Beyond Sunrise

by Candice Proctor

  He swung his head away to shout to the men below. “You’re forgetting something, aren’t you? I have Miss McKnight.”

  There was a pause, filled with the furtive hush of the jungle around them. Granger said, “You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t hurt her. I know you, Jack.”

  “You knew me.” He waited, as if giving time for his words to sink in. Then he said, “I’m standing up now, Simon, and I’m bringing Miss McKnight with me, which means that anyone trying to take off my head is liable to take hers, too. And did I mention she has a machete dangerously close to her throat?”

  India tried to hang back, but his grip on her tightened brutally, drawing her up with him, the sharp edge of the machete close enough that she could feel the cold bite of it against her skin. She let out a little whimper of protest, which was all she could manage. Her fear was like a suffocating weight, stealing her breath, squeezing her chest.

  She could see them now on the narrow trail just below, Captain Granger, his hand clenched in furious impotence around the pommel of the sword at his side, and six seamen, their rifles pointed unwaveringly at India and the man who held her. For one unbearable moment, Ryder and the captain simply stared at each other, and it seemed to India that the very air between the two men vibrated with the violent intensity of their emotions. She was aware of the rise and fall of Ryder’s hard chest against her back, the warmth of his breath against her neck, the power of the dark, muscular arm that pressed against her breasts and held her pinned back against him.

  “Tell your men to lower their rifles. Now,” Ryder added sharply when the seamen continued to hold their guns at the ready.

  Granger turned his head, the muscles in his lean cheek bunching tight. “At ease, men.”

  Six muzzles lowered, and India remembered to breathe.

  The two men’s gazes met again, and clashed.

  “Now tell them to lay down their guns.”

  The tall blond captain’s hard stare never wavered. “Do it,” he said out the corner of his mouth.

  “Nice and easy,” added Ryder, his hand shifting on the handle of the machete at India’s throat. “I’m a very nervous man. Somebody startles me, and Miss McKnight here might end up with a nasty gash in her neck.”

  It was said for effect, of course; the fiend who held her was neither nervous nor easily startled, and India knew it. In another situation, she might even have admired his calm coolness. But she also had no doubts about his ruthlessness. He wouldn’t hesitate to spill her blood if he thought he needed to. The seamen carefully laid down their guns, and she let out a soft, relieved sigh.

  “Now step back. You, too, Simon. That’s right, gentlemen, keep moving. There, that’ll do.” His voice had changed, taking on a vaguely rollicking tone that puzzled her until he said, “Now, gentlemen, you’re going to take off your clothes.”

  The fair-haired captain was so startled, he jerked, while behind him, the seamen murmured and exchanged wary looks.

  “That’s right,” said Ryder. “Don’t everyone rush to strip off all at the same time. We’re going to do it one by one. Starting with you, Simon.”

  The tall Englishman gave a curt, mirthless laugh, and crossed his arms at his chest in a blatantly defiant pose. “Over my dead body.”

  “A laudable attitude, I’m sure. But you’re forgetting Miss McKnight’s throat.” The man behind her shifted and India felt the blade bite, a gasp escaping her lips before she could press them tightly together. “What would the Admiralty have to say about that, hmmm?”

  Granger’s teeth clenched. “You bastard.”

  “Just start with your sword, Simon. Easy,” Ryder added warningly as the captain moved with seething resentment to comply. “Now throw it over that cliff.”

  For a moment, Granger hesitated, then sent the sword sailing out into space. India could hear it clanging and bouncing on the rocks below.

  “Now your jacket.”

  It wasn’t until the captain was unbuttoning his shirt with quick, jerky movements that India thought to squeeze her eyes shut out of consideration for the unfortunate man’s modesty. But even though it was self-imposed, she found the isolating darkness oddly terrifying. In the end, she reluctantly opened her eyes again, but she kept her head tilted back, her gaze fixed on the thick green canopy overhead.

  “Now you,” Ryder said, nodding to one of the seamen after the captain’s smallclothes had joined the rest of his possessions in a heap at the base of the cliff. “That’s right. You. Start with your boots.”

