Perfect Stranger (14 page)

As her bottom left the seat and her feet hit
the ground, she doubly noted how her body ached from head to toe
after being jostled around for the last few hours, not to mention
being bound, gagged and tossed around at the cabin.

"Where to now?" she asked, smoothing her
pant legs and stretching a little.

"Back in there," Jericho said, looking into
the dense jungle. He pulled out his pack from the jeep and set it
at his feet along with the SCAR. He rummaged around through the
jeep for anything of use, poking a few items into the pack before
closing the zipper and shrugging it on. As for the gun, he checked
the magazine inside, tossing the empty mag to replace with a new
one. He looped the sling over his neck when he was done and checked
the pistol he had used earlier, replacing its magazine too.

Jericho lifted his head to survey their
surroundings as he slipped the pistol into his holster. "Looks like
that wetland I told you about is up ahead. We're on the edge, see?"
He pointed to a marsh looking area in the distance.

Chloe shielded her eyes in the wet, heavy
heat. The sun beat down on them like never before. The savanna was
too open. If not for these gallery forests, they would have little
to no cover.

She noticed the ambiance had changed
somewhat, too, along with the open sun and the marshy ground. The
sounds of this jungle seemed less inviting. She swallowed hard as
Jericho started into the brush. "Will it be like this the whole
way?" she asked, tiptoeing into the wetland, careful of where she
stepped.

"Once we're out of the mush and back in the
gallery forest on the other side of the wetland, it will be much
like the forest yesterday," he said, taking a leap over a deep, wet
patch.

Chloe took a step after Jericho and grimaced
as her leg sank into thick water, her boot sucking as she pulled
forward. She looked behind at the open savanna and the sky in the
distance before being swallowed by the canopy above. There, too,
the horizon grew dark. Soon the bright sun would be covered. Clouds
rolled thickly several miles away over the flat savanna, and a
zigzagging strike of lightning shot to the ground, so small at the
distance she would have missed it had the sky not been so
ominous.

Chloe grimaced. Rain was never her
thing.

Chapter Twelve

1900 hours, Monday

The Cerrado, Brazil

Exhausted, Chloe trudged to a stop behind
Jericho. She was sticky with sweat, muddy, and drenched to her
thighs. She felt as if she had been plastered with bugs. The teeny
beasts had swarmed her all day, and the more she fought them off,
the more they came by the droves. The day had been exhausting.

She did smile, however, when a fat raindrop
hit on the tip of her nose, quickly followed by more little plops
landing on her shoulders and back. Chloe lifted her arms out and
tilted her head back as the rain cascaded through the thin spot in
the canopy overhead, rolling off the leaves and splattering down in
a trickle.

Jericho quickly sat his pack under the
shelter of very large leaves, the rifle, too, before joining her.
He rinsed beside her, but did not show quite the same pleasure as
Chloe. He ran his hands over his face once and then went back to
the backpack, sitting under the leaves to pull out the DAGR.

Jericho banged it against his palm and
muttered a curse Chloe barely heard, then tossed the device back
into the pack and pulled out a map.

Chloe ran her hands over her face, into her
hair, rinsing all the nastiness of the day away as the rain sloshed
down through patches of sparse leaves. When she was thoroughly
drenched, and satisfied there were no more bugs stuck to her, she
went to Jericho, and he put away the map, making room to pull her
under the leaves, too, where the bower formed the perfect little
den.

There wasn’t much room, and when Jericho
leaned back against the thick roots of the plant he pulled her down
to him, between his legs, where Chloe could lean against him.

Their bodies were warm together, molded by
their wet clothing. Chloe felt every inch of Jericho, felt his heat
beating solidly at her back. He wrapped his arms around her, slowly
rubbing at her arms as he stared out into the jungle.

The way he held her made Chloe think of the
kiss they had shared the night before, but she couldn’t force
herself to bring up the encounter. There had been so much more to
that moment than just a simple kiss. So much barely contained
passion.

