Rainforest Honeymoon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Completely understandable. He broke his word.” She spoke with impressive calm, under the circumstances. “But why take it out on me? I’ve never gambled a dime at your casinos. I didn’t do anything but break an engagement that never should have happened to a rat fink who never should have been born.”

  “I regret any inconvenience to you, but Swidell needed to be taught a lesson.” Rafferty smiled coldly. “I assure you, I wouldn’t have killed you, my dear. With your wealth and your father’s position, you’re not exactly disposable like some nameless woman from Iowa. I only intended to extend your stay at Suerte del Mar a little longer than you planned.”

  “You intended to kidnap me and hold me for ransom until Bradley paid up,” she said flatly.

  “Something like that. But Dr. Galvez beat me to it and kidnapped you first.”

  For the first time, her voice rose. “He didn’t kidnap me. He rescued me from you.”

  Warmth and something much deeper, soaked through Ren as he listened to her defense of him.

  “Ah yes. Dr. Galvez and his vivid imagination again.”

  “It’s not my imagination,” Ren finally interjected. “I know what I saw. You killed that woman, Jimbo.”

  Rafferty’s jaw tightened. “Which brings up an interesting question I’ve been wondering about for two days. What exactly were you doing trespassing on Suerte del Mar the other night, Dr. Galvez?”

  He didn’t want to answer. The truth seemed so banal after all they had been through since he’d stumbled onto that grisly scene.

  “My turtles,” he finally said after a long pause. “Your dogs were harassing the nesting sites again. This time I had pictures. I came to warn you I was planning to plaster them all over the Internet if you didn’t do a better job containing your Dobermans.”

  Rafferty stared at him for a full twenty seconds, then started to laugh. “This whole thing started because of a couple of dogs and some stupid turtles? What lousy timing on your part.”

  His laughter faded as abruptly as it started and even in the darkness, Ren could see his eyes turn cold. “One would have to say it was in the nature of a fatal mistake.”

  Olivia grabbed his hands again, her nails digging into his skin, and Ren was overwhelmed with the onus of responsibility. He couldn’t regret that night, taking her from Rafferty’s estate. Despite the man’s claims that he wouldn’t have hurt her, Ren had a hard time believing she would have emerged unscathed at his hands.

  James Rafferty wasn’t noted for his self-restraint. And thanks to her idiot of a fiancé, he had one-point-two million dollars worth of reasons not to treat her with kid gloves.

  That vivid imagination Rafferty accused him of having unfortunately could devise plenty of ways this man might harm a vulnerable woman who found herself completely at his mercy.

  Ren knew there was no sense dwelling on those things, on what might have happened if he hadn’t stumbled across her—especially when he was grimly aware that Olivia was probably in far worse danger now than she would have been if he had simply left her to Rafferty in the first place.

  Rafferty had nothing to gain now by keeping them alive and everything to lose.

  It was up to Ren to figure out a way to put the odds firmly back in their favor.

  His head ached like a mother but he unobtrusively turned his attention out the window to try to catch his bearings.

  On this isolated, sparsely populated coast of the peninsula, it was difficult to find landmarks in the dark, but he finally saw an old abandoned shack he recognized. They were only about two miles from Playa Hermosa, with Suerte del Mar just a few miles beyond that.

  They didn’t have much time. He knew once they rode through the gates of Rafferty’s estate—where his word was law and everybody was armed, from Rafferty himself to the lowliest maid—there was a damn good chance they would never make it back out.

  If they were going to escape, they would have to act soon.

  They would have to run for it again. She had been through so much and he knew she was physically nearing the end of her endurance. He could only pray she could wring a little more out of herself and that he had the physical fortitude to push himself, as well.

  He tried to figure out their options, factoring the topography and any elements that might come in handy for their escape.

  Suddenly he straightened with excitement as an idea came to him. It wouldn’t be easy, but right now he couldn’t come up with anything else. With the right combination of circumstances—and a hell of a lot of that suerte—they just might make it.