  India kept her gaze resolutely fastened on the tropical tangle of leafy branches overhead, but Ryder’s low-voiced, explicit instructions and the subtle sounds of clothing being removed in response kept her painfully aware of what was happening.

  He took them, one by one, through the same slow striptease. At first India thought he did it to humiliate them. But then she heard him say, his voice deadly cold and even, “Move one step closer to that rifle, sailor, and we’ll all have a chance to see what color a Scotswoman’s blood is.” And she realized that this was the only way he could hope to keep control of the situation, that in the confusion of seven men moving about undressing it would have been all too easy for one of them to make a lunge for the rifles that still lay on the jungle floor.

  The strain of keeping her head tipped back was starting to give India a cramp in her neck, but she refused to look down. She would not look. . . .

  “You there,” Ryder said, when the last of Her Majesty’s men had stripped to the buff.

  A high-pitched voice squeaked, “Me?”

  “That’s right, you. I want you to pick up each of those rifles, one at a time, and toss them over the cliff. “Look lively now.”

  There was a pause, then the sounds of shifting underbrush and a muffled “Ouch!” that told her the man in question must be moving, barefoot, to comply.

  “And remember,” said Ryder, “try anything, and Miss McKnight here will pay for it.”

  In spite of her best intentions, India’s gaze wavered. She had one swift, shocking impression of a group of red-faced, white-bodied men standing rigidly erect, elbows bent, hands folded over their crotches, and another man, fair-haired and rib-thin, his body hunched over, one hand still protectively cupping his privates as he bent to retrieve a rifle. Then her gaze snapped back to the jungle canopy overhead.

  “I think that will be all, gentlemen,” said the hatefully laconic voice behind her when the last of the rifles had clattered down the cliff face and an expectant hush fell over the jungle.

  India felt her body tense up, tighter and tighter, in anticipation of what would happen next. She’d been wondering for the last ten minutes what she would do if he ordered her, too, to strip. She’d finally decided he could slit her throat with his machete if he wanted; she wasn’t removing so much as a handkerchief.

  “You may leave now,” she heard him say. “One at a time. Just turn around and walk back down the trail single file. No, not you,” he added softly in her ear, his voice deepening with amusement and his hold on her tightening when India would have moved away from him.

  She was no longer bothering to keep her gaze carefully trained on the tangle of vivid green vegetation overhead. Suddenly, the men’s nakedness was of far less importance than what was about to happen to her. She could see them scurrying away, one after the other down the trail, their unshod feet slipping in the muck, their bare bodies glowing a discordant bluish white in the jungle gloom. Only Simon Granger stood his ground, his hands no longer shielding his groin but clenched instead into two fists at his sides. “And Miss McKnight?” he said, his head held high, his voice strained but crisp.

  Jack Ryder’s reply was slow and taunting and laced with a smile. “She’s coming with me.”

  Chapter Eight

  INDIA LET OUT a gasp that brought the strained sinews of her neck into uncomfortable proximity to the machete’s sharp edge. She went instantly, quiveringly silent.

  Captain Granger said, “You can’t b
e serious.”

  Jack Ryder let out a low, mean laugh. “When she’s the only thing standing between me and a hangman’s noose? Of course I’m serious.”

  “You want a hostage?” The Englishman spread his arms wide in a gesture of surrender. “Take me. But let the woman go, Jack.”

  The despicable fiend holding her laughed again in what struck India as an unnecessarily hearty—and heartless— manner. “Nice of you to offer, Simon. But you’re not exactly dressed for a jungle trek.”

  A muscle bunched along the Englishman’s clenched jawline. “I never thought I’d see you hiding behind a woman.”

  “Yeah?” The rollicking tone vanished, leaving in its place a cold, lethal timbre that sent a chill through India’s veins. “Well, there was a time I thought I’d never see you killing women, which just goes to show how wrong one man can be about another.”

  “I was only following orders, and you know it.”

