Spy Hard (11 page)

“I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You got away from me, didn’t you? Not many people can say that, either, believe me.”

His declaration made her feel better.

She hung on to his hand and followed, lifting her feet clear of the ground with each step so she wouldn’t trip over anything. Although it felt like an eternity, she was pretty sure half an hour hadn’t yet passed when he called for their next break.

“I can walk,” she protested immediately. “Walking is the recommended exercise for pregnant women.” She scratched her neck, her skin getting itchy now that the sun was higher in the sky and the mud was drying.

“We’re close to a creek. We should take advantage of it,” he told her.

She couldn’t hear water. Wasn’t losing one sense supposed to sharpen the others? They walked a little more. Then she did hear a faint trickling at last that grew progressively louder as they got nearer.

He stopped. “Sit here.”

She felt her way around, finding what she thought was a large, flat rock. She sat, and he let her hand go. She hadn’t been prepared for it. She immediately felt lost.

“I’m going to check the water,” he told her, and kept talking. “Nice little creek. Maybe six feet wide. Water is brisk. Wish there were some edible fruits around, but I don’t see any.”

He spoke to Mochi next, told the kid to look for food.

She focused on his voice and tried not to think of all the possible dangers surrounding her that she couldn’t see, like poisonous plants, bugs and snakes.

He came back in two minutes. “I’d like to wash you off.”

She would have given anything to feel cold water on her skin. “Okay.”

He tugged on her bootlaces. “I’m going to take you in up to your knees. All you have to do is hang on to me.”

She was more than ready to wash off the grime and sweat, except— “What about piranhas?” She hesitated.

“Not in a quick little creek like this.”

“Parasites?” She didn’t worry about only herself, but had to worry about her baby as well. She would put up with any amount of discomfort rather than risk something bad happening to her unborn son.

“Fast-moving water is usually safe. It’s the stagnant pools you have to worry about.” He worked her boots and socks off, then took her hand again.

She followed him timidly, especially when they reached some smallish rocks, which were wet and slippery.

Then he stopped at last when the water reached just below her knees. “Stand still. I’ll take care of everything. Your center of balance is off with that belly. I don’t want you to bend down, lose balance and pitch headfirst into the current. Okay?”

When he put it that way, how could she protest? “Did you just call me fat?” she joked to ease her awareness.
The man was about to bathe her!

“More like curvaceous, in a blessed way.”

“Very smooth.”

He gave a flat laugh.

She liked the sound of it. His voice lost most of its South American flavor and sounded a lot more American now, the Texas twang more noticeable. And she realized that, before, he’d probably talked like the men in camp just to fit in. But now there was no reason for pretense.

He removed the cloth from her eyes first. She tried to open them, but couldn’t. Disappointment washed over her.

“How long am I going to be like this?”

“A couple of hours, at least. Maybe days.”

Oh, God.
But she appreciated that he gave her the truth.

He washed her face first, careful with her swollen eyes, his fingers barely touching her, the cold water feeling like heaven as it ran down her skin.

Then he washed her hands, her arms, her neck—probably bringing water in his palms to pour over her. She couldn’t see, only feel. His gentle care felt comforting and intimate at the same time. All sorts of sensations skittered along her skin every time his fingers brushed against her.

*

T
HE MATERIAL OF
her light slacks and shirt clung to her skin, emphasizing her curves. She might as well have been naked. His body was as hard as it had ever been, but he ignored that and kept bathing her, knowing the cold water had to feel good on her burning stings.

Mochi played around in the water a short distance up the creek, ignoring what must have seemed like a strange ritual to him. Then he grew bored with that and ran ashore, searched through the undergrowth with a stick, careful to keep the puppy on a short leash.

A strange little dog, that one. Chico refused to accept his disability and darted around with enviable agility, despite his missing front leg, as in love with Mochi as Mochi was with him.

But the dog and the kid didn’t hold Jase’s attention for long, not when Melanie stood right in front of him.

