His knee was killing him. Brian looked up, but could not see the sun from the thick canopy above. Still, it had to be close to the end of the day. The animals were beginning to make their evening sounds, and light had dimmed a little in the last half hour or so. Night fell fast in the jungle, and they hadn’t found shelter yet. The hillside was supposed to be riddled with caves. Just not when you were looking for one.
“We’ll stop here,” he said.
At least the rain had quit for now. He leaned his gun against a tree trunk and scanned the ground for some dry leaves and twigs. But, of course, everything was wet and so were they. The air was cooling off fast. Their soaked-through clothing would be cold and uncomfortable during the night, if he didn’t manage to make a fire.
He was used to this state of miserable affairs, but she wasn’t. If she got sick and weak it would slow them down, and that was something they couldn’t afford. And there was the matter of food, too. While he would have been fine with eating the meat raw, he doubted she felt the same. “Look for anything you think might burn.”
“Won’t a fire give us away?”
“Nobody walks in the jungle at night unless they absolutely have to. The chance of injury is too high, too easy to fall into something, getting bitten by things you can’t see.” He didn’t mention the night predators, didn’t want to make her too nervous to sleep. “My guess is Omar and his band will hole up somewhere for the night and start out fresh in the morning, hoping they’ll come across our trail.”
He reached for the paper in his shirt pocket. Soaking wet. Figured. A few minutes passed before he found a handful of dry leaves under a bush. He crumbled the leaves into a small pile, set a chunk of dry bark on top of them. From his shirt, he got some of the rope Audrey had been tied up with. That was wet, too, but it didn’t matter for his purposes. He peeled off a quarter-inch strand and made a small bow with a green stick. Then he found a dry one, sharpened one end and placed it in the middle of the bark next to the tinder and began moving it with the bow, as fast as he could, putting on the pressure.
He saw Audrey shiver from the corner of his eye. It would have been good if he could have brought the shirt from the man he’d taken out at the cave, but he had to leave it behind. The last thing you wanted in the jungle was to smell like blood. She probably wouldn’t have put it on anyway.
“Can I do anything?”
“No,” he said at first, then changed his mind and instructed her on how to make a sleeping platform. Better for both of them if she pulled her own weight. If anything happened to him, her life would be easier if she’d learned a few skills. He worked on making the fire while he explained what needed to be done.
An hour went by, maybe two, before he caught the faint scent of smoke—he had lost his once keen sense of time while in the cage. He blew gently on the leaves until he saw the first ember glow in the night that had fallen around them. He gave it more air then fed the small fire. There. They would be fine.
Audrey brought him a handful of dry twigs.
He took the wood with a nod. “Are you all right?”
She hadn’t said a word since they had left the cave. He had let her be, not wanting to push.
“Fine.”
The fire had grown enough so he could see her face now. Her expression was somber, but the shock and revulsion he’d seen at the cave were gone. She had been scared out of her wits. The man he had been four years ago could have comforted her. Now he had no idea what to say, what to do.
He was no good for her. Hell, he was probably no good for anyone. For anything.
The question he had tried to avoid wouldn’t go away. How was he supposed to go back to normal civilian life?
Because he definitely couldn’t go back to his job at the SDDU. Not with his bad leg. That position was history. Trouble was, he didn’t know how to do anything else.
For a moment back in the cave, she had looked at him as if he was as much of a monster as the man he had pulled off her. She was probably right. But by God, he wanted it to be different.
“I had to do that,” he said quietly. “You’re safe with me.”
“I know.” She lifted her gaze to him. “I should have handled it better. You did it for my sake.”
Her acceptance loosened some of the tight darkness inside him. The light of the flames bathed her face in a warm glow as she looked straight into his eyes without a trace of fear or loathing.
“I was trying to reach his knife. I think if I did, I might have done the same.”
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”
She nodded. “You saved my life twice. Thank you.”
She reached out and put a hand on his, briefly, warm and soft. He jerked away on reflex, not used to human touch that didn’t hurt, then swore as he burned the back of his wrist in the fire.
Startled, she pulled away.
Damn. “Which one of you was going to adopt?” he asked—the first question that came to his mind.
“Me.”
He took a slow breath as he untied the small bundle that hung from his shoulder. “How come your husband didn’t come with you?”
“I don’t have a husband.”
