Prisoner of War Read online

She had been forced to abandon her father’s car on the road to Pascuallita. There were too many refugees fleeing south to the city for her to move farther north against the tide. Although she didn’t want to lose the protection the car provided, she thought she would make better time on foot.

  Within minutes, as she struggled to push her way through the stream of humanity to the side of the road, she knew she was wrong. There were just too many people and she was too short and too light to barrel her way through them. She stepped off the road into the thick growth on the side and peered into the dappled shadows under the canopy. It looked as if it might be easier to move in there. She could walk a few yards away from the road and keep parallel with it so the road would guide her to Pascuallita.

  She forced her way past the growth hemming the road and it did seem lighter and easier to move along. Feeling slightly happier, she turned to the north and worked her way around the trees in her way, glancing over her right shoulder every now and then to spot the road and the long stream of people, cars and other modes of transport all heading south.

  Her spirits lifted. It would take much, much longer to reach Pascuallita now, but at least she knew she would make it. When she got there, she would check on Duardo’s family to make sure they had survived the initial outbreak of violence when the Insurrectos had made their move. There was a chance Duardo would be there. He would not casually abandon his family. He had too long been their protector.

  If he was not there, then from Pascuallita she remembered the way to the base. On foot, she could sneak up on it and scout around to see if she could find news of Duardo.

  She paused for a rest after an hour of steady progress and mopped her brow. The air was thick and musty under the tree tops. It was only then she realized she couldn’t hear the murmur of people and the muted throb of motors. She spun to face the road, her heart hammering.

  It was nowhere in sight.

  Oh my god. She clutched at her chest as her heart lurched, giving out a queer pang that made her feel like puking. Cold sweat prickled under her arms and down the back of her neck. “Oh shit,” she whispered. The loss of visual contact with the road was bad. Very bad. It was her only means of measuring direction.

  She turned slowly on her heels, a full circle, peering through the trees. She hoped to see something. Movement of some kind. A spot of whiter, brighter light that marked the end of the canopy. Anything that would indicate people, civilization.

  The forest was uniformly shadowed, green and still.

  The only thing that marked one part of the forest from the other was the slope of the land. It lifted gently to Minnie’s left, which could give her a direction. Pascuallita was up in the mountains. The mountains ran like a thick spine down the center of the island of Vistaria. She could keep the slope to her left and that would mean she was moving north.

  She took a few hesitant steps in that direction. She wished she had studied the maps of Vistaria when Calli had been poring over them. Calli wasn’t here. She had to use her own head. Would following the slope mean she was going north? Think, Minnie!

  She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at her temples. If she followed the slope, she would be following the edge of a mountain...and mountains were round at the bottom! All the contour maps showed them as big irregular circles. She would end up heading farther inland, farther into the mountains where the fighting was going on.

  Frustrated, she gave in to the childish impulse to stamp her foot. “I swear, if I get out of this I’m never going to do anything so foolish again!” she muttered. “What the hell was I thinking? Rescue Duardo? I can’t even save myself, for Christ’s sake!”

  She looked around the forest again, hoping that in the last few minutes something might have changed, that she would spot a detail that would help her find her way out.

  Nothing.

  Then she froze. Something had made a noise. Far away, at the edge of her hearing. She closed her eyes again, this time to listen. She held her breath and wished her heart would stop thudding in her ears.

  There. There. Far off. Definitely coming closer.

  She spun to face the direction she thought she had come from. The sound had issued from over there. Something moving through the forest toward her? She kept still so she would not miss a single sound. Yes, someone was moving toward her. The sounds were unmistakable. “Hey! Hey! Over here!” Her shout fell flat and echoless. The thick vegetation muffled it.

  As she sucked in a breath for another shout, the thought struck her. I’m in enemy territory...and I’m shouting in English. The air backed up in her windpipe, choking her with a hard, painful knot.

  Who is coming toward me? Friend or foe?

