Commando (8 page)

“At least your mother protected you,” he said, his voice raspy with emotion. “What did Travers do next?”

“After he got over the initial rage that his money couldn’t buy us back, I guess my father started feeling guilty about what he’d done to me and my mom, so he sent money for me to go to college. By that time, I didn’t fear him trying to kidnap me, so I took his money and went to Stanford. I got a master’s degree in biology, because I wanted to serve Mother Earth and her people as my mother continues to do in her capacity as a healer at the res.”

Jake allowed his hand to drop, because he was afraid that if he didn’t he would fold Shah in his arms and hold her, try to protect her against the pain that was clearly etched on her face. When she lifted her chin and stared up at him, he saw the extent of the devastation her father had wreaked upon her.

“Saying I’m sorry seems useless in the face of what you went through,” he whispered roughly. Travers better hope he never crossed his path again, he thought grimly.

Shah’s mouth pulled into a slight, pained smile. “Men feel it’s their right to beat women,” she told him bitterly. “When I was at Stanford, I got mixed up in politics. I met my husband, Robert, who’s half Lakota. He’d been raised over at the Pine Ridge reservation. I was so lonely for my people and for our way of life that I let the infatuation go to my head. I married Robert in my third year.”

“Are you still married?”

“No.” Shah shook her head sadly. “I repeated my mother’s mistakes. Can you believe that? Robert was an alcoholic, too. At first he used to manipulate me mentally and emotionally. He tried to make me feel unworthy because I was a woman. He thought I should be serving him. Well, that didn’t go over too well with me. By then my mother was a full-fledged medicine woman, and she’d taught me that women are sacred to the Great Spirit.

“Robert tried to demean me over the next two years. When I wouldn’t break and become a victim, he finally attacked me. The moment he laid a hand on me, I was out of there. I filed for divorce the next day. I wasn’t about to get beat up the way my mother had. Enough was enough.”

Jake nodded, a bitter taste in his mouth. “Now I understand why you don’t trust men.”

Shah pulled back and gave him a measuring look. “I have a bad track record,” she agreed. “And I’ve still got a lot of anger toward men that I’m trying to work out,” she warned.

“Rightfully so,” Jake conceded. He was dying inside, for Shah, for the brutal way she’d been treated.

Shah weighed his words, the sincerity of them. “I’d like to believe you, but I can’t, Jake.” She gave a helpless shrug. “Too much water under the bridge between me and men. I’ll pack up and leave in about an hour. I don’t want to be a noose around Pai Jose’s neck here. You go home. This isn’t your battle—it’s mine.” With a sad little smile, she added, “After hearing about my life, no man in his right mind would stay around me, anyway.”

For the first time since his family’s death, Jake felt the numbness leave his heart, all of it. In its wake came a vibrant, living mass of emotions bubbling through him, emotions that were both good and bad. He stared at Shah, unable to put his tangled feelings into words. She’d suffered just as grievously as he had, he realized. Perhaps even more so, because she’d been a child, caught in a trap, with no safe place to hide, and no escape.

Clearing his throat, he said, “Well, this time you aren’t alone, Shah. We’ll take care of Hernandez together, whether you can trust in me or not.” He wanted to add, You’re too special, Shah, too important, to be putting your neck on the line by yourself. Jake held up his hand when she began to protest. “No argument on this,” he told her firmly. “You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

“W
hat is this nonsense about you leaving, Shah?” Pai Jose demanded as he halted on the dock next to her.

Shah looked guiltily up at the old priest. She stopped packing the canoe and got up off her hands and knees. Rubbing her hands against her trousers, she said, “I can’t stay here,
Pai.
I’ve caused all of this.” She gestured toward the village. “Hernandez wanted to scare me off.”

The priest gave a sorrowful shake of his head, resting a thin hand on Shah’s shoulder. “No, child. Don’t go. You’ve been here three months. The people love you. You belong here, doing your work on the medical herbs with the shamans.”

