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He carried a knife, though. It was useful in whacking through vines and opening cans of Vienna sausage. And he walked. He counted it in hours, not miles. He’d done four hours yesterday, on top of six miles rowed back and forth on the nameless creek that bordered his campsite.
Tomorrow he was going to row in one direction until he was exhausted, then he’d go ashore, give his knee a workout and then row himself back to camp. It was a good system. It was working for him. Except for a few minor problems, he was in better shape now than he’d been before the explosion.
He was a hell of a lot more relaxed. Couple of days ago, he’d actually found himself whistling. Another few weeks and he might even find something to smile about.
He wondered what was going on back in Langley. Madden had promised to find out who’d been turned. Who had leaked names, times and places so that two of the best men in the unit had been taken out in one night. Lyon’s name would be on that list of expendables. Which was one more reason why he hadn’t cared to hang around the hospital like a sitting duck.
A duck on the wing had a far better chance of surviving.
A camcorder. Even a disposable camera. Jasmine would give anything for some way to record what she was seeing. No wonder half of Hollywood had moved to North Carolina, with scenery like this. Moody, spooky, fraught with atmosphere—not to mention the exotic noises and all the different odors. Perfect for a remake of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
At least there were plenty of black lagoons, if mercifully few creatures.
Away from the motel, there was practically no traffic. None at all once she’d left the narrow two-lane highway. Clemmie had told her about the old logging road, and she’d followed it, determined to stay out of public view until her face improved, but wanting to take something back with her after spending the better part of eight hundred dollars on a wild-goose chase.
She’d had sense enough to shove a notepad into her shoulder bag. Clemmie had provided that, too. Her writerly instincts had been stirring all morning. She was even considering doing a travel piece on spec to help pay her expenses.
She might even offer it to one of the two newspapers where she’d briefly worked as a special features writer before being laid-off, downsized or consolidated, depending on who was offering excuses.
At least it had led to her acting career, which paid at a better rate, only not nearly as regularly.
Fortunately, she was good at rolling with the punches. Going with the flow. Surviving.
The logging road ended at a hill, which turned out to be a mound of rotted sawdust, covered with creeping, crawling vines. Something was blooming somewhere nearby—something with a sweet, spicy scent.
There was enough high ground so that her feet didn’t sink in the mud, so she followed an all but imperceptible trail deeper and deeper into the woods.
Red berries beckoned from the wild tangle of vegetation. Gorgeous, big fat red berries, like the ones she had picked for her grandmother. Uh-uh. Not again.
She scratched her face, careful not to dig too hard because poison ivy was bad enough without scars. Her face, after all, was her fortune. At five foot ten, her height and her long legs helped, but mostly it was her face. She would like to believe it was her acting ability, because then a few scars might not matter too much, but she was realistic enough to know better.
She had a modest talent and the kind of looks that were just different enough to land her a few parts. Until another kind of look came into fashion, and then she’d do commercials or even catalog work, and maybe some modeling.
Not that modeling appealed to her. The few models she knew were obsessed by diets, cutaneous laser resurfacing, ultrasound liposuctioning. One of them was actually growing her own collagen for when she needed a major overhaul.
Jasmine would much rather settle into a comfortable, low-key life with Eric and their children, and maybe her grandmother living together in a little bungalow somewhere. Fashion was fleeting. Film fame was fleeting. Family was forever.
Oh, yeah? So what happened to all of yours?
Somewhere up ahead she heard a sound that didn’t belong in this mystical, moss-hung environment.
A splash. A bump, a yelp...
And then a groan.
Two
The boat looked out of place in the muted setting. It was painted a muddy shade of royal blue, the paint scuffed in places to reveal a previous coat of turquoise.
Idly, Jasmine scratched her right cheek with her left hand and her left ankle with the toe of her right shoe. When she itched anywhere, she was inclined to itch all over. Power of suggestion.
Either that or mosquito bites.
