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  He smiled, all Mr. Charm. “It pains me to see you treated no better than a servant. It’s much cooler in my tent. Why don’t you join me? We’ll have something cold to drink, and it’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  She glanced around for Derek and spotted him through the trees, shovel in hand, digging at the top of the rise. “I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want Señor Castillo to get the wrong idea.”

  “Señor Castillo is busy making plans. He has given me use of the tent for the afternoon. Shall we go? Or do I need my friends to escort you?”

  She glanced around and saw two soldiers standing by, obviously there to do his bidding. The message was clear. She could go willingly, or they would drag her there by force.

  She started walking toward Castillo’s big tent, off in the trees at the edge of the lush jungle. The soldiers followed. A knot formed in her stomach and began to squeeze tighter with every step closer to the tent. One of Montez’s men opened the flap, and she walked inside. Montez followed, and the flap closed behind him.

  “Some refreshments?” he asked as if they were friends, but she didn’t miss the icy determination in his blue eyes.

  Her survival instincts grew stronger, and her heart began to speed erratically. “All right.” Anything to draw out the moment and give her some time. Perhaps Castillo would return. General Batista was somewhere in the camp, but she hadn’t seen him since Castillo’s arrival. And general or not, Montez was one of El Defensor’s soldiers. No help there.

  Montez poured her a glass of white liquid, the horchata with guaro the men had been drinking last night. He handed it over, poured himself a glass and drank down a good portion of it.

  “Now you,” he challenged.

  She took a sip and set the glass on a nearby table.

  “Finish it,” he commanded.

  “I’m not in the mood to get drunk.”

  His mouth hardened even as he smiled. “It might make things more pleasant for you.”

  Her heart was beating hard now, pounding in her temples. “What things?”

  He set his empty glass down on the table next to hers. “We both know why I brought you here. I intend to have you, Ms. Wingate. The beautiful daughter of one of the world’s wealthiest men? It will be a memory I treasure.”

  Her mouth dried up. She forced a calm note into her voice. “Are you sure you want to take that kind of risk at this crucial stage of your operation? Aren’t you worried about my father? If you hurt me, he won’t pay you.”

  “Your father wants you back alive. He’ll pay whatever we ask.”

  It was true.

  “You’re not a virgin,” Montez continued, moving closer. “Keep your mouth shut and you and I will be the only people who ever know.”

  She was standing next to the table. As Montez came up behind her, she picked up his empty glass and gripped it in her hand as tightly as she could. When Julio pressed his lips against the back of her neck, she whirled, smashed the glass into the side of his head and ran.

  She had almost reached the tent opening when Montez caught up with her. His head was bleeding, his jaw clenched into a line of fury. Gripping her wrist, he spun her around and slapped her hard across the face.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” Dragging her deeper into the tent, he slapped her again, and Bree cried out.

  The glass of horchata she had been drinking crashed to the floor as Montez pushed her down over the table and came up behind her.

  Bree screamed and started fighting.

  * * *

  DEREK WAS ALREADY moving as Bree and Montez entered the big canvas tent. Shovel in hand, Derek disappeared off the rise into the rain forest. Whatever Montez had in mind, it wasn’t good.

  The sound of Bree’s scream sent him running. One of the men guarding him shouted for him to stop, but he just increased his speed. The guards, a brawny man with greasy black hair and a shorter man with rotten teeth, took off at an angle, cutting a path between him and the tent.

  As the men drew near, Derek whirled and used the shovel as a weapon, holding it like a bat, cracking the metal spade against the brawny man’s head, jamming the handle into the shorter man’s chest, then knocking him in the head. Both men went down, and Derek kept running.

  Montez had two guards posted outside the tent. Derek wielded the shovel again, taking one of the men down with a blow to the shoulder, then shoving the blade into his stomach. The guy’s eyes rolled back as he hit the ground.

  The other guard moved in. With no room to maneuver, Derek dropped the shovel and swung a punch that sent the second guard crashing into a tree. Derek yanked him up and hit him again. A spray of blood flew into the air. The man groaned when he hit the ground, clearly unconscious.

  Derek jerked open the tent flap to see Bree bent over a table, her skirt up around her waist as she fought Montez with every ounce of her strength, kicking and screaming while Montez held her down and tried to work the zipper on his pants.

  Derek’s teeth clenched. Blind rage burned through him, and an urge to kill Montez with his bare hands.

  Grabbing the man by the back of the neck, Derek dragged him away from Bree, whirled him around and smashed a fist into his pretty-boy face. Montez cursed and swung a counterpunch that Derek dodged. Derek threw a series of punches that had Montez bleeding from his nose and mouth, but Montez got in a solid blow that cut into Derek’s cheek.

  Keeping his weight on the balls of his feet, he threw a hard right that sent Montez flying across the table, landing in a heap on the patterned carpet. Derek jolted to a halt as a big semiauto appeared in Montez’s hand, retrieved from a leather satchel on the floor next to where he’d landed.

  Derek cursed. Montez’s smile looked demonic. He regained his feet, his finger tight on the trigger.

