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The pervert fiddled with the phone and held it up. The flash seared her eyes. Taking photographic evidence she was alive? How long did they plan to keep her that way?
* * *
Half an hour later she sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor at the back of the plane, g-forces churning her stomach and spinning her head. If her balance had been warped before, it was tied in knots now. The seawater soaking her clothes felt like it was snapping into ice in the chill of the altitude. Fat lot of use the jumpsuit was.
And what was with the transparent plastic roller door on one side of the plane? What kind of scrap-heap plane had a door like that, and no seats? The wiry man sat beside it, gun slung over his shoulder, beady eyes staring at her. Only a finger-width of metal and a pervert pilot at the controls separated her from a couple of vertical miles of nothing, with a sudden stop at the bottom. At least the roar of the engine was muffled by the helmet the capitaine had eased over her head. But why the goggles and harness? He hadn’t clipped her to the plane, so what was the point? Or had the whole getup been an excuse to find hiding places for the electronics?
She struggled for breath, the thinness of the air escalating the growing panic of watching her window of escape close. She swallowed, hard, to equalize her ears. Her body might have given in—for now—but her mind certainly hadn’t. The electronics equipment digging into her ribs was as good as an escape pod.
The capitaine eased up behind her. She flinched. He cradled his legs around hers, his knees splayed either side of her waist. “Time to strap up,” he shouted. “We’re approaching the dro...” The thundering engine engulfed his words.
“The what?”
He fastened a series of clips at her shoulders and waist and pulled on the straps, yanking her spine hard up against the backpack strapped to his chest. They were clipped together? He stretched out his legs so they rested, hot and solid, either side of her thighs. Her heart sped up. Okay, this was getting weird.
“When we open the door, wrap your legs around the undercarriage of the plane.”
“When we what? Are we landing?” She hadn’t noticed a drop in altitude.
“When we jump, I need your chest out, legs curled back and head up. You know this, yes? Like a banana. A banana with its arms out.”
“Jump? Are you shitting me?”
“Hold tight. The plane will turn.”
She swayed in time with the capitaine as the plane banked, then corrected. The thin man gave the thumbs-up and rolled up the plastic door. Wind whistled into the plane, flapping the guy’s bandanna. Holly clutched for a handhold on something, anything. All she found was the capitaine’s thighs. His quads clenched into rock under her gloves. Her belly lurched. They were parachuting? He pushed forward. She resisted, but he had all the power. She tried to twist away. He grabbed her arms and straightened her.
“If you want to live, do what I say,” he shouted into her ear. “If you fight this, if you grab for me, I might not be able to pull the cord and we’ll both die. Best thing you can do right now is relax.”
Relax? What kind of a psycho was he? He slid forward, shoving her ahead of him. Her stomach churned like a washing machine.
“Don’t be so tense, princess. I’ve done this a thousand times.”
“Pushing your luck then, aren’t you?”
Another shove and her legs dangled out the door. Nothing but thin air lay between her shoes and the ocean. A whole lot of thin air. The water shone silver in the moonlight, interrupted by patches of darkness, like black holes. She retched, and clamped her mouth shut. Vomit would only spray right back into her face.
“Best not to look down.”
No kidding. She snapped her focus straight ahead. Death was not in her game plan. As the man said, she had no choice but to trust him, for the next few minutes, at least. Just as well he was a 250-pound slab of muscle.
No. That made no sense, right? Wouldn’t his weight just mean they’d hit the ground with a bigger smack? Would she hit first, or would he? Physics had never been her thing.
“Don’t forget, wrap your legs backward,” he shouted. “Rest your head back on my shoulder and look up. When we’re in the air, keep your arms extended and curl your legs back. Banana, remember?”
Holy Moses. She was really going to do this. Wind buffeted her jumpsuit, flattening the fabric against her. She didn’t need encouragement to wrap herself into him. If she could nail their bodies together, she would. He’d obviously done this before, and right now the more immediate threat was the deep blue sea—or worse, the land. She closed her eyes, tried to block her thoughts. Banana, banana, banana.