  “Did the sugar daddy pay up?” he asked, trying to keep Rafferty talking and distracted while he went to work on the restraint at his ankles and gestured for Olivia to do the same.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That woman I watched you kill. Was it worth it? Did the man with her pay his debt?”

  “I had a check within the hour.” He spoke with smug self-congratulation that Ren found obscene, considering the circumstances. “I regret I had to take such drastic measures but her sugar daddy, as you call him, left me no choice. For weeks, I warned him he would face dire consequences if he didn’t make some attempt to pay his debts. Tommy Bialetti owns a string of very lucrative car dealerships in the Midwest. He was more than capable of paying what he owed, he simply chose not to. After several more traditional debt collection measures failed, I had to show him an honorable man does not walk away from his obligations. I believe he got the message, don’t you?”

  “Do you really think you’ll get away with it? Killing her, killing us? That is what you plan, isn’t it?”

  “Like Tommy Bialetti, you’ve left me very little choice, I’m afraid. And no, I don’t anticipate any ramifications once I’ve dealt effectively with the two of you.”

  “What about my father?” Olivia asked.

  Ren quickly ascertained she had removed her ankle restraint and was drawing Rafferty’s attention to her so Ren could work more aggressively on his own.

  “He will want answers,” she went on, “and I’m afraid your convenient little botched-rescue scenario isn’t going to wash with a man like Wallace Lambert.”

  Rafferty’s jaw tightened. “I will simply have to make the evidence indisputable, won’t I?”

  “You’ll have to do better than that. My father won’t rest until he finds the truth about what happened to his cherished only child.”

  “Is that right? According to our mutual friend Mr. Swidell, your father considers you more in the nature of an inconvenience and was delighted to turn over responsibility of you to his trusted associate. A perpetual disappointment were Bradley’s words, I believe.”

  She stiffened, drawing in a harsh breath. Direct blow, Ren thought. He cursed her father, and he cursed Rafferty for rubbing salt in that particular wound. Most of all, he cursed Bradley Swidell for putting her in this predicament in the first place.

  They were nearing a bad section of the dirt road, a natural drainage channel where runoff from the hills on the inland side of the road cut across to wash down to the sea. It was muddy and slick and particularly treacherous here, with a steep drop-off to the Pacific.

  On either side of the road was thick, nearly impenetrable growth. Nearly impenetrable, but not completely, not for someone like him who knew this area well.

  As he expected, the Hummer had to slow down to negotiate the mud, though the driver was still clipping along at a moderate pace.

  When Rafferty’s attention was diverted by haranguing the driver to slow down further, Ren grabbed Olivia’s hand and gestured to the door. He made a swooping little gesture with his hand to indicate what he wanted them to do. In the darkness, he could see the whites of her eyes as they widened. She shook her head with a hard, brisk movement.

  He tugged her hand a little more insistently and was again overwhelmed with her trust in him when she let out a hard breath through her nose, then nodded tightly.

  He judged his spot just right, gripped her hand tightly i
n his and prepared to jump out into the unknown.

  * * *

  This was insane. He was insane.

  Crazy turtle man.

  Olivia had just an instant to wonder if she would rather die from jumping out of a moving vehicle or die at the hands of James Rafferty. Before she could puzzle that out, in a blink Ren shoved open the door and leaped out.

  The Hummer wasn’t going very fast in the mud, but jumping out of it still knocked the breath out of her.

  He didn’t even give her a second to scramble for it again before he half dragged, half carried her into the dark, murky forest.

  “Are you hurt?” Ren asked.

  She shook her head, working hard to suck oxygen into her lungs. Behind them, she could hear shouts and curses and the sounds of rapid pursuit. He had his fingers clamped hard around her wrist as if afraid to let her go. She had no choice but to try to keep up with the bat-out-of-hell pace he set for them.

