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  He seemed excited and impressed at this strange place in the middle of the jungle. He didn’t seem scared of any of it, just curious, conversing with the puppy rapidly in his native language.

  “Can you hunt around here before we head out?” Melanie asked.

  “I’ll try. But keep in mind that there was a fairly big fight here recently. Then the rescue chopper coming and going. Fire, too, at one point. The smell of charred wood is still in the air. Game might avoid the surrounding area for a couple of days.”

  She looked grim at that assessment.

  And he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The last thing he’d wanted to do was discourage her.

  “How about this? You go and get some rest in one of the bedrooms, in a real bed, and I’ll go look around. If there’s game anywhere nearby, I’ll bring it back. That’s a promise.”

  She brightened. “They have real beds here?”

  “You bet.”

  She slid off the chair. Hesitated. “Can I do anything to help?”

  He couldn’t do anything but smile. “You’re doing good. With the independence thing. Here you are, eight months pregnant and offering to follow me into the jungle to look for game. That’s pretty self-reliant.”

  Her eyes went wide with unspoken pleasure, the corners of her mouth turning up. “You think?”

  “You bet. You’re so independent you barely even set off my protective instincts anymore.”

  “Really?”

  He looked at her and fought the urge to pick her up and hand-carry her out of the jungle. “Okay, I might still feel a little protective. But that’s my fault, not yours,” he assured her. Then he turned to Mochi and told him in Spanish to stay and guard the señora, a task that seemed to please the boy to no end.

  Jase left the old pistol with them. Not because he thought Melanie would need it, but to increase her sense of security. The building smelled like smoke and humans. That should keep the wild animals at bay. She and the boy should be perfectly safe. Yet Jase found himself reluctant to leave them as he walked away.

  And, not for the first time, he had a feeling that his protective feelings toward her might not come from his usual must-save-all complex, that there was something else between them, some sort of a link he couldn’t name. He shook off that weird notion and headed off into the forest for some bush meat.

  * * *

  “IT’S A SNAKE, isn’t it?” Melanie looked at the chunks of white meat that had been carefully cleaned and chopped and could have easily passed for chicken, except she knew better.

  Jase fired up the propane stove, one of the very few things that had miraculously escaped damage. He’d brought the meat neatly wrapped in a banana leaf, but dumped it into a proper skillet now that they’d found one in all this mess. “Constrictors are perfectly safe to eat. And they’re tasty.” He gave her a patent

  used-car-salesman smile, smarmy and fake. “Honestly.”

  And made her laugh, which, under the circumstances, was a miracle.

  She stirred the meat while he hunted for spices in the ransacked cabinets, came back with a jar of steak sauce and sprinkled some into the skillet.

  She drew a deep breath. Her stomach wasn’t as queasy as it had been in her first trimester, but the pregnancy hormones did still affect it. She wasn’t sure how she was going to handle this. “I’ve never had snake before.”

  He gave her a patient look. “Of course you have. What do you think bush meat is?”

  The women made bush meat stew a lot. The menu at camp contained little else, in fact, except when they had someone coming in for a meeting from a bigger town nearby and they brought a side of beef, but that only happened once a month maybe, or less.

  “Bush meat is deer,” she said with confidence. “Rabbits at the very worst.”

  “Bush meat is whatever the men find in the bush. Monkeys, snakes, frogs, anything with meat on it.”

  She pressed a hand against her stomach, which gave a sudden roll. “Stop. Please.” She drew a deep breath to steady herself, but that might have been a mistake.

  As the meat began to fry, its aroma filled the small galley kitchen. But no, okay, she had to admit, the contents of the skillet just smelled like frying meat. She steeled her spine. Fine. A stupid chunk of meat wasn’t going to defeat her. She needed the nutrition to get out of here and take her baby back home safely.

  She would do whatever it took. “Okay.”

  He smiled at her. “See that? You’re tougher than you think.”

  She could get used to him telling her that, she decided as he served her a plate. He handed another one to Mochi, who fell on the meat and gobbled it up. Chico didn’t even chew, just inhaled everything.

  She drew another deep breath. If they could do it, so could she.

  “Don’t look at it,” Jase advised, sitting across the table, which he’d cleaned off and propped up to make up for the broken leg. “Look into my eyes and think of something else.”

  She put the first piece into her mouth and held his gaze. He gave her an encouraging smile. “So what’s your favorite food?”

  “South American cuisine. Got used to it in Rio. Julio was a fantastic cook. He really did well with that restaurant,” she said as she chewed carefully. If only everything else in their life had gone as smoothly.

  He’d been handsome and hot-blooded, gave her 100 percent of his attention. She’d soaked that right up. But once they were married he had that project in the bag, so to speak, and moved on to the next: opening a second restaurant. And gave his full attention to that.

  He’d also become a lot more authoritative. He’d even demanded that she give up her work. Not that she had ruled that out, once the baby was born, or even had time to think about it at that point. She would just have liked to be the one to make that decision.

  “I’m a steak guy, myself,” Jase was telling her.

