by Sara Craven
“Some of this is conjecture, isn’t it?”
“Only some of it. And it’s the president’s conjecture, not ours. He believes that if Forbes gets into power he’ll immediately start the slow process of appointing Cabal puppets into key judicial, military, intelligence and economic positions. The long-term goal will be to effect the kind of legislative and constitutional change that will enshrine Cabal power for decades to come.” Hunter threw another log onto the fire. “And he’ll start by naming a new vice president to replace himself.”
Sarah watched the flames gobble at the fresh piece of wood, and the hunger to know Hunter more intimately burned deeper in her. She studied his stark profile in the flickering light. He might be a mercenary, he might kill people with his bare hands, he might exist in the shadows of civilization, but he helped people sleep at night—whole populations who would probably never find out what he’d done for them.
“Hunter,” she said softly. “How did you—how did the FDS get involved in all this?”
“The president’s physician, Dr. Ruger, was at a U.N. conference in Brussels two weeks ago. So was my colleague Jacques Sauvage. Sauvage handles FDS operations and was at the conference to lobby for an international standardized code of conduct for private military companies. Ruger managed to get to him in the washroom. He used the opportunity to covertly enlist us on behalf of President Elliot.” Hunter paused. “It’s a close to impossible mission, Sarah. But we took the job. Someone had to.”
“The president personally hired you guys?”
“Everything else has failed him, and we were the one opportunity that presented itself. Besides, he knows our work, our reputation. We’ve contracted to the States before through a covert arm of the CIA.”
It dawned on her suddenly. “Hunter, even if we do find the antidote to the disease in that container, it’s not going to stop them…is it?”
“No. It won’t. But if we can identify the pathogen within the next two weeks and find an antidote, we could save many lives. But most importantly, we hope to find some kind of biological fingerprint in the pathogen that will lead us to the lab that created it, and in turn that could lead us to whoever is pulling the Cabal strings.”
The fire was dwindling, the jungle night creeping closer. She rubbed her arms. “So this is why they want to kill me,” she said softly.
“Sarah, they don’t know that you know any of this. If they thought you did, and if they knew that I’d been engaged to try and help the president, they’d launch the attack immediately. You’re just a loose end right now.”
He placed his hand on her knee. “And that’s another reason you had to shoot that man. If they’d captured and tortured you—and they would have tortured you—you’d have been forced to disclose your connection to the FDS and by extension, the president. They would have launched the attack. You saved millions of lives by taking that one.”
She bit her lip, trying not to see the dead man’s eyes in the yellow of the flames, trying to understand what she’d gotten herself into. “But they’d prefer to avoid launching the attack before Forbes got into power, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes. However, they will risk it rather than lose their last shot at getting their man into the Oval Office.” Hunter took her hand. It was warm, comforting. “You did the right thing, Sarah. And…and I’m proud of you.”
Her heart kicked at his words. “I used to think that taking a life was never justified. Now…now I just don’t know.” She didn’t know anything anymore. There was no more black-and-white, just shades of gray.
He didn’t answer. And they sat in silence, watching the flames die. Something screeched in the forest and she moved a little closer to Hunter. He put his arm around her. “We should get in the hammock.”
“How do you do it, Hunter? How do you do this kind of thing over and over again, and still live with yourself?”
He stared at the coals for a while. “I’m really not that different from you, Sarah. At heart I think you and I are pretty much motivated by the same thing.”
“How so?”
“We both want to help people who can’t help themselves. And in places like this, people like you—nurses and doctors—need people like me so that you can continue to do your jobs. Whether we like or not, we’re two halves of an uneasy partnership.”
He drew her closer. “Besides, who else is going to come to the aid of a lone American nurse who calls 9-1-1 from the heart of the jungle?”
That made her smile. “I wasn’t thinking.”
He gave her a squeeze. “Come on, it’s bedtime.”
01:03 Alpha. Blacklands.