  “Come on, babe. We won’t have much of a head start. All we’ve got is that minute or two element of surprise. Rafferty’s going to be right behind us. We’ve got to haul it here.”

  She couldn’t believe they were out of that vehicle—nor could she believe she was actually being forced to run for her life through the blasted jungle again.

  Ren seemed to be going in no discernible direction—cutting across a stream here, over a rock here. But since their way was relatively unobstructed by the thick growth, she assumed he must be following a vague trail.

  “What’s our plan here?” she asked, when she decided the immediate danger of hypoxia had passed.

  He looked around him as if gauging their whereabouts. Since she couldn’t see a darn thing through the darkness and heavy rain, she decided he either had eyes like a puma to see in the dark or he was suffering the lingering effects from his head injury.

  “You’re not going to like it,” he finally answered.

  “As long as it doesn’t involve a slow, torturous death at the hands of a psycho like James Rafferty, I’m game for anything.”

  Unbelievably, he stopped on the trail, his dark eyes glittering in the moonlight.

  He had to be crazy, she thought again.

  Rain was pouring down on both of them, it had to be 4:00 a.m. or later, armed, dangerous men were hot on their trail and he had a damn head injury, but Dr. Lorenzo Galvez didn’t seem to want to do anything but stand there grinning at her.

  He was crazy.

  And she was crazy in love with him.

  “You are one hell of a woman, Olivia Lambert.”

  She shook her head, though for the first time in her life she was beginning to believe it.

  “So what are we looking for?”

  “Nothing now. Here we are. Take off your dress.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “That sundress thingy. You’re going to have to take it off.”

  “I can’t! I’m not wearing anything underneath!”

  “Really?” That seemed to divert him momentarily from the crisis at hand, but he quickly jerked his attention back. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you’ll break your neck if you try to climb in that.”

  Sudden dread pumped through her. “C-climb where?”

  He pointed to the tree next to her. “It’s not nearly as far as the tree house. There’s a platform here, only about twenty or thirty feet up.”

  She saw the climbing rungs then and couldn’t believe he was going to make her do this again.

  Terror threatened to overwhelm her but even as she stood there in petrified indecision, she could see the beam of flashlights cutting through the trees as their pursuers approached.

  “Come on, Liv,” Ren said urgently. “We have to.”

  She couldn’t let Rafferty win. He would kill both of them and she would have no one to blame but herself. Instead of taking her dress all the way off, she quickly gathered up the hem and tied the edges into a hard knot just below her posterior to keep her legs free, drew in a deep breath for courage and grabbed hold of the bottom rung.

  The next few minutes were a hellish blur. She ignored the ache in her arms, the scrape of bark against her bare skin, the gut-churning fear. All she could focus on was finding the next rain-slicked rung in the darkness and hauling herself ever upward.

  Below, she could hear shouts and calls among Rafferty’s men but she didn’t dare risk looking down to see if they had seen the tree.

  At last, when her muscles were quivering and she was afraid she couldn’t go another foot, she reached a small wooden platform, perhaps five feet by seven feet. She pulled herself up and flopped to her back, her pulse pounding and her breathing ragged.

  Ren was right behind her. He joined her on the platform, his breathing just as labored. For several long moments, they lay without moving. Then he reached for her and held on tight.

  “Please don’t make me do that again,” she begged.

  “I won’t, baby. I promise.”

  He kissed her forehead and then tilted her chin up so he could slant his mouth over hers. His lips were salty and cool from the rain, and in his arms she felt safe for the first time since Rafferty walked into their bedroom back at the beach.

  “I’m sorry, Liv.” He whispered the words in her ear and she was reminded there were armed men looking for them thirty feet below. “I’m so sorry I called your father. I honestly thought it would be the best way to keep you safe. I never for a minute would have guessed he would go straight to Rafferty with our location.”

