Down to the Wire

by Lyn Stone

  Joe glanced around at the eerie formations protruding out of the ground and hanging from the ceiling. “Sorry. Against Virginia law. Can’t deface anything. Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, code of the caver.”

  “I’ll pay the damn fines!” she cried in a desperate whisper.

  “Not necessary,” he assured her. “There are so many bends in the tunnel, the little bit of light we have won’t show through to the main cave.”

  “You’re sure?” Martine stood frozen, struggling anew to control her breathing. It wasn’t so bad in here now if she didn’t let herself think about having to crawl her way out again.

  “Martine?”

  She jumped, brushing back against a slender waist-high point that snapped under the pressure. The sound of it hitting the floor of the cave seemed to echo forever.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Joe told her. “Just try to relax for a minute. Don’t worry about that.”

  Yeah, getting slapped with a misdemeanor for defacing a cave was not exactly high on her worry list right now, Martine thought, catching back a sob that threatened to unleash hysteria if she let it go.

  Joe was rubbing her arms, doing his best to comfort her, but it wasn’t working very well. “Now comes the really fun part, I’m afraid,” he said.

  She was already shaking her head. “Not another crawl!”

  “Nope, not yet.”

  “Then what?” What in the world could be worse?

  “Body search,” he replied, looking a little apprehensive of her stunned reaction. “We’ve got to find that implant.”

  Joe had dearly wanted to get Martine naked, but certainly not in a situation like this. She obviously wasn’t that enthusiastic about it herself right now, though she was gamely unbuttoning her shirt. His gaze followed her fingers and he winced a little when he saw them tremble. “Wait.”

  She halted what she was doing and just looked at him, wide-eyed, awaiting further instructions.

  “Let’s check your neck and arms first. Maybe undressing won’t be necessary.” God help him, he didn’t need to see her without her clothes on. Not right now. He had enough problems without arousal sapping all the blood from his brain.

  When she offered one arm, he pushed up her sleeve and ran his fingertips over her skin, sliding them up to her shoulder beneath the fabric. Smooth as cream. He nodded and then began checking the other. “Any bumps you’ve noticed anywhere lately?” he asked, hoping for a reprieve. If not, he was in for a really uncomfortable hard-on he couldn’t do anything about.

  “Maybe a few bug bites, but I got those when we were hiking to Bogotá.” Her voice sounded breathless.

  He released her arm and slid his fingers along the sides of her neck, checked her nape, hairline, then massaged the scalp beneath that gloriously silky mane. Nothing. He sighed. “Shirt first, I guess.”

  She removed it. Joe held the flashlight close to her skin as he examined every visible inch, sliding her bra straps off her shoulders.

  Impatiently she yanked the thing down around her waist, freeing her breasts. Joe watched her hands slide carefully over the surface of her body, her fingertips pressing against her softness, checking for any blemish that might indicate her skin had been perforated.

  Breath stuck in his throat. He couldn’t tear his gaze away. Her breasts were beautiful, the dusky nipples erect. Due to the cold inside the cave? He sweated as if it were ninety degrees. Or was she as turned on as he was? Now was not the time.

  “My back?” She turned away and presented the smooth expanse of skin. Joe shut his eyes tight for a couple of seconds and flexed his fingers. Gingerly he placed his palms so that they spanned her rib cage and drew them inch by careful inch until he’d covered the area between her waist and underarms. The curve of her waist drove him crazy.

  Fanning his fingers out, he caressed her shoulder blades, the indentation of her spine and on up to the smooth curve of her neck and shoulders. She shivered.

  He groaned. “Lord, I wish we were doing this somewhere else,” he muttered.

  “And for some other reason,” she added in a small voice, reminding him that she was suffering from both fear for her life and claustrophobia, not arousal.

  “Pants next,” he told her with a new determination to keep this businesslike. “Put your shirt back on so you won’t freeze.”

