Family on the Run

by Margaret Watson

He continued to paddle, his strokes long and hard. Finally, when the water was threatening to sink the canoe, he headed for the shore.

  Chase jumped out of the canoe and dragged it onto the riverbank, then Andi handed him the baby. Chase set Paolo on the ground, then helped Andi out of the canoe. He put his hands on her waist to steady her.

  Grasping his arms, she asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  His hands tightened on her waist. “I’m fine. How about you?”

  “I’m only wet.” She looked up into his face, barely visible in the moonlight, and stepped closer to him. “When the canoe jerked so sharply, I was afraid you’d been hit.”

  “I was afraid it was you.” He closed his eyes and pulled her hard against his body. “It took everything I had to keep paddling.”

  Her heart pounded and her blood raced. His musky masculine scent surrounded her, and the length of his body burned into hers. Her skin jumped where he held her.

  She told herself to move away from him, but she couldn’t think. She could only feel. And nothing felt more right than being in Chase’s arms. Nothing felt more natural than leaning against him and soaking in his strength and his warmth.

  When he bent his head toward her, she didn’t think at all. She simply lifted her face and met his lips. He took her mouth like a starving man given a feast, and she leaned into him. He groaned when their mouths met, and her head began to spin.

  She tried to speak, but all the air was trapped in her chest. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All she could do was feel. Chase trailed his hand down her back, pausing at each bump on her spine, touching her as if she was precious and fragile. When she moved, trying to get closer to him, he groaned again before pulling her into the V of his legs and moving intimately against her. She felt his erection against her abdomen and knew she should move away. But instead, she pressed closer.

  He trailed his lips over her face, pausing at the angle of her jaw, then moved down her neck. Desire throbbed heavily inside her. Suddenly the world tilted, and she realized that Chase had picked her up. He laid her down in the grass that lined the riverbank, then stretched out beside her.

  He eased one leg between her thighs, and she wrapped herself around him, trying to pull him closer. He groaned again, deep in his throat, and shoved her T-shirt up over her chest.

  When his hand closed over her breast, she heard herself cry out. Frantically she pulled his mouth to hers again, losing herself in his kiss. Nothing existed but Chase and the trembling demands of her body. When he bent his head to take her nipple into his mouth, she cried out again. Her hands shook as she held his head to her breast.

  She heard the sound, but it didn’t register. It couldn’t break through the sensual haze that held her in its grip. Then the noise came again, sharper this time, and Chase raised his head.

  She gripped his arms, aching to feel his mouth on her again, her body aroused and throbbing. Then she recognized the beginning of a wail from Paolo, awake now and hungry.

  She scrambled to sit up, and Chase moved to the side. She didn’t look at him as she pulled her shirt down over her aching breasts. She couldn’t force herself to meet his gaze as she reached for the baby.

  Paolo stared up at her, his eyes wide in the faint moonlight, and she saw him draw in a breath for one of his ear-shattering screams.

  She turned to her backpack to grab a bottle of formula, but Chase had already done so. Silently he handed her a bottle, and she mumbled her thanks. Without looking at him, she rested against a tree and fed Paolo.

  The sucking sounds coming from Paolo seemed to fill the air around her, drowning out the frantic beat ing of her heart. She could feel Chase’s gaze on her, but she busied herself with Paolo. Finally, when he had almost finished the bottle and his eyes began to close, she looked up at Chase.

  He was staring at her, but when their eyes met, he stood up. “I’m going to take a look at the canoe,” he said, his voice gruff.

  “Good,” she said, her voice equally strained.

  Apparently they were going to pretend that the passionate embrace had never happened. That was fine with her, because it shouldn’t have ever happened. And if she hadn’t been so frantic with fear for Chase, it wouldn’t have.

  Chase turned away from Andi as she changed Paolo’s diaper, giving fervent thanks for the concealing darkness. He was too unsettled, too off balance, to face Andi right now.

  Why the hell had he kissed her? And why had she kissed him back? They didn’t even like each other. He jerked the canoe farther onto the riverbank and wedged it against a tree.

  His body liked her just fine, he thought sourly as he took out his flashlight and examined the hole in the hull of the canoe. That was the problem.

  “How does it look?” Andi stood next to him, holding Paolo against her shoulder. Her face was pinched with worry, and all traces of passion had disappeared.

  That was what he wanted, he told himself. He wanted nothing but business between them. “It looks like we came damn close to buying the farm,” he said, scowling at her.

  Panic flashed in her eyes as she moved to look more closely at the hole. “Maybe we can fix it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll pull out my handy fix-a-canoe kit, and we’ll set off again in no time.”

  She stood up straight and glared at him. “Sarcasm isn’t going to solve anything. If it’s really beyond repair, I’ll start walking to Monterez right now. But I think we should at least try to repair it. We only have three more days to get to Monterez.”

  A lock of hair fell into her face, making her look like a bedraggled waif, but her eyes were fierce with determination. He sighed and couldn’t stop himself from brushing the hair back. “I’m sorry, McGinnis. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” His fingers lingered at her jaw, then fell away. “I’ll make a plug for the hole. It won’t work perfectly, but it should last long enough for us to get farther down the river.”

