Half the wooden bridge lay floating in segments fifty feet down in the torrential river. The rest of the bridge dangled, burning, cutting off access to the mobile command post. Something he would worry about later.
Adrenaline searing through him, he locked eyes with hers. "Hold on. Don't move. Just let me pull. Try not to pump your feet, okay?"
"Okay," she answered, barely moving her lips. "Lucia?"
"Is fine."
"Let me go before you—"
"We're not replaying that past again." No more deathbed pleadings from this woman. She wasn't going anywhere if he could help it. "Now shut up so I can haul you up here."
In the back of his brain he knew his arm throbbed like a son of a bitch, but adrenaline chugged through him, numbing pain and fueling endurance. His muscles bunched, strained, as he used his boots to dig into the moist undergrowth and inch them both back. Slow. Progress. He worked one hand at a time higher up her arms, hefting until she could...
Swing a leg over.
Hooking his arms around her waist, he rolled them away from the ledge, and damn that hurt. He swallowed down bile and clutched her harder against his chest. Yeah, it could pass for a lifesaving tangle, but he needed to hold her while he cleared his head of the horror of that moment he'd seen Sara pitch forward toward the river, boulders below. Undoubtedly crocodiles, too.
Gasping, he untangled from Sara before he lost it and sat there holding her until Chavez's men waltzed up to shoot them. He checked behind him and found Lucia safe, hugging her knees.
The kid scrambled to her mama's side. "I stayed quiet, like you said."
Gasping, shuddering, Sara curved an arm around her daughter, smothering the top of her head with kisses. "You were perfect, chica, a very good girl." Her accent thickened with emotion. "We're all right. Everyone is all right."
And he'd thought Sara was gorgeous before. Right now, even with her hair a tangled mess and her face scratched and streaked with dirt, she glowed with love for her kid so strong she just about blinded him.
Resting her cheek on Lucia's sweaty curls, Sara turned her attention to Lucas. "Gracias."
The drone of bugs, screech of monkeys, sporadic spit of distant gunfire faded as the world narrowed to just Sara. He recognized the sensation even five years after the first time he'd felt it. He freaking couldn't breathe.
He looked away from her beauty and terrified eyes, back to the mangled bridge to wrap his mind around an alternative escape plan. "Something must have gone wrong with the smash and grab."
"Smash and grab?"
Steeling himself, he nodded to her. With a final kiss to her daughter's head, Sara shrugged off her backpack, unzipping and digging deep with shaking hands, tossing aside bug repellant, PowerBar packets, peppermints....
"Smash into the compound. Grab you out." What was she doing in her backpack? Hunting for a snack, for crying out loud?
Or another knife. God, he hated doubting her.
He gripped her arm. "Sara. Stop."
She jerked at his touch, her eyes colliding with his and sending a jolt snapping right through him. How could she appear so different and so familiar at the same time?
If he didn't look away soon, Lucia would be clocking him again long before Chavez found them. "What are you doing?"
A question he should be asking himself.
Sara withdrew her hand from the backpack, a fresh T-shirt in hand. "Before we go anywhere, I need to tie a bandage around your arm. The bleeding's worse since you pulled me up and we won't make it too many more steps before you pass out. Even if you think you're superhuman, you're not, and I can't carry you."
She had a point, punctuated by gunfire in the distance.
He grunted a go-ahead. "Fine. But we need to take cover behind a tree."
Not too tough since there were trees just about everywhere. Scanning for threats, he shoved to his feet and herded them from the clearing.
"Here's good." He rested his shoulder against a towering hardwood, his uninjured side, as close as he would come to relaxing. He needed to watch, be ready to move, keep his defenses in place against sneak attacks from Chavez—and his own damned traitorous libido.
Five years without sex sure did play hell with a man's self-control when his heart was already breaking sound barriers from Sara pitching over the edge of the cliff. Breathe. Shut it down. Get control.
"Lucia, chica ?" Sara palmed her back. "Stand by Lucas for a minute, porfavor. Then I won't have to watch you while I help fix his arm."
He glanced down at the kid, who happened to offer a great mental bucket of cold water as well as making for an effective chaperone. "I don't bite."
"I do," Lucia answered with a mutinous tip to her chin and defiant glint to her saucer-big brown eyes.
He admired grit in a person. This one had the makings of being as big a heart-stealer as her mama. "I'll watch my back."
Lucia leaned against the same tree, but stopped short of actual contact and pretended an exaggerated interest in a caterpillar between her miniature hiking boots.
Might as well get his arm fixed ASAP. He looked up at Sara—finding her gaze glued to the two of them. She had to know he was curious about the child. But he wondered even more if Sara would trust him with the truth.
Either way, this wasn't a conversation they could have in front of Lucia. "Patch me up so we can get out of here."
White T-shirt in hand, she bit the corner and ripped wide strips before picking the edges of his torn flight suit from the slice in his bicep.
Holy crap. The edges of the horizon fuzzed. He pressed his head to rough bark for grounding.
"So you were coming to get me? You already knew I was there?"
"I found out this week." He focused on Lucia to keep his mind off the searing pain—and Sara's butterfly touch.
