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  Fournier looked relieved. “All of us, or—”

  “Just you and me,” said the Argentine.

  Gus spoke up. “Wouldn’t a younger man be more comfortable on the back of an ATV? Perhaps Carlos or I could take your place,” he suggested to the lead negotiator.

  Álvarez shook his head. “Only Mr. Fournier,” he insisted. “He is the one with the contacts.”

  “When do we go?” asked Fournier. “Our time is limited.”

  “We go now,” said Álvarez. He turned to the rest of them. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. There are hooks on the wall for your hammocks, firewood for the fireplace. You may boil rice twice a day, but the fire must be extinguished by sunset.”

  “How far away is Rojas’s camp from here?” Lucy spoke up, earning a frown.

  “I don’t know,” said Álvarez, heading toward the door. “I don’t ask questions.”

  Asking questions was dangerous, obviously. But inquiring minds wanted to know. Would they get to meet Commander Rojas, or would the Argentine always speak for him? How far away was Rebel Central? Was Rojas hiding something he didn’t want the UN team to see?

  As they went to hang their hammocks on the pegs, she peered through the smudged pane of a window and realized only Estéban and Manuel had been left to guard the UN team. The rest had departed with Buitre.

  Catching Gus’s eye, she ascertained that he had noticed the sudden laxness in security. Giving Dumb and Dumber the slip in order to get a peek at Rebel Central was a distinct possibility.

  “Only two more days,” Gus murmured. Seeing her shiver, he drew her into his arms to warm her with his body heat.

  Accepting his embrace, Lucy envisioned the exchange going off without a hitch. She pictured her and Gus on a helicopter, sailing up and over the lush jungle canopy, returning to civilization, to the life she’d led before the mission.

  Why, she wondered, did envisioning the best-case scenario leave her feeling cheated? Why the emptiness, the sense that her potential hadn’t been fully realized?

  Perhaps it had to do with the fact that only one of the hostages would be coming home alive. The job would be a moderate success at best, denying her a full sense of accomplishment.

  God forbid this nagging emptiness had anything to do with Gus. There wasn’t room for tenderness on the battleground against terror. She was wasting her time thinking maybe there was. This assignment was a onetime deal, an opportunity to relive a simpler era when loving Gus was all that mattered. She wasn’t the same girl she was back then. Of course, she had feelings for him. But feelings didn’t count when the world was falling apart.

  COMMANDER ROJAS USED a forty-foot watchtower as his headquarters. The structure afforded him an inspiring view of La Montaña. Up here, where the air was moist and sweet and highly oxygenated, he enjoyed a sense of loftiness and security. Using shortwave radio only for emergencies, he had managed to elude both the Colombian army and the CIA.

  Until now. Deputy Buitre’s testimony made Rojas’s blood run cold. “You are certain you have overheard them speaking English?” he inquired, his voice gruff with disappointment.

  “Yes, sir,” insisted the scarred soldier.

  Deputy Buitre had been a rebel since his teens. His experience made him an asset to the FARC. He had no reason to make up lies. Nor did the Venezuelan captain, for that matter.

  “Bring Captain Vargas to me,” Rojas decided. “I wish to hear his testimony in person.”

  “I will, Commander,” the deputy promised. “Immediately.”

  Commander Marquez, standing next to the deputy, wrung his hands together, waiting for a moment to chime in. “Commander,” he cautioned, “even if there are spies within the UN team, we cannot harm them. The world would consider us barbarians,” he insisted.

  Rojas sat back, crossed his arms, and thought. Marquez was right, of course. If he seized any one of the UN peacekeepers, it would appear to outsiders that the rebels acted with unwarranted hostility toward a neutral entity.

  On the other hand, if the couple were spies for the CIA, then letting them go could spell ruin for the rebels, depending on how much they had discovered during their stay on La Montaña.

  Did they know of the FARC’s plans for resurgence?

  Could they lead the enemy to the FARC’s hidden camps?

  Twirling a pen between his thumb and forefinger, he turned his head to survey the canopy, which was topped by a thin mist. As he drew a breath of oxygen-rich air, a plan began to form in his head.

