"Can you stand?"
"Yeah," she said, then made a liar out of herself when he rose and offered a hand. She stood—and her knees buckled.
He caught her before she went down, and pulled her up against his chest.
Through his sodden shirt and pants she felt the hard breadth of his chest, the lean line of hip and thigh. Felt his body heat steam through wet clothes and counteract the rain. His heartbeat, fast but steady, pulsed against her cheek.
"Steady," he whispered, telling her they were far from in the clear. "Take a second. Get your feet under you."
"My feet aren't the problem," she muttered, embarrassed by her sudden weakness. "What happened back there?" she asked when she felt herself level out.
He reached around in front of her and retrieved her Browning from the jungle floor. Before handing it to her, he did what he could to wipe it dry.
"What happened is that we need to move out," he said, his face expressionless. "That shot is going to draw the rest of them like flies."
She tucked the gun into her waistband, then met his eyes. Saw in them the answer he had avoided giving her. He'd shot someone. Someone who had been intent on killing him ... or her ... or Adam.
Someone who was probably a boy. God. All of this was so senseless.
"We can't. . . can't just leave him."
"Yes," he said, his eyes as vacant and hollow as an empty vault, "we can. You're not here on a mercy mission, Lily. And his friends don't give a rip that you're only here to find your son. Me, they'll just kill if they catch us. You .. . they'll let you live a long time before they're through passing you around. By that time, you'll wish you were dead."
If his intention was to scare her, it worked. When he took off, she reached for her backpack and fell into step behind him. A new level of fear fortified her with a burst of adrenaline.
They slogged on for another hour. The underbrush thinned some, making walking a bit easier. The trade-off was that the terrain had grown steep and the rain no longer had to filter through a canopy of trees. It was like taking a cool, pulsing shower with their clothes on. Not a speck of mud remained on Manny's face or hands. Even his clothes and hers had been washed clean—which made them stark white targets against a dark green terrain.
They were almost to the top of a long, rocky knoll, using tree limbs and thick, woody vines to help pull themselves up the steep, rain-slick grade, when they heard voices behind them.
Lily glanced over her shoulder when Manny swore; not thirty yards behind them at the foot of the hill was a troop of soldiers, all carrying semiautomatic weapons. She could hear their shouted orders and figured they'd be fanning out and combing the area and would not give up until they found her and Manny.
"Go, go, go!" Manny ordered with a quiet urgency that sent her scrambling to keep up with him.
If the rebel troops spotted them, they'd pick her and Manny off like sitting ducks.
When she slipped and slid a few feet backward, Manny reached back and grabbed her hand. He jerked her up beside him and catapulted them over the rise. The momentum sent them flying over the rim of the hill—which dropped off at a drastic angle. She was vaguely aware of Manny wrapping himself around her as they tumbled down the hillside like Jack and Jill on their botched attempt to get water.
Lily didn't have time to think, let alone scream. It was all she could do to keep hold of her pack while they rolled, bounced, skidded, slipped, and careened down the steep embankment like a runaway tire. She felt like she'd been caught up in an amusement park ride—only she had no idea when this one would stop and let her get off.
They bounced hard enough to jar Manny's arms loose and he flew one way, she another. She landed flat on her face at the bottom of a ravine, a bed of ferns and moss cushioning her fall. For several seconds, she just lay there, catching her breath, assessing for damages. When she was relatively certain she was in one piece, she pushed up to her knees—to see Manny spread-eagled on his back five feet away.
His eyes were closed. He wasn't moving. And then she saw the blood. Lots of it, covering his right temple.
Oh God.
She scrambled to his side on all fours, decayed leaves and fern fronds rustling in her wake, the rain, if possible, pouring down even harder.
"Manny," she whispered, and checked for a pulse—
strong, thank God
—then lifted an eyelid. He flinched. Another good sign.
"Manny!" She tapped his cheek with an open palm, trying to rouse him.
He groaned and rolled his head to the side.
Relief that he was coming around zipped through her chest like fresh air.
"Come on," she urged him, kneeling by his head to inspect the cut. It was nasty. He must have hit a rock on the tumble down the hill. A two-inch gash sliced through his scalp, just inside his hairline. That accounted for the blood. Head wounds bled like blazes. The knot roughly the size of a robin's egg beneath it accounted for the unconsciousness.
"Come on," she pleaded this time, trying to rouse him. "We've got to get out of here."
His eyes opened then. He tried to sit up, swore, and went slack again. "Whoa. Spin cycle."
God. He couldn't run in this condition. She had to hide them. Fast. And he wasn't in any shape to help her.
Frantic, she looked around, spotted his rifle and ALICE pack through the pouring rain. Crouching low, she slipped and slid her way to retrieve them. Once she'd gathered all their gear, she searched for a place to hide.
Ten feet away, she spotted a thicket of wiry brambles butted up against one of the many man-sized boulders scattered along the jungle floor. Trailing vines, ferns, and thick, lush orchid stems made a curtain around the boulder. At its base a natural hollow, like a bowl, almost like a narrow set of root cellar steps, cut a cove of sorts. A cove big enough to hold a man.