Her stomach plummeted. Air rushed at her exposed cheeks. Her eyes flicked open. A shadow loomed overhead, retreating. The plane. Oh man, they were falling. Her sinuses pinched. Her nerves pelted panicked messages into her brain. Even through the goggles, she struggled to keep her eyes open. A piece of fabric flapped against her cheek like a jackhammer. What was she supposed to do again? Arms back, legs extended? No, the other way around. They righted and stretched out parallel to the earth as wind buffeted her jumpsuit. The pull of the harness suggested the capitaine was still attached, at least.
The pain behind her eyes intensified, as if someone was shoving needles into her skull. Was something about to pop? This couldn’t be healthy. An hour or so ago she was being rocked to sleep by a gentle ocean swell, and now this?
She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing her mind to imagine herself skimming over the water in a yacht, as she had every endless night in prison, returning her to the happiest time of her life: the three years she’d spent working at the sailing school in Los Angeles, trading honest labor for a place to crash and a chance to sail. But then she’d fallen for the wrong man and got suckered into running cons for him by her desperation for love and money and survival. Yada yada yada.
Pressure thumped into her chest, and something yanked them upwards. Oh, God. What had gone wrong? She opened her eyes. A red parachute stretched above them. The rush of the wind had silenced, leaving her panting the only sound. They’d stopped dead, as if suspended.
“Holy crap,” she said. People did that for fun?
“How was that?” He sounded as if he was grinning.
“Terrifying, you jerk. You could have warned me.”
“Anticipation only makes it worse. Do you trust me now?”
“Even less.”
“An hour ago you probably thought that wasn’t possible.”
Was it only an hour since they’d left the inflatable? How far could a small plane fly in half of that? In the hull, in the darkness, she’d had no grasp of their direction. “Where are we?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Oh, I know just what I’m doing.”
If he did, he sure didn’t sound happy about it. Islands were scattered beneath her feet—dark patches among the silver, with not a light in view. Uninhabited? Dang. What body of water could it be—Andaman Sea, Indian Ocean, Strait of Malacca? The land forms didn’t look familiar from any maps she’d studied. She heaved in a breath. At the movement, something poked into her ribs. The GPS unit. It could pinpoint her location. She could get a message away on the sat phone with her coordinates and threaten to go to the media if the senator didn’t rescue her. She gritted her teeth. For now, she’d play the helpless victim. If the capitaine wanted a princess, he’d get one. But the second he let his guard down, she’d be gone.
* * *
Rafe steadied his breath to clear the adrenaline of the 200-kilometer-per-hour free fall, and pulled the toggle to ride the wind to the northeast. Once they’d dropped another three hundred feet, the air currents would take them northwest. His coordinates had been smack on, but Penipuan Island was only twelve square kilometers, and the biggest clearing was smaller than a football field. If he didn’t read the conditions right, they’d wind up snared on a tree—or worse, bobbing in the ocean. At least there wasn’t some insurgent with an AK-47 taking potshots, like the last time he’d fallen from the sky. Tonight he was in far better company.
The heiress raised her gloved hand to her ribs for the third time in as many minutes.
“Has the comms gear slipped?” he said.
“The way you strapped it on? I hardly think so.”
He raised his eyebrows. She was coping surprisingly well. He’d been prepared to knock her unconscious if she’d freaked out about a parachute drop in these conditions, but she was far tougher than he’d expected—and she had a sense of humor. She might need one, to spend a week with him.
And he might need to watch his back. She wouldn’t be the pushover he’d counted on—and with Michael and Uriel gone she was all his responsibility. She turned her head, and the skin of her cheek caught the moonlight, smooth as satin. Tough and beautiful. He grimaced. Tu agis sans passion et sans haine. You act without passion and without hatred. He’d recited the line every day of his nineteen years in the Legion, but it’d never resonated as strongly as it did now. He must put aside his anger toward Gabriel and even his fear for Theo, and treat the heiress honorably. She was a prisoner of war, not a woman to covet. The objective of his mission must remain clear: save his son.