  She tugged up her bra and put her arms through the straps, then pulled on her shirt. Without pausing, she pushed down her slacks, panties and all, so that they bunched around her ankles. Then she straightened.

  Joe swallowed hard, praying for strength while he examined the enticing roundness of the nicest ass he’d seen in years. Maybe ever. She jumped a little when his fingers strayed into dangerous territory.

  “I’ll do that,” she gasped. “Get the backs of my legs.”

  He crouched and did as he was told, beating back the wildest urge to kiss the backs of her knees. Though the light was too weak, he imagined he could see the faint veins there in that tender spot, the crease of thin skin, sensitive as hell. His lips tingled at the thought. He ached to taste her against his tongue.

  He deliberately avoided even thinking about what she was doing to her front while he was busy at her back.

  “All clear,” she told him, moving a step away and hurriedly dragging her pants up. “Now for my feet. But I’d know it if it was imbedded in one of my feet. Don’t you think?”

  Think? Who could think? He couldn’t even stand up. Instead he leaned back against the wet wall of the cave, still crouched, and patted one knee. “Balance against that stalagmite and put your foot up here.”

  She placed her hand against one of the sturdier-looking waist-high towers and did as she was told. Joe removed her shoe and cradled her bare foot in his hand, memorizing the shape of it right down to the length of her delicate toes. Reluctantly, he relinquished it and slid her shoe back on. “Other one,” he muttered, both glad and sorry as hell he was almost done.

  Near the back of her ankle was where he found it. A small, raised nodule the size of a mosquito bite. He cursed.

  Chapter 7

  “What? What is it?” she demanded. “You found something?”

  “Looks like it,” he growled. Now he was going to have to damage that beautiful skin of hers to get the transmitter out. He would have to hurt her. The thought of it made him sick, but it had to be done.

  “Well, that’s a relief!” she said with a protracted sigh. “That figures. It would be in the last place we looked, wouldn’t it? What can you use to remove it?”

  Joe placed her foot on the ground and got up. Without answering her, he pulled a clean T-shirt out of his sports bag and then found the Swiss Army knife he’d purchased at the airport gift shop when they’d bought his clothes.

  He rummaged in the corner of the pocket for the cigarette lighter. Though he’d never smoked, he did possess the primitive notion that a man should carry fire wherever he went. He couldn’t count the times it had been a life-saver.

  He tried never to be without a lighter and a pocket knife, two things that were very handy to have in some situations. Every time he flew, he had to ditch a knife and buy another when he got where he was going. Thank God he had one now even though he was cursing what he needed it for.

  “This will have to do.” He opened the smallest blade, flicked the lighter on and ran it over the blade to kill any bacteria. “Sit down and get as comfortable as you can. This is going to hurt a little.”

  She sat, looking so pale and vulnerable against the bare rock he could hardly stand it. He sat facing her and gently lifted her foot to rest in his lap, her leg braced between his knees.

  “Lean forward and hold the light close. Brace your arm on my knees,” he ordered, bracing himself, trying to see her foot as an inanimate object. “Be as still as you can.”

  “Just like removing a splinter, right?” she said with blatantly fake cheer. “Go for it, doc.”

  Joe made a careful incision, slicin
g open the layers of skin with the sharp point, regretting he had nothing to anesthetize the area. If only they’d still been in the jungle, he knew certain plants he could have used for that. Even the enzyme from certain frogs, he could have used topically to deaden the tissue.

  She hadn’t made a sound or jerked her foot the way he’d expected. Blood trickled out, the flow increasing the deeper he went. He mopped at the incision with a corner of the T-shirt he had wadded beneath her heel.

  Sweat beaded his face as he worked, separating the small wound, searching for the foreign object he was sure would be there. Nothing! The tissue beneath the skin looked totally undisturbed except for the incision he had made.

  “Damn!” he growled, grabbing the flashlight and holding it directly over the cut. Again he stanched the blood and searched, probing with the flat of the blade until he was sure. What he was looking for simply wasn’t there.