Wednesday, September 24
Hunter could feel every soft curve of Sarah’s body against his as gravity forced them together in the center of the hammock. It was strong enough for two, but made for one, with a cover over the top and mosquito netting around the sides. He lay there, zipped into the tiny cocoon with her, breathing the same air as her, fingering his gun and listening to the sounds of the jungle and the bump of bugs against the fabric. He was almost afraid to breathe too deeply. Each inhalation seemed to push yet another part of his body against hers, and he didn’t want her to know that the contact had made him as hard as a rock.
Sarah moaned softly in her sleep and stirred, the movement pushing her breasts against his chest. Heat spurted to his groin. It didn’t help that he was already stiff and aching with need. Hunter closed his eyes. This was pure torture. So much for maintaining distance, he thought wryly. Because right at this minute he was being squeezed as close to this woman physically as he was emotionally. He wondered just what it would take to finally tip him completely over the edge of control.
The hours ticked by interminably as he listened to her breathe, his own rhythm falling in time with hers. As dawn crept into the sky, he began to wonder what it might be like to sleep with her every night, wake up next to her each morning. Make sweet, hot love…. He caught his breath sharply. Not because of the pulsing ache in his belly, but because he’d thought of tomorrows. With her. How in hell had that one sneaked up on him? Hunter McBride couldn’t offer a woman like Sarah Burdett anything, let alone the promise of a new day. And that’s why he couldn’t touch her.
She moaned softly and moved again. Hunter groaned. This mission was testing him in ways he’d never dreamed possible.
Chapter 12
08:00 Alpha. Blacklands.
Wednesday, September 24
They’d been on the move for two hours when a rumbling roar resonated through the forest, so loud it froze every molecule in Sarah’s body.
Hunter’s hand shot up. “Don’t move!” he growled.
A crash of breaking brush sounded to her left. Sarah’s heart leaped to her throat. Hunter made a quick motion, as if he were patting a basketball. “Down!”
She dropped to the ground, heart crashing against her chest wall. He crouched next to her. “If he comes at us,” Hunter said in a hushed voice, “don’t look in his eyes. Look at the earth.”
“If what comes?”
“Gorilla.”
She stared very hard at the forest floor, trying to make her body still.
They waited. A small cloud of bugs flitted about her face, but she didn’t dare flinch. Her muscles began to ache. But there was nothing, no more sound. The beast was somewhere just out sight, watching them, waiting. She could sense it.
Hunter reached for a bush, pulled down a thin branch and began to strip the fat, shiny leaves off with his hand, crushing them in his palm, making a crackling noise.
“Do it,” he whispered. “Make as if you’re grazing. The sounds are familiar to him. If he hasn’t seen us yet, this will alert him, but at least we won’t take him by surprise.”
Sarah swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. She didn’t dare look up from the ground. She groped for the bush, pulled at the leaves, scrunched them furiously in her fingers.
“Over there,” Hunter whispered. “Look.”
Sarah
raised her eyes slowly. Just beyond the bushes, partially obscured by leaves and brush, was the biggest wild beast she had ever seen uncaged. He was a mass of muscle on all fours, facing away from them. A shock of silver hair coated his impossibly broad back. The gorilla slowly turned his leathery face toward them, and gazed right into her eyes. Sarah’s heart clean stopped. Everything about the animal screamed danger, but beneath his thick domed brow, his round eyes were liquid brown, gentle, full of intelligent curiosity. Looking into the eyes of the silverback, she felt as if she were staring right into the living heart of the jungle, a place as old as time. Her heart pumped back to life at the strange primal connection. A sense of awe overcame her, and for a moment she forgot her fear.
But all of a sudden, the silverback lurched up onto his back legs, pounded his chest and barreled at them with a gut-rumbling roar. Sarah gasped, jumped back, falling onto her butt. The gorilla stopped just short of them, reared up and beat his chest again.
Hunter’s hand clamped on her arm. “Don’t move!” he murmured. “Stop looking into his eyes. He sees it as a challenge.”