He frowned. The Legionnaire’s Code of Honor hardly applied. If his commandant got wind of this he’d be out of a job and in a French prison quicker than he could say Honneur et Fidélité. Outcast from an outcast’s army. The commandant was already suspicious about Rafe’s claim to be on bereavement leave. Who would a widower, an orphan and a loner mourn? But Rafe had been tied to the Code of Honor so long—after too many years without one—that he couldn’t shrug it off, whatever the circumstances.
Instinctively, he calculated the distance and time to ground. “When we come in to land, raise your legs straight out ahead of you, knees slightly bent, and let me do the work. For you, it’ll be like easing into an armchair.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
He followed the direction of her finger to the dark oval of land beneath them. The breeze warmed with every foot they descended. The coolness at altitude had been a relief after days of gagging humidity. “That’s it.”
“There are no lights. Is no one meeting you?”
“It’s uninhabited.”
“So it’s just you and me?”
Her tone carried a note of hope. “You and me and thousands of miles of ocean. No boat, no helicopter, no airstrip. We’re a hundred kilometers from the nearest inhabited island, nowhere near a shipping lane, and pleasure boats don’t come this way.” Gabriel had chosen well. They were imprisoned by water. But now, he had comms. He just had to figure out what to do with them.
“They stay away because of pirates?”
“Currents and reefs, mostly. But yes, pirates, too. Don’t worry, ma chérie, I will protect you.”
“Before or after you cut off my ear?”
He flinched, and the chute lunged, forcing him to make a hasty correction. He’d forgotten his empty threat, but it wouldn’t hurt for her to believe he was capable of it. “Do exactly as I say and you won’t be harmed. We’ll be on the ground in two minutes.”
“And who will protect you from me?”
He eased the parachute into line for the final approach. He was beginning to wonder that, too. “I don’t need protection.”
Outside the Legion, the only person on Rafe Angelito’s side was Rafe Angelito. Same as it had always been. Same as it would always be.
Chapter 4
They skidded across a clearing, sea grass scraping the seat of Holly’s jumpsuit. A gentle landing, as promised. How did someone get that practiced at parachuting? You’d have to be in adventure tourism or the military, and the capitaine was no chirpy tour guide. So she was dealing with a paratrooper? Weren’t they the elite soldiers—dropped behind enemy lines on secret missions?
Her stomach knotted. He became more formidable by the minute. He unclipped them, pulled her to her feet and let go warily, hands splayed in the air either side of her, ready to catch. The earth remained steady. Gravity had begun to take her side, at least. He busied himself with unhooking clips and gathering the parachute, with the deft movements of a man drilled in the routine.
Beside the clearing, a long stretch of ocean beach thundered rhythmically. Otherwise they were surrounded by rain forest, screeching with insects. Was there a building, or would they sleep outdoors? A palm tree rustled overhead. She flinched.
“Bats,” he said, following her gaze upward, to where ragged black shapes glided. She shivered. Concrete jungles were more her thing.
“Don’t worry, they’re vegetarians. It’s the mosquitoes you must watch for.” He stripped off his jumpsuit, his dark, sleek clothing emphasizing his tall, taut body. More Batman than Superman, perhaps. Give her a brooding mystery man over a clean-cut farm boy any day.
Except today. And only ever hypothetically.
She fumbled with her gloves. “What do I call you?”
His dark eyes fixed on hers, unguarded for a second, as if it wasn’t something he’d considered. “John,” he said, his mouth curling at one corner.
“Short for Long John Silver? Or long for Captain Jack Sparrow?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I prefer Jack.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She exhaled away the tension. If he was reluctant to tell her his real name, he must be planning to let her go. But what if the ransom wasn’t paid?
She jammed her fingernails into her palms. Even if the senator didn’t intend to pay, he’d have to at least go through the motions of searching for his daughter, after the publicity of the live webcast. He wouldn’t want the bad PR of admitting Laura had misled the public, with the primaries looming. Would the US military become involved? Did this count as a diplomatic incident? Terrorism? Jack might seem like the real deal, but one man couldn’t hold his own against a whole unit or platoon, or whatever pack American soldiers ran in.
