Just a Kiss Away (12 page)

“No!” he roared.

She jumped.

His shoulders moved, his purple neck tensed. The panther was back, ready to pounce.

Fighting the urge to protect her throat, she scooted back across the room fast enough to give Madame Devereaux a goiter. Then she sat in the dark corner, feeling the way Eve must have felt after foolishly eating that apple.

Although the rice really was an accident, just like the slip of the knife, she wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t a forgiving man, so she chose to just keep quiet, a monumental effort when she wanted so badly to speak and be forgiven.

“So long, Lollipop.”

The exchange was on. Sam watched the guards cut the ropes that bound her feet. She looked up, her light eyes tentative and frightened.

“Good-bye, Mr. Forester,” she whispered, her eyes downcast.

They hadn’t spoken during the last day. Since she’d dumped the rice on him she’d stayed in her corner, he in his. All her snobbery was gone, replaced by a meek blond shell. He liked her better with a little spunk in her; as hard as it was to admit, her quietness seemed unnatural. He glanced at her again. An odd sense of guilt, something he hadn’t felt since he’d understood his uncle’s joke, swept through him.

With the exchange taking place today, he could afford to ease the girl’s fear. After all, he reasoned, she’d be out of his hair, and he’d be long gone by the time Luna returned. He had to be. Death at the colonel’s hands would be his only other option.

She stood so regally, yet her shoulders and demeanor screamed defeat. It touched the warrior within him.

“You’ll be back in Manila by tomorrow,” he assured her.

She gave him a weak smile, and her eyes misted. “Go home. Go back to Belleview.”

She sniffed. “Belvedere.”

He grinned in spite of his sore jaw and split lip. “All right, Belvedere.”

She looked him in the eye, an apology searching for forgiveness.

“Forget it, Lollipop. It was an accident.” He gave her a quick nod of his head, a mock salute of sorts. Her face lit with a blinding smile just before they led her away.

Sam stared at the closed door. He kept his severed ropes in place and listened to the sounds of them walking away from the hut. After a few minutes of waiting, he glanced up, figuring by the sounds that it was midmorning. Not long afterward he heard the guards change—the sound he’d been waiting for. The camp would be disrupted for only about ten minutes. Then Luna and the escort would be gone and the guards would watch him even more closely, not wanting to risk the loss of their prisoner while their commander was gone. If that happened, heads would roll.

But that wasn’t Sam’s problem; escaping was. He shook off the ropes and pulled his dagger from inside the top of his boot. He sawed a U-shaped opening large enough to crawl through in the corner of the hut, and slowly pushed open the cut section. As it opened, he bent so he could see outside.

There were five other huts in view, which meant five huts could clearly see the back of this one. That was a problem and a hindrance to his escape. But it was also a challenge. Suddenly his bruised body didn’t ache so much. His fingers were able to move freely; his expression came to life. Sam needed this.

The area in back of the hut was clear. Ignoring his bruised ribs and sore hands, he crawled through the opening. Crouched, he quickly replaced the section of grass wall so the hole was undetectable. He crept along the back of the hut, pausing when he reached the corner.

An alert guard stood by the door. He’d play hell getting by that one. The man had that zealous-guard stance. To Sam’s right was a wide open space, then another hut. Laughter echoed from inside along with the smell of food. It was the mess hut.
Damn. The busiest place in a camp.
Quickly he moved back to the other corner. The coast was clear. He rounded it and moved along that side of the hut. A thick copse of banyan trees stood about fifty yards away to the south, protected by two rows of looped barbed wire. He heard footsteps. They came from in back of the hut.

Sam took off at a full run, jumped the wire, once, then twice. His feet hit the ground, jarring his aching ribs so hard that he lost his wind. The second he felt the cool shadow of the trees he dove for the ground, gasping for air and rolling into the damp, yard-high guinea grass that grew beneath. He lay as still as stone, his ribs aching like the very devil and his breath coming in shallow pants, which he fought to keep silent.

The men stopped about ten yards away. The fetid scent of the oozing wet ground hit his nose. He waited. They moved on. Slowly he got to his knees, moving in a crouch toward the riverbank that bordered the encampment. Time was running out. His mental clock ticked. Soon they’d discover he was gone.

