by Marton, Dana
As if to underscore that, he said, “Stay the hell away from me.”
All right, so he didn’t want to be friends again.
Chapter 7
SHE’D CHANGED. GLENN didn’t like it.
She’d cut her hair. Why would she do that? She’d had lovely hair, silky soft waves tumbling down to her butt. For school and the engineering lab she’d always worn it in a thick braid so it wouldn’t get in the way. But at night with him . . . He’d loved the sight of all that dark hair spread out on the pillow. He’d loved her. Not that it’d mattered to her.
Why would she show up in his life now to mess him up all over again? His mind had a hard time catching up with the fact that she was here.
Hot fury pumped through Glenn’s veins. After surviving the torture, the fever, the illegal loggers, the trip through the jungle, he’d been less than ten miles from freedom . . . His jaw clenched so tightly, his teeth ground against each other.
Miranda.
She sat in the back of the truck opposite him. Why now? After all these years . . .
He was mad as hell, yet couldn’t take his eyes off her, comparing every little detail to his memories, trying to reconcile this new Miranda with the old. Her body was different. More compact, with more muscle. She’d moved with a controlled strength that showed her army training. Wearing a simple shirt with khaki cargo pants, she had the whole Lara Croft thing going, her head held high, unbowed in captivity.
He had a flashback to their video-gaming days and he almost, almost, softened toward her a little.
“Break. Out.” She carefully mouthed the two words at him.
She was not going to tell him what to do. He glared and mouthed back, “You’re not in charge.” He was going to break out because he wanted to break out. He wasn’t going back to Guri for more torture. Fuck the commander.
But before he had time to come up with a plan, Miranda Pain-in-the-Ass Soto parted her knees and dropped her cuffed, fisted hands between her legs where the soldiers wouldn’t see them, then unfolded three fingers on her right hand while holding his gaze. Three. She closed one finger. Two. Closed another one. One. Only her index finger was extended.
A countdown. He had one second to figure out what they were doing. Then she gave a final nod and attacked with lightning speed.
She slammed her elbow into the face of the soldier next to her, hard enough to break his nose and knock him off his seat, then she threw herself on the second man as he shouted, “Alto! Alto!”
She yelled at Glenn. “Hurry!”
He was fighting, doing his level best to mirror what she did. He didn’t have her skills, but he did have some extra weight to throw into his punches.
By the time he immobilized his first guy, she already had her cuffed hands wrapped around the last man’s throat, choking consciousness out of him as the truck rattled down the road.
The lightning attack lasted less than a minute.
Jesus. The sudden, violent rush of effort stole the air from Glenn’s lungs. He kneeled in the bottom of the truck, breathing hard, staring at her. All four soldiers were incapacitated, lying partially on top of each other.
He’d gotten one; she’d gotten three, her face flushed from the fight.
His old video-gaming nerd self would have had a boner by now. The more mature Glenn was . . . All right, turned on, dammit, as he watched her, her chest heaving while she tried to catch her breath next to him.
“Let’s grab what we can.” She was moving again already, reaching into the shirt pocket of one of the knocked-out soldiers. She pulled out a small key.
How did she know the guy had it? Apparently, she’d paid more attention than Glenn had.
“Hands,” she ordered. “Hurry up.”
He held out his wrists and was free the next second, then he took the key and unlocked her cuffs in turn, hating the red circles on her pale skin.
She paid no attention to her injury. She grabbed a pistol and shoved it into the waistband of her pants for easy access, then took the water canteens off two of the men and clipped them onto her belt. Glenn did the same with the other two.
She grabbed a knife. So did he. They both grabbed hats. Then as he patted down the last guy, he found a lighter and half a pack of cigarettes. He pocketed those. He had a feeling they were heading back to the forest where fire might come in handy.
The jungle was torturous in its own way, but Glenn preferred it to the commander.
When Miranda picked up a rifle, so did he. Then she moved to the tailgate and made room for him next to her, in front of the closed canvas flaps. “On three again,” she said. “One, two, three.”
She pushed the canvas aside on the last word and opened fire on the military Jeep that followed the truck for extra security. The Jeep swerved, then slowed before the driver straightened it, his passengers returning fire.
At the noise of the gunfight, the driver of the transport truck slammed on the breaks, realizing something had gone terribly wrong in the back. The sudden lurch nearly tossed Miranda and Glenn off the truck. Glenn careened to correct, but Miranda shoved him.
“Jump!” She pushed him straight into the path of the oncoming bullets.
He lost his rifle as he tumbled to the ground, had no time to pick it up. Above him, Miranda kept shooting non-stop, kept the soldiers pinned down in the Jeep long enough for Glenn to make a mad dash toward the forest.
He ran like hell, certain about only two things: they were going to die, and Miranda Soto was raving mad.
He didn’t look back until he was in cover behind a tree, then he pulled his pistol and shot blindly at whoever was still moving. Only Roberto was alive in the Jeep, his head pulled down behind the dashboard as he shot at them.