He could have kept up playing in the water with her for a good long time. But he wanted her to have plenty of time to sit and rest before they had to get going again. So, after another couple of minutes, he took her hand and led her out of the water, sat her down on the flat stone at the creek’s edge, in the sunshine.

He tugged her clothes away from her skin here and there for modesty. She would have done that if she could see. “Let’s stay here a little while and give your clothes a chance to dry.”

Not that a person could ever completely dry off in the jungle.

Mochi ran over with some kind of a mushroom, smiling wildly.
“Señor?”
He pointed to his own mouth, as if asking permission to eat it.

He’d found it, he could have it. That was only fair. For all Jase knew the mushroom was a local delicacy. He nodded. He didn’t worry about the thing being poisonous. Mochi knew the edible plants in the area better than Jase and Melanie put together. They would have to rely on the kid for advice, and not the other way around.

The boy shoved the mushroom into his mouth and chewed it hard, but didn’t swallow. He spit the gooey mess into one hand, then stepped up to Melanie and smeared the slop over her eyes before Jase could stop him.

She sniffed the air. “What is it?”

You don’t want to know.
“Medicine.”

“Thank you,” she said politely.

Mochi went on to treat the rest of her stings, looking mightily pleased.

*

M
ELANIE UNWRAPPED THE
cloth from her eyes at the next rest stop. It needed to be wetted again. She tried to open her eyelids, as she’d done every time the cloth came off. And this time she succeeded. They didn’t open fully, but they did open a slit. Even that sliver of bright light seemed blinding. She closed her eyes again as relief swept through her.

Then she tried again, more careful this time, holding her hand above her eyes to shade them.

“Hey.” Jase smiled at her. She was sitting on a log and he stood just a few feet from her.

That smile was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen in her life, even if his face was unshaven and his hair a mess, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. None of that detracted from his ruggedly masculine good looks.

He seemed different, and she wasn’t sure if she thought so because she was appreciating seeing again, or because now she knew that he wasn’t just one of Pedro’s thugs, or because she was beginning to like him. They’d been through a thing or two, at this point. Some tenuous links of trust had built between them.

“Can you see me?”

“Yes.” She could have jumped up and thrown herself into his arms, she was so happy. But she was well aware what she must have looked like—both body and face swollen out of proportion. So she pulled back instead and closed her eyes to give them a moment of rest from the light.

Then stole a glance again.

This time, her gaze dipped below his face and she registered the rest of his body. He had his shirt off, and soon she could see why. He’d been in the process of pulling a leech off his abdomen. The flat plane of his belly, those ridges of muscle… Hot need punched through her suddenly and caught her off guard, need she hadn’t felt since Julio had died.

A completely out-of-place reaction.

How embarrassing.

Dappled sunlight glinted off Jase’s tanned skin. A drop of moisture from the branches above landed on his shoulder and ran down, following the contours of his muscles. He looked like a jungle god, while she…

Melanie pushed to her feet and walked away from him before he could notice her ogling him and she embarrassed herself completely.

“I’ll make a fire and we’ll eat here,” he called after her. He had his shirt back on by the time she turned around. Then he repeated his words in Spanish for Mochi’s sake, a little louder so as to be heard over Chico, who had started barking at the bushes.

Mochi simply smiled in response, his standard answer to pretty much everything. Not that the boy seemed fond of the camp food that kept coming from Jase’s backpack. He preferred fruit he climbed to get himself, and fat white grubs he dug from under the bark of fallen, decomposing trees. He sucked those down as fast as American kids did candy. He didn’t seem to understand why Melanie turned down his offer to share each time, but he didn’t seem offended. As far as he was concerned, that meant more for him and the puppy.

Jase moved around their small campsite to collect wood. She went to help him, but before she could pick up the first fallen branch, he froze and lifted a hand in warning, his other hand going for his weapon.

Stopping half-bent like that sent a bolt of pain shooting across her lower back. She straightened slowly and stepped back to the edge of the clearing, sank down on a large rock as she listened for any suspicious noise and scanned the forest around them.

