Sara kicked, bit, and a steely arm clamped around her waist.
Dios rnio. Her heart lurched up into her throat. Horror, frustration, futility clawed inside her as hard as she clawed at him.
She'd been so careful. How could they have found her already? And who? Ramon's men or Padilla's?
Either way, she couldn't give up. For her child, she had to fight. Please, Lucia, stay back.
She rammed her elbow into his gut, but his hold didn't even loosen. Lucia squeaked, darting behind a tree. Good, chica. Stay there, she willed with her eyes.
Sara slammed her head back, cracking her skull against the man's face. He grunted. A promising reaction.
Spurred, she hooked her foot behind his knee and leaned, using her weight rather than muscle to drop them to the ground—a more level playing field. Steely arms locked around her as they tumbled. Strong. He was so damn strong.
But she was smart and determined. She stopped fighting, stunning him still long enough for her to slip her hand to her waistband.
Her fingers closed around the knife's wooden handle. She wasn't the piece of fluff who fainted at the sight of blood any longer. She eased her arm up, slowly, blade tucked out of sight until just the right moment.
Fired by the maternal drive to protect her child, Sara stabbed deep into human flesh.
Pain seared Lucas's arm.
Holy crap. Sara had stabbed him. So much for a happy reunion.
The warm gush of blood flowed down screaming nerves, slickening his grip on her wrist. He clamped tighter, tighter again, until he feared breaking her fragile bones, but she wouldn't let go and seemed beyond hearing his hissed words in her ear. Even with the hard-rock band of monkeys and backup macaws screeching overhead, he didn't dare shout her out of the daze and risk bringing Ramon Chavez's men down on them. But he couldn't serve himself up for carving, either.
Flipping her to her back, he anchored her to the grassy carpet and tried like hell to ignore the sensual arch of her bucking and writhing under him. Who'd have thought there was enough blood left in his body for a hard-on?
She writhed under him much like she had during long sweaty siesta hours spent making love in her flat. Not the smartest memory to have at the moment.
Her knee jacked up—
Hell. She was determined to neuter him. He twisted to block her and slammed her wrist against the ground once, twice, whispering, "Sara, damn it all, Sara, it's me. Lucas."
She didn't stop struggling. Her eyes glazed over with bloodlust, her nostrils flared. Too battle-focused to hear? Or could she have amnesia? Unlikely and tragic, but God, that would be a balm for his ego that was stinging worse than the gash in his arm.
"Sara. Sarafina, baby," he whispered in her ear as he'd done often in the past with a completely different intent. "It's me. It's okay. Do you hear me? I'm here."
She stilled under him long enough that he dared pull back to look down at her. Her eyes went wide with shock.
With recognition.
"Lucas?" she gasped. "Dios mio? It can't be you." She slumped back, her longer hair splayed over the verdant forest floor like on a mossy bed. "How? Why?"
So much for an ego-soothing case of amnesia. "I'm here for you, of course."
He took in the different feel of her, a more angular body, hollows in her cheeks, smudges beneath her eyes barely visible under her naturally bronzed complexion, but up close, he couldn't miss them. Or her dark pool eyes, so deep a man could fall in.
Unmistakably his Sara.
The reality flooded his mind with near-numbing force. Pain exploded through his head. Not shock. Real pain. What the—?
By instinct, he started to reach for his gun. A tiny she-demon stood over him with a branch clasped in her fists, ready to beam him a second time.
"Get off my mama!"' she screeched in a jumble of Spanish and English.
The little girl who'd come through the stone wall with Sara whacked him again, on his injured arm this time, no quarter. Damn it! Fire flamed up to his shoulder, the jungle ceiling swimming in front of his eyes.
Sara crab-walked backward from under the tangle of their legs. "Lucia, chica, stop. Lucas will not hurt us. He's going to walk with us."
Lucia?
Lucas.
Sara's words blurred in his brain. She tucked the child under her arm and stared back at him with stunned wide eyes. A kid. Hers. And his? The name certainly indicated as much, but the child only looked to be three at the most.
Realization roared through him when he was too damn shell-shocked to shut down emotions. Had she been raped?
Red rage fogged his vision. Kneeling, he planted a hand on the soft jungle floor and hung his head, dragging in breaths for control.
She raised a trembling hand to his jaw, skimming up to trace along his cheekbone into his hairline. "Are you all right? She didn't hurt you, did she? Oh my, you are alive. Tomas, as well?"
He nodded while sorting through a few too many shocks at once. Hot blood trailed down his arm to squelch in his fisting hand.
She'd thought he was dead, too? A little convenient for his jaded peace of mind. But showing his hand could send her running. Either way, the CIA wanted her brought in.
Except, God help him, she still knocked him on his ass. He was so freaking grateful to see her alive he could barely breathe.
"I prayed that Tio Ramon had lied to me, but I feared that... Never mind. As long as you're here and my brother survived." She swept a hand over her face and shook away the dazed expression.
Dazed?
He was the one who had reason to be stunned stupid, not her. He needed to get out of here but he wanted more than anything to haul her close, hard and inhale the scent of the woman who'd tormented his dreams for five long years.
What the hell was he supposed to say now? He should have been ready for this meeting, even as much as he'd tried to deny the possibility to forestall debilitating disappointment.
"Your arm." Her eyes went wide. "I am so sorry. Let me—"
Boom. The ground shuddered under his feet. From surprise?