And a woman,
she thought,
if they didn't mind getting up close and personal.
Knowing it was only a matter of minutes before the rebels popped over the ridge, she scrambled back to Manny.
"Help me," she ground out as she worked her hands under his armpits and, employing every ounce of strength left in her, started dragging him toward the boulder.
He weighed a ton, all muscle, solid as stone, and mostly deadweight. He made valiant attempts to dig in his heels and push, but his weight tore at her burning muscles. She thought she heard a shout—and adrenaline kicked in again and helped her drag him the rest of the way.
He was holding his head up and trying to roll to all fours when, panting from the exertion, she left him next to the stone steps and scrabbled back for their packs and his rifle. When she returned, she tossed the packs into the hole for a cushion.
"Survival... blanket," he muttered, poised on his hands and knees now, head hanging as blood dripped onto the ground between his flat palms and slowly seeped away in the rain-saturated ground. "Camo. In the pack. Get it."
Her wet fingers flew as she dug inside his pack, found the blanket, and tugged it out.
"Hurry ... we've got to get down there." When he didn't move fast enough, she gave him a none-too-gentle shove.
He landed on his back on top of the packs with a grunting groan. Wasting no time, Lily piled in on top of him, dragged the rifle down into the hole with them, then covered them with the blanket.
Lying as still as the earth surrounding them, Lily tried to regulate her breathing. Then she held her breath altogether and covered Manny's mouth with her palm when the distinct sound of boots on the ground—lots of them, very, very close now—drowned out the rapid-fire beat of the blood rushing through her ears and the rain pummeling the blanket.
CHAPTER 18
Nothing but the thin camouflage blanket above her protected Lily and the 180 or so pounds of hard, bleeding male beneath her from the rebel forces.
Seconds passed. Minutes. Each one felt like an hour.
She could hear the shouts of the rebel squad scouring the area. Died a hundred deaths when she thought of the marks Manny's body had to have made when she'd dragged him across the jungle floor, which must surely point like an arrow to their hiding place. And then she prayed that the rain washed the signs away—and that this hole didn't fill up and drown them.
Beneath her, Manny groaned and struggled to sit up.
"No ... no, shush," she whispered, desperate to silence him, recognizing he was most likely disoriented and confused, because he'd been half-conscious when she'd shoved him into the hole.
"Have to stop them—"
She covered his mouth with her hand, pressed her cheek against his. It had been a while since a razor had touched his face. His whiskered stubble felt like sandpaper against her skin. She welcomed the stinging abrasion. Welcomed the reminder that he was strong—would be strong again as soon as he shook off the effect of the blow to his head.
She breathed deep. He smelled like rain and jungle loam and blood. Like sweat and man and things she'd been missing in her life for a very long time.
God. Sex? She was thinking about sex when they could be heartbeats away from death. Okay. She cut herself a little slack on that one. She'd worked enough trauma to know that an adrenaline rush could supercharge all the senses. Libido included. Nothing like a little brush with mortality to trigger a knee-jerk need to experience all the good things soon to be gone. And sex with Manny had always been a very good thing.
He shifted again and she pressed herself deeper into him.
"Manny, be still," she murmured. "Lay still. Please, please. You have to stay quiet."
He stilled abruptly. The tension-wrought confusion in his muscles eased. And then he said her name. "Lily."
His gruff whisper wasn't a question. It was a statement of relief. Of recognition.
He let out a breath, deep and long, said it again. "Li-ly."
Memories ... of long, loving nights and deep, rich emotions filled her chest with tender longing. So tender, it brought tears—for all that had been. For all that could never be.
She turned her head ever so slightly toward his, their warm breaths meshing, their heartbeats pounding. Against her belly, she could feel the length and strength of an erection that told her his thoughts had gone the same way as hers.
His physical reaction to her had always been instant and intense. Even now, with rebel forces surrounding them, practically walking on top of them, and Manny drifting in and out of consciousness, he recognized her body, wanted to claim it as his.
"Liliana," he whispered, and touched his lips to hers. "I'm with you now."
Then he kissed her with a longing that accelerated the already rapid-fire beat of their hearts. A longing so big, it made her heart hurt, her throat swell.
"I'm with you now," he repeated against her mouth, then touched a hand to her hair. "Tell me what's happening."
It took her a moment. A moment to snap herself out of the unexpected sexual heat he'd ignited with one kiss, one whispered word—
Liliana
—and not a single stirring from his honed, muscular body. A moment to regroup and come back to the reality that death could come quickly and she would never have the chance to tell him she had loved him. Never see the face of their beautiful child again.
"We fell," she whispered shakily, willing herself to pull it together, "into a ravine. You hit your head. Here." Very carefully, she touched her fingertips to the wound and felt the sticky wetness of clotting blood. "You were unconscious for a few minutes. We're in a... I don't know ... it's like a bowl at the base of a boulder, hiding from the rebel soldiers."