He'd never been one to shout, or even raise his voice, yet somehow she could easily hear him over the constant cacophony of bugs and shrieking monkeys, the periodic bursts of gunfire quieting the farther they trekked from the compound. How did he manage that little trick?
She settled for a safer question, and one close to her heart. "Tell me about Tomas."
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything, of course. He's my brother. I would do anything for him."
Of course Lucas would know that firsthand since she'd married him for her brother. Five years ago, after the embassy attack, she'd seen the disillusionment, even flash of anger in his eyes when he'd realized why she'd finally accepted his proposal. His pain had stabbed through her with far more force than any rebel bullets.
"He's attending college at the University of North Carolina studying psychology. He plans to use it as a cop."
Her baby brother a police officer someday? She'd missed so much with him. But Lucas had missed even more with Lucia. At least they were all alive. "He's happy with his life and choices?"
He frowned as if she were speaking another language, but then even the old Lucas would have winced at discussing emotions. "He's successful. Dean's list grades and he runs cross-country."
"Thank you for his new life, for taking such good care of him."
"I'm sure there are things that you would have done better. But I did my best."
"I knew you would when I asked." Their final minutes together came roaring back, then the horrifying time span after she woke. "I thought I'd caused your death by asking you to take him. That the delay while you went to retrieve him cost you precious time."
She stared at her feet trekking across mushy foliage, waiting for him to give the obvious answer she'd probably been subconsciously fishing for. But nothing. He stayed silent, the noise from sweeping aside fronds her only answer.
Whack.
Whack
Whack.
Sara attacked the spiky plants with extra force. "Aren't you going to tell me it wasn't my fault?"
"Would it make any difference?"
Practical Lucas. She welcomed that familiar response even as he left her to find her own absolution.
"Not really." Her brain skipped to a thought so obvious she should have considered it right away. "It's not your fault, either, that Lucia and I were left behind."
He glanced at her with that almost-smile of his.
Would he feel guiltier learning how she'd been held? Or would he even believe her?
His jaw flexed, any hint of a smile long gone.
They needed to put that subject on hold until Lucia was better settled for the night, rather than now when she could wake at any second. Her daughter had never known their life was anything other than normal.
Which brought new concerns about the transition to a real life on the outside. If they lived long enough.
"Sometimes I let myself imagine that Ramon lied to me and that you and Tomas made it out safely, but mostly—" she shrugged "—I feared I believed it because I desperately wanted it to be true."
"After the doc told me you'd died, we left in an outgoing helicopter. We were in the States by sunrise."
"You thought I was dead that soon? I always assumed you just grew to accept it over time when you didn't hear from me."
"You can't have thought I abandoned you,"
"I told you to take Tomas."
He stopped, pivoted, the steely determination shining from his eyes in a matching shade of the silver threading his temples. "I would have made sure he was on that helicopter out of here, but I wouldn't have left without you. They showed me your body. They told me you were dead."