“Nothing.”
“Olie…” Luc cajoled him.
“Nothing. I said it was nothing, and I mean nothing, Boudreaux.”
“No way.” Luc shook his head in amazement. “He threatened you and the rest of the team, too, didn’t he? And you didn’t want to tell me ‘cuz that would pressure me to agree.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Sergeant Boudreaux, I am a big boy whose career doesn’t depend on the good opinion of some shit-eating congressman—and yours doesn’t, either.”
“Shit,” Luc said. He never figured on making general someday but didn’t want to leave the army before he was good and ready. Or slink out with his tail between his legs as if he’d been dishonorably discharged. And to let Olie and the team get screwed over, too?
“I’ll do it.”
“You sure?” Olie gave him a steely glare.
“I’m sure.” Luc managed to fake a laugh. “Maybe once Daddy’s Little Princess sees what survival training is like, she’ll go back to the snakes in Washington, D.C.”
“YOU MADE ARRANGEMENTS for what?” Claire Cook dug her nails into her palms and winced at the pain.
“Jungle survival lessons.” Her father gave her a wide smile and helped himself to a glass of sweet tea from the pitcher in the cherry-paneled, extra-large refrigerator. “Ah, delicious. Did you brew mint leaves into it, as well? Very refreshing.”
Claire had been a politician’s daughter long enough to know tap dancing when she saw it. “Survival lessons?” she prompted.
Her dad set down the glass and dropped his soothing tone. “Since you have decided this is your course of action, foolish as it may be, I am helping you to implement your choice in the safest way possible.”
“Dad, really. The settlement at Río San Lucas is its own little town—just like Cooksville.” Their hometown was named after their ancestor, who helped settle central Virginia before the Revolutionary War. The redbrick house they were standing in had been commandeered by the British as a barracks during that war and barely escaped being burned by the Yankees during what her grandfather Cook had always referred to as the War of Northern Aggression.
But her dad was on a roll. “Cooksville isn’t surrounded by deadly rain forest, killer snakes and venomous spiders.”
Claire made a face. There he was harping on the snakes and spiders again, just because she didn’t even like the supposedly harmless daddy longlegs spiders. Maybe she should try killing them on her own rather than yelling for their housekeeper, Louella. She flinched at a tickle on her neck and realized it was a stray dark hair falling out of her ponytail. She really had to get over that.
“Not to mention jaguars, feral pigs and half-naked tribesmen who would be more than happy to add an exotically beautiful young girl to their harem, or squad of wives, or concubine crew, or whatever they call it down there.”
Claire had to roll her eyes. Brown hair, brown eyes and brown freckles scattered across a nose that hovered on the edge of snub was hardly exotic. And honestly, she’d had plenty of practice fighting off overly amorous men among the suit-wearing tribes of the Potomac River. A couple she hadn’t fought at all, but her dad didn’t need to know that.
“I will be fine,” she enunciated carefully. “So thank you, but no thanks. Dr. Schmidt will show me the ropes once I get down there and I won’t have any problems.”
“Claire, Claire, Claire.” Her father shook his carefully coiffed silver head in what she figured was mock ruefulness.
“Dad, Dad, Dad.” She copied him right back.
He dropped the Mr. Nice Dad act and pulled on his congressman face—not the kindly, wise face the cameras saw, but the face his opponents saw when they tried to block his bills or basically thwart his not-inconsiderable will. “You will take this training, or you won’t go to San Lucas. Not to teach, not to visit, not even to fly over it.”
“And I told you, if you try to pull my passport, I will go to the media. I’m sure that TV reporter you accidentally called a ‘slime-sucking son of a bitch’ on live feed would be happy to interview me.”
Her old man pulled his face into a half grin. “Ah, you wound me, Claire. To think that I of all people would be so obvious, and after all these years in politics, no less.”
A knot tightened in her stomach. “If you’re not going to be obvious, then what?”
“Dr. Schmidt is coming to the States on a fund-raising lecture tour in January, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Claire eyed him narrowly.
“And the settlement gets most of its funding from American donations, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” she muttered. Dammit, she knew what was coming.
“If the kind European Dr. Schmidt is found to have some problem that might prevent his American visa from being approved, perhaps the nasty rumor of association with the narcoterrorists in the south of San Lucas—”
“Dad!” Claire’s chest tightened. “Dr. Schmidt has never associated with the drug runners—never!”
“Come on, Claire, we both know he doesn’t ask many questions when some scumbag shows up with a mysterious gunshot wound he got while ‘cleaning his automatic rifle.’” Her dad made air quotes with his fingers. “Your grandfather did the same thing when he ran the settlement, so don’t try to tell me different.”
Claire pursed her lips. “The settlement is neutral territory down there. That’s why they need me as a teacher. The local villagers know it’s safe to send their children for schooling so they can get an education, have a better life than what their parents had.”
“And do what? Move to the city where they can live in slums and pick over the garbage dump for food?” Dad shook his head. “Your mother and I had this discussion a million times. What if they are better off in the jungle, doing what their ancestors have done for thousands of years?”
“And what did Mom say? She was the one who grew up in the settlement.”
“Your mother was adopted into the tribe, knew the languages and cultures and was generally regarded as a world expert on San Lucas de la Selva, but even she didn’t know the answers. How do you expect to?”
This was what was so infuriating about arguing with her father. He had the politician’s trick of turning her argument back on her and twisting her words all around. She resorted to what did work: stubbornness. “I don’t expect to fix everything. I expect to go.”
“My God, you’re pigheaded.” He shook his head. “Just like your mother and grandfather. All right. You’ll go—if you pass the survival training.”
Claire protested but he held up his hand, his blue eyes blazing. “You are my only child, the only child of your mother, and I will be damned if I put you on a plane to the dangerous jungle when you can’t even make yourself kill a harmless spider here in Virginia. I’m willing to let you go, but not as some lamb to the jungle slaughter.”
“Fine.” Claire gritted her teeth and relaxed. She’d been a Girl Scout, knew how to build a fire, find out which way was north. This would be similar, only designed for a more tropical climate than central Virginia. “How hard can it be?”
Her dad smiled, but it was his sharky smile that Claire had never seen directed at her before. “How hard can it be?” he mocked. “I guess you’ll have to ask Sergeant First Class Luc Boudreaux. He’s the Green Beret soldier who will be training you.”
“OH, WOW. YOUR dad said ‘Green Beret Sergeant First Class Boudreaux’?” Claire’s best friend Janey Merrick stopped midjog and bit her lip.
“Yes,