  A dangerously volatile hum of anger coursed through the man behind her. India knew a stab of raging panic, then felt him relax, his voice sounding unutterably sad and weary as he said, “Just get out of here, Simon.”

  For a long, silent moment, the two men stared at each other. Simon Granger said, “I won’t quit. You know that, Jack.”

  “I know it.”

  The Englishman turned to leave, and it was only by sheer force of will that India managed to hold herself still, her jaws clenched together to keep from crying out, No! Don’t leave me here with him! She watched in sick, stomach-wrenching despair as Simon Granger maneuvered his way with rigid care down the slippery, narrow trail, his tall, naked white body flickering ghostlike through moss-covered tree trunks and vivid green creepers. Then an outcropping of rough volcanic boulders hid him from her sight, and she was alone in the jungle with a mad, machete-wielding Australian renegade and an unknown number of watching cannibals.

  Jack kept his grip on Miss McKnight’s wrist, the weight of his arm across her rib cage holding her back pressed tightly to his chest, his machete at her neck. He waited until Simon had disappeared from sight and the only sounds to be heard were faint jungle whisperings and the labored breathing of the woman he held in his arms, her full breasts rising and falling with each intake of air. Then he let her go and stepped back warily.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected her to do. Faint maybe, or fall into hysterics, or maybe even try to make a frightened run for it. He should have known better.

  She stood rigidly erect, her back still to him, one hand rubbing the wrist he’d held so tightly, the other hand coming up to touch fingertips to her neck. When she finally turned, it was to show him a pale but composed face. “So, Mr. Ryder,” she said in that tart, Sunday-school teacher voice of hers. “What do we do now, given that a return to the Sea Hawk is obviously no longer an option?”

  Jack let out a soft laugh and drove his machete back into its scabbard. What now, indeed? When Simon and his bluejackets had appeared below them on the trail, Jack’s only thought had been to get himself out of a tight situation alive and with as much of a chance of getting away as he could manage. It was only now, as he stared at the pith-helmeted woman who stood before him, her shoulders determinedly straight, her fine gray eyes flashing scorn and contempt, that the magnitude of what he’d let himself in for burst upon him.

  For the next two days, he was going to be tramping through a cannibal-infested jungle in the company of the most aggravating, sharp-tongued Amazon he had ever had the misfortune to encounter. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he’d be willing to bet his machete that as soon as Simon and his men scrambled into new clothes and rearmed, they were going to be hot on Jack’s trail. Simon would have been after him in any case, but it didn’t help that to his already long list of crimes, Jack had just added the offense of kidnapping a popular lady travel writer.

  “What we do now,” said Jack, taking her by the elbow and propelling her with gentle insistence down the path, “is move. Very quickly.”

  She removed her elbow from his grasp, but kept walking. “And precisely what is our destination?”

  “La Rochelle.”

  “La Rochelle?” She stopped abruptly and swung to face him. “But . . . that will take days.”

  “Two, by my reckoning. If we move it.”

  “Two?” She drew back her shoulders and crossed her arms beneath her impressive breasts in the manner of a Valkyrie preparing to do battle. All she needed was a sword and a skull cup flowing with mead, Jack thought, and the image would have been complete. “I’m not going.”

  Jack eyed the statuesque, strong-jawed woman before him. A smaller, weaker female he might have bullied, but this one was almost as tall as he was—besides which, he didn’t think anyone had ever successfully bullied Miss India McKnight in her life. He tried a different tack. “You want me to leave you here, do you? Alone?”

  “I am not afraid of being alone.”

  “You’re forgetting about the cannibals.”

  Her lip curled in scorn. He’d known men who could do that, but never a woman. “Do you really think me such a fool as to fall for that tale twice?”

  “Tale? You think it’s a tale? And who do you think left that footprint?” He jabbed a pointed finger toward a muddy patch on the trail, where the imprint made by a bare human foot showed clearly.

  “Obviously, one of those poor unfortunate men you forced to disrobe.”

  “Their feet were bare going down the hill, not up it.”

