Good. Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose until the relief faded enough for him to think again.
Keagan's wife was fine. They'd already worked hard for their own peace since Keagan had been undercover on Carson Hunt's flight that had been shot down in the Middle East. He'd handled the fallout better than the rest of the crew, given his intense CIA training.>"I wanna walk."
"Not today." They couldn't risk pumping the venom through her system any faster. "But soon, I promise."
Lucia shrugged. "Okay, long as we can share a mango instead of those icky bananas."
"Deal." To hell wasting time to hide their camp.
He reached for the first aid kit and finally let himself look at Sara, so pale he wondered if he would have to carry her, too. What a time to remember she needed to take things slower because of her own health concerns that he'd been too much of a bastard to realize.
Her lips pressed tight before she nodded. "I can keep up."
She had to, and they knew it.
"We need to make tracks and get to the town before nightfall. Best-case scenario, we have twelve hours. Since she's a kid, with a faster metabolism... We need to move. Now."
Her trembling jaw told him he didn't need to articulate the rest. They both knew. Children were at a greater risk.
They had twelve hours before the spider's toxin could kill Lucia.
They were alive. Ramon was certain.
Kneeling by the idling Jeep, he studied the baked footprints in the fading sunlight filtering through the jungle canopy. A solid trail. For some reason they'd broken from their covert jungle trek.
Another few seconds and he would be back in the Jeep, following them full out. He hadn't actually seen Sarafina, but knew in his gut the smaller set of footprints belonged to her. If she was still on her feet then whoever had taken her hadn't hurt her yet. Someone must be carrying Lucia, which worried him. Sara didn't have the strength to cart the child and he hated to think of the little one terrified in the arms of a monster.
He grieved for his country that men like Padilla gained power. They needed a strong hand, but not a brutal one. Hadn't he proven himself in the way he took care of Sara even though she'd tried to leave? And again with this woman who could very well be out to kill him?
He wasn't heartless. He prided himself on his humane treatment of prisoners, like now. Hadn't he let the Nola woman make a trip into the brush alone as long as she sang the whole time? Not a bad voice. But how strange hearing her hum when she stayed silent otherwise.
The gunfire had finally faded. Calls on the two-way radio while Nola took her breaks had reassured him at least some of his men had survived. How many, he wasn't sure yet. But he'd given them instructions to meet him at the small town at the end of this road where people loyal to him waited. Once there, he could find out whatever he needed. Soon.
"Nola? Finish. We need to leave."
The humming stopped.
"Nola?"
Gun raised hip level, he strode toward the brush. "Don't make me hurt you."
She stood, breathless. Tucking her head, she rushed past, long bare legs blotched from bug bites and bramble scratches. "Sorry."
He watched her through narrowed eyes. He'd been out of the field for over twenty years, but he'd staged training ops to keep himself sharp. Ramon whacked the brush aside with the nose of his gun. He found simple broken limbs, as he would expect. And sticks jabbed into the ground beside a knotted palm in a precise pattern.
In a code.
She'd been leaving signs, and these weren't just rudimentary markings. Damn right, she had survival training.
And she'd been playing him all along.
Chapter 9
Sweat as thick and gritty as her fear, Sara wished she could wake from this nightmare—it was a hint away from dark after all. She would open her eyes to find herself playing with her daughter. While she was at it, the past five years could turn out to be some horrible dream, too.
Except her eyes were already open, the burning in her exhausted legs very real as she raced beside Lucas with Lucia in his arms. He'd told her the "safe place" he'd mentioned earlier was actually an American-kept "safe house"—which had stunned her to the roots of her hair, but she would grasp the blessing with both hands for her daughter.
His supposed "safe house" waited a couple hundred yards ahead. The sounds of a small town already mingled with the monkeys and bugs, adding a symphony of church bells, vehicles, even a nearby Jeep distinguishable from the rest.