When she and Lucas had discussed forever before, she'd mourned leaving her homeland. Not anymore. Cartina might be beautiful, exotic, but she was too aware of the real-life predators lurking in those lush trees.
Run. Don't think. Run.
Around a curve, the road widened, revealing a bridge a couple of hundred yards ahead. The wooden walkway stretched across a gushing river fifty feet below. Maybe her heart wouldn't explode after all. They really would make it before the bombs and bullets tore them apart.
Lucas had come for her, after so long and so many dreams she'd been certain could never come true, he was here. Tall, alive, so wonderfully solid. His intensity that she once longed to rattle was right now pulling them through hell.
Almost there. While Lucas paused to secure his hold on Lucia, Sara stretched for the handrail—
A whistling sounded overhead a second before a hole split through the jungle canopy like a knife slicing through a verdant green sheet.
With a blooming explosion, the bridge blasted apart, ripping the ground from beneath her feet.
Chapter 3
Talk about having his world blown all to hell.
Lucas grabbed for Sara's hand as her feet slid from under her, even knowing he was too far to reach her. She slammed onto her stomach, earth giving way beneath her while she clawed for something, anything to hold her.
Hell, no, this wasn't happening. He refused to lose Sara after finding her again.
He dropped the kid. Catapulted forward. Clapped his fingers around Sara's wrist as she slid over the side.
Toward the fifty-foot drop.
Flat on his belly, he clamped his hand around her other arm, gripping while her feet dangled. Praying the whole freaking cliff wouldn't give way under them both, killing Sara, him, leaving that kid out here alone to die or at the mercy of monsters. Dimly he registered his radio jarring off his waist and skittering to the edge. Over. The radio spinning endlessly down until it splashed.
Half the wooden bridge lay floating in segments fifty feet down in the torrential river. The rest of the bridge dangled, burning, cutting off access to the mobile command post. Something he would worry about later.
Adrenaline searing through him, he locked eyes with hers. "Hold on. Don't move. Just let me pull. Try not to pump your feet, okay?"
"Okay," she answered, barely moving her lips. "Lucia?"
"Is fine."
"Let me go before you—"
"We're not replaying that past again." No more deathbed pleadings from this woman. She wasn't going anywhere if he could help it. "Now shut up so I can haul you up here."
In the back of his brain he knew his arm throbbed like a son of a bitch, but adrenaline chugged through him, numbing pain and fueling endurance. His muscles bunched, strained, as he used his boots to dig into the moist undergrowth and inch them both back. Slow. Progress. He worked one hand at a time higher up her arms, hefting until she could...
Swing a leg over.
Hooking his arms around her waist, he rolled them away from the ledge, and damn that hurt. He swallowed down bile and clutched her harder against his chest. Yeah, it could pass for a lifesaving tangle, but he needed to hold her while he cleared his head of the horror of that moment he'd seen Sara pitch forward toward the river, boulders below. Undoubtedly crocodiles, too.
Gasping, he untangled from Sara before he lost it and sat there holding her until Chavez's men waltzed up to shoot them. He checked behind him and found Lucia safe, hugging her knees.
The kid scrambled to her mama's side. "I stayed quiet, like you said."
Gasping, shuddering, Sara curved an arm around her daughter, smothering the top of her head with kisses. "You were perfect, chica, a very good girl." Her accent thickened with emotion. "We're all right. Everyone is all right."
And he'd thought Sara was gorgeous before. Right now, even with her hair a tangled mess and her face scratched and streaked with dirt, she glowed with love for her kid so strong she just about blinded him.
Resting her cheek on Lucia's sweaty curls, Sara turned her attention to Lucas. "Gracias."
The drone of bugs, screech of monkeys, sporadic spit of distant gunfire faded as the world narrowed to just Sara. He recognized the sensation even five years after the first time he'd felt it. He freaking couldn't breathe.
He looked away from her beauty and terrified eyes, back to the mangled bridge to wrap his mind around an alternative escape plan. "Something must have gone wrong with the smash and grab."