Could he?
“Stop thinking so hard,” he said, crossing the gap between them in three strides. He laid a fingertip on her forehead. She froze. Some kind of threat? He stroked down to the bridge of her nose. Holy cow, he was smoothing out her worry lines. “You have nothing to be concerned about. You’ll be back in your rich woman’s world soon enough.”
He stilled, and stared at her, his forehead creasing. She gulped. Was he noticing the differences between her and Laura? He flinched, removed his finger and shook his head slightly, as if banishing an unwelcome thought. Had touching her been an instinctive reaction, a mistake?
His focus dropped to her shoulders as he began to unclip her harness, muttering some kind of chant in French. His gravelly scent washed over her. Her body heated up, as if it’d just realized it was back in the tropics after their high-altitude reprieve. She shivered, which made no sense at all. He reached down to slide the contraption over her hips, his fingers grazing her stomach. She lurched away. “I can handle that.” This was not a man to get worked up about, no matter how fine a specimen.
She wriggled out of the harness. Beyond the white tips of the breakers, the full moon lit a silver path to the horizon. Even if she could mobilize rescuers, how long until they arrived?
“You’ll have plenty of time to admire the scenery.” Jack’s deep voice made her jump. “Now, we find shelter.” He nodded to the sky above the jungle, where heavy clouds were rapidly snuffing out the stars.
At least the horizon was still out there. This might be a prison, but it wasn’t a cell, with no stars visible beyond the floodlights, no hope of hearing the sea, no hope of anything. At least here there was still a chance of rescue or escape, however small. She was alive, for starters. And not as helpless as he might believe.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Like, right now.”
He started, as if suddenly awkward. Awkward was good. She could play on awkward. She hopped from one foot to the other—as much as she dared without risking falling on her face.
“I’ll just find a tree to go behind,” she said, eyeing the fringe of darkness beyond the clearing. “Seriously, dude, I’m about to burst my bladder all over this suit.”
He grimaced. Oh yeah, he was picturing it. Job done.
“Go down to the beach,” he said, quickly. “Less chance of snakes and spiders. But watch for scorpions—keep away from driftwood and rocks.”
Ugh. She was only used to dealing with human predators. The beach could work, though. She could scoot around the sand dunes and up into the jungle. “Flashlight?”
He pulled one out of a bag. “If you’re not back in three minutes, I’ll come after you.”
“What do you think I’ll do—swim home?”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Three minutes, princess.”
That’s all I need.
* * *
Rafe began repacking the chute and harnesses. A large piece of fabric and a bunch of clips and straps could have a dozen uses on a deserted island. He looked up, lining up the Orion Nebula with the star Alnilam to confirm where north lay. The villa was on the northeast of the island, beside a lagoon.
Phase two was complete. Gabriel’s men had come through this far, at least. They hadn’t dropped him in the ocean, they hadn’t harmed the heiress, they hadn’t shot them both dead. Maybe this fool mission might actually succeed. Maybe Gabriel would keep his word. While Rafe held the trump card—the woman—he was in a position of power. As long as he kept her alive and in sight, phase three had every chance of succeeding.
In sight. His gaze snapped toward the beach. Three minutes was up. Light spilled from behind a sand dune. The jumpsuit wasn’t the easiest thing to get out of, if you weren’t used to it, if your hands were still shaking from the buzz of the free fall. He’d give her another minute.
Merde—he should have taken the sat phone. Too busy trying not to think about her bladder, or any other body part. He couldn’t afford to lose the equipment before he figured out how the hell to get them out of this, without triggering Gabriel’s suspicions.
He stuffed the last of the chute into the bag and zipped it, then shrugged both packs onto his back. The light on the beach hadn’t moved. The air grew hotter and wetter by the minute. Better get the princess to shelter before the storm hit.
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.