by Terese Ramin
Cameron grabbed at her arm. "A word in your ear, Jones…."
Acasia only glided deeper into the forest, where the overhead canopy became thick and impenetrable once more. She shut him out, closed herself up out of habit, out of practice. She told herself that she was allowed to care, but he was not. She wanted him to behave the way her script said he was supposed to, going where and when he was directed without question or hesitation. But there was more to him than that, damn it, and she knew it.
Nobody ever becomes who they think they will. Something Fred had said to her once, right before she hit rock bottom and knew the only way out was to reach for "up." The only way to get to there from here is to grow into yourself, make use of what ails you, and get beyond it.
Sometimes she hated her brother’s perceptiveness.
She disappeared behind a curtain of hanging vines and mosses, and Cameron followed. Sweat trickled down his back and glued his khaki shirt to his skin. Heat and pain from the neatly dressed head wound made him suddenly nauseous, and he stumbled and fell against a tree.
"Sorry," he muttered as Acasia caught him, pulling him away from the red–and–white caterpillar that fell past his bare hand.
"Concentrate on something," Acasia suggested, taking her bandanna, soaking it with water from the canteen and laying it over the back of his neck. "Do the multiplication tables or the ABCs or…"
"The periodic table of elements?" Cameron said wryly.
Acasia used her boot to clear a section of jungle floor and her arms to guide Cameron safely onto it. "Or the periodic table of elements." Amusement was an appreciative ripple in her voice. "Whatever you’re best at." She wet the bandanna again, washed the coolness over his face and throat, twisted the cotton into a strip and tied it around his head. Then she offered him the canteen. "We can rest for about a minute. The antibiotics Fred gave you ought to kick in soon and you’ll be all right. Just take it easy."
Take it easy? Who was she kidding? "Was it poisonous?"
"What?"
"The caterpillar you saved me from."
"Yeah, sort of." Acasia shrugged. "It’s got a sting that makes you think you’re having a heart attack. You get over it in a while. You ready to move? We need to get going." There it was again, the importance of time, the urgency with which she lived. Cameron watched her, waiting for his head to settle, his body to recover from its feverish sweat. He could not imagine her at a standstill. Everything was immediate for her.
"I’m taking you downriver to the falls," she said, opening the side pocket of her pack to pull out a plastic bottle. "There are some caves behind them where you’ll be safe, but it gets pretty buggy between here and there, so you’d better splash some of this on as long as we’re stopped. I don’t want you turning into an insect buffet table. Do your cuffs, shirtsleeves, collar, even your head. The bug–life around here’s pretty bloodthirsty." She moved as she spoke, covering the signs of their passing, removing any evidence that they’d stopped. "Plays hell with the tourist trade. How are you feeling?" She touched his cheek with the back of her hand, and he caught her wrist.
"You’re good at this," he said quietly, as though he were admitting it for the first time. "I want to know how—and why."
Acasia opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything.
"Tell me the truth," Cameron said.
Acasia looked away as time pulsed between them, counted in the steady beat of the pulse beneath Cameron’s fingers. She knew he wouldn’t accept a lie; and she wouldn’t tell him the truth.
"Security before revelations," she finally said lightly, and rose, using the grip he retained on her wrist to draw him to his feet.
"Make that talk as we walk and you’ve got a deal."
"Fine. See this tree here?" She reached out to stroke the bark with her fingertips. "This is a copaiba tree. Industrialists are hoping to get a synthetic fuel very much like diesel oil from it. Down a ways I’ll show you a stand of trees where some birds of paradise live. This plant here… crush the leaves and make it into tea and it’ll cure your indigestion. Over here—"
The down on Acasia’s arms rose at the same time as the hair on the back of Cameron’s neck. She moved like lightning, but he was faster, grabbing her, pushing them both to the ground even as they heard the sharp slide of an automatic weapon being cocked.
"Damn!" Acasia muttered, squirming out from underneath him as she dragged the shotgun off her shoulder. She looked at Cameron and saw the weapon already in his hand.
