Bridal Op

Trouble was, she’d been telling herself the same thing for about five weeks now, believing it a little less each day.

She couldn’t give up. If she lost faith…

But faith was hard to keep when she was hurt and hungry, when her life was threatened daily. At the beginning she’d got regular meals and trips to a nearby waterfall in the evenings to clean up. Although at the time she’d thought of her captivity as unbearable, now she wished for those times back. She hadn’t eaten in two days, hadn’t bathed in four.

Were they growing bored with their task of guarding her? Or had something gone wrong with Miami? She’d overheard enough to know that she was being held for ransom. Where was it?

It’d be here. Soon. Juan and her father would see to it. She had to keep believing that.

Both men had lost so much already: her father losing her twin sister to leukemia at the age of six, Juan losing his unborn son to drugs and his ex-wife to insanity. She hated the thought that now they had to worry about her.

From where she was, she could see the small fire and the men who gathered around it, drinking, one of them shoving a needle into his arm deep in the shadows. She still thought of escape now and then but no longer had the strength to attempt it.

The money is coming.

The money is coming.

The money is coming.

She repeated that over and over in her head. She knew better than to even whisper when she wasn’t asked.

Chapter Two

Rafe rubbed his elbow, sore from wielding the machete all morning. “You’re too close,” he said, then paused. Had to be the first time he’d ever said that to a beautiful woman. Man, times were changing.

Isabelle dropped back.

Better. They had to keep a healthy distance between them so that if they were discovered they wouldn’t both be taken out by the same spray of bullets. Drug routes crisscrossed the mountains; marijuana plantations were fairly common; poppy fields bloomed in out-of-the-way clearings. And with those came the men who guarded them, the drug lords’ private armies.

Laderan army base notwithstanding, the locals knew who owned these parts and respected the real power, the men on whom their lives depended.

“What’s that noise?”

Rafe stopped to listen. “Trucks. We must be getting close to the main road.”

Most roads in the area were little more than footpaths that connected the mountain villages. The only paved highway for hundreds of miles led to the army base that guarded the north corner of the country. They’d been hearing planes overhead more frequently for the past few hours but couldn’t see any from the thick canopy above.

He moved forward, toward the sound of the trucks, his feet sinking with every step into the layers of leaf mold underfoot. Walking on a solid surface would have been nice, but even when they found the road they would have to keep in the cover of the trees. At least he’d be able to stop navigating by his GPS unit and simply go by sight at that point.

The sound of motors faded, but he kept going forward. In another five minutes, he could see more light filter through the trees ahead. “There.”

He signaled to Isabelle to keep down as they crept to the edge of the woods. Damn. He scanned the other side of the road, nothing but stumps and low brush for as far as he could see.

“Not good,” he said when she came up next to him. “Loggers.”

“Do we have to cross?”

“We don’t have to, but I wouldn’t have minded having options. I don’t like it. If they’re logging this far up the mountain now…”

“They might have cleared woods closer to the base, too,” she finished the sentence for him.

“Right. I’d prefer not having to come out into the open.” He glanced at her. She looked okay although she’d been more quiet than usual that morning—probably the side effect of the high elevation. The thin air was bothering him, too, and he’d grown up with it. “Want to stop and rest for a while?”

“Not yet. I can walk a little longer.” She gave him a small smile. “I hate to stop knowing Sonya is out there, suffering who knows what.” She was backing away already, a few yards into the woods where they could walk without having to worry about being seen from the road.

“If anything happens to us, Sonya is not going to be saved at all. It’s okay to take a break,” he reminded her. They had precious little time left, not enough for Rachel Brennan, head of Miami Confidential, or anyone else to come up with a backup plan. They had to succeed and for that they had to stay in good shape and not let themselves get too run-down.

She drew in a good lungful of air and straightened her back, visibly gathering strength. “We’ll be fine.” Her fawn-colored eyes glinted with determination.

“Okay,” he said, just as eager to get going. “We’ll eat as we go.”

He moved forward, watchful and alert to any dangers ahead. They’d been lucky so far with the wildlife, but surprises abounded in the jungle. Speaking of which, the forest seemed awfully quiet all of a sudden.

He stopped again.

“What’s going on?” she asked from behind him.

“Listen.” He strained his ears. Was a group of smugglers moving through the woods nearby? Maybe a predator?

He pulled his gun, Isabelle following his example.

And then he felt it, a small trembling that could easily have come from a caravan of military vehicles passing on the road, except for the lack of motor noise.

“Watch out for falling trees!” he shouted as the ground shook harder now.

She was looking at him wide-eyed, her knees bent as she tried to balance. Insects rained from the trees and she shrieked. He was over there in two leaps, covering her with his body as she crouched down.

“It’s okay. Hang on. Just an earthquake.” He had to continue shouting now to be heard over the groaning trees, large branches splitting and smashing to the ground around them.

Then it all stopped just as fast as it had begun.

“Just an earthquake?” she asked weakly, once the ground stopped moving.

“Happens all the time.” He straightened and did his best to clean the bugs off her while she still crouched there with her shoulders hunched, apparently trying to prevent anything from crawling under her collar.

“Define all the time,” she said as she stood, then shivered with revulsion as she took in the ground and all the creepy crawly natives that were busy burrowing under fallen leaves or taking flight.

“A couple of hundred quakes a year. Some are so small you don’t even feel them, some pretty big.”

“And you haven’t told me about this, because?”

“I forgot about them.” He shook his head. “Isn’t that weird?” There had been two big ones during his childhood. Hard to believe they’d skipped his mind. He’d been living in Miami a long time. “It’s been a while.”

And he’d had too many other things on his mind to remember everything he should have. He was worried about Sonya, the wildlife in the jungle, Isabelle’s distracting presence and the fact that fifteen years ago, before he had left for the U.S., he had been a misguided young man, very much part of the local drug trafficking scene. If he weren’t careful, he could easily run into one of several people who’d just as soon separate him from his skin than see him in it.

“We go this way.” He picked up his machete and struck the bundle of vines blocking their way. “Keep behind me. Once we reach the base, we have to get a detailed picture of the place, find out where Sonya is, make a plan.”

He got down to business, separating a knot of woody vines that blocked their way.