  She glanced around frantically. She couldn’t run. Running would get her more lost and would mark her trail with the sound of her stumbling progress through the forest. She had to hide somewhere until she knew who this was.

  She spotted a fallen log, green with moss and vines, up against another trunk. At the crotch of the pair, there, she could duck out of sight. She hurried over to the fallen tree and climbed over the massive beam. It was bigger than she’d thought it to be, which was reassuring. She ducked behind it and hugged the still-standing trunk. The tree was solid against her shoulder and that helped too.

  The sounds of progress were close and not nearly as loud as the sounds she had made. Whoever it was, they were sneaking up on her. Not good. She shrank back against the tree, her heart hammering, strained and aching. Any second now, they’d be at the spot where she had been when she’d first heard them. Somehow, she must look over the dead tree and see who it was. If they carried a gun, she would consider them the enemy. There were regular army soldiers who had swung over to the side of the Insurrectos when they had first declared war.

  She had to look. There was no other way to learn who it was because now the person stalking her had come to a stop.

  Dead silence.

  She must look, but she couldn’t. Gutless! She swore under her breath but still didn’t move. She didn’t have the courage.

  Heavy feet landed on the fallen tree, rocking it. She looked up, straight into the opaque eyes of a jaguar. The midnight black creature seemed huge to Minnie, even though they were smaller than a tiger. It rumbled under its breath as it studied her. It was like listening to a cat purr with her ear pushed up against the sub-woofer. Minnie could feel the rumble through her bones.

  She jerked back and slammed into the tree behind her, which might well have saved her life, for as she pressed up against the tree, she remembered Robert Redford’s soft voice in Out of Africa, telling a petrified Meryl Streep as she faced down a lion, “Don’t run.”

  The jaguar’s hindquarters bunched, as if he gathered himself to spring. Minnie gave a breathless little moan. In that moment she knew it was all over. This was where it was going to end.

  She wasn’t ready, not nearly ready. She’d just learned what it was like to truly love a man and there was so much more to discover...

  Chapter Two

  The jaguar bared its fangs and leapt with a roar that deafened her.

  It was slammed aside by an unseen force, as if it had smashed into an invisible wall. It hit the ground with another roar. Dirt and leaves sprayed as it dug its big, dinner-plate-sized paws into the dirt and twisted around to come back at her.

  This time she heard the gun as it fired, saw the place where the bullet hit high on the back of the jaguar’s shoulder, punching it back down to the ground. As she stared at the jaguar, frozen with disbelief, she saw from the corner of her eye an army-issue boot push up against the trunk. A long-fingered hand curled around a pistol. The pistol was thrust closer to the jaguar to make the aim certain. The gun fired and the jaguar jerked. It fell still and silent.

  Minnie looked up then. She wasn’t certain which emotion was strongest when Duardo turned his head to look at her. Knee-weakening relief. Overwhelming joy.

  He smiled, showing his white teeth. “Only one like you wou
ld wear designer jeans to war.”

  “I wasn’t going to war. I was coming to make sure you were still in it.”

  “I was, until you got yourself lost.” His smile faded. “Do you have any idea where you are?”

  She grimaced. “I figured I was in enemy territory.”

  “Then my company has not been without some influence.” He pulled on a slide on the pistol and let it snap back into place, then ejected the clip out of the handle of the pistol and loaded it with bullets from a pouch at his waist. He seated the clip back into the gun with a slap, pushed a lever with his thumb and thrust the gun into the covered holster at his hip. “We must move away from here,” he said. “The sound of firing will travel and will draw them to investigate.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She threw herself into his arms, threading her own around his neck. She pressed her lips against his skin, tasting her own tears mixed with his unique flavor.

  She fully expected him to push her away. Duardo was a proper Vistarian and there was a time and place for such things. He’d already told her they must hurry but she needed this contact. She needed to hold him and feel his warmth against her, even for a small moment.