  She hadn’t moved away when he touched her. She stood staring at him, her eyes wide, looking more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her. His heart moved in his chest and he almost reached out and pulled her close. Then she blinked and backed up a step. “What can I do to help?”

  “Watch the kid,” he said gruffly.

  “Paolo is asleep again.” She set him down carefully in the space between two trees, then turned to him. “It’ll go faster with two people working on the boat.”

  “Suit yourself.” He needed some distraction, he thought desperately. He didn’t want to stand here, looking at Andi in the moonlight. “You never did tell me why we’re in such a rush to get to Monterez.”

  “We haven’t had time,” she said.

  “We’ve got a lot of time now.” He found a hatchet in his backpack, then shone the beam of the flashlight on the surrounding trees, looking for the right kind of wood. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

  She hesitated for too long, and he finally swung around to face her. “Or don’t you trust me with your information?”

  “Of course I trust you,” she said immediately. “I’m just trying to figure out how much you want to hear.”

  “Tell me everything,” he said as he selected a strong wiry sapling and began to chop it down. “It’ll be easier to make decisions if we both have the same information.” He refused to admit that he suddenly wanted to know everything that had happened to her in the past few months. It was merely business, he told himself.

  “All right.”

  She moved behind him and reached out to hold the sapling steady as he chopped. Once again, their unspoken communication made him uneasy, but he ignored the feeling. “You’ve told me the bare bones already, but start at the beginning.”

  “I got to Chipultipe about two months ago. That was two months after Paloma had first made contact with the agency. Her husband had been killed a few months earlier, and she’d just given birth to Paolo. The agency promised to take care of both of them. We were fortunate in the timing, because the village had requested a teacher
from the Peace Corps about a year earlier. So no one was suspicious when I showed up.”

  “How did you make contact with Paloma?”

  “I knew who she was and where she lived. I waited until I’d been in the village for a week or so, then I went to her house very late one night. I woke her up and told her who I was. We worked out the details that night, and a few days later she made up an excuse to ask me to watch Paolo for her. I acted reluctant at first, but finally gave in. So she had a reason for seeing me every day.”

  “You had a nice little setup.” She had done a great job, he realized. She’d managed to get into the village without suspicion, then to think of a reason to see her source every day.

  “It worked well,” she agreed. “Maybe too well. I don’t know what happened, why El Diablo got suspicious of Paloma. And maybe nothing happened. Maybe he just heard that a foreigner was watching Paolo and didn’t like it. I don’t think anyone else in the village suspected who I was. I was really careful never to ask any questions about El Diablo, never to appear to be anything more than a teacher.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said, setting the hatchet on the ground and turning to her. “You can’t control everything when you’re undercover.” His face darkened. “I learned the hard way.”

  “I know.” Her voice was low and passionate. “I’ve told myself that over and over. But Paloma still died. And if I hadn’t gone to the village, she’d still be alive.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Andi was too tempting, standing so close to him, the agony of what had happened to Paolo’s mother vivid on her face. He picked up the hatchet and turned away. “Criminals like El Diablo don’t thrive and get stronger because they’re humanitarians. Chances are, Paloma would have gotten killed eventually, anyway. People who work for criminals like him tend to have short life spans.”

  “She was just a maid!” Andi said passionately. “He would have no reason to kill her.”

  “Men like El Diablo don’t need a reason to kill.” Chase took a violent swing at the tree. “Maids are in a position to see and hear an awful lot. Maybe he killed his maids regularly, after they’d been working for him awhile. How do you know?”

  There was a long pause behind him. “It’s kind of you to try and make me feel less guilty,” she finally said, her voice quiet. “I appreciate the thought. But that’s not the issue. The issue is the information Paloma gave me.”

  The sapling finally cracked and fell, and Chase pulled it into the small clearing. “Here, hold the flashlight while I cut out two plugs.”

  Andi took the flashlight and trained it steadily on the tree. “Paloma told me she’d heard El Diablo talking about a meeting he was going to have. She told me the names of the men, but they didn’t mean anything to her.”

  “But they did to you,” he said.

  She nodded. “They were the heads of two of the biggest drug cartels in South America. As soon as I heard about the meeting, I knew we had to stop it. If El Diablo, the most powerful drug dealer in Central America, hooked up with those two men, the three of them could create a huge and almost unstoppable conglomerate. They would be able to move drugs around the world with impunity.”

  “Paloma didn’t know when this meeting was supposed to take place?”

  “No.” Andi tightened her lips. “But I asked her to keep her ears open to see if she could find out. I’m afraid she might have taken too many chances, done something careless and made El Diablo realize she was spying on him.”

  Chase put the sapling aside and took both her hands. “Her death was not your fault, Andi.” Her name felt too intimate on his lips, far more intimate than McGinnis. “Informers know how dangerous their job is, and they choose to do it, anyway. We’ll never completely know why. We can mourn them, but we can’t let ourselves be swamped by guilt when they’re killed. It just gets in the way of doing our jobs.”