A canoe would have been good. A dugout canoe would be wonderful, but probably too much to hope for, even in this wilderness. At least it was wooden, not aluminum. It could still belong to a native hunter or trapper or maybe a fisherman with a rich lode of stories to share. Travel pieces with a human interest angle had a far broader appeal. Oklahoma had Will Rogers. North Carolina had...Daniel Boone? Black-beard?
Well, surely they had somebody interesting. A place like this must have a fascinating history. She’d have to ask Clemmie about it before she checked out tomorrow.
“Hello-oo,” she called out tentatively. “Anybody there?”
The sound that greeted her could, she supposed, have come from a hunter or a trapper. As profanity went, it was not particularly original. At least it didn’t reek of filth and venom. She didn’t mind a few damns and hells when the occasion demanded, but she hated filth and venom.
Whoever it was, he didn’t sound as if he were in the mood for company. Carefully, she began to edge away from the creek, or stream or rivulet—whatever it was. According to the map, there was supposed to be a big lake with a name that reminded her of mosquitoes and a rıver called the Alligator somewhere around here.
What if he was an alligator poacher? She’d read somewhere that hunting alligators was against the law. Jasmine had been called laid-back. She’d never been called stupid.
“I’m leaving now,” she sang out, in case he decided to cut the odds of getting caught. “I didn’t see anything, so I think I’ll just go on back now. Have a nice day.”
“Dammıt—hold on!”
She held on. It was the kind of voice that commanded obedience. Clutching the straps of her shoulder bag, she held on as if her life depended on it, thinking that in a pinch, she might use it as a weapon.
“I’ve, um...I’ll send somebody if you need help, all right?”
“Need—help!”
He sounded as if he were in pain. Tom between curiosity, concern and a healthy respect for hidden danger—she’d been at an impressionable age when she’d seen Deliverance—Jasmine hesitated just a moment too long.
“Can’t move. Need—a hand. Please.”
That last word was uttered too reluctantly to be anything but sincere. Whoever he was—whatever fix he was in—one thing was clear. He hated like the very devil having to beg for help.
“Sorry, but I’m on the other side of the creek.” That prompted more cursing, and then another, “Please?”
“It looks awfully deep. I can’t swim.” Even if it was only up to her knees, she wasn’t particularly eager to step off the bank into that dark, sluggish stream. She couldn’t see a glimmer of bottom. Even if she didn’t drown, she might get eaten alive. Maybe not by piranhas, but there might be leeches. She’d seen African Queen three times.
“Follow bank—south—forty yards. Fallen tree.” Fallen tree. Uh-huh. “Which way is south?”
She peered through hanging branches, hanging vines and swags of gray-green Spanish moss, trying to catch a glimpse of the man behind the voice. If she was going to take the risk, she’d just as soon know what she was getting involved in.
“Toward sun.”
Well, that was easy. As dense as the trees were, there weren’t enough leaves to block out the pale, low-riding sun. “Well...all right, I’ll try.”
Her mind raced ahead as she picked her way along the narrow, winding creek. It could be a heart attack, snakebite—anything. He might even have tripped on one of his own traps and now he was lying there in agony, his lifeblood seeping into the muck while hyenas sniffed at his carcass.
There weren’t any hyenas in North America, even she knew that much. That didn’t mean there weren’t scavengers. Predators.
“Where the devil are you?”
“I’m coming!”
Forty yards. How was she supposed to measure forty yards when every few steps she had to circle around a root or a fallen tree or a tangle of vines—none of them hairy, thank goodness, but some with wicked briars.
There was the tree he’d promised. It had fallen across the creek, blocking two-thirds of its width. Barely enough room to squeak past in a boat, if he’d come from this direction.
And he must have come from this direction, because he’d known about the tree.
Scratching her cheek—not actually scratching, but pressing into the itch with her fingernaıls—Jasmine surveyed the situation. If she could keep her balance, keep from falling in, she might be able to walk out far enough to jump the rest of the way. That’s if she didn’t lose her nerve first.
She lost her nerve, but it was too late. Teetering on the lower edge of the huge trunk, she faced two choices. Turn around on the mossy rounded slope and go back...or jump.
She jumped.
“Ow! Oh, shoot!”