No. Wait. Another explosion. Followed by gunfire. Leaves rained down from the rustling branches. The monkey rock overhead went silent—then shrieked to decibel-defying levels. Smoke spiraled through the trees, drifting with the acrid stench of burning buildings.
The compound was under attack.
Gunfire stuttered too damn close. Explosions trembled the ground. Alarms filled the air. The government raid already? But it was too soon. Something had gone wrong while he was away, and this woman and child were seconds from being caught in the crossfire. Hellish images from the embassy shooting bombarded him—watching Sara's body jerk from one, two, three bullets before he reached her. The moment spun out in a deja vu repeat of five years ago.
Damned if he would let the past replay.
Lucas launched to his feet, injury forgotten and scooped up Sara's daughter.
"Run!"
Lucas's order reverberated in Sara's ears with as much force as the explosions blasting through the walled compound less than five hundred feet away. She'd escaped with seconds to spare. She shivered.
Heaven only knew how long Ramon could hold off Hector Padilla or why the attack had launched before sundown. And how did her military husband's appearance now play into everything?
At least she was free of Ramon, and Hector Padilla would never touch Lucia.
Still too shocked to stand, she could hardly process what she was seeing—the angular face of the stark, ungodly handsome man who had haunted her dreams for years. Threads of silver flecked his jet-black hair, his blue eyes still as steely piercing.
Too much to take in at once with her brain already on overload from shock.
Lucas hauled her to her feet, reminding her she didn't have the luxury of time to sort through her questions. Given the choice of staying with Ramon or leaving with Lucas...
No choice for her at all. "Where—"
"Head straight for the path, a direct route to a bridge. Once we're there, we'll have help."
He held Lucia with such authority the child didn't even argue, her warrior-baby attitude gone for the moment.
Sara shook her head. "I meant where did you come from?"
"There'll be time to talk later, and believe me, we sure as hell will talk. But not now. Follow me."
He had her daughter. Of course she would follow him into hell—as he undoubtedly knew.
Her eyes firmly on his broad shoulders, her daughter's wide-eyed face peering back at her, Sara trailed him through the dense pines and palms. He stomped spiky fronds, leaped over a downed tree trunk rotting in the undergrowth.
Lucas's blood warm on her hands, realization burning hotter in her brain, Sara sprinted deeper into the rain forest with her back-from-the-dead husband and Lucia. Lucas's daughter. So much to explain.
If they lived long enough.
He broke free of the dense jungle, back onto the path where he picked up the pace, fronds beating their ankles. Somehow without looking he seemed to know just how fast to run so he didn't leave her behind. Her heart thundered in her ears. She'd tried to improve her endurance with long walks and isometric exercises that Ramon wouldn't notice or question. Still, she wasn't half as fit as she'd been five years ago before the shooting.
Panting, she wouldn't give up. She refused to slow him down and endanger Lucia. She would live long enough to have that talk with Lucas. To wrap her arms around him and hold him close for a grateful minute before they had to sort through everything else.
She would live long enough to tell him he had a child. A beautiful, quirky daughter who loved bugs and swung a branch like a professional baseball player.
Sara scrounged deep and ran harder, her lungs laboring.
Lucas slowed to run alongside her, even though he didn't waste so much as a glance in her direction, his eyes constantly scanning the terrain. "Hang tough. Not much farther. The bridge is right ahead and a plane's waiting nearby."
A plane. Already? Relief made her dizzy. Or maybe it was oxygen deprivation.
In minutes, her nightmare would be over. She would leave for the United States, see her brother.
Introduce Lucas to his daughter.
When she and Lucas had discussed forever before, she'd mourned leaving her homeland. Not anymore. Cartina might be beautiful, exotic, but she was too aware of the real-life predators lurking in those lush trees.
Run. Don't think. Run.
Around a curve, the road widened, revealing a bridge a couple of hundred yards ahead. The wooden walkway stretched across a gushing river fifty feet below. Maybe her heart wouldn't explode after all. They really would make it before the bombs and bullets tore them apart.
Lucas had come for her, after so long and so many dreams she'd been certain could never come true, he was here. Tall, alive, so wonderfully solid. His intensity that she once longed to rattle was right now pulling them through hell.
Almost there. While Lucas paused to secure his hold on Lucia, Sara stretched for the handrail—
A whistling sounded overhead a second before a hole split through the jungle canopy like a knife slicing through a verdant green sheet.
With a blooming explosion, the bridge blasted apart, ripping the ground from beneath her feet.
Chapter 3
Talk about having his world blown all to hell.
Lucas grabbed for Sara's hand as her feet slid from under her, even knowing he was too far to reach her. She slammed onto her stomach, earth giving way beneath her while she clawed for something, anything to hold her.
Hell, no, this wasn't happening. He refused to lose Sara after finding her again.
He dropped the kid. Catapulted forward. Clapped his fingers around Sara's wrist as she slid over the side.
Toward the fifty-foot drop.
Flat on his belly, he clamped his hand around her other arm, gripping while her feet dangled. Praying the whole freaking cliff wouldn't give way under them both, killing Sara, him, leaving that kid out here alone to die or at the mercy of monsters. Dimly he registered his radio jarring off his waist and skittering to the edge. Over. The radio spinning endlessly down until it splashed.