  She had forgotten the phone call that had set the events of the last hour in motion. She shook her head at the guilt in his voice. “You couldn’t have known. I never would have suspected it, either.”

  “If I hadn’t called your father, Rafferty would never have figured out where we were.”

  “And if I hadn’t been stupid and stubborn enough to go on my honeymoon by myself, I never would have been standing on that trail at Suerte del Mar.”

  She would have been safe in Fort Worth with no idea that somewhere else in the world lived a crazy turtle scientist with warm brown eyes and unshakable courage.

  If not for Ren, she would have spent the rest of her life trying to measure up to her father’s unreachable expectations, never guessing at the deep reservoir of strength inside her.

  She would have been miserable.

  “How’s your head?” she whispered.

  She felt his shrug and to her regret, he released her and sat up. “Still feels like I went a couple dozen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world. What did that ape hit me with?”

  “Tree branch. You went down hard.”

  “And took a trip to the Bahamas for a while, apparently.”

  “Why would you need to go anywhere else, even when you’re unconscious? We’re already in paradise, right?”

  He laughed softly at her dry tone and kissed her hard again, then moved around to explore their platform.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered. With every movement, their perch swayed dangerously.

  “We can’t stay here all night. You’re shivering.”

  “I’m afraid of heights, remember?”

  He grinned at her again. “Yet here you are anyway. Like I said, you’re one hell of a woman, Olivia. I would love to stay here and give you time to rest but sooner or later, Rafferty and his men will see the rungs.”

  “How did you find them in the darkness and know they led to a platform?”

  “I helped a buddy build it last summer in exchange for some work he did on my research digs.”

  “Is he a scientist too?”

  “Nope. Fisherman. He needed a quick way to get down to the beach and this is what we came up with.”

  She frowned. Before she could make sense of that, she heard voices below.

  “Boss, I found something,” a voice called out.

  “What are you waiting for?” Rafferty responded. “Go check it out.”

  Ren cursed. “Okay. We have to go.”

&
nbsp; “Go where?” she exclaimed. “We can’t climb back down now without meeting Rafferty’s goon headed up.”

  He grabbed her and hauled her to feet and led her to a corner of the platform that was missing the railing that surrounded the rest. For one crazy moment, she thought he meant for her to jump; then he handed her something.

  A zipline, she realized. It was the trolley to a zipline leading off the platform and heading down to the Pacific. Her heart started that wild staccato rhythm again.

  “Just hang on tight to this, okay? You’ll come out right on the beach, on soft sand. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s only about six hundred yards and it’s perfectly safe.”

  “I can’t do this, Ren. I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can! You can do anything. I can stall the guy coming up for a minute or two, but I can’t keep them all from climbing after us. Sooner or later we’re going to have to fly out of here. There are only two trolleys, so they can’t come after us, at least without taking the hard—and I mean hard—way down. It’s the only way, Olivia.”

  She knew he was right but that didn’t make what she had to do any easier. Still, she had made it this far. She could come up with enough adrenaline to push her through this, too.

  She grabbed hold of the handles. “Ready?” he whispered. She could hear Rafferty’s thug climbing ever closer.

  “Yes,” she lied, then swallowed a scream as the man she loved gave her a hard push into nothingness.

  After the first shock, she almost laughed at the sparkly sensation of flying through the air tethered only by a narrow steel-gauge zipline. It was exactly like being in his arms, she thought. Wild and exciting and incredible.

  Her borrowed sundress was flying out behind her and she could only be glad it was dark and no one could see her mooning the world. Still, the cheery yellow color of her dress must have attracted some attention below. After just thirty seconds or so, she heard yelling and cursing, followed instantly by several sharp pops.

  Rafferty was shooting at them, the bastard. She held her breath, her arms being pulled nearly out of their sockets, until she left the shooting behind her. A moment later, the beach rushed up to meet her. She landed with a hard oomph and only had time to roll out of the way before Ren hit the ground right behind her.