Then she did catch some leaves moving in a patch of bushes, in the direction when Jase was staring. She held her breath, not knowing what to expect. The picture of an attacking jaguar flashed in her mind, but when the branches suddenly parted, Alejandro stepped out of his green hiding place.

The man held two guns, one aimed at Jase, the other aimed at her. A terrifying grin spread on his face.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Alejandro’s eyes narrowed as he gave Melanie a double-take, his face twisting into a grimace.

Not the sort of comment a girl could take as a compliment. She had the sudden urge to cover her face, but the moment didn’t allow for vanity. She scanned the ground, her gaze coming to rest on the machete, about equal distance between her and Jase. He only had eyes for Alejandro, the two men squaring off, weapons aimed.

“You yellow-bellied bastard.” The man spit on the ground. “You ran from the fight.”

“So did you,” Jase pointed out with a shrug. “It’s between the bosses. I came here to make a decent living without being harassed by the
policía
every day like I was in the city. Why should we have to die just because those two bosses decided to squabble, eh, amigo? We go someplace else,” he said, immediately reverting to camp talk. “How about that? You come with us. Plenty of bosses in the jungle. Plenty of work.”

“I ain’t no traitor.” Alejandro spat again. “I’m here to bring Don Pedro’s woman back to him.” He glanced at her again, but couldn’t quite do it without wincing.

How had he caught up to them so fast? Well, okay, she definitely slowed Jase down. Quite a bit. But still. This meant that Pedro must have noticed that she’d gone missing shortly after Jase had broken them out. And Roberto had probably remembered that Jase had been up in her room before. Maybe they’d put two and two together.

The man kicked at Chico—who barked at his feet, having somehow escaped his leash—but missed. Mochi ran over to scoop the dog up and carried it to a safe distance.

“No gringo bastard will outsmart me,” Alejandro growled at Jase. Then he gestured with the gun he held on Melanie. “Up. Get over here. You, too,” he told the boy.

She stayed where she sat. “I can’t. I’m too exhausted. Everything hurts.” God’s honest truth.

The man scowled at her. “Try harder. I’m here to save you from this
hombre.
”

For a second she didn’t know what he was talking about, then realized that he thought Jase had kidnapped her. Don Pedro had probably made that claim to save face. He would never admit that she’d run away from him. But if Alejandro took her back, Pedro would punish her in private, about that she had no doubt.

The last thing she wanted was to be saved from Jase, but she kept her mouth shut. Maybe she could use the fact that Alejandro thought she was here under duress to her advantage.

She made a show of pushing herself up. Groaned. She rubbed the side of her belly. “I don’t think this is good for the baby.” She sank back down. “I can’t do it. Sorry. I need time to rest. He’s been pushing me too hard.”

Instead of going to Alejandro as ordered, Mochi moved closer to Melanie.

The man’s scowl darkened. He hesitated, probably weighing his options. He had to know that if anything happened to the baby while he brought Melanie back to camp, Pedro would blame him.

“We’ll wait,” he said after a long, tension-filled second.

He stepped closer to Jase, but still held the second gun on her. Either he wasn’t 100 percent sure about Pedro’s claims of her kidnapping, or he figured that if Jase cared enough about her to kidnap her, he might be kept in check with threats to her life.

The weapon in his right hand was aimed straight between Jase’s eyes. “Drop your gun right now.”

Jase didn’t move.

She hadn’t thought he would. He wouldn’t allow himself to be disarmed that easily. She reached out and grabbed Mochi’s arm, pulled the boy and the puppy closer, ready to roll behind the large rock she was sitting on if bullets started flying.

Alejandro’s finger twitched on the trigger.

Jase dropped and rolled in the blink of an eye, ducking behind a tree.

She slid behind the rock at the same time, pulling Mochi and the puppy with her. The baby kicked inside her, protesting the sudden movement. She kept her head down as she patted her belly.
Everything’s going to be okay,
she told herself, and tried to keep her breathing steady, tried not to give way to panic.

“You better be ready to die,” Alejandro shouted to Jase from behind a fallen log, the words followed by some choice obscenities. “Don Pedro doesn’t forgive. And I don’t either. You stole that kid from me.”