He opened the sack he’d woven from strips of palm leaves to carry the squirrel-like animal he had killed earlier.
“One of those independent women?”
“One of those women whose husband couldn’t take the stress of infertility treatments and left her for a simpler relationship,” she said quietly.
“Sounds like a real jerk.” She was still young, though. He figured her for thirty, if that, with all kinds of possibilities still ahead of her.
She didn’t respond.
“Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s okay. And Josh is okay, too. I mean—I guess, some things just aren’t meant to be.” Sadness laced her voice.
Why the hell had he brought up this topic? Damn, he sucked at the pep-talk thing. Better focus on something he knew how to do.
He skewered their dinner—had already skinned and gutted the squirrel when he caught it—and held their meal above the flames. There was pitifully little meat on the bones, hardly enough for one person, let alone two, but it was better than nothing. They would manage.
She combed her fingers through her damp hair and moved closer to the fire. “How long have you been here?”
“Four years.” The words burned his throat.
She looked up at him wide-eyed. “Have you ever tried to escape before?”
Hell, yes. That’s how he had known about the caves. But they had caught him each time. He had been too impatient, trying to make a break for it before he had his strength back.
He shrugged. “For the first year, I couldn’t walk. Then I got malaria and was too weak to get away. I did try, mind you. Then they stuck me in a damn cage.”
“Why didn’t they ransom you?”
“They didn’t know who to ask for money. I wouldn’t tell them who I was. And they thought I might have some useful information.”
Then by the time they figured out he wouldn’t talk, the disagreement over his fate had been too public of a quarrel. Jamil couldn’t shoot him at that point without making it seem like he was bending to his younger brother’s will. And they couldn’t let him go, either. He had seen too much. Sometimes he wondered if Jamil was simply waiting for him to give up the fight and die.
Audrey was looking at him in bewilderment. “Why would they think you had any information that concerned them?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Are you some kind of a spy or something?” she asked after a while, staring at him with suspicion.
“Military.”
“Why didn’t they come to rescue you?”
“They don’t know I’m alive.”
His team had been spread out in the jungle, looking for a group of Muslim extremists who had crossed the border from Indonesia to purchase explosives. He had found a cache of TNT in an underground bunker, called in the location. Unfortunately, the Malaysian military had chosen that day to crack down on some bothersome guerillas and had dropped a couple of bombs over the forest where they’d thought the guerillas had been hiding. One of the bombs had hit the bunker.
The force of the explosion had thrown him clear, which was the only reason he had survived—with his skin torn off his side, his leg broken in several places and a severe concussion. Jamil and his men had found him, taken him with them. He remembered little of those first weeks. They’d recognized him as a soldier and had questioned him when he’d recovered. When he wouldn’t speak, Omar had rebroken his leg.
“Do you have a family back in Montana?”
He turned the meat over the fire. “My parents have passed away. They adopted me when they were older.” And marriage had never been in the cards for him. It didn’t mesh with his job. “Do you have any other siblings?”
“Just Nicky.”
“It must have been hard losing her.”
A look of determination crossed her face. “I’m going to find her and get her back.”
“She’s alive? Why didn’t Omar’s men bring her back to camp?”
“A little over a week ago, we were supposed to go on a four-day tour to Gunung Mulu National Park. I had to stay behind at the last minute. The judge was asking for more documentation for the adoption and I was meeting with the lawyer I hired here, so Nicky went alone. Not alone, I mean. A whole group went with a guide.” She looked down at her hands. “They were attacked by guerillas and twelve tourists were taken hostage. The demand is a million dollars per person.”
She had to be kidding. “You came to the jungle to rescue her?”
“I came to pay the ransom.” She reached under her shirt and pulled out a crumpled, wet piece of paper. “It’s a bank account I opened a couple of days ago.”
He glanced at the smudged printout that showed a cool million as account total.
“The Malaysian government is negotiating with the guerillas and told the family members to stay put, but I couldn’t do it. These things never end well. The military will attack, half the hostages won’t make it. I’ve seen it on TV before…. No government will ever admit that they don’t have everything under control.”
“So you grabbed a million from your savings and ran off into the jungle? How were you planning on finding them? Does the government know where they are?”