"I did my time," he whispered.
"Where?"
"Terror Tech."
"Where?"
One of Futures and Securities rivals in private security, Terror Tech was the last place she would have expected Cameron to deal with. Founded by an outspoken former military man and government covert operations adviser, the firm specialized in providing whatever kind of peace, tranquility and grandstanding the client was willing to pay for: private armies, troop training, hostage search and seizure missions, survival courses, munitions….
Acasia eyed him incredulously, and Cameron shrugged as if to say, Hey! It was another lifetime, sue me. She opened her mouth, but he shushed her with a look. They heard the scrape of boots and the sound of a Spanish curse. Acasia hugged the ground, and Cameron followed suit. The footsteps scraped closer. Cameron tensed, ready, but Acasia laid a restraining hand on his arm.
There were four worn boots at eye level. The voices above them were rapid and nervous. "¡Mira alla!"
"No, hay nadie. ¡Vamanos!"
There was some indecision, but it was a token amount. The jungle harbored too many unfriendlies, too much uncertainty, for any regular soldier in Sanchez’s army to be comfortable there. The boots turned, the men giving their surroundings a cursory appraisal before beating a hasty retreat in the direction of civilization. Cameron and Acasia remained flat, listening, nerves alert and fraying while ants paraded in unabashed celebration over their chins and throats, sidled purposefully into the moist recesses of their open–necked shirts, paved a stinging path across their exposed skin. And still they waited.
Moisture dripped from the leaves, and the ants became a slow, burning torture, impossible to ignore. Cameron’s teeth ground together with the effort it took to remain silent. Acasia lifted her head, slowly scanning the area for lurking dangers. She took a deep breath and rose to her knees, motioning Cameron after her. He yanked his shirt from his pants as he got up, tearing at his neck in a frantic attempt to get rid of the ants. Acasia’s hands swept over him, helping.
"I thought you said we wouldn’t be followed, that Sanchez’s people were afraid to come here? Damn, these ants sting!"
"I guess I was wrong, wasn’t I? Hold still."
Cameron brushed her help away, suddenly fed up with her half–truths and evasions, her unrevealed past and her tantalizing proximity. "Gee, it’s nice to know even Henrietta Heroine can be wrong occasionally," he snapped viciously.
Acasia went still, chin lifting, violet eyes steady on him. He’d been looking for a reaction, and he’d gotten one. His stab in the dark had gone true.
"You’ve got a helluva nerve trying to psychoanalyze me," she said softly. "Sure you don’t need a bit of it yourself?"
"I want to understand why you do this. What happened between you and the guy in the bird?"
Acasia got to her feet. Dominic’s face hovered on the fringes of memory, blending with Cameron’s, the demon escaping from her Pandora’s box. "Don’t ask me questions I don’t want to give you the answers to."
She turned away from him, but he caught her arm and jerked her back. "You’re messing around with my life here, as well as yours. That entitles me to ask questions and get answers whether you want to give them to me or not."
"You looking to be my hero, Cam?"
"No more than you’re looking to be mine."
"Shut up!" Acasia spit the words at him and stalked to the edge of the river, where the water plunged with reckless abandon over a sh
eer drop. She wanted to get away from Cameron and his insights, away from old wounds, old guilts, old enemies, old friends. Beside her, the spray shot skyward to let the sun make rainbows in it. Suddenly the mossy rocks slipped away beneath her feet, and she went skidding down.
Cameron dropped after her onto the last flat rock, and without thinking she reached out to steady him. The charge went through them again, as it had this morning. The voltage drew them even as they flinched from it, compelling them to linger even as they wrenched apart. They were reacting to one another still. It seemed to be all they’d done so far.
The cave where she’d planned to take Cameron was close, twenty feet away behind the curtain of falling water. With some supplies, the handgun and a bedroll, he would be safe there on his own. She could leave him and go back. It would be better to face Dom than to face Cam in the dark alone.
Acasia faltered, water frothing up around her thighs, and Cameron reached out automatically to support her. "Problem?"
