Spy Hard (10 page)

In another second she smelled smoke. Right next to her, filling her nose. She coughed, covered her nose and mouth. Soon the buzzing lessened, then died away.

“I struck their nest.” She felt incredibly stupid. Now she was really at his mercy, and he was probably mad at her for taking off. Way to make a bad situation worse.

“Move carefully to the left,” he told her. “You’re next to an anthill.”

She swallowed hard.

“Looks like Mochi laid down a line of urine to keep them at bay.”

She expected him to yell at her. Julio would have done that. He’d been a sweet guy 90 percent of the time, but he’d had that hot South American temper. And from time to time he’d lost it. She pulled her neck in, ready for Jase to let his own temper loose on her.

“I saw the machete,” he said evenly. “You hit one pretty big nest. Are you okay?” He took her hand, his fingers gentle on her skin.

His touch reached something deep inside her. “I can’t see.”

“Other than your eyes, where are you stung?”

He probably couldn’t see the stings because of the mud. She pointed at a dozen different places. “Why does it hurt so much?” She moaned the words, she couldn’t help it.

“Hornet venom has about five percent of acetylcholine. It’s not like a garden-variety bee sting.” He let her hand go, and she wished he hadn’t. “I’m going to scrape out their stingers with the back of my knife. Hang in there for a minute.”

He took her face between his palms. “Actually, let me start with those eyelids.”

He used his fingernail, from the feel of it.

When he was done he moved on to the rest of her body, including her scalp. Every single bite pulsed with burning pain. After he finished he packed more wet mud on her skin.

She tried to picture him fussing over her bites. Tried to picture herself. With her belly, she had to look like a hippo on her way home from mud bathing.

“Here, drink.”

Something cold touched her lips. Probably the canteen.

She drank her fill while he tied a cool, wet cloth around her eyes. “That should bring down the swelling.”

“Thank you.”

He didn’t respond, and she had no idea what he was doing once he let her go. “We’ll rest here awhile,” he said after a minute.

She thought about that. She’d had a chance to catch her breath while he’d been treating her. The sooner they got going, the sooner they’d reach the research station.

“We should go.” None of her stings would hurt any less sitting than walking. “If you’re willing to lead me.”

He helped her up, his strong hands taking hers, pulling her up easily. “The second you need to rest, you tell me,” he declared, firmly back in command.

She was dismayed to find that she was actually relieved. Then she decided to cut herself a little slack. She’d get right back on her quest for independence as soon as she could see again.

“Did the hornets sting Mochi?”

“He looks fine. Chico is good, too.”

She moved forward, aware of her complete dependence on him. She had to trust him to help her, when she’d just sworn not long ago that she would never trust another man again, especially not someone like Jase.

Blind trust.
She finally knew the full meaning of the words, not that she wanted to. The concept scared her. She had a tendency to trust the wrong kind of man. That was how she’d ended up in this godforsaken jungle in the first place.

And Jase was definitely the wrong kind of man, just like Pedro, her brother-in-law, even if on a smaller scale.

All the little niceties he’d done for her flashed into her mind. She pushed the images away.

He had to be the same as the others at camp to work for someone like Pedro. She couldn’t start wishing for some fairy tale, then start believing it. She’d done that with Julio and that had ended pretty badly.

She wasn’t going to fall for Jase’s temporary kindness. She would follow him until she recovered her vision, then she would get away from him again as soon as they neared the research station. This time, more carefully. In the meanwhile, she could work on making him forget her first attempt, make him trust her once again.

“I’m sorry I left.” The pure truth, no lying there.

A moment of silence passed, his grip on her hand tightening slightly. “This can’t happen again. You could have killed yourself. You put each of us at risk.”

“I was scared. I don’t know where you’re going. What if someone there will take me straight back to Pedro in hopes of a reward?” She swallowed. All he’d told her was that he was off seeking other employment somewhere up north.

Silence stretched between them.

“You can trust me,” he said at last.

She couldn’t trust him, obviously, but she didn’t want to insult him. He’d just saved her life. “My father will be very grateful to you. He’s well off, financially.”

Her father had been dead for years and had always been an underpaid educator. But she had to give Jase some incentive. “As soon as you take me to civilization, I’ll contact him.”

Another stretch of silence followed.

“You don’t have to run away from me,” he said at last. “I’m not who you think I am.”

Even the worst criminals often had delusions like that, she reflected. Pedro fancied himself as some godfather-like figure who gave work to hundreds. He thought himself strict but benevolent. He was a folk hero in his own mind, helping the poor and evading the government.

“You do what you have to. You don’t really have another choice.” She made sure to sound accepting and understanding.

He muttered something she couldn’t make out. Sounded like he was swearing under his breath. Okay, here it came. The yelling. She’d tried to do the opposite, but somehow she’d managed to make him angry at her anyway. She couldn’t afford that at this stage.

She wrapped her free arm around her belly. “Please don’t be mad at me.” She needed his help to survive.

“I’m not mad.” He stopped walking. Fell silent for a minute before he spoke again, his voice grave. “I work for the U.S. government. So please, don’t run away again. I’m your best bet here.”

Sure he was.

He must have read the skepticism on her mud-covered face, because he continued, “I’ve been doing undercover work at the Don’s compound.”

It surprised her how much she wanted that to be true. She wanted him to be different from the rest. She wanted to believe that she was safe with him. She could talk herself into believing him so, so easily. Which was why she had to make sure she didn’t do that. She had to use common sense.

“You don’t believe me.” Frustration rang through his voice.

“I do,” she lied. She was blind and completely dependent on staying in his good graces.

“Okay. Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I’m going to take care of you. All right? Whether you believe it or not. All you have to do is hang on to my hand and follow me.” He started walking again.