She shook her head. “They’re still gathering intelligence. My brother-in-law wired the money.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“He’s coming. I just— I didn’t want to wait. I hired a local guide who said he could take me to a village frequented by the guerillas.”
“There are dozens of guerilla groups scattered over the island.”
“I figured they could point me in the right direction.”
“And what were you going to do when you got to the ones who have your sister?”
“Show them the account to prove that the money is here in the country, have one of the men come with me and Nicky to the nearest bank. I would have had the money wired there and given him the cash. He walks out with the money, I walk out with Nicky.”
All right, there was a slim chance it could have worked, if she made it as far as the right guerilla camp, but trusting her fate to the first group of bandits she had come across had been a mistake. “There’s no honor among thieves.”
She gave him a don’t-I-know-it look. “The guide led me to a village high up the hills and disappeared by morning. Then the fighters came and took me with them. They had me bound and gagged, I couldn’t even talk to them.”
“I used to have some connections,” he said, surprising himself. “When we get to the nearest town, Miri, I’ll see what I can do about your sister.” He had a pretty good idea where the hostages were.
“How far is Miri?”
“A good week of walking if we don’t run into any trouble.”
He saw her pale in the firelight.
“I don’t have a week. The ransom deadline is in four days.”
Damn. He clamped his jaw together, fighting the inevitable.
She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, her eyes wide with desperation. “What if I allowed myself to be recaptured? I could show the fighters the bank statement and tell them they would get a reward if they took me to the group who has the hostages. Maybe you could follow us to make sure nothing bad happened,” she added, barely disguised hope all over her heart-shaped face.
“That’s not how it works, Audrey. These people don’t engage in dialogue.” He wanted to make her understand. “It would be like it was back at the cave.”
She went still and after a moment, nodded.
“They might shoot you on sight because you made them chase you around. Or they might do worse. And if you told them about the money, they would take you to the bank to get it without going anywhere near your sister.”
She stayed silent for a while. “You’re right,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I failed.”
He hated the misery on her face. She’d come here to adopt a child, and her sister had come to help. It wasn’t fair.
Then again, what in life was?
He watched her struggle with her tears and something twisted inside him, an emotion he barely recognized shook loose—compassion. He opened his mouth. This was a bad idea. He drew in a lungful of jungle air, a mixture of the musty smell of decomposing leaves and the light scent of orchids. “We’ll get your sister back.”
In an instant, her eyes filled with so much hope and trust, he had to look away. Sure as hell, he didn’t deserve anyone looking at him that way.
He had to be insane. The captivity had done it to him, and the beatings. Somewhere along the line he had lost his mind. Because if he wasn’t one hundred percent stir-crazy, he wouldn’t have committed himself to overtaking a guerilla camp alone.
No, not alone. Alone would have been a step up from what he was planning to do. He was going to try to pull off a major operation with a civilian in tow.
FINE, MISTY RAIN dampened her hair, but had not yet soaked her clothes.
“You know, the travel agent was right. She said Malaysia had two seasons, wet and very wet.” Audrey licked her fingers, still hungry, but at least not starving. Their dinner had been reduced to a tiny pile of bones next to the dying fire.
She was about to fall over with exhaustion. The last time she’d slept she’d barely gotten a few fitful minutes on the bottom of the boat, gagged and bound, on her way to the guerilla camp. The desperation she had felt then slammed back into her anew. She couldn’t shake a sense of dread, a premonition that getting Nicky back would be far more difficult than she had first imagined.
“Give me your pants.”
Excuse me? She looked at Brian across the fire.
He picked up a thighbone from the pile, put it on a rock and smashed it with a smaller chunk of stone. “I’m gonna fix the rip.” He chose a long, thin sliver of bone and worked it with his knife, drilling a hole in one end.
A needle. She stood and tugged at the rope. Having to use it to hold up her pants had been a pain. If she tied it loose, her clothes kept escaping; if she tied it tight, it cut into her abdomen. She fumbled. The fibers had swollen from moisture.
“Hang on.”
He came around the fire to help and got on his knees in front of her, his dreadlocks sticking out in every which direction. She sucked in her stomach to give him room to work.
The wildman of the jungle was helping her take off her clothes. Her life had crossed over from the insane to the bizarre.
The rope loosened, and he returned to his spot without looking at her. He seemed to know instinctually what she needed and when—food, protection, privacy—and gave it without thought. She sat back down, took off her boots and pulled the bottom of her pants from her socks where they’d been secured to keep the bugs out.