The two men from the cab of the transport truck were jumping to the ground with their rifles to enter the fray. Glenn fired to hold them back, trying to provide Miranda with some cover. His heart beat hard enough to break through his ribcage. He had zero gun skills. Didn’t she know that?!
She showed plenty of skill as she dropped to the ground at last, shooting backwards as she dashed toward him. “Go! Go! Go!”
He didn’t need any further encouragement. He ran like hell.
She caught up with him pretty fast, tucked her gun away, shouting over the sound of gunfire. “They’re shooting blind. They can’t see us. Keep going.”
He put every ounce of energy he had into moving forward, not that the going was easy. More like an obstacle course: bushes and trees, rocks and exposed roots in their way. One wrong step, and a fall could mean being skewered by a broken bamboo shaft or a branch.
Then an endless patch of thorny bushes slowed them further yet.
“We have to reach the border,” he gasped as he fought his way through the heavy undergrowth. “Boa Vista is just on the other side. We can get transport from there to Rio.”
“The border will be under lockdown before we can reach it.”
“Then we cut through the jungle. Go the long way around.”
“This is the start of the rainy season. It’s rained every day since I’ve been here. Soon the rain will start and won’t stop for weeks. We can’t walk over a hundred miles through heavy jungle without a machete. Not through mudslides and flooding rivers.”
He grunted. She always thought she had a better solution to everything. As company president, he wasn’t used to his decisions being questioned at every turn. Even more annoying was the fact that she was right. Not that he was ready to concede.
He bent a thick, thorny branch out of the way. “We’d be safer in Brazil.” She couldn’t argue with that.
Of course, she did. “We can’t cross the border through the jungle in the rainy season. And if we take the road, we’ll be caught before we get anywhere near freedom. And even if we reach the Brazilian border, they aren’t going to let us in without pap
ers. The border guards will be notified to watch out for criminal fugitives. Instead of asylum, chances are we’d be returned to Roberto.”
Glenn pushed forward, then stopped when he realized he had the knife he’d taken off one of the soldiers. He pulled it from his belt and began hacking away the vines and branches. A machete would have been better, but he was making more progress than when he’d been tearing at the vegetation with his bare hands.
But as soon as Miranda realized what he was doing, she put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t. You’re going to leave a trail a blind man could follow.”
Oh, here we go, Miss Know-It-All Smarty-Pants. He’d forgotten that his roommate in college used to call her Hermione.
The fact that she was right was just an extra layer of irk frosting on Glenn’s layer cake of pissed-off. He was sick and tired of her being right. It was particularly annoying that part of him was impressed by how fast she could think under pressure.
“Are you suggesting that we sit out the rainy season in the jungle?” He went back to using his bare hands to bend branches out of the way.
“First, let’s get away from the men behind us. When we can do it safely, we’ll sneak back into the city and hitch a ride on a plane.”
He glanced back. “There’s an airport here?” Why hadn’t he thought of that? Probably because they were in the middle of nowhere. “How big is Santa Elena?” He’d pictured it as a small town in the middle of the jungle.
“Almost thirty thousand people.”
Leave it to her to know exactly.
“I pay attention to detail when I work a case,” she said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have found you.”
“In which case, I wouldn’t have been caught,” he pointed out, then felt like a jerk when the expression on her face changed. She looked as if he’d just kicked her.
He turned away from her and refocused on the undergrowth he needed to fight through, hoping he wasn’t touching anything poisonous. “How do we walk into the city without getting caught?” Everyone would be looking for them now.
She didn’t respond immediately. Good to know she didn’t have an instant response to every question.
But only a minute or two passed before she said, “Through the slums. People who live there are not the type to call the cops, even if they see some raggedy foreigners. And we’re not going to run into a patrolling officer. The cops don’t go into the slums unless there’s a coordinated takedown going on and they have considerable backup.”
“How are you an expert on slums?” He kept pushing forward.
“Roberto told me some things.”
“I bet he did.”
“Listen.”
He turned.
She held up a hand to bid him to silence.
He strained his ears. “What is it?” he whispered after a long moment.
“Nothing. I haven’t heard anyone behind us for a while. I think we lost them.”
He listened again. She was right. Nothing but the birds and the bugs. His shoulders relaxed. “I know where the bad section of the city is. I walked through it this morning. Let’s circle around and find our way into Santa Elena through the slums then.” He paused. “Even if we cut through the slums without trouble, the airport will be guarded.”
“We’ll figure out something.” She scanned him from head to toe before her gaze returned to his. “Are you all right?”
“You?” She had a bloody scratch on her face, probably from a branch. He wanted to wipe the dried drops, but didn’t reach out.
She held his gaze. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” He had the crazy impulse to push her up against the nearest tree and kiss her.
He put his carnal urges down to dehydration. They were definitely not going there. Ever again.
He moved past her, spotted an animal trail that headed in the right general direction. “Let’s try this.”