  She refocused on him. “Protein is supposed to be healthy.” It sure built muscles, of which he had plenty. He could have been some beef company’s spokesperson.

  He shrugged. “Most of the time I’m off on some mission, existing on MREs.”

  “MR what?”

  “Meal, Ready-to-Eat. Government-issued military food. Freeze-dried, nasty stuff you have to reconstitute with water before you can eat. Doesn’t have much of a taste.”

  He glanced over at Mochi and Chico. They were both already done, eyeing the leftovers in the skillet. Jase divided it between them.

  He hadn’t touched his food yet; he was too busy distracting her.

  It worked. Before she knew it, she cleared her plate, and she felt comfortably full. She needed that protein, both for herself and for William.

  The baby seemed to appreciate it, too, because he started kicking. Mochi stared at her belly where he could see the movement even through her clothes. He laughed and ran to put his hand on the spot, nodding like crazy.

  She glanced up at Jase, amused, but caught such a look of longing in his gaze that it made her look away.

  He finished his meal while she went to the bathroom—some sort of a composting toilet—then they gathered up their belongings and started out in the direction of the rebuilt Jesuit mission, looking for an animal trail that went in that direction, to make things easier.

  “Are you sure the scientists won’t be coming back?” She’d counted on this place. And even if it was missing some walls and most of the roof, it still provided more protection than the jungle.

  “Very unlikely. But we’ll make it to the mission. It’s not that much farther.”

  He was right, of course, so she followed him. They found a faint trail after a while and settled into a comfortable but productive pace.

  They stopped regularly, and were looking for a spot to spend the night when they reached an area that had been logged in the past couple of years. With no tall trees to block the sun, the undergrowth grew especially dense, visibility reduced to no more than a couple of feet.

  Heat and humidity pressed
down on them. She felt as if she was surrounded by green walls in a small space, an uncomfortable, claustrophobic sensation. You couldn’t see any distance, had no idea what waited for you beyond the next few steps.

  Mochi prattled on about something to the dog.

  She didn’t understand a single word, but she liked looking at him. He was comfortable in the jungle, and the way he handled the trek, as if it was no big deal, helped her to relax a little, helped her to remember that countless people lived here and survived the forest every single day.

  Jase would signal the boy to be quiet every once in a while, and he’d fall silent for a few minutes, but then he would start up the chatter again, breaking out in laughter now and then. Presumably he’d said something funny. He and the puppy were having a grand old time together, taking walking lessons with the peg leg at every stop, talking up a storm in between.

  Then Jase slowed at the head of the line. He lifted his hand again for silence. Even as Mochi quieted, Chico started barking at the bushes. Mochi quickly held the dog’s muzzle shut, shooting an apologetic look to Jase.

  Too late.

  A metallic click came from their right.

  She held her breath. Maybe it wasn’t a gun. Could be she heard wrong, and nothing more had happened than a branch snapping under the weight of a snake.

  Mochi held the dog tighter. She pulled the kid closer to her and held her arms protectively around him.

  Then Jase signaled to them to get down and aimed his gun in the direction of the sound at the same time. But another click came from behind them, and another from ahead, then another and another.

  Definitely guns being cocked.

  They were surrounded by an unseen enemy.

  Chapter Nine

  Jase waited, every muscle in his body drawn tight.

  “Put the gun down,” someone shouted at him in Spanish.

  Shooting had been out of the question from the start, anyway. No way would he start a gunfight with Melanie and Mochi in the middle of it. This was exactly why the average commando soldier didn’t take his wife and kid into battle with him, he thought. Not that Melanie and Mochi belonged to him, but still.

  If he’d been alone, he would have had half a dozen options how to play this. In the current situation… He gritted his teeth as frustration swept through him.

  As he lowered his weapon the men stepped forward, one after the other, their machine guns trained on him. He counted a dozen uniformed guys, a small army unit.

  “Who are you?” Their leader yanked Jase’s weapon from him.

  Since he was dressed in camouflage, holding a machine gun better than theirs, Jase couldn’t exactly claim to be a tourist.

  He reached out a hand to Melanie, who’d crouched when he’d told her to get down, and pulled her up. Squatting like that with the extra weight couldn’t have been easy on her knees. None of this could be easy on her, in fact, but she was holding up admirably.

  Instead of hiding behind her, Mochi stepped in front of her in a defensive move. The kid was really something.

  Jase flashed him an approving look, then returned his attention to the men. He had a feeling the army was in this part of the jungle on either Don Pedro’s request or Cristobal’s. His fate would depend on guessing the right man. Don Pedro was the bigger boss. He was more likely to have the money to buy off a general.

  “I’m taking this woman to Don Pedro,” he told the man.

  “You’re in luck, amigo.” The man gave a dark, gap-toothed grin. “That’s exactly where we’re going. You’ll come with us.”

  “Gracias, but we’d just slow you down. You better go without us if you’re in a hurry.”

  “Always have time for friends of the Don.”

  An offer of protection was a big thing in the jungle. The man would have become suspicious if they showed reluctance to accept help. Jase tried to look happy.

  He ran through all the options in his head, all the ways this could play out. He distinctly hated some of the possible endings.

