1 ...7 8 9 11 12 13 ...18 He jogged to the beach. “Laura?”
No answer. The swell had increased, the waves smashing onto the sand. He yelled louder. Nothing. His chest tightened. He closed in on the beam, sinking to his ankles in sand. The flashlight was propped on a rock. No Laura. Merde.
He switched it off and gave his eyes a few seconds to readjust. She’d run off down the sand. He followed, stepping in her footprints to save energy. The trail ran out at the edge of the rain forest. He scanned the foliage, found a recent disturbance in a stand of bamboo, and stepped noiselessly through the gap. Tracking someone in jungle this thick was easy, and he was trained to operate in darkness. She’d have to push through the foliage blind, leaving tracks, making noise, burning energy. She only had a four-minute head start. He smiled. Cat and mouse. His favorite game.
* * *
Why was the damn thing not working? In pitch darkness, Holly felt for the buttons on the sat phone and punched them for the tenth time. The screen stayed resolutely black. It’d been fully charged that afternoon, so it couldn’t be the batteries. Could it have been damaged when the capitaine—Jack—jumped from her boat? Or when they’d plummeted at God knew how many miles per hour? She was screwed. What now?
A fern rustled next to her. She pulled her feet onto the rock she was sitting on. Snake, scorpion or spider? After a minute the noise stopped. She eased to her feet and backed away—into something solid. She gasped, swiveling. A tree. Get a grip, princess. Could she creep back out to the beach and make a bonfire to attract a ship or plane before Jack found her? And how the hell would she light it—rubbing sticks? Put her in a city alleyway and she’d know just how to survive. In the wild she couldn’t tell a turtle from a stone.
“Thought I told you not to run.”
She yelped. Where the hell had he come from? A click, and light filled the forest. That, at least, was an improvement. She blinked rapidly. “I walked.”
“You ran.” He rested the flashlight’s beam on the sat phone. “Hard to get that working without the battery.”
“Ugh. You took the battery.” Of course.
He tapped a pocket on his thigh. “As you said, trust is going to be an issue between us.”
White light flashed through the forest. A second later the sky rumbled. “We go this way. You take this.” He passed her the flashlight. “Give me the equipment. Stay close behind me and step where I step. Stomping should scare away snakes and scorpions—and watch for spiderwebs. You’re no use to me dead.”
Dude, I’m no use to you alive, either.
She followed him, stamping until her feet throbbed. The roar of the ocean receded. Something touched her bare neck. She gasped and froze.
He turned. “What is it?” Concern flecked his tone.
She slapped at her skin. It was wet. She exhaled. “Nothing.” Spooked by a drop of rain. More drops rattled on the broad leaves around them.
He grabbed her shoulder and coaxed her around. “Give me the light.”
He eased his fingers under the collar of her jumpsuit, brushing her nape, then scooped his palm around her upper back. She shivered. Light spilled over her shoulder as he searched. He circled his hand to her upper chest, brushing the tops of her breasts, and released her. She stumbled to reclaim her balance.
“All clear.”
“What should I be scared of? What’s the most dangerous thing out here?”
“Humans.” He returned the flashlight and turned back to the jungle. “Me, in particular.”
“That’s a given.” Humans she could deal with. “I mean, what animals, what insects?”
“Snakes, mostly,” he shouted, walking again. “Only half a dozen species will kill you, most of them in the water—cobras, kraits, sea snakes, coral snakes, vipers... If a krait gets you, you have about a fifty-fifty chance—but by the time you get the first symptoms you’re dead. And there’s scorpion fish and stone fish. The sharks you’ve already met. In these jungles a bunch of spiders will give you a painful bite but probably won’t kill you. Same with the scorpions—the sting hurts, but you’ll live.” He looked up into the canopy. “And the slow loris can give you a poisonous nip.”
“The what?” She followed his gaze. “You’re making that one up.”
“Looks like a sloth, but smaller. It probably won’t kill you, unless the bite gets infected.”
“Good to know.”
“The biggest killer’s the mosquito. They kill more people than the others combined.” He held out a hand to help her navigate a boggy patch. She ignored it. “Malaria, dengue fever, Japanese Encephalitis... Don’t worry, princess, we have spray.”
Lightning strobed. Thunder snapped through the sky and shook the ground. Rain pelted her through the thinning canopy. Jack moved faster, crashing through the undergrowth like an elephant, ducking under branches, stopping occasionally to hold them back for her. A large hulk loomed ahead—a rusty tin shed, rain shelling its roof. Their accommodation? Jack charged into a thicket of scrub, and she tumbled through behind him, into air. A path. That was an improvement.
“Nearly there, princess.”
After another hundred feet the path widened into a grassy clearing. Lightning illuminated a wooden cabin with a thatched roof. Jack crossed the lawn and took the steps to the veranda in a single stride. A lizard the size of her arm scampered out of his path and disappeared into the darkness. She shuddered.
“Stay here,” he said as she reached the veranda. He dropped the bags on the doorstep and jogged out into the rain.
She wiped her face with her sleeve, though it was just as wet. They were beside the sea again, but the waves on this side of the island lapped rather than crashed. Two arms of dark land circled a patch of still blackness. A lagoon. She inhaled the fresh, fertile scent of jungle and sea. Rain splattered all around. She’d been in worse prisons, and this one had a guard who was a step up from the correctional officers she was used to—in so many ways.
A motor shuddered to life, a hundred feet away or more. An outboard engine? But he said there’d be no escape until the ransom was paid. A light flickered on above her head, and a yellow glow spilled from a window. A generator. Not a boat. Her shoulders slumped.
Jack returned, walking as calmly as if it were a sunny day. Rain slicked his buzz cut and flowed down his face. He opened an insect screen, unlocked the door and held it open. “Your suite, your highness.”
Low lamps lit a bed scattered with pink frangipani petals and draped in a mosquito net. A window seat was stacked with red and turquoise cushions. On a glass coffee table, a bottle of champagne nested in a bucket. “Good grief.”
“Did I mention we’re on honeymoon?”
She froze. One bed. Her gaze darted to meet his, her stomach flip-flopping.
“Bed’s yours,” he said, quickly, lowering the bags to the floor. “I’ll take the hammock outside.”
She exhaled, switching off the flashlight and dropping it on the window seat. She wouldn’t put it past him to carry out his threat to relieve her of a finger or two—he was evidently a professional—but there was honor in him, too. He wouldn’t take advantage of the situation in that way.
So he’d booked a honeymoon suite—a honeymoon island. Good cover for a woman in her late twenties and a good-looking man not much older. Would someone come to service the suite, replenish their supplies? Could she get a message away—or steal their boat?
He crossed the glossy floorboards, leaving a trail of water, and unlocked another door. “Bathroom is out here.”
A covered deck held a vanity and mirror, but otherwise the “bathroom” was a tropical garden enclosed by a brushwood fence. In the center, a miniature thatched roof covered a shower. Garden lights lit spears of falling rain.
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