Shah saw Jake coming down the bank. Had he told Pai Jose she was leaving? Still wrung out from last night’s ordeal, she patted the priest’s hand and captured it between her own.

“
Pai,
I love you and the Tucanos people enough to keep you safe from Hernandez. Please try to understand that.”

Pai Jose frowned, his silvery, caterpillarlike eyebrows moving downward. He gripped Shah’s hand. “I can see your mind is made up. We’ll pray for you, my child.”

Prayer, no matter who did it—or from what religious or spiritual base—was not only good, but powerful, in Shah’s opinion. “That’s wonderful. Thank you,” she answered softly.

“Father, did you talk her out of going?” Jake asked as he drew to a halt. He had an olive green canvas knapsack slung across his shoulder. Glancing at Shah, he saw her staring accusingly in his direction.

“No, my son, I didn’t.” Pai Jose turned to him. “At least you’re going along.”

Shah snorted softly and knelt down to finish her packing. “My father hired him,
Pai,
so don’t be so sure he isn’t waiting to jump me from behind, drag me off to Manaus and throw me on a plane bound for North America.”

Pai Jose chuckled indulgently as he stood there, his hands clasped against his body. “I would think that after Mr. Randolph’s magnificent work helping us save lives you would see him in a kinder light.”

Shah gave a sharp, derisive laugh. “
Pai,
you’re a man, therefore you trust other men. I’m a woman, and I don’t.”

Making the sign of the cross, Pai Jose blessed each of them. “God be with you, my children. Will you be coming back here once you’ve gotten the film you want?”

Shah, who was wrapping her camcorder tightly in plastic for the trip down the Amazon, paused for a moment. “I don’t know,
Pai…
”

“We’ll probably stop here for supplies,” Jake said.

“If you get into trouble,” Pai Jose told Shah seriously, wagging his finger in her direction, “you come home. You come here.”

Home.
The word formed a lump in Shah’s throat. She blinked back the tears and got to her feet. Wordlessly she stepped over to the priest and embraced him.

“No promises, but we’ll try,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

Jake smiled to himself. Shah had used the word
we
instead of
I.
Good. Unconsciously she was accepting his presence on this foolhardy expedition. Jake wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was obvious to him that Shah did trust the old priest, even if he was a man. That gave him renewed hope as he watched her turn away to wipe the tears from her eyes. If she trusted Pai Jose, she might trust him.
Let it be so,
Jake prayed.
Let it be so.

“Ready?” Jake asked when he saw that Shah had completed her packing. The sun was heading for the western horizon, and it was nearly 4:00 p.m. Shah had planned to use the two hours of light that remained to get down the Amazon, dock the canoe and make camp. Three miles downstream wouldn’t be a problem; but coming back would be more difficult. They would have to paddle the canoe by hand, since it didn’t have a motor.

Shah nodded. She put the valuable camcorder and some extra videotapes in a small knapsack that she shrugged over her shoulders. Waving goodbye to the many Tucanos who stood on the bank silently watching, Shah felt like crying all over again. These people had openly accepted her as one of their own. Jake moved beside her and sat on the edge of the dock, removing his boots. He placed them inside his knapsack.

“I learned the hard way that wearing boots in a canoe is a stupid idea, when I got dumped in the Orinoco,” he told her ruefully.

Shah moved beside him to sit in the rear of the canoe.

“Wait,” he said. “You move to the bow and paddle. I’ll sit in the rear and be the rudder.”

Shah hesitated. “I suppose you know how to paddle this kind of canoe, too?”

“A little,” he admitted sheepishly. Shah’s features were dark and wary. “Hey,” he told her playfully, trying to ease her worry about his presence, “the biggest, strongest guy always sits in the stern to paddle and be the rudder. You know that. I outweigh you by a lot.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Shah said nothing as she slipped carefully into the canoe, her bare feet touching the bottom’s roughly hewn wood. Kneeling in the stern, Jake handed her one of the two paddles. Her heart was in utter turmoil, and so was her head. Jake was acting as if he were going along with her on some kind of picnic. Did he realize the danger they would be in? Hernandez had proved himself capable of murder. And he wanted her dead. A part of her that she was trying desperately to ignore didn’t want Jake in the line of fire. Not that he couldn’t take care of himself, she admitted grudgingly. Still, she was agitated by the possibility that he could be hurt on her account. She couldn’t bear that thought.