  “I know.” She turned her hands so they were gripping his and twined their fingers together. Chase felt his heart jump. “And thank you for telling me, again, what I should know. But every time I look at Paolo, all I can see is a child who will never know his mother. And I can’t help but feel responsible.”

  He held her hands for a moment longer, allowing himself the pleasure, knowing that it comforted her. Then he drew his hands away. The only thing that would help Andi right now was getting the canoe fixed.

  “What did she tell you when she came to your house that last night?”

  Andi folded her hands in her lap and stared into the night. “She was almost dead when she got there. She could barely speak. But she asked me to take care of Paolo, told me to pack his things in her blue backpack and get out of the village. She was afraid El Diablo would try to kill him, too.”

  She took a deep trembling breath. “And she told me she had heard the time and place of the meeting. It was in five days, at an abandoned airstrip in the middle of the jungle, about an hour away from Monterez. The two men from South America were going to fly in, stay for just a short time, then fly out. There would be other meetings later to cement the deal.”

  “The first thing you should have done was get your radio and pass on the information.”

  “Paolo had to come first,” she said immediately. “His life was more important than passing on the information. I was going to stop for the radio on our way out of the village. Then you showed up and everything went to hell.”

  “We could have gone back for your radio.”

  Andi shook her head. “I thought of that, but I wasn’t willing to risk his life. Paloma died to get me that information, and I intend to make sure that El Diablo is captured. But it’s not worth Paolo’s life.”

  Chase held up one of the plugs of wood he’d whittled out of the sapling. “Then let’s see if we can jam this into the hole in the canoe. We don’t have time to waste.”

  Andi scrambled up and held the flashlight steadily on the hole while he used the side of the hatchet blade to pound in the plugs. Then he stood back and examined the canoe.

  “It’s not perfect, but I think they’ll do the trick.” He glanced up at the sky, then looked at his watch. “We still have a few more hours of darkness. Let’s see how much farther we can get.”

  Andi immediately hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. “I don’t know this part of San Marcos very well. How far are we going to take the river?”

  “This part of the jungle is pretty much uninhabited, it seems. I’ve looked at the map, and it appears we could take the river all the way into Monterez, but I think that would be too dangerous. The closer we get to the capital, the more traffic there’ll be on the river and the more we’ll stand out. We’ll take it as far as we can, but at some point we’ll have to leave the canoe behind and find another way into the city.”

  “El Diablo isn’t going to give up looking for me. I’m sure by now he’s figured out that I was Paloma’s contact, if only because I disappeared with Paolo.”

  “I’m sure he has. But the farther we get away from Chipultipe, the better our chances. It forces him to search a bigger area. With a little bit of luck, we’ll be able to sneak into Monterez before he knows we’re there.”

  “All right.”

  He turned to look at her. “You’re agreeing that easily?”

  Andi looked at him directly. “I already told you that I don’t know San Marcos as well as you do. If I didn’t trust your judgment, Remington, I wouldn’t have left Chipultipe with you. We’re not going to make it to Monterez if we fight over everything.”

  “Andi McGinnis agreeing with me. I guess miracles do happen.”

  “I don’t know about miracles, but I can guarantee you’ll be seeing visions if you don’t watch your mouth.” She gave him a sweet smile as she picked up Paolo. “I figure you don’t want to be killed any more than I do. And since you’re the expert on San Marcos, I’m willing to let you make the decisions here.”

  “I’m touched.”

  Her smile faded and she sighed. “Look, Remington
, our past history isn’t that great, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But I know you’re a good agent, one of the best. And I trust you to get Paolo safely to Monterez. So let’s get going.”

  Chase stared at her for a moment. Andi McGinnis had just placed her life, and Paolo’s, in his hands. He felt like he’d been gut-punched.

  Chapter 6

  “Tell me about your business.” Andi’s voice cut through the darkness, and she saw Chase stop paddling for a fraction of a second, then resume.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  She shrugged. “Just curious, I guess. We have to pass the time somehow.”

  “So we play twenty questions?”

  “Forget it,” she said stiffly. “I was trying to make conversation, but I can see I shouldn’t have bothered. Forgive me for prying.”

  He sighed. “Look, McGinnis, I’m sorry. I’m not much for the social graces.”

  “I wasn’t asking for graceful,” she snapped. “I’d settle for civil.”

  He waited a beat, then said, “All right, civil it is. What do you want to know about me?”

  She wanted to know everything, she realized, and alarm bells went off in her brain. She couldn’t be interested in Chase Remington. Sure, her body hummed when he was close, and his kisses melted her socks, but that was only physical. Just adrenaline and proximity.

  She and Chase were far too different. They wanted different things out of life. She wasn’t interested in tying herself to a man, especially a man like Chase. He was too domineering, too strong. She wasn’t about to surrender her hard-won independence to any man.

  But she could carry on a conversation with him, she told herself. They had to do something to pass the time.

  Chase’s kisses, the way his hands felt on her body filled her head, but she firmly pushed the memories away. That wasn’t how they were going to pass the time.

  “What kind of business do you have?” she asked, instead, trying to ignore the breathlessness of her voice.

  He hesitated a moment. Finally he said, “I have a private-investigation and security business in Denver.”