She did what he told her, her mind buzzing. Okay, he
was
somehow different from the rest of the men at camp, and he
had
busted her out. She supposed she could give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So you came to the camp because of the drugs?” She might not have been allowed in the packaging building, but she wasn’t stupid.

“That, and because Don Pedro is now supplying weapons to terrorists. We also think his human smuggling ring is planning to smuggle terrorists into the U.S. There’ve been movements of some suspicious payments into his Swiss accounts. I don’t suppose you know anything about that.”

The words hit her square in the chest. Everything inside her railed to deny what she was hearing. She didn’t want to believe that someone she was related to—even if only by marriage—would do something like this.

But why would Jase make it up? What would he have to gain?

Try as she might, she couldn’t come up with a satisfying answer to those questions. And when she considered all she’d seen from Pedro and all she’d seen from Jase, she was tempted to believe Jase over her brother-in-law any day of the week.

Pedro was capable of involving himself in absolutely anything that promised to make him money. He considered himself above the law. He thought he was invincible.

But making a deal with terrorists…

Oh, God.

She just found a whole bunch of new incentives to make sure that she got herself and her baby as far as possible from her brother-in-law, to do whatever she could to make sure he would never find them again.

Of course, first she had to survive the next couple of days.

“Who do you work for?” she asked. “Are you some kind of special forces?” She didn’t have a lot of trouble picturing that, actually.

Bringing the kid and the puppy along made more sense in that light. Any mercenary might think that they’d get a reward for an American like her. But a mercenary wouldn’t save Mochi from camp, and certainly not a three-legged puppy.

He moved slowly as he led her, making sure she could keep up. “I can’t really talk about this. I only said what I said to make sure you won’t run away again.”

She made no promises. She wanted to believe him, and she did to a point, but fully trusting anyone didn’t come easily just now. “Is Jase your real name?”

“Yes.”

Okay. That was something. “Are you really from Texas?”

“Wouldn’t lie about that, no, ma’am. Who’d want to be from anyplace else, anyway?”

That sounded about right, spoken like a true Texan. She felt better hearing the grin in his voice. “Where are you really taking me?”

“To a research station not far away. Apparently, a chopper comes monthly with supplies and fresh staff. They can take you out of here.”

Dear God, let that be true.
“And you?”

“I go back to doing what I’ve been doing.”

Her mind buzzed with questions more specific to his mission, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t answer any of those, so she followed him silently, trying to ignore the pain and the stink of the mud that covered her face.

He held her hand firmly and made sure she didn’t fall every time she stumbled. “I’m going to make sure you get out of here all right.”

She wanted to believe him.

Her bunched-up muscles were starting to ache. She needed to relax. She couldn’t. She found walking through the jungle nerve-wracking on her best day. Walking through the jungle blind was downright terrifying.

But the touch of Jase’s hand, his long fingers folded around hers, anchored her, kept her from panicking. If he really was who he claimed…

She thought of the clumsy way she’d tried to seduce him back at the hacienda and embarrassment washed over her.

“I’m so sorry for kissing you.” She blurted the words without thinking, embarrassing herself all over again.

A long moment of silence passed, during which she wanted to sink into the earth. She hated that she couldn’t see his face.

“Don’t ever apologize for a kiss like that.” His voice held amusement.

“I thought—”

“I know what you thought. We’re okay on that. Believe me. No man on earth would complain about that kiss.”

She drew a quick breath, flustered. “Probably no need to talk about it at all, then.”
Please, God.

“Can I at least think about it?” His voice held a grin again.

She was sure her cheeks were fire-engine red. Her only hope was that he couldn’t tell with all her stings and all the mud.

“If I don’t overdo it?” He pushed. “Maybe just once or twice an hour?”

And then, against all odds, she found herself smiling, some of her pent-up tension disappearing. “You can think of whatever you want if you guarantee that we won’t run into any more hornets.”

He was silent for a few seconds. “The thing to do in a bee or hornet attack is to get in water, if there’s any nearby. Submerge yourself completely for as long as you can. They do give up after a while.” He kept talking, as if he knew that hearing his voice soothed her, somehow made up for her lost sense of sight. “Or go into a very dark place. Like the back of a cave. Bees can’t see in the dark.”

He must have learned that in some jungle-survival training class, she decided, glad that he was prepared for all the hazards that faced them.

“Is this side trip going to mess up your mission?” she asked, as the thought occurred to her. And realized that she believed him more with every passing minute. “How are you going to explain taking me and Mochi out of camp when you go back to Pedro?”

“I’ll find a way to make it work.”

But she wondered if he only said that so she wouldn’t feel bad about derailing his undercover operation. “Are there others like you at camp?”

He stayed silent.

Of course, he probably couldn’t tell her anything about that.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I’m the only one,” he said at last.

He would say that either way, she figured. Bad enough that his cover was blown, he wouldn’t betray a teammate. Although, she was tempted to think that he was telling the truth. She’d seen most of the men who worked for Don Pedro, and she hadn’t seen anyone remotely like Jase.

Putting one foot in front of the other blindly was as scary as anything she’d ever done, but she trusted him more with every passing second, and was soon walking forward without thinking too much about it. She had the overwhelming feeling that he
would
keep her safe.

And she was pitifully grateful for that, if not a little disappointed that she’d gotten herself into this situation in the first place.

“I was going to take care of myself,” she voiced her thoughts out loud. “I shouldn’t have to rely on you for everything. This was supposed to be my big break for independence,” she added, unable to help the irony from her voice. “I was going to grow up before the baby came.”

“You’re pregnant and blind. In the middle of the jungle. Give yourself a break. And you’re plenty grown up already. You survived a bandit camp. Hell, you survived Don Pedro. There are hundreds of rough guys, now dead and buried, who can’t make that claim.”

“I
am
going to be independent someday. I
can
handle it.”