“What happened?” His voice held an edge that could have come from pain, or it could have come from anger. She’d like to think it came from pain.
Well, that didn’t sound very nice, either: She certainly didn’t wish the man any more pain. All the same, an angry man—an angry strange man. all alone here in the wilds of the jungle...
Not jungle—swamp. There was a subtle difference, although she wasn’t certain just what it was.
No lions or tigers, only alligators and poisonous snakes?
Oh, God, why didn’t I stay home? Being a bridesmaid couldn’t be much worse than this.
At least this place was on the map. It had a name.
Dismal. Oh, great. She slapped at a mosquito and swore a mild oath. This probably wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but it was right up there near the top of the list.
“What happened?” he called again.
“Nothing happened! I landed on my knees in the mud,” she yelled back.
She was filthy. No more scratching, at least not until she’d scrubbed her fingernails with soap and water. Unless she used a stick. A twig. Natural things were naturally sanitary, weren’t they? Hadn’t she read that somewhere?
Sure they were. Like natural poison ivy.
Lyon had plenty of time for second thoughts while he lay there waiting for deliverance, his face set in a grimace of pain. He’d tried ignoring the agonizing spasms in his back. He’d tried forcing himself to relax, muscle by muscle. He’d tried mind over matter, but pain was pain, and his mind wasn’t up to the task.
Here she came. It would have to be a female. With his luck, she’d be one of those environmentalists, ready to land on him with both feet for disturbing the pristine wilderness with his beer bottle and his Vienna sausage can and his crass human intrusion.
He could have told her the possums would eat the grease. The can would eventually rust away. They did still make ’em out of tin, didn’t they? As for the bottle, he’d take the damned thing with him if she could just help him get on his feet and back in his boat. Eventually, he’d drıft back to the campsite.
Eventually Like maybe, in a couple of weeks.
Either she was wearing snowshoes or she was leading a troop of cub scouts. He heard her thrashing through the underbrush long before she came into sight.
Long. That was his first thought. That she was long all over, especially her legs, which were pink and white and muddy. That she was wearing a fright wig the color of raw venison that stood out around her face like a halo, only he’d never seen a halo in that shade of red, nor one decorated with leaves, cypress needles and twigs.
She smiled. It was a surprisingly sweet smile in what would have been a pretty face except that there was something wrong with it. He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t go around smiling at strange men that way. For all she knew, he could be dangerous, only she could probably tell by the way he was lying here flat on his back sweating bullets that he was no threat to anyone.
“Did you fall?” She had a nice voice when she wasn’t yelling; low, husky—no discernible accent. Even half dead, his brain automatically noted and filed away such details.
“Not recently.” At her look of puzzlement, he added, “Bad back. Took off brace, rowed too far in one stretch.” He sort of grunted the words, trying to keep from breathing too deeply because every breath he took was sheer agony.
She sat on her haunches beside him, her knees projecting over his chest. God, didn’t the woman have a grain of sense under that fright wig?
A man would have to be dead not to react to all that satiny white skin, even when it was daubed with mud and laced with red scratches.
He drew a cautious breath, inhaling the scent of perfume, calamine and feminine sweat.
“Never wear perfume in a swamp,” he grunted.
“I know. I only wore it to, um—boost my morale, but it draws mosquitoes. Is it sort of like a Charly horse?”
“Your perfume?”
“Your back.”
He kept staring at her. Jasmine was used to being stared at; she was a minor celebrity, after all. A very, very minor one.
Somehow, she didn’t think that was the reason he was staring at her. What did he expect her to do? She was no medical missionary. She’d never even been a Girl Scout. They’d moved around too much.
“Yeah, sort of,” he said through clenched teeth. He had nice teeth. White, even, but not quite perfect. They showed to an advantage in a face that was covered in several days’ growth of beard.
He closed his eyes. Without the distraction of a pair of intense periwinkle blue eyes, he looked tired and miserable. Logic told her she had no business being there. Instinct told her that he was harmless and that he desperately needed her help.
Jasmine always trusted her instincts. Every time she went against them—as in the case of Eric—she lived to regret it.
“So...what can I do to help you? Go for help?”