“Cast off,” Jake called as he unhitched the loop of rope that tethered the canoe to the dock. He saw Shah turn and give him a questioning look, then straighten to face the bow of the canoe. He saw the shadows in the recesses of her eyes, but said nothing. Raising his hand, he waved to the people on the shore, then picked up his own paddle.

Jake used his paddle as a rudder, maneuvering the twenty-foot-long dugout only a little way offshore to avoid the swift currents that lurked beneath the seeming calm surface of the Amazon. The bank curved, the lush rain forest like a lumpy green velvet ribbon bracketing the huge river. His ears were keyed for any out-of-place sounds, because he didn’t trust Hernandez in the least. Ahead of them, an osprey wheeled, looking for unsuspecting prey swimming close to the surface.

Shah did little paddling, because the canoe moved slowly but surely along with the flow of the river. Jake admired her straight, long back, wondering what it would be like to glide his fingers down that proud spine and feel her respond. Jake frowned, castigating himself. Where was all this wishful thinking coming from? In four years, he’d been around plenty of other women, but none of them had engaged his heated imagination. Until now.

Jake watched her graceful movements as she moved the paddle from one side of the canoe to the other. She reminded him of a long-limbed ballerina, her every economical movement gliding into the next.

“You ever take ballet lessons?”

Startled, Shah twisted a look across her shoulder at Jake. “What?”

He flushed. “I just wondered if you’d ever taken ballet lessons?”

With a soft laugh, Shah returned to her paddling. “No.”

Jake’s paddle dipped into the water. Suddenly an image of Katie, his ten-year-old daughter, flashed before him. She was running toward him in her pink tutu. She was laughing, excited about the plans for a recital. The memory hit Jake like a punch to the gut. Kneeling there in the stern, he paddled for a long time without speaking as deeply closeted emotions from the past overwhelmed him. He’d pushed away so much about his family, because it had been too painful to remember. Now his past seemed to be surfacing, and he didn’t know what was going on.

Shah relaxed as the first mile slipped behind them. The scents of the rain forest were many and complex. Sometimes she’d get a whiff of an orchid, or the odor of decaying leaves on the sandy soil of the forest floor. Brightly colored blue-and-yellow parrots hid in the tall, stately pau trees that hung over the bank, their dark green leaves like an umbrella over the muddy Amazon. The vines were numerous, varying from thin snakelike ones to some as thick as Jake’s muscular arms.

Shah remained hyperaware of Jake’s silent presence behind her. Sometimes she could almost feel his eyes boring into her—but then she would shake off the silly feeling. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t completely ignore him. What was it that drew her to him? Frowning, Shah tried to figure it out. His size, at first, had frightened her, bringing back memories of the violence done to her by her father and then her husband. Jake’s hand alone was nearly twice the size of her own.

Yet he didn’t swagger like most males. He didn’t have that shallow arrogance she’d seen too often. Shah swallowed and remembered the sadness in Jake’s eyes when he’d seen her hold the little Tucanos girl in her arms. She recalled the frantic emotion in his voice last night when he’d charged into her hut to see if she was safe. Shah rested the paddle across the canoe, in front of her, deep in thought. Yes, Jake had shown his feelings to her—in many ways. The only feelings she’d ever seen from a man on a consistent basis were such negative ones as anger, envy and jealousy—until now.

Jake was different, her heart whispered. Shah closed her eyes and hung her head momentarily, feeling the impact of that realization, absorbing it. Jake scared her. Badly. He
was
different from most men she’d met, in ways she had absolutely no experience with. She’d never realized someone like Jake even existed! A small part of her still questioned his motives for being here. She felt torn apart inside. Time would be the true test of Jake’s intentions, the only test. A frisson of panic shot through Shah. To make matters worse, she acknowledged, her heart was responding of its own accord to Jake, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it. Jake’s vulnerability was like a magical key able to unlock Shah’s closely guarded heart, and it made her feel as exposed as a deer caught in the cross hairs of a hunter’s lethal rifle.