  “You shouldn’t have interfered,” he said. “Now I’m forced to call my men in here to hold you down while I enjoy your woman.”

  Derek’s jaw tightened. “Touch her, and I’ll kill you.”

  Montez just laughed.

  Derek considered his options, which were slim and none. Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted Bree, gripping the handle of the shovel like a baseball bat.

  “I won’t let you hurt her,” Derek said, holding Montez’s attention as Bree silently approached.

  Montez smiled cruelly. “On second thought, I think I’ll just shoot you. Gives me more time with your woman.”

  Bree swung the shovel with all her strength, hitting Montez squarely in the side of the head. Bone cracked, blood spurted and Montez’s eyes rolled back in his head. He hit the floor with a soft thud and lay unmoving, staring into nothing.

  Bree started shaking. “Oh God, I think I killed him.”

  Derek knew a dead guy when he saw one. Montez would never hurt another woman.

  He grabbed hold of Bree’s hand. “We have to get out of here. No choice now but to leave.” The tent was far enough away from the main part of the camp that Castillo’s soldiers hadn’t come running. Derek figured Montez must have ordered them to ignore Bree’s screams and let him do whatever he wanted.

  Fresh fury hit him as he pried the gun from Montez’s dead fingers and stuck it into the waistband of his cargo pants. He quickly searched the satchel and said a silent thanks when he came up with a four-inch folding knife.

  Flipping it open, he hurried to the rear of the tent and sliced a hole large enough for them to climb through, slipped outside and urged Bree to join him. He made a quick check of the area, but the soldiers still seemed unaware of the happenings in Castillo’s big tent.

  Bree’s eyes moved toward the flat spot she could see through the foliage. “The helicopter, right?”

  “No choice, baby. Let’s go.”

  They hurried toward the open area, Bree hampered by her loose-fitting sandals. Derek helped her over roots and fallen logs as they made th
eir way through the dense jungle undergrowth. There was no trail here, nothing but plants, tall grass and tree branches blocking their way.

  He managed to find a game trail, which made things a little easier. Bree’s sandals and long gathered skirt worked against her, making the climb more difficult, but she kept pressing forward. Derek led her up a thickly vegetated hill and came out at the edge of the flat spot where the chopper sat waiting for Castillo’s return.

  “What about the clouds?” Bree asked, looking up at the dense white fog circling the mountain a few hundred feet over the ground. Spotty sunlight shone through here and there, but the heavy white mist was too dense to see the hilly, tree-covered terrain surrounding the clearing.

  “We’ll have to get above the clouds.” It wasn’t good news. The rain forest was mountainous. If he chose the wrong direction, he could fly straight into the side of a hill.

  The good news was that from the moment Derek had seen the chopper land, he had worked to memorize their surroundings as far as he could see in case they found a chance to escape. The knowledge was going to be crucial. He prayed he remembered everything correctly.

  Bree started into the clearing, heading for the chopper, but Derek pulled her back.

  “No way would they’d leave the helo unguarded.” He eased her back into the cover of the leafy foliage. “Stay here while I take a look.”

  He started moving, stopped when he felt her hand on his back. Wordlessly, Bree pointed to a man with a pockmarked face sitting on a stump not far from the chopper. Derek had seen him around the camp—not the pilot, just one of Castillo’s soldados.

  He nodded to let Bree know he had spotted the threat. “Be ready to move,” he whispered and slipped off into the jungle.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BREE WATCHED DEREK circle around the helicopter to the right, planning to come up on the guard from behind. It was a risky move. There was twenty feet of open space between the dense jungle foliage and the stump where the man sat smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

  His relaxed posture said he wasn’t expecting trouble, but a semiautomatic pistol rode in a holster at his waist, and an assault rifle spanned the width of his chest.

  Bree held her breath as Derek appeared out of a thicket choked with dense green leaves. He moved silently across the open space toward his target, the knife gripped in his hand. In his waistband at his back, Montez’s pistol glinted in a thin ray of sunlight, but firing a shot would be a death sentence, alerting the entire camp of their escape.

  As she watched Derek close in on his target, she wondered if he had ever killed a man. He’d been a pilot, not a regular soldier, but he would have been trained in enemy combat, and he was using that training now.

  The knife flashed as Derek grabbed the man by the hair, pulled his head back, and sliced the blade across the soldado’s throat. Blood gushed from the wound, and a wave of nausea hit her.

  She thought of Julio Montez, the man she had killed. It hadn’t been her intention, but she and Derek were fighting for their lives. She had ducked out of the tent in search of a weapon and spotted the shovel. She’d used it in self-defense and would do it again if she had to, but she didn’t feel good about it.

  Careful not to look at the man on the ground, Bree swallowed the bile in her throat and rushed into the clearing toward the chopper. Derek was already aboard when Bree opened the Plexiglas door and climbed into the copilot’s seat.

  “Strap yourself in good and tight.” Derek was busy flipping switches as if he actually knew what he was doing. Bree prayed that he did.

  The engine began to whine, and the rotors slowly began to spin. Derek continued checking gauges and dials, going through some sort of pilot checklist.