She fell in step behind him. “Maybe it’ll take us to a road that goes into town.”
But their plan didn’t go as smoothly as that. They circled back to the road, but every time they tried to leave the woods, they saw guardsmen. The few roads that led into town were riddled with checkpoints. The National Guard had the outskirts of the city covered.
“We could spend the night in the woods,” Glenn suggested as they pulled behind a stand of bamboo, well out of sight. To keep walking after dark was simply too dangerous. They wouldn’t see where they were stepping. “Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow.”
“You think you can handle a night in the jungle?”
His manly pride bristled, but he couldn’t fault her for the question. He’d been a total nerd the last time they’d seen each other, barely a step above the pocket-protector geeks. He’d changed. He wasn’t the same clueless kid who’d fallen for the first pretty girl who liked engineering, and then let her rip his heart out and hack it into pieces. “I can handle anything you can handle.”
A couple of seconds ticked by before she nodded. “It’ll be dark in an hour. Let’s find a campsite.”
They began moving again, away from the road and deeper into the forest, scanning their surroundings, struggling for at least half an hour before he spotted a small clearing at last.
“There.” He pointed. “Trees close enough to each other to build a platform to sleep on.”
“And not much undergrowth for snakes to hide in,” she added as she assessed the spot.
“Plenty of bushes all around, so people can’t see the light of our fire unless they are right on top of us,” he finished listing the advantages.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You’ve done this before?”
“How did you think I made it this far from Guri?” He’d survived more than one night alone in the woods, on the run, sick.
“How did you?”
He pulled out his knife. “Stowed away with illegal loggers, then walked through the jungle.” When she looked skeptical, he bit back a smile. Miranda Soto had a lot to learn about him.
To further prove that he could take care of himself without her help, he moved over to the nearest stand of bamboo that would make the bulk of their bedding and began hacking away at the sturdy stalks. She joined to help.
Okay, so maybe she was faster with the knife than he was. She moved with the assurance of a woman who knew how to use a weapon. He couldn’t help thinking, once again, how much she’d changed all around. But the biggest difference was in her eyes.
The softness he remembered was gone. As was the easy smile from her full lips. Result of the years she’d spent in the army?
If she hadn’t left him, maybe he could have prevented whatever stole that carefree girl right out of her. But even as he thought that, he shook his head. Hell, she didn’t look like she needed a protector. She could probably take him if she really put her mind to it.
She proved her strength by carrying an armload of bamboo over to their selected campsite. He cut some more, then gathered it up and followed her over, sat on a rock as he watched her cut the bamboo stalks to the right size with her knife.
She eyed their clothing. “We’re going to need rope.”
The idea of letting her cut her shirt up into strips held a certain appeal. A crystal-clear image of her naked body flashed into his mind, sending an unexpected rush of heat to his groin. No. He was a full-grown man now, a man who’d seen a thing or two in the world, not a hormone-driven college kid. He was not going to fall under her spell again.
“I’ll make some rope.” He’d learned a lot during the days he was recuperating from his foot infection in that indigenous village under the witchdoctor’s tutelage.
He drew a bamboo stalk over his knee and pressed his knife into the end, splitting the shaft lengthwise. Then he took one half and cut it into quarters. Next, he took a quarter and cut that in half, then halved that, unt
il he had a strip of bamboo maybe half an inch thick.
When he had the entire bamboo stalk cut down to narrow strips, he picked them up and walked over to the nearest tree, looped the handful of strips over the tree trunk and pulled back and forth, alternating his hands in a sawing motion to break down the fiber a little, making the strands less stiff. The whole process required maybe fifteen minutes.
By then, she had the rest of the bamboo stalks set up, so they tied everything together and created a sleeping platform three feet or so off the ground, keeping sound building principles in mind.
She tested the structure. “More lateral support here?”
“I was thinking of braces at a forty-five-degree angle.”
She laughed.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Two engineers constructing a stick bed.”
He grinned at her. “We’re probably overthinking it.”
“You think?”
So they settled for the simple design, something that would serve for a night, but wouldn’t necessarily stand the test of time and reflect modern building codes. When they were done, they tested it once again, together, sitting on opposite ends. The platform held their combined weight without trouble.
“Not a design I’d patent, but it’ll do,” he said as an orange bird burst into song above them, a pleasant, trilling sound. He lay back to listen. His battered body appreciated being vertical.
The heat of the day abated to a bearable level. The jungle was a green cocoon around them.
Suddenly, he felt oddly relaxed and happy, something that had eluded him in his cushy life back home lately. Strange that he would find his zen now, in the middle of the woods with barely the basic necessities, facing all kinds of danger.
The bird gifted them with one last trill, then flew away, an orange feather floating down and landing on Glenn’s chin.
He blew it off. “You know how to make a roof?”
“And walls, and bridges, and irrigation systems. Given the proper materials. Just not from palm leaves.” She looked up at the darkening sky. “Of course, it’ll probably rain overnight.”