He had desired her, and never before had she
ever felt such an intensity of need from a man. That was a heady
notion. He had been completely undone by only kissing her. She
wondered how far they would have gone if he had not stepped away
when he had.

Though Chloe's heart thrilled, since she
hadn’t thought she held any such sway over a man, especially after
what had happened with her ex, she rather imagined she and Jericho
would have had a rude interruption had they continued that
night.

Jericho hadn't been gone long before she'd
been dragged away.

Chloe sobered, sinking into Jericho. Any
thought of romance in their situation was dangerous. For both their
sakes, she wouldn’t bring up that kiss and risk distracting the man
protecting her again.

"We should be out of this mess tomorrow,"
Jericho said suddenly, snapping Chloe to reality. "There's a little
village to the north."

Her pulse picked up a bit. "And then?" she
asked, quietly, turning her head just a bit. The stubble of his jaw
brushed her neck and sent a quiver though her, gooseflesh prickling
her skin. She willed the sensation away, yet couldn’t deny the
pooling of desire the abrasion had caused.

She felt his shoulder lift in a shrug behind
her. "I have no idea. We still have the passports. The problem is
in getting to an airport."

Chloe swallowed, resting her head against
the curve of his neck. "If you leave here, what about your men
still out there?"

He paused, his body
tensing. "Chances are,
if
they escaped, they are in the same situation as
us. Best thing I can do for them is get back to Central and get
some help on the ground. Damn keeping U.S. presence a secret
anymore."

Chloe reached up to pat his arm, gently
caressing him. She wished there were something she could do to ease
the burden. He felt guilty as their leader for all this to have
happened; she could tell. But how could he have known what this
Conyers man had been doing in secret? This was not Jericho's fault.
He had done all he could for his men, she was sure.

"What about Conyers?" she asked then, a
little snarl forming on her lips. She had never met the man, but
she knew she didn’t like him. No one liked a traitor, but she liked
him even less for what he had done to Jericho.

"He'll get what he deserves, one way or
another," Jericho said. It sounded very much like a promise.

"Good." Chloe turned her head and looked up
at him. Again, she wanted to ask about that kiss, but couldn’t, and
quickly turned back before she made a mistake—before he noticed how
strongly he affected her.

As the rain pattered around them, the jungle
darkened. She couldn’t see past the leaves shielding them in the
little, green, cave-like burrow. If Jericho were not at her back,
she would be terrified.

The jungle wildlife had retreated for
shelter from the downpour, and although they had chosen a
particularly open part of the canopy to stop under, they were
relatively dry in their own leafy shelter. Luckily, the water
gathering on the jungle floor was minimal and seeped in quickly
instead of running. And, too, the canopy thickened beyond them, and
little rain fell there at all.

The moisture cooled the stagnant air, but
she was sure the humidity tomorrow would be something to
suffer.

Jericho's arms closed more securely around
her then, and she turned her head back up at him, looking
questioningly.

"I won't have anyone snatching you in the
middle of the night again," he murmured.

Chloe smiled. "No, I don’t think I could
handle that again."

"You did very well, especially there at the
end when you knocked the weapon from his hands."

Jericho's praise had her blushing. Chloe
tilted her head back even further and kissed his cheek softly.
"Thank you for rescuing me," she murmured.

Even in the darkness, Jericho's eyes lit
with a heat so undeniably sexual, Chloe felt the intensity clear to
where her insides pooled with need.

Jericho looked away sharply. "Go to sleep,
Chloe," he said deeply.

Sleep? How could she
sleep?
Chloe scoffed in her mind, but she
did turn back around.

Much later, her eyes did begin to droop. The
rain stopped, and frogs croaked around them noisily. Chloe was
restless, though she slept some. Jericho on the other hand did not,
at least that she could tell.

At times when she woke, she wondered if he
watched her sleeping. The idea was charming, until she worried if
she snored, which in turn made it all the harder to sleep.

