Crossing the Line

by Candace Irvin

  The worst part was, this was all her fault.

  She’d sworn she would wait. That she would give Rick the time he needed to deal with his conscience and his fears.

  Well, she’d blown that resolution, hadn’t she?

  She gotten so used to turning to Rick these past few days, so used to leaning on him, she just assumed he’d be there whenever she needed him. The irony was, he had been there. But because of it, because of her, there was a very real chance that he might not be coming back.

  Ever.

  Eve froze as she heard the bathroom door swing wide. Hope surged in her heart, only to falter as she caught the soft rustle of fabric that followed, not at the side of the bed, but somewhere past the foot. Her hope died out altogether at the solid twin thumps that followed.

  Boots.

  Rick was leaving.

  She opened her eyes carefully, studying him as he pulled a not-so-fresh set of camouflage fatigues from his ruck and silently donned them. She slammed her lids back down as he turned to retrieve a sheet of paper and a pen from the small writing desk beside the door that led to the sitting room. The rip in her heart deepened with each soft scratch of the pen. He finally folded the sheet. She knew darn well they’d spent too much time together over the past week for him to ever believe she was asleep as he crossed the room.

  She kept her eyes sealed shut anyway.

  She thought it would be easier.

  It probably was—for him.

  She, however, would never forget the agony of lying motionless while the man she loved more than flying itself gently pressed his lips to her temple and whispered his regret before he turned, retrieved his boots and quietly slipped out of their room, locking the door firmly behind him.

  Just like that, the fantasy was gone.

  Like her mom. Like Carrie and her unborn baby.

  Like Turner and her crew chief.

  Like her single, blinding moment of joy in Rick’s arms.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the sheet of paper. Even as she reached out and lifted it, she knew what it said. The excuses it held. She didn’t doubt that Rick needed to meet with Ernesto, to plan for their flight. But the rest was a lie. She didn’t have an hour left before it was time to leave. The clock had already run out.

  Because Rick had chosen to give up.

  Again.

  “Am I to blame?”

  Rick tore his stare from the section of gold curls visible through what was left of the Black Hawk’s cockpit window thirty feet away. It took him a couple of seconds to process his friend’s question. He finally shook his head and turned to shove the evidence case containing the fingerprints he and Ernesto had just spent the past hour meticulously lifting from the Black Hawk’s wreckage into the belly of the waiting Huey. “No, Ernie. You didn’t cause any of this.”

  Ernesto reached inside the bird and snagged his thermos. He poured the steaming coffee into his waiting cup. “You are sure? You would not try to spare me, given—” He waved the cup toward the wreckage. “—this.”

  He understood his friend’s concern, but it was unfounded. The information Ernesto had provided concerning Anna Shale might have triggered what had happened between him and Eve, but it wasn’t the cause.

  He was.

  He and his lack of self-control.

  Rick had never claimed to be a Boy Scout. Though he hadn’t made a practice of it, he’d had sex without a condom before. He knew the temptation and he knew the risks. He just thought he could handle them. He wasn’t supposed to have entered Eve at all. Even when passion changed his mind for him, he still thought he could chance a few searing moments inside her body without a damned inner tube dulling the sensations. He’d been so certain he could pull out in time.

  He was wrong.

  He’d felt himself losing the battle from the moment he’d entered Eve. But when she’d clamped down on him in the throes of her release? That was the precise moment he’d lost the war.

  “You love her.”

  Rick glanced up and took the steaming mug of coffee from Ernesto’s outstretched hand. “Thanks.” He left the statement lying there. They both knew it was true. Unfortunately, he also knew it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

  If anything, it complicated matters.

  His friend waited as he searched for the words.

  Rick took a sip of the coffee when the words refused to come and searched again. He leaned forward, delaying the inevitable as long as he possibly could as he sought out those gold curls and tracked them until they disappeared deeper into the wreckage. He sat down inside the Huey and sighed.

  “I screwed up, Ernie. Bad.”

  His buddy’s brow rose, but he remained silent.

  He was grateful. This was hard enough. He stared into his cup. “She could be pregnant.” He didn’t need to see that brow to know that this time it shot all the way to his hairline.

  “Your lady is…worried for her career?”

  Christ, he hadn’t even thought of that.

  Just went to show what a selfish bastard he really was.

  “Yes—no. Probably.” He sighed. “Hell, I don’t know for sure. Neither does she. I won’t know for a month or more, if she’d even tell me after what I did this morning. But I do know I can’t afford to hang around until she finds out.”

  “Ahhh.”

  That single sound grated through him. In Ernesto’s own annoying way, he’d said more than most shrinks could say in a lifetime of couch sessions. He waited for the rest.

  “We have come to the real problem, yes?” Ernesto set his coffee cup on the Huey’s floor and pushed it aside.

  Not good.

  Bloody hell. He should have known better than to confide in Ernesto Torres. Then again, maybe he had. It wasn’t as if he’d been doing so well on his own. Rick sucked in his breath and just did it. He hit the highlights in two minutes. Turner, Carrie and the baby. By the time he finished, he felt like a guest on some cheesy self-help talk show. He must have sounded like one too, because Ernesto’s low whistle filled the Huey.

