She had waited too long to return, she quickly discovered. She would have thought the dying rays of the sun would provide enough light for her to make her way back to her bungalow, fifty yards or so from the beach up a moderate incline. But the trail moved through heavy growth, feathery ferns and flowering shrubs and thick trees with vines roped throughout.
What had seemed lovely and exotic on her way down to the beach suddenly seemed darker, almost menacing, in the dusk.
Something rustled in the thick undergrowth to her left. She swallowed a gasp and picked up her pace, those jaguars prowling through her head again.
Next time she would watch the sunset from the comfort of her own little front porch, she decided nervously. Of course, from what the taciturn housekeeper who had brought her food earlier said, this dry sunset was an anomaly this time of year, given the daily rains.
Wasn’t it just like Bradley to book their honeymoon destination without any thought that they were arriving in the worst month of the rainy season. She would probably be stuck in her bungalow the entire nine days.
Still grumbling under her breath, she made it only a few more feet before a dark shape suddenly lurched out of the gathering darkness. She uttered a small shriek of surprise and barely managed to keep her footing.
In the fading light, she could only make out a stranger looming over her, dark and menacing. Something long and lethal gleamed silver in the fading light, and a strangled scream escaped her.
He held a machete, a wickedly sharp one, and she gazed at it, riveted like a bug watching a frog’s tongue flicking toward it. She couldn’t seem to look away as it gleamed in the last fading rays of the sun.
She was going to die alone on her honeymoon in a foreign country in a bikini that showed just how lousy she was at keeping up with her Pilates.
Her only consolation was that the stranger seemed just as surprised to see her. She supposed someone with rape on his mind probably wouldn’t waste time staring at her as if she were some kind of freakish sea creature.
Come on. The bikini wasn’t that bad.
She opened her mouth to say something—she wasn’t quite sure what—but before she could come up with anything, he gave a quick look around, then grabbed her from behind, shoving the hand not holding the machete against her mouth.
Panic spurted through her as he dragged her into the thick, lush rain forest. Her flip-flops almost fell off but she dug her toes into them as she stumbled after him until they were swallowed up by the jungle, the trail completely out of sight behind them.
After a moment, he stopped, holding her tightly against his hard chest as he stood motionless. She was aware of every single breath against her bare skin and could feel her own hitching in and out of her lungs.
She was going to hyperventilate. She could feel her hands start to go numb and her breathing accelerate. A whimper escaped her, and his grip tightened on her mouth. She could taste his skin, salty and masculine and foreign.
“Quiete,” he ordered harshly in her ear and even Olivia, who had only pulled a C-minus in prep school Spanish, understood what he meant. She forced herself to breathe more slowly, evenly, though she could hear her pulse, loud and strident in her ear.
For what felt like forever, they stood locked together, unmoving. She was too afraid to struggle against the strong arms that held her, acutely aware of the machete he held at his side and of exactly how much damage that blade could do.
He spoke a few more low words to her in Spanish but she didn’t understand what he wanted, any more than she could interpret the hoots and peeps and calls of the night creatures all around them.
He stiffened suddenly and in the distance she saw the beam of a flashlight coming from the trail. Whoever held it aimed it in their direction, but its light couldn’t pierce the thick growth. She wanted to cry out, do anything to reveal their location, but she didn’t dare, ever conscious of that machete.
A moment later, she heard loud voices saying something that sounded like curses in Spanish, before the light disappeared.
The man breathing raggedly behind her waited a few more seconds, then he growled something else she didn’t understand in her ear, the normally fluid Spanish sounding guttural and sharp.
He dropped his hand, apparently expecting some kind of answer. She didn’t have a clue what the question had been, which didn’t seem to go over well with him. Her captor repeated the words, more harshly this time.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. In the dim light, she saw the whites of his eyes as they widened.
“You’re American?” he whispered. “I should have known.”
He growled a long string of curses—pungent and raw and all too understandable.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Please don’t hurt me. Look, I have money in my bag and credit cards. Take them,” she pressed, thrusting out her beach bag. “Please take them and let me go.”
He grabbed the bag from her and rummaged through it, but apparently didn’t find whatever he was seeking.
He lifted the machete and she swallowed a scream that ended in a gasp when he severed one of the long leather handles. He handed the mangled bag back to her and when she reached for it, he grabbed her wrists and tied the ruined handle around them.
Her heart plummeted to her feet when he took off again through the thick growth with his machete swinging, tugging her behind him with the improvised restraint.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she tried again. “My father will pay you anything you want.”
She hoped, anyway.
Maybe Wallace would figure this was a fitting end to his total disappointment in his only child, that she die at the hands of a homicidal, machete-wielding maniac in the jungles of Costa Rica.
“It’s too late for that. I’m in a boatload of trouble here and you just landed your little bikini-clad butt right in the middle of it.”
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t contain her small sound of distress.
“Look, I won’t hurt you.” He paused and even through the darkness she could feel the heat of his look. “Unless you try to run, anyway. Believe it or not, I’m pretty certain you’re far safer with me than you would be if I left you here.”
She dug around in her psyche for any tiny kernel of courage and managed to find one in a dusty corner. “That’s odd,” she retorted through trembling lips, “considering I’ve been here an entire day and this is the first time a madman with a machete has dragged me into the jungle.”
The momentary spurt of bravado disappeared when she heard a shriek nearby, then a swoop of wings and the unmistakably grim sound of something dying.
Her captor tugged her restraint and pushed on. “There are worse things on Suerte del Mar than a madman with a machete.”
While her imagination tried to ponder what that might possibly be, he cut through the heavy growth, roughly parallel to the shore. He seemed to have eyes like the jaguar she had mistaken him for earlier. While she stumbled in her flip-flops over roots and small plants, he plowed through, the machete scything away as he tugged her inexorably toward some destination she could only guess at.
After a few more moments, he shifted direction and headed down toward the ocean.
“Where are you taking me?” she finally dared ask.
“Rafferty keeps his boat docked here. It’s the only way we’re getting away.”
Oh, she didn’t like the sound of that. “Please,” she tried one more time. “Just leave me here. I’ll only slow you down.”
For about half a second, she thought he might be wavering,