She looked at his hand and shut her eyes. "Yeah."
"Can I help?"
"Not when you’re it."
Cameron dropped her arm. "You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Jones?"
It was too late for qualifiers, but she tried anyway. "I didn’t mean—"
"Yes, you damn well did mean." Wounded, Cameron lashed out before she could finish, unable to listen to anything more. "You’ve sniped at me about every damn thing for the last twenty–four hours. I’ve had enough. You’ve convinced me. We’re strangers. Now do your stinking job and shut up."
Deserving someone’s contempt never made it easier to swallow. With great difficulty, Acasia controlled the urge to strike back at Cameron. Regardless of whatever personal dilemma she might consider herself embroiled in, he was right: she was still on company time—and therefore company manners. That meant rescuee first, rescuer second.
She swallowed, and the acrid taste of unexpressed anger stung her throat. They had progressed from memory to lust, from the seed of an emotion they’d both dreamed of for years, to pure bullheadedness. From zero to minus zero, every forward step was followed doggedly by two back. Between them sat Zaragoza’s brief history: vivid, violent, the conflict still unresolved. Acasia knew all too well what to expect from Zaragoza, from Sanchez, from Dominic. He was in the village; he’d brought soldiers.
And Fred was alone.
Fear and steel ran down her spine at the same moment. Her personal involvement and regrets didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was keeping her brother and his patients safe.
Cameron watched determination enter her eyes and braced himself for the beginning of the next round.
"I’m going back."
"Not alone, you’re not."
Acasia looked at him, and he held her gaze steadily. She felt the same strength in him now that she’d felt the night he’d offered her his heart and she’d handed him the already scattered bits of her soul. She dropped her eyes, giving ground first, conceding. "Keep your head down."
* * *
Indians milled in the center of the clearing, infants and toddlers carried in slings on their parents’ hips, older children clinging to their legs. Two soldiers in sweaty green uniforms, M–16s at half–mast, did shepherd duty at the fringes of the group, while two compatriots methodically scoured each thatched hut for their quarry to no avail. Fred stood on the clinic veranda with Dominic and another pair of soldiers. Vindictive wreckage—garlands of bandages, broken pots and medical equipment, smashed medicine bottles—was strewed over the ground around the building.
Acasia crouched with Cameron in a tangle of brush, watching her brother control himself at great cost. She clamped her teeth together and remained still. Beside her, Cameron tensed, muscles bunching together, brushing her shoulder, her thigh, her hip….
"Give it up, man," Fred was saying. "She’s not here, never was. Just give it up."
Dominic’s dark face creased in a scowl, the scar on his cheek stretching to enhance the fierceness of his expression. "She’s here," he said. "I can feel her." He stabbed at Fred’s chest with a finger. "You’re a fool to protect her. She’ll get you killed, like she did the others." He swung his arm out, and glass shattered in the clinic window. Blood bubbled up from the cut on his fist, and Dominic viewed it with distant fascination before carefully wiping it off on Fred’s shirt.
Fred looked down at the smear, then back at the man who was smiling coldly at him.
"Give her to me," Dominic said. "Let me put her out of our misery." Then, softly: "She’s one person, one person for so many."
A chill swept through Acasia. She didn’t think as she stood and said calmly, quietly, "No."
Cameron scrambled after her before she could give them away, catching her around the waist and dragging her behind a tree. Locked together, they struggled, Acasia as determined to protect Fred as Cameron was to protect her. His forearm found her throat, choked her, gained her attention. "Damn it, Acasia, hold still. This is not the time to be a martyr. Fred’s handling it! He’s handling it!"
Acasia’s glazed eyes focused as she struggled to breathe. She tried to say, "Let me go," but no sound came. Cameron had learned a few skills she hadn’t anticipated. What other surprises did he have in store?
"All right?" Cameron warned.
Acasia nodded warily. She would have to watch her step now, every bit of the way.
Satisfied, he released her, and she gulped air silently. Fred’s voice reached them again.
