It was no wonder she’d been making sex noises – he could practically come from the taste of it. Why the hell had he suddenly gotten noble? He could have eaten ten times that amount and not even begun to satisfy his hunger.
She started to move away, and he reached out and grabbed her ankle, stopping her. Her mouth probably tasted like chocolate, he thought, momentarily distracted.
“MacGowan, what are you doing?” she said.
He wasn’t quite sure. He hadn’t been this close to a woman in God knew how long. “Maybe we’ll call it even then. You can have the untying for free.”
“You’re the one who had the candy bar in the first place,” she said, reasonable. “In fact, I’ll give you another ten thousand dollars if you have a second one.”
“That’s how you get ‘em hooked,” he said, releasing her. Reluctantly. “Give them a free sample and then make them pay.”
“Fifteen thousand?”
“I’m guessing you really like chocolate.”
“What woman doesn’t? Twenty thousand.”
“Sorry, princess, I’m all out. That’s the only candy bar I’ve seen in thirty-four months.”
For a moment there was silence. “And you gave it to me?”
Shit. “A farewell present,” he said lightly. “Since I’m leaving you.”
“When?”
The night was cool, overcast, and he could hear the partying from up the hill. “Now,” he said, and pushed open the door to the jungle night.
CHAPTER THREE
Beth didn’t hesitate. She dove after him, out the rough door, scrambling down the path behind his silhouetted figure. He was moving fast, blending with the shadows, and she had a hard time keeping up with him. Every step she took seemed to echo in the night forest, twigs snapping beneath her feet, leaves rustling as she brushed by, but she didn’t hesitate. She could barely see him up ahead – if she lost him she’d be screwed. Wilderness training had never been part of her upbringing, and she’d be lucky if she didn’t get eaten by alligators.
Except there were no alligators in the Andes, she was pretty sure of that. But there were wild cats and God knew what else. She’d eaten some strange things since she arrived in South America, and she didn’t like to think about what kind of animal they’d come from. Probably Rodents of Unusual Size.
She slipped, going down hard on her backside, but she managed to keep it to a small grunt of dismay. By the time she got to her feet again he had disappeared into the night as if he’d never been there.
She froze, momentarily panicked. He was her only chance at escape, and she’d already lost him. She’d understood more than MacGowan had thought when Carlos and the other boy were arguing – if she made it back home it wasn’t going to be in pristine condition. The thought pushed her onward, deeper into the jungle. So she knew squat about surviving in the wilderness. At least she’d read enough Worst Case Scenario books to have a general idea of what to do in an alien abduction. She couldn’t remember whether escaping from guerilla kidnappers in the Andes was mentioned, and if it was, she’d forgotten. All she could do was keep moving and hope she’d catch up with MacGowan before he went to ground completely.
In the distance she could hear the sound of a stream. That was a start – water had to flow downhill, and her only chance at survival, if MacGowan proved elusive, was to get as far down the mountain as she could. If nothing else, she could follow the stream.
Someone with MacGowan’s training wouldn’t need to rely on something as simple as that. He was clearly well-versed in dealing with these kinds of things. The closest she had come was reading a book on worst-case scenarios.
She was simply going to have to hope for the best, expect the worst, and just keep moving . . .
An arm came around her waist, a hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from screaming, and a moment later she was pulled back into the thick foliage, held against a strong male body. “Keep still,” he whispered in her ear, barely a ghost of a sound.
She had the sense not to fight him. A moment later someone walked by, one of the guerillas on nightly rounds. He was smoking something dubious and his rifle was slung carelessly over one shoulder, and as he moved past she let out her pent-up breath.
It wasn’t even a noise, lighter than the wind through the greenery, but MacGowan tightened his hand over her mouth, hard, and the stoned soldier spun around, the rifle at chest level.
And suddenly she was alone. MacGowan had released her, disappeared back into the jungle, leaving her at the mercy of the creep in front of her.
“Who’s there?” he demanded in Spanish. He speared the brush aside with the barrel of his gun, and Beth sank lower into the dirt.
She felt like a terrified rabbit, small and quivering in the dirt, and she crouched there, frozen, waiting for rough hands, pawing at her, waiting for a bullet, waiting for God knew what.
She heard a noise, a rustle, a thud, a crunching sound, and she lifted her head just a little. The gun had disappeared, as well as the man behind it. She sat up a little higher, then almost screamed as someone looked out of the darkness.
MacGowan. It was MacGowan’s rough hands on her, pulling her to her feet. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded in a breath of sound.