Just a Kiss Away (14 page)

He set her down and looked at her, suddenly struck with the picture of her reaction if she were to get a good look at herself. Her hair was still wet, a tangled mess that hung past her shoulders, the fire bush branches still drooping from her head. Dirt smudges streaked her pale cheeks like war paint and the damp gag flopped out of the top of her dress like a limp flag of surrender. Scrapes crisscrossed her pale forearms like scratches on pearls, and her formal pink dress looked as if it had spent two years at the bottom of a ragman’s cart.

Lollie LaRue was a mess.

She was also a problem, one that could get them both killed. He couldn’t abandon her in the middle of the jungle, and he needed to keep her safe. Yet he had to get to the river, and he had a hunch, based on past experience, that taking her with him would ensure their capture, something neither of them could afford now. It didn’t take a genius to realize that just seeing them together would be proof enough for the Spanish. They wouldn’t give her a chance to explain. She was with him, and she would be condemned. But he doubted she’d believe him, or take the news too well. He’d have to string her along.

“Do you think you could do something?” he asked, resorting to his string-with-the-kitten maneuver.

Her eyes lit and her stance perked up. She nodded. He almost felt sorry for her . . . almost.

“Okay,” he said, leaning down as if to tell her a state secret. “I want you to stay here while I check out the river.”

She looked around at the thick, dark jungle that surrounded them, her face unsure. “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed with you?”

“No.” Sam hid his smile and looked serious. “It’s much better if you stay here. I need you to protect the flank. It’s an important job.”

Slowly she nodded, still staring into the thick jungle. He turned to leave, knowing from experience that this was the safest place for her. He needed to see if the boat or any of the soldiers, Spanish or rebel, were still on the river.

“Shouldn’t I have a knife or a gun or something?”

Not if I want to live through the day, he thought, but responded, “Ever fired a gun?”

She nodded. “Once.” The tone of her voice told him all he needed to know.

“That bad, huh?”

“I shot out the leaded-glass window in Jeffrey’s study.”

“Ah, the oldest brother. The one who told you about your name.”

“Oh, you remembered.” Her face lit up.

How could I forget when you went on about it for ten minutes?
He didn’t say that, but nodded instead.

Her smile disappeared. “But Jeffrey wasn’t there at the time.”

“Lucky for him.”

She winced, then admitted, “My brother Jedidiah was, though.”

Her expression was so serious that Sam wouldn’t let himself smile. He did, however, feel a sudden odd kinship with that brother of hers.

“After breaking the window the bullet hit the gas lamp over the desk. Jed was working at the time.”

Sam waited for the rest.

She looked up at him. “Ten stitches and he didn’t come around until supper time.”

“I’ll keep the gun. You won’t need it.” Sam turned on his heel and started toward the river. He needed to get away before she figured out what he’d done.

“How long will you be gone?”

He stopped and turned back. She was scared, sitting there hugging her knees and giving him that big-eyed stare. Then she tried to smile. She failed and looked down at her knees instead.

“I won’t be long.”

She nodded and kept looking at the thick jungle as if she expected it to choke her. What really hit him was the way she tried to hide her fear. She sighed, resigned. No arguments, no tears, no screaming or begging, just a wee spark of courage. He almost relented and let her come with him. Common sense stopped him. She was safer here. “Just remember, don’t leave this spot. It’s too easy to get lost. Stay here.”

He was about eight feet into the jungle when he heard her mumble, “How can I protect the flank without a weapon?”

He’d been counting. It had taken her ten seconds to realize that, and by then he was safely away. He moved toward the river, pretty certain that if anyone was still there it would only be someone to guard the boat. Rebels tended to scatter and circle back around if attacked in the jungle, but on that boat Luna and his men had been sitting ducks.

The Spanish were most likely the victors in that skirmish. He’d figured six to eight of them had been tracking Lollie and him. They were probably deep in the jungle by now, still looking for the two of them.

When he neared the river, Sam inched his way toward the bank, making sure he stayed well behind cover. Mind and ears sharp, he scanned the area. The boat was still there, its bowline tied to a tree on the opposite bank. He looked for the guard. There wasn’t one. That didn’t ring true.

Suspicious, he waited longer, watching for any sign of movement in the brush.

It didn’t make sense to leave the boat unguarded. The Spanish as well as the rebels would value the trawler. He buried the rifle under a pile of dead leaves, crawled out of the bushes, and slithered into the water. After taking a few deep breaths behind a cluster of cattails, he dove and then swam underwater to the boat’s port side. Slowly and carefully he surfaced, edging around to get a look at the other side.

No guards.

He couldn’t be that lucky. The unguarded trawler was a gift. Sam could get the Lollipop and start up the boat. They’d be at the exchange point in Colorido Bay before nightfall. But first he needed to check out the boat. Caution still guarding his movements, he slowly swam toward the nearer bank.

If Lollie had learned a lesson
in the last long minutes, it was that the jungle was never silent, and always savage. Birds cawed and screeched, sounding like distant human screams. Moisture permeated the air, forming a thick dew that clung to leaves and vines and dropped like intermittent rain to the black mulch below.