  “You should have come to me sooner, Ricardo. I may not have been able to help you, but you could have helped me.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged. “You could have taken my place in the confessional. At least you would have done the penance justice.”

  What the hell?

  Rick stiffened—until it hit him. He forced himself to relax, to lean against the side of the Huey.

  Ernesto nodded sagely. “Take off the sackcloth, my friend. You will find your burdens easier to bear without it. Especially when they are not truly yours.”

  Rick frowned. “That’s what Eve said.”

  “She is wise.”

  She was, but that wasn’t the point. Rick took a sip from his mug and scowled into it. “She’s wrong. So are you.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, dammit.”

  His buddy tossed off another one of those damned Latin shrugs. “If you say so.”

  “Hell, why not come out and just call me a liar?”

  “Because you are not. But you are set in your ways. You have been for many years. Far too many, I think.” He reached down and retrieved his coffee. “Tell me, if your positions were reversed and you had sworn your oath to your country and then died in much the same manner, leaving your sergeant behind, would you wish him to deny his desires and his future, simply because you had chosen to go back on your word?”

  He refused to answer that one.

  He couldn’t.

  Despite his silence, Ernesto nodded. “I thought not. Just as I also suspect that beyond the obvious, your turmoil has little to do with what happened here seven weeks ago. I bid you to look farther back, into your past. Tell me what you see. No, tell yourself. And then, go to your lady and tell her.” With that, Ernesto stood up. He took a sip from his coffee, then tossed the rest into the grass. “And now, while you think on what I have said, I shall go and see what remains to be done so that we can
leave.” He stared off into the trees for a moment, then shook his head. “The sooner we leave this place of death, the better, I think. For all of us.”

  Rick took the mug from Ernesto’s hand and set it beside the thermos, watching his buddy as he snagged his rifle and slung it on his shoulder before strolling off. For a man who knew someone was out to kill him, not to mention that his father was dying, his step was remarkably light.

  His father.

  Not Ernesto’s, his own.

  His past.

  Rick glanced up in time to see his friend join Eve before they both disappeared behind the far side of the wreckage. He didn’t call Ernesto back. He’d already figured out what the man had been trying to tell him. What Eve had tried to tell him the day before when he’d broken off their love-making not far from this very spot.

  He was running again.

  He was using Turner the way he’d used the jungle and the Army. Once again, he was trying to escape.

  The fear, the uncertainty.

  The twin shaft of pain that came right along with love.

  He’d long since figured out that if he wanted one, he’d have to accept the potential for the other. Did he? Could he? In his heart he knew Eve would never set out to hurt him deliberately. But his mother hadn’t set out to destroy his father either, had she?

  Yet she had.

  Ernesto was right. This wasn’t about Turner and Carrie and a baby that would never be. It was about him and it was about Eve—about the baby that deep down, he wanted to have with her. If not now, then someday. Someday soon. The question was, would he be able to put the past in its place and forge a future with Eve?

  He didn’t know.

  But he knew he had to try.

  The breeze picked up as Rick dumped his coffee out into the clearing beside Ernesto’s. A split second later, the hair on the back of his neck snapped to attention. Whatever vibes his friend had picked up on, he felt them too.

  Strange.

  He hadn’t noticed them before.

  But then, he’d been preoccupied. Ernesto was right. It was time to gather the remains that he and Eve had been forced to leave behind the first time—and get the hell out of here. Maybe after Carrie and Turner and Eve’s crew chief had been laid to rest, he and Eve would be ready to move on. If he was lucky and she forgave him for walking out on her this morning, it would be together.

  He shoved the mug beside the thermos and grabbed his rifle as he stood. Ten paces across the clearing, the wind shifted and he froze. Sniffed. That breeze was definitely off.

  The jungle was off.

  Once again, the telltale hairs on his neck snapped to attention. This time, they refused to relax. Especially when he realized the birds and insects on the far side of the clearing had gone mute. He inhaled again, deeply. There was something in the air all right, and it wasn’t good. The lingering hint of smoke, melted steel and cooked fuel had masked it earlier. He placed it now.

  Sweat. Exertion.

  Ernesto’s, Eve’s…and someone else’s.

  Bloody hell. Not someone.

  Many.

  He hit the tree line in three seconds flat, battling the urge to scream Eve’s name across the clearing like some raw, day-old recruit as the horror in his mind raced against the sudden terror wracking his heart. He tightened his grip on his rifle and continued his advance, pushing past more than a decade of training until he was drawing on pure instinct alone. Seconds ticked away.

  Minutes.

  Goddamn it, how many did he have?

  How many did Eve have?

  He refused to believe it was already too late.

  And then, finally, mercifully, he was there.

  Rick scanned the wreckage quickly, noting anything and everything that was in or out of place. Eve’s ruck was still resting alongside the four-foot section of rotor blade that had been sheared off during the crash. The cutting torch was leaning against the ruck, as if she’d set it down a moment before. Her rifle was propped up against the dangling cockpit door. Ernesto’s lay in the scorched grass two feet away. He forced his stare to double back, scanning even more slowly as he prayed. His heart slammed into his throat as he was finally forced to acknowledge the truth.