"…touch any of these Indians and the French government will get involved. You don’t want that. And I know Sanchez doesn’t. It would put a real crimp in his style—and your life." Fred’s smile was as hard and unforgiving, as menacing, as Dominic’s.
The walkie–talkie on Dominic’s belt crackled, interrupting the game. He snatched it up and listened, his eyes on Fred, alert against any signs of relief or betrayal. "Are you sure?" he asked, then listened again. "No, you’re right, it must be her. I’ll come there." He holstered the radio and made a snapping motion at the nervous soldiers, all the while watching Fred. "You get a reprieve. She went south. Means she’s crazier than I remember." He tapped Fred’s chest again. "When I’m done with her, I’ll be back for you."
"Promises, promises," Fred said.
The mercenary spun away, laughing. "Bank on it," he said, and was gone. Within five minutes the helicopter lifted from its resting place and soared away into the blue southern sky.
"Ally ally oxen free," Fred shouted, and descended the veranda steps to casually begin the task of cleaning up.
Acasia sagged against the tree. "One day down."
"What does that mean?" Relief left Cameron angry.
"Means we’ve got twenty–four, maybe forty–eight, hours before he comes back."
"That’s supposed to make me happy?"
Acasia pushed him out of her way. "It means I haven’t totally fouled up my job—and, yes, that should make you happy." She pushed the heavy brush aside and prepared to join Fred. "One other thing," she said in careful afterthought. "Don’t ever try to choke me again."
She didn’t say or else, but the threat was there, and Cameron heard it. He caught her wrist and hauled her around as she tried to leave. "Or you’ll what? Go ahead, spit it out. I just saved your mulish neck—not to mention Fred’s and everyone else’s. I believe that rates a thank–you, not a threat."
"If you’d stayed home where you belong, no one would have been in danger in the first place," Acasia pointed out. For a little longer she would let herself use the childish blame–laying games to keep her buckling knees at bay. He was right, of course, and she owed it to him to say so, but not yet, not while she had to brace her bottom lip with her tongue to keep it from quivering. "Neither of us would be here if it weren’t for you."
She accused him in a way that left him nothing to say. Where had she gone, the woman he’d wanted to love this morning, the one who cared? She aggravated the hell out of him, but he’d been frightened fo
r her, no one else. No one else had existed since she’d swept back into his life.
And it meant nothing. Sadly he relinquished Acasia’s arm. "Touché," he said. "You win." Then he brushed by her and through the snarl of grasses.
"Cam." For a trace of an instant entreaty wavered in Acasia’s voice. She didn’t want to win, she wanted to fight, to taunt, to snap back and forth as they always had—anything that didn’t force her to deal with herself and her feelings for him.
Cameron hesitated without turning. "What?"
Her mouth was so dry that she could barely speak. "For what it’s worth, you were—" Great, fantastic, wonderful, the best… None of the adjectives said enough. She took a deep breath and raised her chin. The next step was risky and irrevocable, but she took it anyway. "I’m glad it was you out there with me today."
There was so much she couldn’t say, so much that would have to wait. Cameron turned, and for a fraction of a second they shared one thought, hesitant but unwavering, wary but distinct: later. Acasia’s mouth lifted in the tentative hint of a smile. The lines about Cameron’s lips deepened cautiously.
"Anyway," Acasia said, "thanks."
Cameron glanced away to hide his pleasure, then looked back and lifted a finger to his brow in a mock salute. "No sweat," he said, and stepped into the clearing to join Fred.
Chapter 6
NUMB, ACASIA STOOD in the center of the infirmary and took in the destruction. It had taken years to build and equip Fred’s clinic. She supposed the mess looked worse than it was. This sort of destruction so often did. Still, it was daunting to see how little a life’s work could be boiled down to—and how quickly.
"Hey, Casie! You going to give us a hand?"
She turned around at the sound of Fred’s voice. He was facing away from her, directing the cleanup, and there was something very reminiscent of I told you so about the set of his back. But perhaps that was merely whimsy on her part. Or guilt.