  She gazed at him with cool disbelief. “You realized you might need a hostage, and—”

  “A hostage?” Jack leaned into her. “Bloody hell. If I hadn’t been so bloody worried about you getting yourself eaten, I wouldn’t need a hostage now.”

  He swung away from her, his head falling back, his gaze taking in a whirl of vibrant, tangled greenery before he spun back suddenly to pin her with a hard, suspicious stare. “Exactly what do you think I’m planning to do to you, anyway? Drag you off into the jungle and rape you?”

  He watched a flush of maidenly modesty color her cheeks, her breath hitching in an unmistakable betrayal of fear.

  “Jesus. You do.” He set his jaw, one pointed finger coming up to waggle beneath her thin nose. “Well, let me tell you something, lady. I’m not that hard up. This is the bloody South Pacific, remember? These islands are full of naked, willing women. A man doesn’t need to resort to kidnap and rape to get a little around here.” He paused, his gaze sweeping over her to linger just a shade longer than he meant it to on her full, heaving breasts. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t pick some frigid, supercilious, bloody-minded Englishwoman!”

  She stared at him, her color becomingly high, her breath coming hard and fast through parted lips. But all she said was “I am Scottish, not English.”

  A breeze blew up suddenly, rustling the leafy canopy overhead with a movement that must have brought down a coconut somewhere nearby, for the crash of it echoed and reechoed through the jungle. Jack threw a quick glance up at the patch of sky just visible through the overarching mass of branches. From the sounds of things, there was a squall blowing in. Smothering a crude oath, he drew his machete from its scabbard and straightened his arm until the point rested against India McKnight’s breast, just above her heart. “Look, Miss McKnight, I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re English, Scottish, or Transylvanian. Just move.”

  She went a shade paler, but she didn’t move. “You’re bluffing. If you kill me, you won’t have a hostage, so what would be the point?”

  “You willing to bet your life on that?”

  They stared at each other. The wind died, and in the sudden stillness the steamy heat seemed more oppressive than ever. He watched a bead of sweat form on her forehead and roll down her temple. Just when he thought she was going to call his bluff, after all, she blinked and looked away.

  “Very well, Mr. Ryder. You may put away your machete.” Turning on her heel, she stalked off down the path ahead of him, her shoulders pulled repressive
ly back, her pith-helmeted head held high. “But when they hang you, I intend to be there.”

  Jack swiped one forearm across his hot, sweaty face, and followed her. “They need to catch me first.”

  He’d expected her to dawdle along, deliberately trying to delay him, but she kept pace with him easily, her long legs matching his stride for stride. Watching her, Jack came to the conclusion she was one of those women with a naturally long, mannish gait. He suspected she was constitutionally incapable of walking slowly, no matter how much she might have wanted to. The thought brought an odd smile to his face, a smile that faded to leave a lingering, unexpected ache that was both wistful and sad.

  At first, she stomped along in an angry, detached silence, no doubt indulging herself with satisfying images of his lifeless body twisting at the end of a hangman’s rope. But it wasn’t long before her interest in her surroundings reasserted itself, and several times he had to prod her on when she would have stopped to investigate a peculiar form of mushroom growing on a moldering log, or to watch a red parakeet flitting through the branches of a giant breadfruit tree. He supposed it was inevitable that she would, eventually, turn her overly well-developed sense of curiosity to him.

  “Why are you wanted by the British navy?” she asked as they pushed through a stand of enormous old native pines mixed with native oaks and laurels and tree ferns.

  He glanced back at her in surprise. “Didn’t you even bother to find out, before you agreed to help Simon capture me?”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Then she said, “I was having difficulty finding someone willing to take me to Takaku, and Captain Granger suggested you. I didn’t know what he intended.”

  He didn’t want to believe her, but studying her half-averted profile, Jack thought she was probably telling the truth. She was too determinedly straight-laced and bloody-minded to ever lie convincingly. He wondered idly if he would have drawn his machete on her and taken her hostage if he hadn’t thought, in that first rush of blind fury, that she’d deliberately set him up. He was still pondering the question when she said, “Were you actually an officer in the British navy?”