“Shah?”

Her head snapping up, Shah jumped at the unexpected sound of Jake’s lowered voice. Her hand moving to her pounding heart, she twisted around. “What?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you….” Jake said apologetically.

“I’m just naturally jumpy when a man’s behind me,” she said. Shah saw darkness in Jake’s gray eyes, but he quickly hid his reaction. “I got jumped by my husband from behind, and some part of me has never forgotten it,” she explained, realizing he was upset for her, not with her. That was another new discovery—a man caring about her.

“I understand,” Jake said, noticing how Shah’s face had paled, her eyes widening enormously. He could see not only her fear, but, even more moving, her vulnerability, as well. “You were deep in thought.”

She tried to smile, but didn’t succeed. Her hand was still pressed to her heart. “Yes…”

The overwhelming desire to blanket Shah in all the warmth and tenderness he possessed threatened to be Jake’s undoing. He understood Shah’s fragility where men were concerned, now that he knew where it had originated. His mouth curved slightly. “Maybe canoe rides invite people to think long and hard,” he offered.

“They always do for me,” Shah admitted. She purposely kept her voice low for fear of discovery—just in case some of Hernandez’s men were nearby, invisible in the thick jungle.

“How do you want to approach this area where Hernandez is being allowed to cut down trees? Is it on this side of the river or the other?”

“This side. I tied a piece of red cloth to a bush hanging near the edge of the water. Once we see that, we can make camp anywhere nearby.”

“Don’t you feel it would be wiser to camp outside of Hernandez’s area and hike in? He could have sentries patrolling the river where that parcel’s located.”

Shah shook her head. “If you’ve been in Brazil before, you know that this jungle—” she pointed to the trees with her finger “—is thick with vegetation. It would slow us down too much. I want to be as close as possible to the area where he’s going to be cutting.”

Jake conceded to her reasoning. Most of the rain forest was overrun with vines that hung like giant pieces of spaghetti off trees that towered well over a hundred feet above them. Add to that many gnarled roots of bushes and trees, exposed by six months of rain on sandy soil—ready to quickly trip a person. Jungle hiking was slow and tedious, requiring the utmost focus. “Okay,” he said, “we’ll land when you spot that red cloth.”

Jake didn’t like hugging the bank of the river. When the hair on the back of his neck began to stand up in warning, he used the paddle as a rudder to guide the canoe about a hundred feet farther into the river.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re too close to the bank.”

Shah frowned. She could feel the current begin to snag and pull the canoe farther out. “It’s dangerous to get out too far, Jake! The Amazon makes huge whirlpools. If we’re caught in one, we could be killed! We might not be able to paddle hard enough to break the hold of the current. I know the river looks calm and safe on the surface, but it’s not, believe me.”

“I know that, darlin’. Now, just relax. I’ll get us safely back to shore.”

Shah couldn’t shake her sudden tension. The truth was, she wasn’t a good swimmer. Believing that each living thing had a spirit, she never entered the Amazon without offering it a gift of tobacco to ask for safe transit. She gripped the sides of the canoe, her knuckles whitening as Jake continued to guide the canoe farther from shore.

“I’m a lousy swimmer, Jake! If we tip over, I’ll be a liability.” Shah turned around. “I could never make it to shore from here.”

Jake felt bad for having frightened her. “This is for our safety, Shah,” he explained, keeping his voice low and calm. “What if Hernandez has his goons along the bank where we want to land? Do you think they’re going to welcome us with open arms? My bet is they’ll draw a bead on us and kill us.”

Shah lowered her head, biting nervously on her lower lip. “I—Okay, it makes sense. I don’t know what I’m more scared of—bullets, or trying to survive being dumped in this river.