  “You are right,” he said to Marquez. “We cannot harm them.”

  Disappointment seized the planes of Buitre’s face, and Rojas realized here was a man who enjoyed inflicting pain on others. Nor was he bright enough to realize what his leader had in mind. Putting his weight on his elbows, he leaned forward to enlighten the deputy. “Tragically, in the jungle, there are many accidents that may befall an individual. Especially,” he added, bringing a glint of comprehension to Buitre’s eyes, “when there is a war underway.”

  SPRAWLED ON A CARPET OF WET MOSS, Lucy peered over a rocky ledge at Front Commander Rojas’s compound. “It’s bigger than I thought,” she admitted to Gus, her heart thumping in the wake of their sprint through the jungle, her blood thrumming with excitement.

  They hadn’t had to trick Dumb and Dumber, after all. Estéban and Manuel had simply dropped off to sleep by the fire inside the casita, and Lucy and Gus had excused themselves, supposedly to heed the call of nature. They’d run the instant they were out of sight, slipping and sliding down the path, as giddy as kids escaping from school, until they heard it—the bustle of Rebel Central.

  Veering off the path, they’d pushed through a tangle of vegetation, coming to this rocky ledge where they got their first glimpse of Rojas’s hideout.

  Buildings with corrugated tin roofs peeked through a thinned canvas below. The camp buzzed with activity, but the thin drizzle and tree branches made it hard to see what the fuss was all about.

  Still, they were lucky to view the camp at all. Journalists, the CIA, and the entire Colombian army had been searching for Rojas’s new headquarters for over two years now.

  “Check out the watchtower,” said Gus, pointing.

  Following his finger, Lucy spied a structure roughly five stories high, just clearing the canopy. It had been painted green and draped in nets to keep it camouflaged. She hadn’t even seen it till he showed it to her. Bravo to Gus for noticing first.

  “I’d like to see the view from there,” he added, regarding it through narrowed eyes.

  “Me, too.” Wellbeing flowed through Lucy’s veins. For once, she felt like Gus’s equal, his true partner, not a woman he had sworn to protect. “What the hell is making that noise?” she added, searching the camp for the source of the sawing sound. “Are they clearing the forest?”

  “I think those are the ATVs Álvarez mentioned. Look, there’s one right now.” Just then, an ATV shot into a thinned area below them, pulling a trailer behind it.

  Men rushed forward to unload the trailer.

  As Lucy strained for a better look, Gus twisted the heel of his boot and pried the phone out. “The camera has a telescopic lens,” he said, pressing a button to power it up. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

  “Crates,” she answered, catching a glimpse of a long pine box as it was pulled from the trailer. “Long enough to carry rifles. Or stinger missiles.”

  Next to her, Gus swore quietly, and she glanced at him askance. “What’s wrong?”

  “Battery’s dead,” he said flatly.

  As he fetched the spare battery from his right heel, she made a mental note—they were now down to eight hours of battery power. “Five crates unloaded,” she murmured, keeping an eye on the activity below. “The ATV just took off again, back the way it came.”

  Gus’s silence recaptured her focus. She found him frowning at the phone with a tense expression that made her stomach cramp. “What is it?” she asked.

  He pu
lled out the new battery. “It’s not the battery that’s dead. The phone has water in it. There’s too much moisture here,” he added.

  Worry pricked Lucy’s bubble of contentment. “So we have no communication,” she realized.

  “For the time being. The phone isn’t completely shot. If it were, there’d be a red dot inside the battery casing. If it dries out it’ll probably work again.”

  If. Probably. To Lucy those words weren’t particularly comforting.

  “Uncooked rice,” Gus murmured thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  “I can stick the phone in a bag of uncooked rice, and that should draw the moisture out.”

  Should. “But what if someone goes to cook up breakfast and finds it?” she asked, her agitation rising.

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take,” he answered with a grim look. “I promise I’ll keep an eye on it.” Putting both batteries back in his boot, he pushed the phone deep into his pocket. “We’d better get back,” he said, sending one last glance toward the lookout tower. The dead phone, and the lack of communication, was dampening enough to etch lines of worry on either side of his mouth.

