“I know what he said, but I need some air. I won’t go far. Keep an eye on the children for me.”
Joe wouldn’t deny her request. Kerry knew she was taking unfair advantage of that as she left him standing watch over the sleeping children. She slipped through the dark rooms of the plantation house and, wanting to avoid Linc, exited through a screened porch at the back of it.
The stones of what had once been a terrace were broken and crumbling. Grass was growing up through the cracks. Kerry wondered how many parties had been held there. What had happened to the people who had enjoyed a gracious lifestyle there? They had obviously been affluent. Had they exploited the land and the laborers, as the propaganda posters proclaimed?
And Kerry Bishop wondered if she had ever met the owners of the house. In that previous lifetime, had she been introduced to them in a gracious salon while wearing a designer dress and nibbling on canapés?
She pushed that disturbing thought aside and strolled down a weeded path. The evening was blissfully cool. She followed the path through the formal garden and beyond. The sound of running water attracted her attention. She almost stepped into the flowing stream before she saw it. It was an uncovered treasure. In the moonlight, it looked as sparkly and bubbly as champagne.
She hesitated only a moment before sitting down on its rock-strewn bank and unlacing her boots. Seconds later, she was standing in swirling, cooling water up to her knees. It felt delightful. Reluctant to leave it for even a second, she stepped back onto the rocks and unfastened her khaki pants. When she went into the water the second time, she was wearing only her shirt and panties.
She submerged herself in the natural whirlpool. The gurgling water washed her gritty, sun-baked skin, which was salty and itching with dried sweat. The swift current worked like massaging fingers to rid her muscles of their fatigue and tension. She ducked her head and let the water close over her scalp and flow through her dusty hair.
Her bath would have been divine had Linc’s words not come echoing back to her. How could he possibly think that she had enjoyed the guerrilla soldier’s attention? Strange, that while the guerrilla’s touch had repulsed her, Linc’s caresses hadn’t. Originally she had been just as frightened of him, mistaking him for a man as bloodthirsty as the ones they had encountered that day. But she’d never been revolted by his touch. Disturbed, yes. Aroused, yes. But never had she found his kisses repulsive. And should he ever kiss her again—
She never got to complete the thought.
An arm closed around her midriff just beneath her breasts and hauled her out of the stream. Before she could utter a single sound, a hand was clamped over her open mouth.
Chapter 5
Kerry fought like a wildcat.
She bit the meaty part of his hand below his wristbone and earned a grunt of pain for her efforts. But when she tried to work her mouth free to scream, his hand only mashed against her lips bruisingly. The sounds she tried desperately to utter were stifled.
She kicked backward against his shins, wiggled and squirmed, scratched and clawed, twisted and turned. But his strength was far superior to hers. His arms felt like a vise about to crush her ribs.
“Shut up and be still for crissake.”
Kerry went limp. Her captor was Linc.
While it was infuriating that he would frighten her this way, she was thankful that it was he and not a guerrilla fighter who was dragging her deeper into the jungle and away from the house.
“Um-um-um.”
“Shh! Shut up.”
His words were nothing but hissing breaths close to her ear. Then new sounds registered with her, sounds she hadn’t noticed before, but which were frightfully distinctive and familiar. The gruff laughter of men. The lilting, melodic tones of conversational Spanish spiced with vulgarities. The clanging of aluminum cooking pots and the clinking of armaments.
Soldiers were making camp somewhere nearby.
Gradually Linc eased his hand away from her mouth. Her lips were bloodless and numb from the pressure he had applied, but she forced them to move, forming words that were mouthed almost without sound.
“Who are they?”
“I didn’t wait to ask.”
“Where?”
“On the front lawn of the estate.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. She turned on her heels and was about to charge through the brush. Linc’s arm shot out. His hand grasped a handful of her wet shirt and, using that as leverage, hauled her back.
“Let me go!”
“Are you nuts?”
“The children.”