Little light managed to reach the jungle floor, making everything around her smell damp and dead. She eyed the thin blue ribbon of sky that showed above the dark tops of lofty jungle trees—trees so tall and dense that they looked like dark towers to heaven. She felt small and trapped, as if the jungle could swallow her like a single drop of dew.

From the hidden sun, a single beam of light bled through the treetops, falling on her hand like a benediction. She shifted so the bath of sunlight completely covered her. That one thread of light in the jungle darkness reassured her. But that reassurance was short-lived once the insects hummed louder. She knew they nested and crawled everywhere, creepy little bright red and green and yellow creatures, nothing like the small brown locust and worms and beetles back home. She watched a bright green fly with grasshopper legs and a fire red head flit from plant to plant. Despite the carnival colors and its graceful way of gliding through the air, the strange insect only drove home the fact she was so far from everything she knew and loved.

Her hands started to shake. She swallowed, searching for the strength to hold her own with the foreignness of the jungle that caged her. More than anything, she wanted to vent that fear by screaming until she was hoarse. She didn’t, because she didn’t want to be gagged again, and a part of her needed desperately to prove to Sam Forrester, and to herself, that she wasn’t female fluff.

A twig cracked behind her. She froze, not breathing, just listening.

She caught the scent of something. Another quiet footstep sounded . . . closer. The scent grew stronger. It was the odor of human sweat. She closed her eyes. Again a twig snapped. Her eyes shot open; her hand closed tightly around a clod of dank soil, and moisture seeped through her fingers, running over her hands. She took a shallow, slow breath.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow flicker past. A thin rough cord fell around her neck . . . then jerked, choking her. She threw the dirt, grabbed the cord, and yanked it away from her throat.

Something whizzed past her. She felt its wind. A dull thud sounded. The cord instantly slackened. A Spanish soldier fell next to her, a knife in his chest. A scream of terror pierced the air. It was hers.

Sam stepped from the bushes in front of her, his face a savage mask. He strode toward the soldier and kicked him over onto his back.

“Gawd . . .Lollie covered her face.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, then slipped his knife back into its sheath.

She didn’t dare look back, just gulped three deep breaths to still her pounding heart. Then she looked at him. His face was hard, barely human. His mouth, the only crack in his face, was thin, hard, and unyielding, just like his stare. He looked at her with cold power. Then he glanced at the dead man with an ice-edged expression of pitiless anger. Sam Forrester didn’t need two eyes. One could be deadly enough.

It seemed as though
they’d walked forever, or at least her feet felt like it. His stance was still tight, alert, and ready, but he seemed less intent and had stopped barking orders at her about twenty minutes ago. He only swore when she fell, which she just did.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him.

“Are they following us?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“But the man you killed—”

“He might have followed us, but he could have been left behind to clear the rebels from the boat. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter.”

From his tone she could tell the subject was closed.

A few hundred yards more and they emerged onto the riverbank where Sam had brought her after he rescued her before. The boat was moored on the opposite side, and Lollie stopped, assuming they’d now have to cross the river, not that she wanted to set foot on a boat again.

She was wrong. Sam turned downriver.

“Where’re we going? That boat’s right there.”

“We can’t take it.” He kept on, never breaking stride. “The engine’s full of bullet holes. That trawler’s dead in the water, which is what you’re going to be if you don’t move faster.”

Lollie hurried behind him, smiling because she wouldn’t have to ride in the boat. “Oh, that’s good.”

He stopped, scowling. “I realize you and I don’t see things in the same logical light, but even I can’t figure out why you’d be glad to be dead in the water.”

Lollie laughed. “Oh, I didn’t mean that. I’m glad about the boat.”

He stared at her for a silent moment, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully while he nodded his head as if he understood perfectly. All his motions were exaggerated. “Makes perfect sense. Instead of the ease of a two-hour boat ride to get to that bay, you’re glad we have to haul butt through miles of jungle and mud.”

The scorn-filled look on his face pricked Lollie’s pride. The man treated her as if she had no mind and was nothing but a weak snob. She decided to skirt the issue of her seasickness. “I don’t like boats.”

He muttered something indistinguishable. “Well, Miss Lah-Roo, I hope you like walking as much as you like talking, because that bay is over half a day’s walk for a jungle-trained soldier.”

He raked her with a long assessing look that started at her head and ended at her toes. He shook his head, and when he looked up at her again she could tell he found her lacking. His tone always implied a lack of respect, and that really hurt.

She couldn’t help that she’d been born in privilege and he to poverty. And it seemed unfair of him to dislike her for something she couldn’t control. It was as unjust as hating people because of the shape of their nose or the color of their eyes or hair.

Every time she tried to be kind, like offering him her food and trying to help him after the gawdawful beating, he rudely threw the offer back in her face, and she didn’t know how to deal with that kind of reaction. It hurt her so much all she could do was run off wounded to her own lonely dark corner, because when she cowered in her corner he wasn’t so mean.