Sarah glared at her toes as hard as she could, heart palpitating, palms damp. She could barely breathe. Slowly, the big old male silverback turned, gave them a last glance over his massive shoulder and swaggered off into the forest. All she could hear as the sound of crunching undergrowth died down was the blood rushing in her ears.
She let out a soft and shaky whoosh of air.
“Are you all right?”
She turned to Hunter. “That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” she whispered. “Was he alone?”
Hunter’s brows raised. An odd look crossed his face as he studied hers. “You’re not afraid?”
She laughed. “Petrified.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “But in a different way.”
It wasn’t a question, it was an observation. And with a strange jolt, she realized he was right. Something had happened to her. She’d been pushed beyond panic, beyond blinding fear, and what was coursing through her blood now was raw survival instinct. It was empowering, not debilitating. It made her acutely aware of everything around her. Sarah realized with mild shock that she felt strangely centered and in control. She’d been stripped of everything and driven to rock bottom. She’d been forced to kill a man, and everything else paled in significance.
He nodded slightly, as if confirming to himself he was right. Then he smiled, a warm light twinkling in his eyes. “I think he was.”
She jerked her mind back. “What?”
“Alone. Wait here, stay low.”
Hunter edged forward, pushing leaves aside with his machete, creeping through the foliage like a wild animal himself. He paused, listened, waited. Moved forward again, waited. Then he flicked his hand up, calling her to his side.
She crept over to him. “Has he gone?”
“Looks like it.” He placed his palm in the center of a wide and squashed-flat circle of leaves and twigs. “This was his nest.”
“They make nests?”
“The old male does. He builds his nest on the ground. His family, wives, children—they build platforms to sleep on up in the trees. He protects them from below.” Hunter glanced up, scanning branches up in the canopy. “I don’t see any platforms up there. This old guy’s probably too old for family, that part of his life over…” Hunter’s voice faded as he squinted up into the trees, his hand resting on the flattened twigs.
Sarah studied his rugged profile. He seemed momentarily distant, as if he were seeing something beyond the branches, beyond the forest. As if he was trying to feel what the old gorilla might have been feeling.
“Did his troop just leave him?”
“He would’ve been challenged and beaten by a younger male for them to have done that. Survival of the fittest. The younger genes keep the troop strong.” Hunter scanned the trees again as if searching for the proud old male.
A strange sense of sadness filled her heart. “Will he die, then…alone?”
Hunter’s eyes cut to hers. “Yes. Alone.” He stood abruptly, turned away from her and ran his fingers through the straggly leaves of a plant that grew almost as high as her shoulders. “This is what he was here for. See the red fruits at the base of the stems? That’s wild ginger. Gorillas love it. Look.” He pointed out fruits that had been peeled, sucked dry and cast aside. She hadn’t noticed them. She hadn’t even known to look.
“And what’s that?” She pointed to broken clumps of dried, dark brown mud near the bases of several trees.
He raised a brow, studied her face, and a smile ghosted his lips. “Termite nests. Gorillas smash them open and eat the grubs. Good protein.” With the muzzle of his AK he poked at a lost little grub wriggling on the ground. A wicked playfulness lit his eyes. “Hungry?”
She pulled a face. “Not that hungry.”
He laughed, held out his hand and helped her to her feet, drawing her close to his chest as he did. Sarah stilled at the look in his eyes.
For a second, silence hung thick, and a hot current pulsed between them, an invisible but tangible connection. The light in his eyes faded, darkening to something more feral. Sarah swallowed. She found herself looking at his mouth, becoming conscious of her own. She wasn’t afraid he might kiss her, she wanted him to. A hot thrill of anticipation zinged through her, and for a fleeting second she thought she might act, might just lean up to him and put her lips to his. Because she could see he wanted her.
But he looked abruptly away. “We should get moving.”
Disappointment spread through her, but the residual hum of desire remained, making her cheeks warm as she followed him into the forest.