  But they should be safe for the night, at least, he thought. Then they would have to break away at one point the next day, escape the men and head to the mission.

  They could never outrun the soldiers if they were pursued. Which meant that he’d have to get his weapon back and kill the dozen men. Without Melanie and Mochi getting hurt in the process. He tallied up his ammunition. Plenty. He had made sure to prepare for the trip before he’d left the camp.

  “What’s with the kid?” The man gave Mochi a speculative look.

  “Bought him off some loggers we came across. Needed a guide,” Jase said, then nodded toward Melanie. “We were about to stop. She needs rest. She’s the Don’s sister-in-law.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  No choice now but to lie all the way through. “They’re expecting trouble at camp. I was supposed to take her to safety.” He named the nearest town he knew of in the direction from which they were coming. “But my jeep busted an axle on the logging road we were taking. I have to walk her back to the Don. Figured we better take a shortcut. Still, damn slow going.” He made sure to sound put-out and annoyed as if he hated getting stuck with the task.

  The man’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded after a few seconds. “We’ll stop for the day at the next clearing we come across. She can rest there until morning.”

  He led the way, gesturing them to follow. Jase did just that, and then so did Melanie and Mochi. The rest of the men fell in line behind them, with the exception of two who ran ahead with machetes to clear their path. And there they went, marching down the trail again.

  They didn’t have to go far before they found a suitable place near a creek. Jase helped make camp, assessing each men’s strengths and weaknesses. The soldiers were irritable, tired of the march and bored. He made sure to keep Melanie and Mochi as far away from them as possible. He didn’t want the men to start picking on them for entertainment.

  Since he had time, he built a sleeping platform instead of simply hanging their hammocks. He figured Melanie’s back could use a nice flat surface to rest for a change. They washed, ate and drank. He pretended to pay attention to that, but kept an eye on the men and the sole sentry they set.

  Obviously they felt safe and comfortable. And with reason. The rest of their army buddies weren’t that far off, camping less than fifteen miles from here. At this point, they were definitely the strongest force in the jungle.

  Their relaxed mood might just play into his hands, Jase thought as he went about his business.

  When they called for Mochi, he didn’t interfere, but he stood ready. Thankfully, all they wanted was the boy to climb a tree and fetch some fruit. They kept him close by so they could play with the dog, until the kid fell asleep by the fire.

  Since Chico curled up right next to him, Jase let the boy stay where he was. The dog would bark if a snake came their way in the night. And if Jase showed too much affection for the kid, or acted protective, it would make the others suspicious.

  So he ended up sharing the sleeping platform with only Melanie. He draped their mosquito netting around it and tucked in the edges. The camp soon quieted, everyone but the sentry settled in for sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” Melanie whispered next to him. “Pedro was my problem. I shouldn’t have involved you in any with this.”

  “Hey, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” he said absentmindedly, his mind on his escape plans, then winced when he realized she might take that the wrong way. Way to go, Campbell. Smooth all the way.

  But she patted her belly without taking offense. “I think that’d be me. I have to warn you, I can’t carry a tune for anything.”

  That she could keep a sense of humor under the circumstances was nothing short of amazing.

  Being in the same “bed” an arm’s reach from her didn’t exactly facilitate sleep. He tried anyway. The camp was quiet; only the bugs droned on in the trees. He looked over at her after a couple of minutes passed. Her eyes were stil
l open.

  “I’m too nervous to sleep,” she admitted.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “Is every mission like this for you? One calamity after the other?”

  “Pretty much. Believe it or not, I usually like it.” He lived for a good challenge. Not that his job was a game to him, but still something close; obstacles to conquer, to try himself, to prove himself, to win.

  Except this time he felt none of the rush. This time the stakes had somehow changed. Melanie wasn’t simply another damsel in distress. Melanie was somebody to him.

  Oh, hell. That was just a whole new level of stupid, even for him. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if blocking out the sight of her might solve that problem. It didn’t.

  “Do you think we’ll ever get out of the jungle?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Don’t think too far ahead. Just think of right now, right here. Keep it manageable. This is all we have to deal with at the moment. Right now, right here, all we have to do is get some sleep.”

  “I’m scared right now, right here.”

  Her admission made him want to draw her into his arms, so he tried a different tactic. “I’m not taking that as a compliment,” he said with feigned indignation. “I’m here protecting you. If you’re still scared, that must mean you don’t think I can handle it.”

  “Not what I meant,” she said immediately.

  “Well, if you think I can handle it, then there’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “Is that some kind of manly logic?”

  “You got something against that?”

  “Hormones and feelings.”

  He felt his lips curve into a grin. “Now that scares me more than these jokers here.”

  She smiled at him through the darkness. Then she closed her eyes at last.

  He watched her for a long minute, then looked behind her to examine the campsite, all without turning his head. He didn’t want them to catch him spying. The sentry walked the perimeter, then sat down by the fire. Jase’s weapon was there, too. They hadn’t given it back to him, no matter how close to Don Pedro he’d claimed to be. He would just have to take it back on his own.