  “What? What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice higher pitched than usual.

  Joe sighed heavily and shook his head as he looked up and met her worried gaze. “Looks like it was just a mosquito bite.” But now it was a gaping little wound that was bleeding profusely and probably hurting like the devil.

  “Then where could the transmitter be?” she demanded in a small voice. “Where could he have put it?”

  Joe was already cutting a portion of the clean shirt to tie around her ankle as a bandage. “Looks like you might be able to pay me back for this little mistake. I guess it’s my turn.”

  Martine watched, knowing her attention was a little too avid, as Joe sat back on his heels and hastily ripped off his shirt. Muscles rippled and gleamed in the glow of the flashlight. He wore a grim, narrow-eyed expression and she knew hers probably matched it.

  “Must have slipped me a mickey one night and put it where I wouldn’t notice. Dammit, I thought I’d gained his trust.”

  “He didn’t trust anyone,” Martine said with a huff.

  “Start with the upper back,” he ordered. “That’s the most logical place to put the thing since it’s the hardest to reach and the place I’d be least likely to notice a blemish.” He turned as he spoke.

  Martine brushed her hands over his skin, feeling the warmth and dampness against her palms.

  “C’mon, you’ll never find it like that. Punch around,” he demanded. “Do it harder.”

  Do it harder. Yeah. When the lightest of touches only fueled the fire he’d started with his examination of her own body’s surface.

  She exhaled noisily and pressed her fingertips more firmly into the muscles, covering every inch, wondering how much more stirred up she would get if he had to remove those pants of his and search more intimate areas of his body. Probably too physically excited to remember why she was doing this. At least it was taking her mind off where they were.

  “Joe?” Just to the left of his right shoulder blade, she had felt something. She zeroed in on the spot, circling the small pea-sized lump. “This could be it.”

  “Dig it out,” he demanded. “Don’t be fussy about it. Think of cutting the eye out of a potato. And hurry up. Those batteries need to last long enough to get us out of here when you’re finished.”

  Oh, God. The light! Crawling out with no light. She didn’t want to think about that. She wouldn’t.

  Her hands shook when he handed her the knife and lighter and took the flashlight in his hand. He braced one palm against the wall of the cave and draped the hand holding the light over his shoulder so that it shone down on the area she was probing.

  Martine shook her head to clear it, took a deep breath and concentrated on the job at hand. She had to forget about the problem of getting out of here and do what she had to do. If they didn’t unload this transmitter, there was no way they’d make it to D.C. without Humberto catching them. They probably wouldn’t even make it out of the cave if the transmission wasn’t blocked by all this rock.

  No. She couldn’t think about all the rock bearing down on them from all sides. Not now.

  “Do it, Martine!” he demanded. She jumped and almost dropped the knife.

  To give herself a moment to focus, she wiped the knife on the knit shirt he had cut in pieces to make her bandage, and then clicked the lighter to sterilize the blade.

  Joe remained steady as the rock that supported him while she gingerly drew the sharp tip of the blade over the bump she had found. Steel struck something foreign. His blood obscured whatever it was, so she patted it away with the shirt and cut a bit deeper. And there it was.

  Hissing in sympathy, she pried the small cylinder free and caught it in her palm. “Got it.”

  “Give it to me,” he said, his voice gruff, impatient.

  She reached around him and he took it from her, moving the flashlight to look at what she had found. Martine quickly pressed a pad of fabric hard against the wound, though she could no longer see it. Her own incision pulsed like a bad bee sting. His must be hurting even worse.

  After a few seconds, he moved away from her and rose to his feet. “We’ll leave the thing here,” he said, speaking in a near whisper as he placed the transmitter on a small ledge in the cave wall. “Now we need to go.”

  He gave her the light and pulled on his shirt. When she moved toward the tunnel they’d come through, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Not that way. We’d probably run right into them.”

  She heard his weary sigh. Something was wrong. “Joe? What is it?”