Wide child-eyes stared back, wary. She was so tiny in spite of her defiance he would let her use him as a bridge if he could. But that was his job, right? Defending the helpless. It didn't have anything to do with a soft heart that could make him too weak to protect them.
Sara looped a cotton strip around his arm. "What do we do now? You're in uniform so I assume your friends are nearby? And you mentioned a plane."
"Other side of that bridge, at the air base."
She yanked tight, knotting. He bit back a wince, pulled a smile for the kid currently engrossed in putting the caterpillar on her wrist. Probably not much of a smile, but hey, he was behind on practice.
Sara looped the rest of the shirt around her hand. "Now would be a good time to call your military pals to come get us."
No kidding, but no dice. "My radio fell into the river."
"Oh. That's not good." She swiped the T-shirt over her daughter's dirty face while the caterpillar made its way up Lucia's arm. "We will take the next bridge."
"Do you happen to know where that would be?" Because unless she knew something he didn't, they were in a crapload of trouble.
"No, but surely there's another bridge close by."
How could she have lived here for so long and not know the area? "Fraid not, according to my charts."
"Are you sure?"
He wasn't used to people questioning him, but figured she wouldn't take well to one of his infamous don't-mess-with-me glares. "I've studied maps of the area. We're better off heading for a shallow crossing point. We have two choices. Option A, continue north along the waterline to a narrow bend where we cross and reach a—" Could he trust her with the location of a CIA safe house? "—safe place in a village where we can sleep for the night."
A treacherous hike even without a kid in tow.
Sara dabbed the T-shirt over the sweat dotting her throat and brow. "How far?"
"Roughly twenty-five miles. With the terrain and the little one, it should take us about two to three days."
"Option B?"
"Go back and hang out with your buddy Ramon."
Lucia dropped her caterpillar. "Tio Ramon?"
Uncle Ramon? The child didn't seem in the least scared of the bastard. A thought he could only file away to think about later, after he hauled their asses out of this mess.
"No." Sara shook her head, crossing her arms tight over her chest.
A chest, he suddenly realized, that was quite a bit more generous in spite of her slighter frame. From having a kid? With his defenses seriously dinged, his mind filled too easily with the image of her round with a baby. Whose?
Sara followed his gaze down to...
She dropped her arms. "What about a flare?"
"And bring Ramon to the rescue?"
"Or Padilla."
"Padilla?" Another name on the CIA's To-Be-Nabbed list.
Kneeling by the open backpack, she rezipped and lifted it to her lap. "Hector Padilla has been plotting a coup to fake out Ramon."
"With any luck Ramon and Padilla will take care of each other."
Gunfire popped again. Closer. Scattering birds flapping through the trees.
"We have to get out of here. Pass me the kid. I'll carry her and you take the backpack. We've got a lot of ground to cover before sunset."
Shoving away from the tree, he stifled a wince at the pull to his arm, flexed his fingers through the pain and reached for the little girl. She chewed her lip, eyeing his hand, then his face. At least she wasn't threatening to chew on him.
But they needed to keep her calm. Carting a screaming kid through the jungle would exhaust precious energy, not to mention attract attention. She released her lip and pressed her mouth tight. Her arms thrust out in the universal pick-me-up gesture. A surge of protectiveness shot through him at mach speed.
Who the hell was he kidding? No matter who'd fathered this child, she was Sara's, who'd for some reason cared enough to name the little one after him.
The child was a permanent part of his life, beyond any soldier-style responsibility. The reality soaked into his thick head now that he wasn't running flat-out from bullets and bombs. But he could use a little more time to process that fact.
Shifting into survival mode, he shut down his brain to the questions hammering as loud as his adrenaline-revved pulse. Explanations would have to wait until later anyway.
Because he was certain this would be no conversation for young ears to overhear.
Stick in hand, Sara smacked aside spiky fronds since the path continued to narrow the farther they walked from the demolished bridge. Beyond clearing the way, they also needed to scatter hordes of fire ants and countless other deadly insects Lucia would have enjoyed studying.
If only confused emotions could be as easily swept aside.
At least Lucia seemed content to ride on Lucas's back without biting him. He'd fashioned some sort of makeshift baby backpack for her from his vest and vines.
From her perch, her daughter drifted in and out of sleep, her head bobbing, tiny arms looped around Lucas's neck. Sara blinked fast. She wouldn't cry, damn it.
So often she'd envisioned just such a beautiful image, but never in such a horrific setting. A setting they were likely stuck with for two nights. Together. On a bizarre family campout, complete with boa constrictors and gun-toting rebels.
The sun settled fast in the jungle, which didn't leave much more time to put distance between themselves and the compound. Had Ramon noticed her missing yet? With a little luck—and she could use some—he would assume that Padilla's men had abducted her.
Still, she couldn't count on anything. "If Ramon's still alive, I'm afraid he won't give up until he finds me. I just want you to be prepared."
"All the more reason for us to walk faster."
She'd researched as much as she could without raising suspicion, but she'd never been much of a hiking or camping sort. A lack of skills she now regretted. Even having grown up in this country, she was totally dependent on Lucas's survival training.