  Her tears came harder when his arms wrapped around her and he pulled her tight against him. She could hear his heart thudding against her chest. “Como te amo, tu eres una loca.” His murmur was low, against her ear. “What am I to do with one like you?”

  “Stay with me,” she suggested. “It’s easier that way.”

  Her answer was Duardo’s arms tightening around her. Just for a moment. Then he let her go, picked up her hand in his large one and led her farther into the forest, up the slope.

  “That’s inland!” she said, trying to keep her voice down.

  “Yes.” He was moving swiftly through the forest without hesitation, stepping over logs and tangles of vines, striding to the point where Minnie almost had to run to keep up with him.

  “Aren’t the Insurrectos this way?”

  “Farther north. Around Pascuallita.”

  “Pascua...Duardo! Your family! Are they all right? Do you know?”

  This time his answer took longer. “They know what to do,” he said at last. “Cristián will take care of them.”

  Minnie thought of Duardo’s younger brother’s quiet reserve and matched it up against armed Insurrectos hell-bent on destruction. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “I am a soldier, Minnie. They know where my place must be during times of war.”

  She took a few running steps as the tug on her hand propelled her along. “I guess it’s not by my side, huh?”

  He stopped so unexpectedly she almost ran into him. “No,” he said firmly. “I should not be here. Neither should you. Yet here we are.” He tugged at the buttons on his camouflage shirt, swiftly releasing them. “Do not misinterpret that fact, Minnie. If you must be here—and apparently you must, for you have defied long odds and two armies to reach this far—if you must be here, then I would prefer to be here with you where I can protect you than in a...a...” He frowned, his English failing him for the first time since he had magically appeared, wielding his pistol. “Hole in the ground,” he said. “Long, skinny, for hiding in, for shooting from.”

  “Fox hole...or a trench, is what it really is.”

  “Trench, yes. That is a good word for it.” He pulled his shirt off, wadded it into a ball and stuffed it beneath a nearby log. He was wearing a black stretch sleeveless T-shirt beneath. It was formfitting and revealed the strong chest and abs that the regulation army shirt always hid. His tanned arms were strong, with rounded caps of muscle and sinewy forearms.

  Minnie found herself studying his body, the dips and swell of flesh over muscle. She knew those curves well and had explored them thoroughly. Duardo had spent his adult life working to be a better soldier for Vistaria. He was immensely proud of his country and unafraid to reveal the depth of his devotion.

  He dropped to one knee and pulled the hems of his pants out from the high army boots and yanked them straight so they hung like normal trousers, hiding most of the boots.

  “I didn’t mean to pull you away from your hole in the ground,” she said, her voice husky. “I didn’t mean...I don’t know what I meant to do, Duardo. I just knew I couldn’t sit still when the news coming through was so bad...” She bit her lip. “Pascuallita has fallen. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “When the base fell, we knew Pascuallita would fall, too. It was inevitable.” He held out his hand to her. “Come. We do not have much longer and the campground is a distance from here.”

  She hesitated. “What will be at the campground?”

  “If we get there in time, Nick and Calli will be there.”

  This was the most astonishing answer Duardo had given her to date. “How the hell will they get there from the city? Sprout wings and fly?”

  “Almost,” Duardo agreed, with a grin. “Nick will steal a helicopter.” He picked up her hand again. “Come.”

  “Steal?” Minnie repeated as they moved off. “Steal from whom?”

  “I do not know. From his brother’s fleet, I imagine.”

  “Well, sure, the President of Vistaria probably has a dozen of them lying around.”

  Duardo set a cracking pace. She could barely keep up. She broke into a slow jog just to stop dragging on his hand. “Why did you take off your shirt?” she asked.

  “So I do not look like a soldier at first glance.”