“No!”
He winced, as if speaking sharply hurt him. If she didn’t know better, she might even have thought he was afraid of something.
Of course, she didn’t know better. For all she knew, he was a criminal on the run. Might even have been injured in a shoot-out, only she didn’t see any sign of blood.
“Are you a criminal?” she asked. Might as well get everything out in the open. He didn’t appear to be armed, and she was pretty sure she could outrun him, if push came to shove.
“No way,” he gasped. “Retired...cop.”
“You’re too young to be retired, and how do I know you’re a cop?”
“Disability,” Lyon said, not without a glimmer of humor. Damn, she was persistent. If he’d had to be rescued by a female, why couldn’t she have been a physical therapist?
“Then you really are a policeman?”
He nodded, which was a mistake, the neckbone being connected to the backbone, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t retired, but it was close enough to the truth.
Close enough for government work, as the old saying went.
“Well. I don’t suppose you can walk, but if we can get you in the boat maybe I can take you back to the motel and have someone send for a doctor. It’s right on the water. The motel, I mean. It might even be on the main river, I’m not sure, but if it is, this stream should get us there sooner or later. All we have to do is follow—”
“No way.”
“No way, what? Everything east of the Mississippi flows into the ocean by way of streams and rivers. If we—”
“No, I mean—ah, hell, it hurts!” Lyon closed his eyes and willed himself to let go—not to tense up. “Get me back to my campsite and we’ll call it even.”
“I don’t see anything even about that. I do all the work and you—”
“And I do all the bitching and groaning. Sorry about that. I’ll pay you for your time.”
“I don’t want your money.” She had dark eyes—brown with a hint of maroon, like her hair. They were shooting off sparks.
“Take off, then. Sooner or later someone else will come by.” They both knew that was a crock. They were so deep into uncharted territory it was a wonder the buzzards could even find them. “How’d you get here? The road doesn’t come anywhere near here.”
“I followed an old logging road and then just kept on walking.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Lady, that’s no answer, but if it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon skip the dialogue and head on back to camp. You wouldn’t believe how dark it can get this far from the nearest streetlight.”
Jasmine was no judge of distance. There was a security light outside the motel, but that would be miles away. Miles and miles and miles. The trouble with long legs was that they covered so much territory, even at a leisurely pace. “If I can get you into your boat, can you do the rest by yourself?”
He gave her that “Duh” look.
“Okay, so maybe I’ll paddle you as far as your camp—and even help you get out, but then I’ll have to get back to the motel. I’m catching a plane to L.A. tomorrow.”
She was catching a plane nowhere, no time soon. That much quickly became obvious. By the time she managed to get him into the boat, they were both practically in tears. He from pain; she from sheer exasperation.
Not to mention the fact that he was about a hundred eighty pounds of solid muscle and bone, and fighting her all the way. Or if not her, fighting the pain.
She’d have sympathized more if he hadn’t cursed under his breath every step of the way. “Relax,” she snapped.
“Lady, if I could relax, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Fine. Then don’t relax. If I had a brain, I wouldn’t be here, either.”
The fighting didn’t stop at the edge of the water. “It’s not a paddle, it’s a damned oar!”
“I know what it is, and stop cursing.”
“Then stop jiggling around and sit down.”
She sat. On the back seat, because he was sprawled out across the front seat, taking up most of the middle space. He was sweating. It wasn’t really cold, even though it was February, but it wasn’t warm, either. Especially not now that the sun was almost out of sight.
Jasmine wished, not for the first time, that she’d worn jeans instead of her white shorts. And a jacket instead of a long-sleeve yellow denim shirt. She was a summer person. She didn’t own clothes suitable for a North Carolina winter.
“Don’t you even know how to row a boat?”
“Of course I know how to row a boat.” She’d seen it done plenty of times in the movies.
“You don’t row from the stern thwart, you row from amidship.”
“I know that.”
“Then move!”
“You’re there. Amidship, I mean.” He was propped up against a seat cushion on the whatsis up front, but his legs stretched out so that his feet were under the middle seat.
“Straddle my damned feet!”