  He squeezed her arm. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Like I have a choice? Yes, I do trust you.” Her heartbeat had kicked up to double speed again when she’d heard the apprehension in his voice.

  “Good, because I need you to do something you’re not going to like.” When she remained silent, he continued. “You’ll have to go first this time because I’ll have to lift you up.”

  She shivered. Quaked, really. Her nervous gaze scanned the shadows around the top half of the cave room. As if he read her thought, he directed the beam of light to an opening about six feet off the floor.

  “There,” he said. “It will be a longer corridor than the one we came in through and a little narrower in places. We’ll have to leave the bags here, so anything you can’t live without, get it if it will fit in your pockets. Your I.D. and money, maybe a comb.”

  She was already kneeling, digging out the things he’d listed. Fighting off her dread as best she could.

  “Put your sweater on. We might have to spend the night in the woods if they’ve disabled the Jeep. It’s not that chilly outside, but sleeves will protect your skin from the brush and bug bites.”

  As they moved toward the hole in the wall that he had pointed out, he kept talking steadily. Martine grasped at his every word, at his every implied reassurance that they would exit the caves and go on to other challenges she knew she could handle. But her heart was in her throat and it pounded mercilessly.

  When they reached the place where he would have to lift her up, he grasped her shoulders and lowered his mouth to hers. His mouth was warm against hers, his lips parted, his tongue searching out hers. She wanted to respond, meant to. But all she could manage was mere acceptance while trying hard to lose herself in the moment. Much too soon, he pulled away, taking all the warmth with him. All the comfort.

  The kiss scorched her inside and out, not dispelling her fear very much, but imbuing her with a new determination to get the hell out of this hole and see where a kiss like that could lead.

  She sighed after he released her and rested against him for a couple of seconds, trying her level best to soak up some of that confidence of his.

  “Up we go now,” he said, shaking her firmly but gently. “You can do it, Martine. One arm over the other, push with your feet. We’ll be climbing this time, so it’ll take more energy. Think of surfacing, seeing that moon.”

  “How…how deep are we? I need to know now.”

  He hesitated as if remembering, measuring in his mind. “About ninety, maybe a hundred feet
. Maybe not that far,” he said. “Piece of cake. You can do that.” His voice was gentle, coaxing. “Come on now, let’s get it over with, okay?”

  A hundred feet of rock? She caught back a moan, cleared her throat to cover it, and tried not to shiver uncontrollably when he turned her around and grasped her by her waist to lift her up. Then she remembered. “The flashlight!” she cried.

  “Once I get up there behind you, I’ll pass it to you, but we’ll have to leave it off unless we run into an obstruction and need to see—”

  She gasped, a horrible little sound of terror, then clamped a hand over her mouth.

  He surrounded her with his arms and held her tight. His lips pressed against the side of her neck, then whispered into her ear. “You can leave the light on. All the time, Martine. It will be okay. But you’ll need to crawl in the dark far enough that I can get in there behind you. Then I’ll give you the flashlight, all right? Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, a jerky movement that made her even dizzier than she had felt before. “Let…let’s go.”

  The hardest thing she’d ever done was crawl into that small dark place. Fear of being confined and crushed almost overwhelmed her the second Joe’s hands left her.

  Suddenly she couldn’t help scrambling forward just to make sure she could. Up and out, she huffed, hyperventilating, anything to get free, to feel open space around her, the night air, anything but all this…rock. Faster, the terror urged, go faster. Get out. Get out! Now!

  Dimly, over the frantic thundering of her heart, she heard Joe call to her. But she couldn’t listen, couldn’t slow down. Not even for the comfort of light to lead the way. Her mind worked in fits and starts, rapidly grabbing at anything else when it touched on the thought that she wouldn’t make it.

  Suddenly the passageway narrowed, her hand pushed through a hole smaller than a basketball. Light bled around her body, flickering on the solid rock in front of her, on the small jagged opening. Desperately, she pushed at the obstructing wall around the aperture.