  “Put your headset on.”

  She found it and was lifting it over her head when she heard the first gunshot. Fear jolted through her. Whirling toward the sound, she saw a dozen armed men cresting the hill, surging onto the open patch of ground.

  “Hang on, darlin’. Time to get out of Dodge.”

  Bullets pinged on the metal struts, and her heart seemed to stop as the chopper lifted away. The nose tipped forward, skimming along the ground, eating up the distance between them and the men. Her stomach swirled for an instant before the helicopter swept them into the air.

  Even with the headset over her ears and the roar of the engine noise, she could hear the echo of gunshots. Derek worked the controls, trying to get the chopper out of range, his features set in a hard, determined line.

  He was in his element, she realized. She trusted him to do what he was trained for, trusted him as she had from the moment she had met him. The last thing she saw was a thin man who looked like Castillo charging up the hill, leading a group of men coming in from another direction.

  Then whiteness engulfed them, and she started praying again. The helicopter kept climbing through the cloud layer, but she had no idea whether they would get high enough to see where they were before running into the side of a hill.

  Please, God...please, God...

  Seconds that seemed like hours passed before the helicopter popped into sunshine so bright it hurt her eyes. Derek swooped left to avoid a mountainside that appeared right in front of them, and they were away.

  “Looks like we’re in the clear,” he said through the headset.

  Her heart was still pounding. “I can’t believe we made it.”

  “Yeah, now all we have to do is figure out where we are and where to find civilization.” But she could hear the smile in his voice. Typical cocky pilot.

  “What are we going to do?”

  He explained how he had been mentally keeping track of their location since the hijackers took over the passenger jet and forced the airplane off its course, veering east to the abandoned airfield. He’d added the two-day trek up into the mountains and figured he knew approximately which way to fly to get them to safety.

  “This is an old R22 Raven,” he said. “It’s got a piston engine, fairly easy to fly. This one has Garmin avionics, so we can see what’s out there.”

  “So we’re headed back to the airstrip?”

  “It would be a good place to land, but we could still be miles from a village, and it’s the first place Castillo will look for us.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Our best course is to head for San Salvador. I figure the closer we get to a city, the more population. The more people, the better the chance of finding a place to set down and a phone we can use.”

  Unfortunately, as the chopper continued west, Derek’s voice over the headset sounded a lot less cocky.

  “We got a problem,” he said, and a fresh rush of adrenaline jolted through her.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “One of those bullets must have nicked the gas tank. The fuel level is dropping way faster than it should be.”

  Bree glanced down, seeing nothing but green. At least it was flatter here, the mountains mostly behind them. But dense vegetation and trees covered the ground.

  “Look for an open spot,” he said. “Someplace we can land.”

  While Derek checked the GPS, Bree scanned the ground through the Plexiglas bubble, but flat jungle was jungle nonetheless, and she couldn’t see any end to it.

  “Just jungle and more jungle.” How long before the fuel runs out? she thought. How long till we crash?

  “Keep looking,” Derek said.

  “I think I see a road down there, but it’s pretty overgrown.”

  “I see it.”

  “Can you make it work?”

  “Don’t have much choice.” He swooped down to the road, which followed a stream, looking for a wide spot that wasn’t too overgrown. She heard the engine begin to sputter, and her heart jerked.

  “Hang on,” he said. The chopper continued to sputter and jerk uncontrollably. Her pulse was hammerin
g, her sweaty hands gripping the seat. Then she saw where Derek was headed—a spot on the river wide enough to handle the blades—and felt a fresh shot of hope.

  The helicopter rapidly descended, and her fingers dug into the seat. For an instant she closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. Her eyes flew open as the struts settled neatly on the ground and Derek shut down the engines.

  Bree looked over at him and grinned. “We made it!”

  Derek smiled. “Yeah, baby, we did. Now we just have to follow the road till it leads us to a village.”

  “Might be a long walk, but at least we don’t have to hack our way through the jungle.”

  “Or fight our way through Castillo’s men.”

  But as they climbed out of the helicopter and Bree went around to join Derek, ten rough-looking men stepped out of the heavy foliage onto the road, two of them with pistols drawn and pointed squarely in their direction.

  Derek swore softly. He and Bree both raised their hands.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS AMAZING how circumstances could change. What to Derek had looked like another group of hostiles was actually a bunch of villagers working together against a local band of thieves.

  The thieves had been raiding nearby settlements, and the men had set out to catch them. They’d been searching when they’d spotted the chopper and heard the engine misfire. The guns were only a precaution.

  The men spoke Spanish, making it easy for him to communicate. Since he wasn’t sure where the villagers’ sympathies lay, he told them he and his wife were on vacation when they had been kidnapped by hostiles. Although they managed to escape in a stolen chopper, they needed to report the bandits to the authorities and call Bree’s father, who would be worried about his daughter.

  The story seemed to satisfy the men, who led them into the tiny village of Santa Margarita. It was little more than a scattering of wood-framed houses painted an array of once-bright colors, clustered around a block-long dirt street.