As they moved deeper into primary jungle the air grew cooler, richer, more full of oxygen, the scent somehow greener. Sarah felt as if they were working their way slowly back in time. The tree trunks here were massive in size and spaced farther apart, giving the area a cathedral-like quality. She stopped, looked up in wonder. Branches knitted in a dizzying architectural puzzle all the way up to a translucent dome of green that quivered high in a wind she couldn’t feel down on the forest floor. These trees had to be hundreds upon hundreds of years old. How could she have been blind to all this incredible beauty around her?
She felt Hunter watching her. Cautiously, she lowered her eyes and met his. That elemental wariness was back in them, a dark, predatory hunger. Heat rippled through her. She blinked, a little self-conscious under the intensity of his gaze and her instant physical reaction to it. “This place…it’s incredibly beautiful,” she said, her voice husky.
“Yes.” He didn’t break his gaze. “Very beautiful.”
Warmth flushed her face. She glanced away, cleared her throat. “It’s…so natural, yet it reminds me of the architecture of an ancient cathedral I visited in Barcelona. There’s a similar ethereal quality to the light, the space. I don’t really know how to put it into words…it has a timeless, almost sacred feel.” She looked up at him. “That cathedral was probably built around the time some of these trees started to grow.”
“When were you in Spain?”
She tensed at the blunt delivery of his question. “Six years ago…for my honeymoon.”
His eyes narrowed. He adjusted the rifle at his side. Was the mercenary actually showing possessiveness? Was he uncomfortable thinking about her and Josh together? A ridiculous warmth blossomed through her at the notion. It made her feel good…about herself.
And then she realized what had just happened. She’d thought about the beauty of that cathedral, not about Josh. Not the honeymoon. Not her failed marriage. Not all the dark feelings that always came when she remembered anything associated with her ex-husband.
Excitement bubbled in her heart and she couldn’t contain it. “Hunter, this the first time I’ve been able to think back to a time I shared with Josh without actually thinking about him.”
Hunter’s expression didn’t change. His eyes remained dark, watchful.
>
She didn’t care. She blew out a breath she felt as if she’d been holding for years. She almost wanted to cry with spontaneous relief. “It’s…I feel free.” She laughed lightly, tears pricking her eyes. “Here I am, on the run in the jungle, being chased by—by militia, a group bent on dominating the world, poisonous bugs, snakes, gorillas and…and all I feel is exhilarated, free of my ex, can you believe it? How weird is that! Am I going totally insane?”
A smile crept along Hunter’s mouth. A dimple deepened in one cheek and creases fanned out around his eyes. “Not totally.”
She’d made the hard-ass soldier smile, really smile. She’d made him reveal a dimple she hadn’t seen before. He was truly happy for her. Damn, it felt good. She grinned. His eyes sparkled in response, edging her over, and she did it. She gave a little spin, her arms held wide.
Hunter threw back his head and laughed—a laugh that vibrated right through her, filled her with happiness. She spun again, round and round under the trees, her arms out, her hair lifting around her. Monkeys cackled in response. She found it funny that even primates in the trees saw the humor in it all. She spun faster and the world spun with her, and then suddenly without her. The ground dipped one way, the branches the other in a kaleidoscopic blur of green and brown and yellow…. She teetered, tripped, flailed and fell. Hunter caught her, and her body slapped hard against his chest.
She held still, the world racing wildly around her, the sound of blood again rushing in her ears.
Then everything grew hushed, even the monkeys. It was as if the whole jungle was holding its breath. She slid her eyes slowly up to his, and swallowed. The mirth, all signs of happiness in his eyes, were gone, replaced instead by dark, blatant hunger and the raw stamp of arousal etched along the lines of his mouth.
She could feel the thud of his heart, hard and fast, against her breasts. She could smell his maleness, feel the dampness on his arms, his hair rough against her skin. Heat seeped into her belly. The world narrowed around her.