Reaching the bank, he belly-slid down into a blanket of deep green lotus pads that floated on the murky river water. He made his way along the mangroves lining the bank, moving beneath the thick acrid-smelling branches that hid him from view. The racket of a steam pump chugged and clattered in the air.

He stopped. A boat was close by. The river narrowed and turned; the mangroves stopped. Someone had cleared this section of the bank. Sam moved away from the bank, out to a thick stand of water bamboo—a new source of cover. His head was the only part of him above water, and it was obscured by the thick swamp reeds.

Here the width of the river almost doubled, forming an inlet where a long, gray-weathered wooden dock stood on bundled bamboo piers tinged green with river slime. A faded green and white river trawler sat on the north side of the pier, and fatigue-clad soldiers milled about the dock and decks, some on guard and others readying the boat to cast off. White steam spit a cloud into the already wet air, and the clunk, chug, and clatter of the steam engine drowned out any conversation Sam might have overheard.

Fully loaded, the boat had a conglomeration of splintered wooden crates and gray, rust-banded barrels along the port side. Once black, but now half red with the ever-prevalent rust of the tropics, the steam engine rose from the middle of the ancient river trawler. Next to the rusty boiler, a palm frond canopy served as a roof for the small pilot wheel.

Huddled around the open bow of the boat like birds to bread crumbs stood a group of armed rebels. They soon parted to give Sam a glimpse of Colonel Luna standing over his precious pink cargo—the Lollipop. She sat on a narrow bench on the foredeck next to a mooring winch. From her frantic gestures and Luna’s impatient tapping of his bolo knife against his boot, Sam gathered they were having some kind of argument.

He glanced past the dock to a large clearing, where five more armed guards stood watching the river. From their perch high above the riverbank, they could watch the whole inlet, assuring Luna and the boat of protection and ruining Sam’s chance of making his way downstream.

The movements on the dock told Sam that the boat was about to cast off. The engine geared into a constant chugging, and the dockmen bent over the cleats, uncoiling the lines that held the trawler. Sam had to think fast.

There was no time to find a log or driftwood branch to hide him from the armed patrol. The boat backed up slowly, building up steam. Sam inhaled long, slow breaths that filled his lungs with oxygen and put a purgatory of pressure on his battered ribs. One last breath and he dove deep, hoping to make it to the boat before it could reverse engines and head downstream.

He swam underwater, pulling with all his strength, thankful that some anonymous male ancestor had given him the gift of a big frame and a strong upper body. At this moment, he called on every bit of power and strength in that torso. His lungs burned from holding an eternal breath. The vibrations of the engine drew him in the right direction, closer and closer until he could feel the water around him ripple.

As fast as a rifle shot the sound died. Then metal scraped metal and the engine clunked. There was nothing but silence. His lungs burned, his ribs ached, his numb legs kicked on and one arm pulled, then the other, dragging the drawing weight of his clothed body through the water with a stubborn determination earned in the Chicago slums.

Come on . . . come on, swim, you bruised bastard, swim.

A clank echoed through the water less than two feet from him. Water suddenly rushed around him with a push of current. Then with a loud, squealing scrape of metal the engine kicked in.

Sam surfaced just in time to grip a portside tow handle by the trawler’s rudder, a good five feet from the propeller blade. His hands ached, but he held fast, fighting the wake as the boat headed downstream.

She’d like to died,
but hung her head over the right side of the boat and vomited instead. From somewhere on her left, the colonel swore in Spanish. She stared at the blurred river water and concentrated on breathing. Then it dawned on her that swearwords sounded exactly alike in any language. It was the disgusted male tone that gave them away.

She’d tried to tell the man that she couldn’t take the boat ride well. He didn’t believe her. She gagged some more. Bet he does now, she thought, remembering how they’d cut the ropes from her bound hands so she could hold onto the rail while she hung her head over the side. The boat floated along, rocking slightly from side to side, side to side . . .

Her head swain, chills raced up her back and over her arms, and her stomach lurched in counterpoint to the boat. She finally sat up, raising one limp hand to her damp forehead. The men stared at her in horror.