“Here we go.” He peeled a thin string from the rope and licked the end to smooth down the fibers.
She took off the pants and tucked her shirt around her legs. It came to midthigh. She glanced at Brian across the fire. “Hopefully, the bugs won’t do too much damage. They can’t eat me in just a few minutes, right?”
His hands shook as he tried to thread the needle, the movement slight at first, then growing more pronounced. The muscles in his face tightened with each attempt. She had noticed the shaking before, a trembling that came to his fingers and passed after a while. His nerves were shot. That he’d survived at all was in itself a miracle.
“Let me do that.” She held out her hand.
He hesitated for a moment, his eyes burning like silver flames of an unearthly fire, then dropped the needle and thread into her palm. She wanted to say something to lighten his mood, but what did you say to comfort a man whose life had been stolen away? What could she possibly say that would make the past four years okay? She focused on the needle and went to work.
He didn’t stay idle, either. When she glanced up, he was rubbing two chunks of hard sandstone against each other. He didn’t stop until he got a flat surface on one. He waited until the mist wet it, picked up the smaller of his two knives and worked the blade over the rock with smooth movements, away from him, clockwise first then anticlockwise. The sound sent shivers down her spine, reminding her of old horror movies.
Maybe it was the darkness that seemed to have swallowed them that turned her thoughts so morbid. The night was a solid black wall starting a few feet from their campfire, surrounding them. The calls of wild animals, like that of angry invisible ghosts, startled her from time to time, made her draw closer to the flames.
She had been able to appreciate the beauty of the jungle when she had first seen it on the peninsula shortly after their arrival. It had seemed a living, breathing marvel. Now she found it threatening.
Brian examined the knife at the light of the flames, then took his shirt off. As scary as his appearance was in general, his body was beautiful, despite the scars. And she appreciated the strength in it that had saved her life.
He grabbed his beard with his left hand and began to hack away with the right, tufts of hair falling at his feet. Once he was down to the last inch or so, he gathered some water from the palm leaves next to him, wet the stubble thoroughly, then shaved.
She put down the needle, grabbed the larger knife from the ground and cut off the extra thread, then put her pants and boots back on. There was nothing else to do but watch his progress. His hands had steadied. And thank God for that. She wasn’t sure she would have been brave enough to offer her help with shaving, not with that deadly looking blade.
The fire was down to embers when he moved on to his hair. There hadn’t been enough dry material to keep the flames going, but whatever they’d managed was enough. They had a hot meal in their stomachs and were warmed up a little. If nothing else, it lifted her spirits, which was probably one of the most important things. If she could keep her mind from sinking into despair and giving up, the battle would be half-won.
Brian cut the hair on the side methodically and progressed to the back, his movements turning awkward.
“Let me help.” She rose and went to him. “Turn around.”
She knelt behind him and worked fast, cutting as much by feel as sight. He tossed what had remained of the ropes that had once bound her into the fire, but the fibers were damp and gave but a few more minutes of light, producing plenty of smoke in the process. Then the last ember blinked out and they were shrouded in darkness. “Here’s the knife.” She held it out to where she’d last seen his hand.
“You keep it,” he said.
She tightened her fingers on the handle, unsure where to put the small weapon.
He didn’t move.
What was he waiting for?
She should probably brush the hair off his back. She shifted, reluctant to touch him. And how stupid was that? He had saved her life twice, had just given her a knife that was sharp enough to shave with. He wasn’t about to throw her to the ground, for heaven’s sake. She reached out with her left hand and brushed the clippings off, quick, businesslike. It was strange to touch him like this, feeling without seeing, the long ridges of his scars pressing against her fingertips. For someone as underfed as he was, he retained an amazing amount of muscle.
She snatched away her hand and stood in one motion, stepping back.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice deep and thick.
She could hear him put on his shirt and move over to the raised platform she had built while he’d started their short-lived fire. He had instructed her on how to make a frame, how to stack on top the two dozen or so fallen branches he’d asked her to gather. She hoped the vines would hold and they wouldn’t tumble to the ground in the middle of the night, although, they weren’t high up—no more than a foot or so—just enough to keep the bugs and rats and snakes off them.