  Eve was gone.

  So was Ernesto. It was as if they’d simply vanished.

  Impossible!

  He scanned the wreckage once more, narrowing his field of vision during this pass, widening his criteria, not knowing what the hell he was searching for until he found it.

  And then he did.

  Three feet away from the ruck. A tiny spot of red.

  Blood?

  His heart slammed back up his throat. This time, he couldn’t knock it down. He choked on the blinding panic. The enforced inertia. The need to move. Examine.

  Search.

  But if he moved before he heard nature’s all clear, he could be risking his one chance at tracking Eve undetected—

  There.

  The second the insects and birds resumed their song, he was off like a surface-to-air missile. Rick snagged the red and kept moving, not opening his hand until he was covered by the shattered steel of the chopper. He stared at the meticulously whittled, ceremoniously stained sliver of wood in his palm, the gleaming needle at the end.

  A traditional Córdoban war dart.

  He knew exactly who owned the blowgun the wooden dart had been fired from. What he didn’t know was who the dart had struck, much less if the tip had been dipped in poison designed to paralyze—or to kill.

  Chapter 14

  S he was dreaming.

  She had to be.

  But this dream was unlike any other she’d ever had. For one thing, the world was upside down—and it was moving. For another, it smelled. Scratch that, it stunk. Like the time Carrie’s first Greek geek left his socks and running shoes in her dorm-room closet their freshman year—for the entire Spring Break. Eve peeled her lids open. Trees, vines, ferns, all upside down. She might be woozy, but she wasn’t dreaming. Someone was carrying her…and it wasn’t Rick. “What the devil’s going on?”

  And where was Rick?

  “¡Idiota! I told you to gag her.”

  “She was asleep.”

  “Well she is awake now. Do it! If you had taken all three as you were ordered to, we would be done with this.”

  All three?

  Then Rick was safe?

  Eve prayed even as she blinked her eyes against the fog still swirling through her brain. She strained to stare around the massive, sweaty back beneath her cheek—to find that voice. The one up ahead. She knew that voice.

  “Colonel Arista?”

  She should have kept her mouth shut, because the next thing she knew, someone shut it for her—with a solid smack from the butt of a rifle. Her face smashed into that filthy shirt before she had a chance to discover who’d wielded it.

  A moment later, the world went black.

  When Eve came to, she was lying on her side with a grimy gag stuffed half-way down her throat. She could only hope the bastard who’d carried her hadn’t used his sock. She could hear men arguing some distance away. Unfortunately, she had no idea what they were arguing about. They were speaking Spanish.

  She tested the gag.

  Loose.

  Thank God.

  She clamped down on her bile and slowly pushed the flat of her tongue against the fabric, nudging the filthy rag far enough out of her mouth so that she could hook it over her bottom lip. She could always pull it into place if she needed to. Between the midday heat, her bound arms, and the gag now riding her upper chin, she still couldn’t breathe comfortably, but at least she wasn’t eating some thug’s sweat.

  So where was she?

  Where was Rick?

  Please God, don’t let him be—

  No. She refused to think it. Rick was fine.

  Somewhere.

  She had to believe that. Just as she had to stay alive until he found her.

  Grass tickled her face and throat
.

  She lifted her head slightly and eased her throbbing jaw to the right. She couldn’t see far. Eight, maybe ten feet. She definitely appeared to be in a clearing.

  But which one?

  She lowered her head and rested her jaw against the ground. Her hands were drawn so tightly behind her back she swore her shoulder sockets were about to rip loose. She thought about shifting, trying to get more comfortable, but she didn’t. She’d learned her lesson the first time. She curled her fingers up instead, attempting to gauge the strength and material of whatever was binding her wrists.

  Her blunt nails scratched skin.

  “Eve?”

  She froze. Waited a beat. Prayed. She finally returned the muffled whisper. “Ernesto?”

  “Sí.”

  Relief seared through her. “Where’s Rick?”

  “Tracking us, I hope.”

  Oh, God. So did she.

  She closed her eyes against the other sight. The one still tormenting her no matter how many times she’d ordered it from her head. Dammit, Rick was fine. Probably headed this way, just as Ernesto said.

  But what if he wasn’t?

  “Good, you have woken.”

  She groaned as Arista grabbed her bound wrists and hauled her up and over Ernesto’s prone body before she could re-seat the gag. The rag dropped to her neck as Arista did his best to dislocate her arms by dragging her several feet backwards before he shoved her up against the side of a chopper.

  Chopper?

  She ignored the colonel’s swarthy frown, twisting her head to the right before he could stop her. He rewarded her with a stinging slap—directly over the bruise on her jaw. She swallowed her groan easily. Hell, she’d survived worse beatings by the time she was five.

  For the first time, she was actually grateful.

  The skills she’d learned then just might keep her from revealing how truly terrified she was now. Nor did she need to draw on her army POW training to know that she had nothing to gain if Arista discovered he’d gotten to her—and everything to lose. She swung her head to the left, toward the dormant tail rotor. “Nice Huey. Does it fly?”