She’d rather straddle his damned neck. With her bare hands.
But she moved, rocking the boat, causing him to gasp so that she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. The man was injured. She didn’t really want to hurt him any worse than he was already hurting, but if anyone deserved a bit of pain, he probably did.
Once settled on the edge of the wooden seat, she eyed him cautiously and reached for the oars. There were no oarlocks, only wooden notches that had been wallowed out until they were all but useless.
The oars stretched almost all the way across the creek. Cypress knees reached out from both sides. Lyon could have told her she’d need to shove from the stern until they cleared the fallen gum. Once past that point, the creek widened out.
He didn’t tell her because the last thing he needed was a clumsy, clueless beanpole dancing around in the stern of his boat. They’d both end up overboard, and he’d sink like a stone.
She muttered enough so that he pinned down her accent. Bible Belt with a faint patina of West Coast, polished by a few diction lessons. He wondered what the devil she was doing here, and then he quit wondering about anything except whether or not he would survive the night.
If he could’ve gotten his hands on all those muscle relaxants he’d quit taking cold turkey, he’d have downed the lot. And then, if he was still capable of unscrewing a cap, he’d have started in on the painkillers.
She shipped the oars as they approached the fallen gum tree. One of them swiveled around and struck him in the shoulder. The other one rolled across his shin.
“Oops. Sorry,” she said. “It’s getting dark. How far is this camp place of yours?”
“About six and three-quarters miles.”
Her mouth fell open. She had a nice mouth, well curved, full lower hp, but not too full. The swelling on her right cheek and eye was probably poison ivy. Even with most of his attention taken up by his own situation, he’d noticed her trying not to scratch. She’d reach up, hesitate, frown at her grimy nails and sigh. He’d have scratched it for her if his back had permitted him to reach out.
“I can’t go that far, I have to get back to the motel.”
“Fine. Pull over to the bank and get out.”
“What about you?”
“What about me? I won’t starve, if that’s what you’re worried about. I had half a can of Vienna sausage for lunch.”
“How will you get home?”
“Not your problem.”
“It is so my problem! I can’t see my way back to the motel in the dark. I’ll take you to your camp and you can lend me a flashlight and point me in the direction of the road, and...”
She gaped at him, her mahogany-colored eyes growing round. Even the one that was swollen half shut. “Did you say six and three-quarter miles?” she whispered.
The boat scraped against a cypress knee, and without even looking, she reached out, grabbed the thing and shoved off. Her survival skills were on a par with her rowing ability.
“Like I said, pull over to the bank and get out. Follow the creek to where you found me and then retrace your steps back to wherever you came from.” If he’d known there was a motel within walking distance, he might have gone even deeper into the swamp.
Company, he didn’t need.
Jasmine was having trouble making out his features. He was facing away from the rapidly fading light. His shoulders looked enormous in the baggy gray sweatshirt. She had a feeling they would look even more impressive without it. A surly man with shoulders the size of a refrigerator she didn’t need.
With a heavy sigh, she retrieved the oars now that the creek had widened out. One of them scraped his hip. He caught his breath, she apologized, and told herself it would make a wonderful travel piece. Lost in the wilderness, surrounded by silence, Spanish moss, cypress knees and a perfectly splendid sunset that was reflected, now that she’d come around a bend, on the water.
So far she’d seen no signs of any predators, but she had seen a huge, graceful bird she recognized as a heron type. It lifted from the bank just as they’d rounded the bend and flapped right overhead. If she’d been standing, she could have reached out and touched it.
If she’d been standing, she would have probably fallen overboard. Heaven help her if that happened, because she couldn’t swim a stroke and whatsisname wouldn’t be able to pull her out.
“What is your name, anyway?” She slapped at a mosquito and winced when it set off her itching again.
He hesitated just long enough for her to wonder why he hesitated at all. “Lyon,” he said.
“Oh, right. As long as it’s not alligator.”
“What’s yours?”
She didn’t hesitate. She, at least, had nothing to hide. “Jasmine. Jasmine Clancy,” she said, just in case he was wondering where he might have seen her before.