She stepped after him and felt for the edge of the platform, big enough for the two of them to sleep on without touching.
“Good haircut,” he said, “by the feel of it.”
“I wasn’t taking a big risk. Anything had to be an improvement.”
“It was that bad, huh?” There was a rare lightness to his voice.
“Scary.”
“You don’t strike me as the type who scares easily.”
Shows what you know. She was scared of the jungle. She was scared for Nicky. She was even a little scared of him. First time in bed with a wildman, and all.
“What do you do at home when you’re not dashing off to rescue people?”
“I work at a drug and alcohol rehab clinic.” She had resigned her director of admissions position just before leaving for Malaysia, and took a cut in pay and title so she’d have more time to spend with her baby when they got back. And she was scared about that, too. If, after all the dreaming and hoping, she wouldn’t turn out to be a good mother.
“So the urge to rescue runs deep in the blood.”
Was he teasing her? The deadpan comment seemed so out of character, she was unsure how to respond.
“I had a boyfriend in high school who died of a drug overdose. I didn’t even know he was using. He was class valedictorian. I got involved in every anti-drug support program after that. Things just progressed from there, I suppose.”
She fidgeted on the bed.
“Know of a good twelve-step program for recovering washed-out POWs?” His voice was hard again, not a trace of lightness left in it.
She wanted desperately to say something that would help him, something that went beyond the usual you’re-in-control-of-your-future platitude. In a sense, he was similar to the men and women she dealt with at work every day. Their lives were robbed from them by the substances they abused, just as the guerillas had stolen years from Brian. And yet in many other ways, he was profoundly different.
“Good night,” he said, closing the conversation before she could form a response.
She was up long after his breathing evened, startled by a call or shriek of some wild animal every time she began to doze off. Small noises came from above, insects and God knows what else dropping on the palm leaf roof Brian had thrown together after he had coaxed the fire to life.
Her mind was restless, going to Nicky over and over again, wondering how she was doing, if her sister was still alive. Her clothes were damp and she was cold, wishing back the cave where they’d spent the previous night. Amazing what a difference dry clothes made.
Brian mumbled something.
“What?”
He spoke again, in another language. She could hear him kicking at the leaves that she’d piled onto the bamboo platform for comfort. Maybe he was having a nightmare. He probably had enough bad memories to fill a lifetime of scary dreams. She had only spent a day with the guerillas. He had been their prisoner for four years. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what he had gone through.
The thought brought a slew of uncomfortable questions. What right did she have to ask him to go back? He had already suffered more than most people she knew did in a lifetime. He needed rest and sufficient food, and medical care for his bad leg.
She was prepared to risk everything to save her sister, even her life. But she had no right to ask him to do the same.
He kicked again, wildly, and must have hit one of the supports because the shelter rattled. She reached out and her fingers brushed against his face, registering how cold his wet skin was a split second before his hand closed around her wrist—tight enough to hurt.
Fear slammed into her. They couldn’t see each other. He could snap her neck before he woke enough to remember her. “Brian?” She scrambled away from him as far as she could.
He eased his grip and a second later let her go.
“Sorry,” he said after a while, his voice raspy from sleep.
“You had a bad dream.” She rubbed her wrist, staying back.
Silence followed her words.
“Look,” she said after a few minutes. “You don’t have to come with me. If you could just take me close enough so I can get to them without getting lost.” That would be enough. She would show the bank statement, and after that things should resolve quickly.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said over his shoulder, misunderstanding her. “I said you could trust me.”
“It’s not that I don’t. I do. But don’t you think you’ve had enough? I’m grateful that you saved my life. But it’s not your job to watch over me. You don’t owe me anything.” She said the words awfully bravely, even though she didn’t feel very brave at the moment.
“We’ll get your sister.”
She wanted to protest and pretend that she wasn’t melting in relief, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She did need him, want him with her. He was offering. She wasn’t stupid enough to fight him on this.
A steady drizzle came from above, some of it dripping through the makeshift roof. She pulled in her neck and wrapped her arms around herself. Under her brand-new shirt, she had on a cotton T-shirt and a thin cotton tanktop with a built-in bra under that—three layers of clothing and she was still shivering. Brian’s shirt was torn in a couple of places, worn thin with use.
She scooted closer to him until she was touching his back.
He pulled away.