  “Right.” Lucy, who’d wondered whether to tell him about the worsening pain in her hip, filed it away for when the mission was over. Thank God they were heading out of the jungle soon.

  “So what’s our story?” he asked, reaching for her hand. “We got turned around and headed the wrong way?”

  “Sounds likely enough,” Lucy agreed, sending a final glance at Rojas’s watchtower. If she were the rebel leader, she’d be up inside that sucker, making big plans.

  CHAPTER 13

  All night long, the satellite phone lay buried in the sack of dry rice in the corner of the casita. Gus slept with one eye open, prepared to leap up and intervene should any one of the team members decide to measure out rice in advance of the morning meal. If all went well, the moisture in the phone’s casing would be gone by morning.

  With the first hint of daybreak brightening the house’s single window, Gus rolled out of his hammock and stealthily retrieved it. Casting a glance at Lucy, asleep in her own hammock, he slipped outside.

  Yesterday’s rain had finally moved on, leaving droplets of moisture winking like diamonds on every leaf. The jungle was drenched in birdsong and monkey chatter, creating a joyous cacophony, through which Manuel and Estéban slept, wrapped in tarps, their hammocks slung between trees.

  Gus moved stealthily past them up the path before veering into the woods. Positioning himself beneath an opening in the trees, he removed the battery from his right boot, inserted it into the phone, and held his breath.

  As the logo jumped onto the black screen, he closed his eyes briefly. Thank God. He’d worried that his nightmare had been a premonition of awful things to come, like one of the Elite Guardsmen recognizing Lucy on the trail. He hadn’t been able to tell if any of them had or not. But at least he was getting a clear signal from the satellite now—a reassuring turn of events. Here was his chance to touch base with the JIC and inquire whether Whiteside had decided to pull Lucy off the mountain.

  The phone rang once before it was snatched up. “That you, Ethel?” Vinny asked in a perfect imitation of Fred.

  “I need to keep this short,” Gus murmured, peering cautiously around him. “Listen, I’m about one click away from Rebel Central, which means my coordinates should be close to one of those camps.”

  “Roger that, Gus.” It was the OIC. “We suspected that yesterday when you approached the coordinates for Ki-kirr-zikiz. We thought maybe you’d try to call in. What’s going on over there? Over.”

  “Sorry, sir. The sat phone’s been out of commission. To bring you up-to-date, the lead negotiator has cut a deal with the FARC and is currently off the mountain trying to work out the details. There may be an exchange taking place here, in the next couple of days.”

  “We’ve heard rumblings to that effect, Gus. Do you think Fournier can pull it off?”

  “He’s got the experience,” Gus reasoned. “Plus the FARC are eager to ship us out of here. Commander Rojas has the Venezuelans funneling him weapons faster than they can unload them.”

  “The Predator has images of that,” the OIC corroborated.

  “Any word from Whiteside on pulling Lucy out early?” Gus asked. “We crossed paths with the Elite Guard yesterday. I don’t know if any of them recognized her, sir, but I’m not sure we should take any chances.”

  “Well,” Luther countered, sounding suddenly uncomfortable. “The negotiation is this close to resolution, Gus. It might throw a wrench into the process if Lucy were to disappear all of a sudden,” he reasoned.

  Gus had to admit that was true. Still, recalling the conjecturing look on the Venezuelans’ faces, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear that Lucy’s encounter with them in the warehouse last year would bite them in the ass. “Yes, sir,” he murmured.

  “So proceed as you are, Gus, and good luck. We’ll be monitoring things on this end. Anything else?”

  “No, sir, that’s it.”

  “Hope to see you soon, over.”

  “Thank you, sir. Out.”

  With another peek around the tree, Gus stowed the phone in his boot before turning to water the tree.

