“You don’t think any animals will come in to hurt those men, do you?” she asked, looking worriedly at the men who were glaring daggers at them from their positions in the dirt.
His response was a low, throaty chuckle as he put the Jeep in gear. “You’re such a Pollyanna!”
She rolled her eyes and shifted in the passenger seat so that she was looking forward. “Right, that coming from a G.I. Joe!”
He laughed again, then spun the steering wheel to turn the Jeep around so they could head out of the small clearing in the same direction the guards had arrived.
While Goran drove, Calista twisted around, searching the Jeep for a map or some other piece of information that would tell them where they were. “We need to figure out what country we’re in,” she told him, unaware of his perusal of her butt while she sifted through the equipment in the back of the Jeep. Because there weren’t any paved roads, the going was rough and she bounced around quite a bit, but Calista was determined to find something that would lead them out of this godforsaken jungle! Finding air conditioning was her goal.
“Aha!” she called out, then turned back around, sliding into the passenger seat as she held up a laminated map triumphantly. “We’re in…” she searched the map, looking for clues. “Costa Rica?” she gasped, then turned to look at Goran. “We were held captive in one of the happiest countries in the world?”
“Costa Rica is the happiest place?”
She shrugged, turning her attention back to the map. “According to several surveys I’ve read. Although, I don’t know if the residents of Costa Rica are happier because they don’t have a lot of competition or if there’s something more to the happy factor that other populations don’t grasp.”
For the next hour, they drove through the jungle, both of them scanning the horizon as well as the rear of the vehicle for anything that might be a danger, such as additional guards searching for their missing captives.
“Something just occurred to me,” she called out when they suddenly reached a rough, gravel road.
“What’s that?”
She put a hand to his arm, stopping him from driving out onto the road. “What if there’s a tracking device in this vehicle?” she asked. “I mean, those guards weren’t the most trustworthy gentlemen. Whoever kidnapped us has some money. The supplies and the vehicle, not to mention the out of the way place where we were being held, all add up to someone with a lot of money. From the conversations we overheard, I suspect that the guards are all mercenaries, trading their services to the highest bidder. What’s to say that the person who developed this plan didn’t trust the people they’d hired?”
Goran looked as if he might argue with her initially, but when she finished her explanation, he nodded his head sharply. “Good point.” He put the Jeep in park and got out. “I’ll search the undercarriage.”
“I’ll look through the supplies,” she told him.
Five minutes later, both of them held a small tracking device in their hands. Looking down at them, Goran shook his head. “Good job!” he told her. “Brilliant thinking!” And he pulled her into his arms again moments before he took both of the tracking devices and tossed them into the woods. “Let’s go,” he said as they both hopped back into the Jeep.
Two hours later, they came to a paved highway. Goran looked over at her, dark eyebrows raised. “What do you think? Right or left?”
Calista bit her lower lip as she surveyed the highway. “Well, it occurs to me that we really can’t…”
“…Be seen in public yet,” he finished her thought. “I know. That thought occurred to me as well.”
She sighed. “We don’t know who was involved in helping those men kidnap us.”
“There had to be an inside person helping out.”
“Right.” She tapped a ragged, filthy fingernail on top of the map. “I know for certain that my brother wasn’t involved. We could call him. He could arrange a place where we could hide out until he gets more information.”
He thought about that for a long moment, his eyes scanning the highway in both directions. There wasn’t a lot to see, since this wasn’t a particularly populated portion of the countryside. “I think that would work. But the next question is how are we going to contact him.”
Calista shrugged her shoulders. “I’m stumped there too,” she replied.
He rubbed the scruffy beard on his jawline, then eyed her warily. “I’m going to propose something and I don’t want you to reject the idea until you’ve thought about it for a long moment.”
She looked at him warily. “Okay, what?”
“We need to steal a phone,” he told her. “We can’t use any of the equipment here in this Jeep, even if we found a phone in those boxes.”
She nodded, understanding where he was going. “The phone might be tracked.” She sighed and looked around. “Okay, but if we’re going to steal something, we have to do it in a place where it won’t be missed immediately.”
“I suggest we find a tourist area, maybe a resort, where we could blend in a bit more.”
She looked down at her filthy clothes, fingernails and skin. “I don’t think there are any tourist areas where we could blend in very easily.”
He laughed, nodding. “Okay, let’s find a place to clean up a bit first. Let me see the map.”