  The why? was on the tip of her tongue and she bit it back. If the area was crawling with Insurrectos, then the more Duardo looked like a harmless civilian the better. Although, even civilians weren’t guaranteed safety right now. Which was why, she realized, Duardo was dragging her through the forest and up the side of a mountain, to make a meeting with no less than the president’s brother, the man called the Red Leopard by the army, who moved behind the scenes making things happen. Nick had made it possible to pull Minnie out of this mess and was seeing to it himself.

  Duardo was also making sure it happened. God knows where he had come from, what distance he had traveled. He must have tracked her from the road.

  “How did you know to come and find me?” she asked, at last. This was the one piece of information she could not figure out for herself. She had to push the question out with each exhalation. She was starting to breathe heavily now.

  “Nick told me.” Duardo’s voice was unaffected by the pace. Damn him.

  How would Nick have known? Calli. Calli must have reached him somehow, told him she had taken the car and left the city. Minnie felt sick. God, how many other people had been dragged into this because of her stupid, stupid decision? She had to smarten up. This sort of stuff could get people killed.

  The slope abruptly steepened, to the point where they were scrambling up a hill. Duardo let her hand go and they both used hands and feet to climb up the crumbling, sandy slope. Minnie found footholds in tangled pieces of vine and clumps of the tough stringy grass that grew where the sun reached.

  From farther along the slope, a bird gave a long, warbling cry and took off in flight. The sound of flapping wings and the brush of tree branches was loud because the rest of the forest was silent. Duardo grew still and turned his head, listening.

  Minnie halted and tried to quiet her heavy breathing. The tension in Duardo’s body was warning enough.

  He relaxed and the hand that had lifted to the holster on his hip lowered. He studied her and grinned. “You are having fun, no?”

  “Yeah, Duardo, just a ball. You really know how to show a girl a good time.”

  He reached into a pocket on his trouser leg and pulled out an ivory-handled folding knife and popped the blade. It was about four inches long and looked deadly. He folded the blade away and held it out to her. “Keep it in that little pocket on your jeans, there,” he said. “If there is any sort of trouble and I can’t help you, they might just be stupid enough not to search you for weapons.”

  “Shit no, I’m not
taking that,” Minnie said, holding up her hands. “That’s how trouble escalates, when you start brandishing knives.”

  Duardo grabbed her wrist and slapped the knife into her hand. “You must listen to me now, Minerva Benning. If you are in a place where I cannot help you, then you can be certain you are in the worst sort of trouble there is. Your only choice will be to use the knife or die. Do you understand?”

  She swallowed. “That means if you can’t help me, you’re probably dead, right?”

  “Probably,” he agreed. His calm gaze would not let her go. It kept her pinned, kept the lid on her fear.

  Reluctantly, she curled her fingers around the knife. “All right,” she said, her voice hollow. She’d take the knife but knew that if Duardo was dead, then she wouldn’t want to use it.

  He read her reaction. His grip on her wrist tightened. He shook her. “You use it, you hear me? It does not matter what you do with it. Stab, slice, hack. You keep using it and you get yourself out of trouble if you can. Do you hear me?”

  “But, Duardo...”

  He shook his head. “No, do not say ‘but’. Do you not understand, Minnie? I am the one who must serve his country, yet if I must die to save you, I will do it gladly, as long as I know you will survive.” He shook her hand once more. “You use the knife, yes? If it comes to it, you use the knife.”

  She felt like crying, but Duardo’s relentless gaze wouldn’t let her. She cleared her throat and looked down at the knife. “I don’t suppose you’ve got one in blue, do you? This color just doesn’t go with my jeans.”

  He gave a choked laugh and held her face as he kissed her hard and thoroughly. Then he let her go and watched as she slid the knife into the little stitched pocket on her jeans.

  He waved up the slope. “I’ll beat you to the top.”

  “No contest,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t get used to these huge freaking mountains of yours, Duardo.”

  They climbed once more. The small break had let her catch her breath and restore some energy. Now she climbed as quickly as she could manage. Yet Duardo still kept ahead of her.