that argument.
“Eleanora seems so desperate to touch Teresa.” Sarah nibbled on her lower lip for a moment. “I think she must have lost a child of her own.”
Setting the pistol aside, Jack leaned forward and regarded her intently. “Listen to me, lady. You’ve got enough problems of your own right now without taking on Eleanora’s. We both do.”
Sarah lifted her chin from her knees. “Maybe it’s time we talked about those problems. I know mine, but I’m not sure I understand yours, or where you’re coming from. Why are you protecting me and the children? What’s in it for you, Jack?”
She hadn’t meant to sound accusing or disdainful, but the contempt she couldn’t suppress crept into her voice. He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged and retreated behind the shuttered screen of his eyes.
“Maybe you didn’t understand the little discussion Che and I had when we hauled you into camp. The government forces are putting enough pressure on his little band of cutthroats as it is. If I’d allowed the trigger-happy bastards to kill you the night of the raid, the public outcry over a nun’s murder would have tripled the intensity of the air patrols. I wasn’t eager to have the federales descend on this camp, guns blazing, until I’d hightailed it out of here.”
Sarah’s heart turned over in her chest. “Just when do you plan to do that—hightail it out of here?”
“When my business is done.”
“What happens to me and the children when you leave?”
Across the dim, shadowed interior their eyes locked. Silence dragged out between them until Sarah felt it in every pore, every nerve.
“I don’t know yet,” he finally replied. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust you…” She stared at him, unspeaking, for moments longer then turned away.
Jake slid the .45 back into its holster, his throat tight. He wanted to tell her. Christ, his gut ached with the need to tell her. But he didn’t dare. Not yet. As he doused the Sterno “candle” and slid into the bedroll beside hers, however, Jake swore that he’d erase that faint, lingering contempt in her eyes if it was the last thing he ever did.
He lay awake in the darkness, one arm crooked under his head, wondering just why it was so important to him.
The children’s steady breathing joined the chorus of night songs from the jungle outside. Sarah shifted on her pallet, her hips twisting this way and that as she sought a comfortable position. After a while, her soft, breathy sighs told Jake she’d slipped into slumber.
She was some restless sleeper.
He smiled in the darkness as she mumbled incoherently into the bedroll and twitched her hips once more. But the smile froze on his face when Sarah flopped over on her back. She flung out an arm, touching him as she had the first night in the hut. Only this time her hand didn’t just rest on his arm. This time she clutched at him in an unconscious, reflexive reaction to the contact, then followed the touch of her hand with a snuggle. There was no other word for it. She twisted across the space between their bedrolls and snuggled up against his side. Her breast pressed against the wall of his chest. Her cheek rubbed against his shoulder, seeking a comfortable position.
Common sense told Jake to slide his shoulder out from under her head and turn his back to her. Or at least nudge Sarah back over onto her own thin mattress. He didn’t do either, however. Instead, he lay still, feeling the wash of her breath against his neck. Hearing the little smacking noise she made as she settled once more into sleep. Reminding himself that she was off-limits. The scent of her surrounded him, all sun-warmed, musky female.
Despite every reminder, despite every stern warning to control himself, Jake felt his senses flicker, then ignite. His groin tightened, slowly, painfully. It took every ounce of discipline he possessed, but Jake resisted the fierce need to curl his arm about her shoulder and press her even more firmly against him. He lay still and unmoving, cursing the tattered remnants of a conscience that wouldn’t allow him to roll over and cover her soft body with his own.
He was still wide awake when a booted foot slammed against the door to the hut.
“Hey, gringo!”
Jake had rol
led out from under the net and was on his feet before the second kick banged against the wood.
“Che wants to speak with you!” Enrique shouted unsteadily through the door. “Hey, americano!”
A third kick sent the door crashing back on its hinges. Enrique stumbled inside, his flashlight waving wildly. Its sharp, powerful beam caught the startled, frightened faces of the children clutching at their hammock edges. It swept over the bedrolls, then jerked back to pin Sarah in its piercing glare. Her silvery blond hair tumbled over her shoulders as she sat up and raised a hand to shield her eyes. Jake stifled a groan at the sight of her high, firm breasts clearly silhouetted against the thin cotton blouse.
Enrique didn’t make any attempt to stifle his reaction. He gaped, openmouthed, for several seconds. Then a slow, hoarse chuckle sounded deep in his throat. “So this is why you’ve not joined us to drink tequila and exchange war stories these past nights, gringo. Your médica has been tending to your aches privately, eh?”
His thick, slurred phrasing told Jake there wasn’t a hope in hell of them talking their way out of this.
“I, too, have such an ache, gringo.” Enrique held the flashlight on Sarah with one hand while he fumbled at his belt buckle with the other. “You go talk to Che, and I will see that my pain is treated, eh?”
Jake had only one option.
He took Enrique down.
Chapter 7
A single, swift chop to the neck, and Enrique’s knees buckled. Before he hit the dirt, Jake bent and caught the big man’s weight across his shoulders. It happened so fast, so quietly, that the only evidence of any struggle was the flashlight bouncing on the dirt floor.
“Get that,” Jake grunted, staggering back a step under the weight of the unconscious man.
Sarah scrambled to the end of the bedroll and caught the spinning metal cylinder. Her hands shaking wildly, she directed the beam at Jake. He winced and turned his head away from the blinding light.