“Could I have a wet rag, please?” She lolled back against the rail. Her whole body felt like peach jelly.

The colonel ordered a soldier to find something, then turned his back on her. She wiped away the tears that streamed down her hot cheeks. Her eyes always teared when she threw up. The boat moved as they met a swifter current, and she swallowed air and leaned back over the side, ready to get sick again.

Concentration came to her rescue and she managed to control her weak stomach. Soon she could feel someone’s stare. She pushed up from the rail, opened her eyes, and turned ever so slowly. The soldier had returned and held out a damp piece of cloth. She plastered it over her clammy forehead and collapsed back on the hard bench, moaning as her stomach protested those fast movements. The boat swayed again and again. She flipped the cloth over to stop her queasy chills. Moans slipped past her lips with each motion of the boat. She couldn’t stop them, besides which moaning made her feel better.

Each second spent on the water was an hour, each minute seemed like a day. Her stomach lurched again, sending her upright with her head over the side. And as she hung there, the wet rag gripped like a missal in her hand, she prayed that they would get to that bay, and soon.

Sam gripped the tow handle
of the rebel trawler and kicked at the wake. They were headed for Colorido Bay, where the exchange would take place. Once near the bay, Sam could let go of the boat and swim to shore where he’d have to cut through four days’ worth of jungle to get to Bonifacio’s camp. The boat ride would shave almost two days off his journey back. It had been a stroke of luck, being able to let the trawler haul him downstream.

Occasionally, over the steam engine’s sputter, he could hear the rebel soldiers talking from the deck high above him. He was safe, chest high in the water and hidden from the deck view by the breadth of the trawler’s stern. The steam engine sputtered, and Sam lay back in the water, letting it lap at his sore muscles.

Something popped, then whistled.

By instinct Sam ducked. If there was one thing he knew as well as his own name it was the popping sound of gunfire.

He turned toward the north bank, where a group of Spanish soldiers fired on the rebels. It was an ambush.

Gripping the tow handle, he watched for a safe place to let go and make his way toward the bank. The rebels returned the gunfire, but men dropped from the deck into the water like clay pigeons. Four barrels splashed near him along with one of the wounded rebels.

He let go of the boat and treaded water, using a barrel for cover. Slowly he guided the barrel toward shore. A few minutes later he reached the bamboo reed and managed to crawl up the bank where he hid in a cluster of fire bushes.

The boat chugged along. Then a round of bullets hit the engine, sounding like target practice on tin cans. The engine sputtered and died. There were still six rebels on the deck, Luna being one of them, and they returned the Spanish fire. Sam watched a moment, then caught a pink flash crawling between some bullet-riddled crates. He swore. First she scurried left. A bullet slammed into the crate next to her, sending her scuttling back to the far crate with all the stealth of a blind pig.

Lollie LaRue was going to get herself shot.

Sam shook his wet head in disgust. All the woman had to do was stay there. The Spanish wouldn’t keep her once they found out she was Luna’s prisoner. The Spanish watched their relationship with the United States; they didn’t need any more diplomatic trouble. The situation between the two nations was already too close to exploding into trouble.

Now if Eulalie, an American, were found with him, also an American and a mercenary, that would be another story. The Spanish had been beating through the jungles, weeding out as many guerrillas and mercenaries as they could, and they knew of his reputation and who hired him.

A scream pierced the air. He knew that sound only too well and turned toward it. The pink twit cannonballed into the water, arms reaching for the nearest barrel. She missed it.

Sam groaned.

She sank like granite.

Without a thought, Sam slid back into the river. He pushed the barrel across and dove, looking for her in the murky brown mud of the river. He swam deep, dodging Mauser bullets from the Spanish rifles. They’d seen her. He amended that: they’d heard her. The king of Spain had probably heard her.

And her mouth was what saved her now.

A dull gurgle sounded from his right. He turned and saw her. Blue eyes open and frantic, her mouth open and screaming. He grabbed her hair and yanked her toward the surface, heading straight for a barrel. He’d never known a person could scream underwater. They broke the surface, and she coughed and gasped. He tried to cover her mouth to quiet her. She took in her air and turned around, linking her arm around his neck and holding on for all she was worth.