  Still weighted with foreboding, he hurried back to camp, relieved to find Manuel and Estéban just stirring. Carlos and Bellini met him at the door as they headed for the trees. Inside the casita, S¸ukruye knelt by the fireplace, pouring rice into a tin bowl. But Lucy was still in her hammock, apparently lethargic after a restless night’s sleep. He crossed the room to gaze down at her. “Morning,” he said, noting with a touch of alarm that she seemed more pale than usual.

  “Hi,” she said shortly, rubbing crust from the corners of her eyes.

  “Tough night?”

  She refused to answer, rolling stiffly to a sitting position. She’d pleased him by asking to share a hammock with him last night. They’d tried, only to end up hitting the dirtpacked floor when they both tumbled out. Lucy had then moved to her own hammock, where she obviously hadn’t fared much better. The thought that she might have missed him broke over him like a warm morning sunrise.

  Just then S¸ukruye left the casita to fetch water for the rice. They had the place to themselves. He sought the courage to voice the question that had been building in him lately.

  “Did you check the phone?” she asked before he had the chance to speak.

  “Um, yeah. It works again. I just called in and brought the guys up-to-date.”

  “Good,” she said, a hint of color returning to her face.

  Gus swallowed hard. It was now or never. “You know, when all this is behind us…”

  She looked up at him sharply, suspending his suggestion. “What?” she prompted impatiently.

  Maybe she wasn’t in the right mood for him to suggest a date. She seemed a little irritable. “Nothing. It’ll wait,” he decided.

  With her hip throbbing painfully, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, and her stomach rumbling for the meal of rice that wouldn’t be ready for another half hour, Lucy’s patience was too thin for her to tolerate guessing games.

  “Just tell me,” she insisted, feeling crabby and angry at herself. Damn it, she couldn’t even sleep without the comfort of Gus’s arms around her. What happened to being completely self-reliant?

  He sent a nervous glance at the door. “Well, I was thinking, when this was over, we could maybe see each other, socially,” he suggested with watchful wariness.

  He sounded like the shy college sophomore who’d asked her out when she was just a freshman. Even as her heart took wing, Lucy’s stomach sank like it was weighted with concrete. She stared at him, speechless. They were in a war zone, living on borrowed time if the Elite Guard outed her, and he was trying to ask her out on a date? If they both lived through this op, the chances of them staying on the same continent for the next assignment were slim to none. How the hell was romance supposed to fit into th
at picture?

  At her continued silence, Gus shifted uncomfortably. “You still like pizza, right?” he continued bravely. “I know this new pizza place near Tyson’s Corner—”

  She put a hand up, suspending his persuasions. “Stop,” she begged. “That’s enough. Just…don’t say any more.”

  Jamming his hands into his pockets, he frowned down at her. “You’re the one who insisted I spit it out,” he added, his eyes dark with disappointment.

  “My fault,” she accepted. “And don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing personal, okay? People like us don’t do relationships, Gus. I can’t even keep a houseplant alive.”

  Rolling out of the hammock, she pushed abruptly past him, afraid he’d see the confusion in her eyes and pounce on it. Her knees felt strangely weak as she headed toward the door to jam her feet into her boots. A part of her longed to turn back, to hurl herself into his arms and say, “Yes, I want to date you!” But the smarter half prevailed. Squaring her shoulders, she marched out of the casita without a backward glance, nearly knocking down S¸ukruye, who was on her way in.

  “Careful!” the woman cautioned as Lucy bumped her bucket of water.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, fleeing the building. Hurrying past the others, she pushed blindly into the blur of vegetation, remembering at the last second to mark her trail by bending branches.

  Gus’s suggestion, coming on the heels of a poor night’s sleep, had thrown her thoughts into turmoil.

  Hell, she had nothing against casual dating. She’d been known to dazzle the opposite sex from time to time. But there would be nothing casual about seeing Gus socially, as he’d put it. This adventure in the thicket made it glaringly obvious that they felt comfortable together as boyfriend and girlfriend. If she dated him again, she’d become as wrapped up in him as when she was younger. She’d be picking and choosing her assignments so she could see him, distracted from her primary objective.

  Worse than that, she wouldn’t be self-reliant ever again. She would need him to feel complete, just as she had in college. It had taken years to stop missing him.