Sometime before dawn, Chloe began to rouse.
This time not because of noise making frogs, but because of warm
fingers running down her jaw. Chloe was immediately awake, but
fought showing any signs of awareness. A single digit ran across
her lips, but then stopped.

Although Jericho's touch was gone, the
reverberations of his caress ran though Chloe so hard she didn’t
think the feeling would ever cease.

Chapter Thirteen

1730 hours, Tuesday

A small Brazilian village

Jericho's boots crunched on the dry, sandy
rocks beneath his feet as they climbed the hill to the outskirts of
the village. They had waded though the wetland, pushing their way
through thick brush and vines in the less sloppy parts of the
jungle. They'd then caught a small break in a gallery forest where
the vines were not so thick nor the ground boggy, though the jungle
floor was a giant, empty ravine. This part of the forest was dying,
as its water source had dried up. He smiled at Chloe's pout when
he'd explained the way the gallery forests worked in a savanna.

She'd honestly been sad for the jungle and
its inhabitants. She truly had a tender, sensitive, pure heart. So
different from his. She didn’t put on these emotions to seem
girlish. Chloe genuinely cared. Yes, she had a tendency for
cluelessness and naivety, but Jericho found he liked that in this
world people like Chloe still existed. Some might find her naivety
tiring or feel jealous of her obviously sheltered life. He only
wanted to protect that innocence. But then, Jericho remembered that
same innocence was what had gotten her into his mess.

As they crested the knoll, they at last
reached the village he had seen on the map the night before, a
place about the same size as Pirai, perhaps slightly smaller.

There were a few caved in buildings on the
outskirts, hardly enough left of them to be called rubble. He was
worried at first, but as he and Chloe came closer, children could
be seen ahead playing in the streets, and homes began to come up on
both sides of the dirt road. A little farther and the road turned
stoned, though it had long ago lost any filling between the flat
rocks, and now only dirt caked the crevices. The road was most like
once a dirt path that, as it had been well traveled, became
wider.

The homes here, too, resembled those in
Pirai, though less cultivated. There was an air of impoverishment
in this place they had not seen in any other place. Vines grew on
the houses thickly, in a way suggesting neglect.

He stopped in the street to examine the
village below. Finding no threat, Jericho stooped to the ground to
set his backpack there, taking the SCAR and breaking it down into
the upper and lower receivers. He put them into the backpack, out
of sight, so as not to frighten anyone.

He stood and took Chloe by the hand, and
they continued on.

As they came closer still,
children raced out into the path, kicking a soccer ball. The
children stopped to watch them as they neared. Jericho waved,
saying, "
Boa noite,
" as they passed.

Open mouthed, the children did wave back,
but the boy with the ball tucked it under his arm; and instead of
going back to their play, they all ran home, ducking into homes
down the street.

"I'm not sure we will have much luck here,"
Jericho said, perturbed. Brazilians were always friendly. Perhaps
the obscurity of the village had the inhabitants unused to
strangers or travelers.

Chloe grimaced. "I'm sure we look a sight."
She looked down on herself and laughed.

Jericho grinned. "I think we terrified those
children."

Up the street, a man stepped out of his home
as Jericho and Chloe came to an intersection. Jericho immediately
pulled Chloe into him.

"
Boa noite.
" Jericho greeted the man
and then began to explain that he and his
wife
were looking for a place to
stay the night and that they had been lost in the jungle several
days.

The man looked at Chloe and gave her a
toothless grin, then motioned them to follow him. Jericho tensed,
but led Chloe after the villager. An uneasy feeling unsettled him,
and Jericho found himself examining their surroundings more
thoroughly.

They rounded the next street corner and
almost instantly began to hear samba playing in the distance, and,
too, there were lights strung up in the inner village, blending in
with the dusk.

Chloe clasped onto his arm excitedly, and he
smiled down on her. He suspected she would enjoy having a bed for
the night. She would surely feel safer.