Close beside him, McCall felt Ellie’s body tighten and silently prayed, willed her to silence. Aloud he said mildly, ignoring the last comment, “That would be appreciated. And we would gladly accept your gracious offer of refreshment…since your men did not allow us to bring our own.”

“Ah-my men.” The smoker gave a shrug, an elaborate gesture of regret. Then he continued as he turned away, indicating that McCall and Ellie were to accompany him, “Sometimes they can be a little, shall we say, overzealous?”

“Yeah?” McCall lit a cigarette as he moved to the smoker’s side, thereby establishing himself on a socially equal footing. He could only hope Ellie would catch and understand-not to mention obey-his hand-signal that she was to follow along behind. He kept his tone mild…conversational. “Does that include disabling my car?”

“They harmed your car?” The smoker took his cigar from his mouth and favored McCall with a look of sharp dismay. “Señor Burnside, please accept my sincere apologies. Let me assure you that when you are returned to your car, any necessary repairs will be attended to.”

“Gracias,” said McCall dryly. The ambiguity in that sentence made his skin crawl; the words when and necessary spoke volumes.

He could feel Ellie’s impatience like a sub-audible hum in his own bones. She’d be champing at the bit, he knew, eager to get down to business, anxious to see the animals she’d come to buy, demanding to speak to the man in charge. She wouldn’t understand the Mexican way of doing things. Understand that here the conventions must be adhered to first, polite greetings made, concern for health and well-being expressed, hospitality offered. Even if, McCall reflected wryly, the party you were doing business with was planning to kill you.

“Our amenities are few here, as you can see,” the smoker went on, with an expansive wave of his arm. He pointed toward a pyramid-shaped pile of great stone blocks half-buried in jungle foliage. “I would suggest you go in that direction for privacy.” He halted and turned to look at McCall, sharp black eyes narrowed against the smoke of his cigar. “You may have five minutes-each-one at a time. In case one of you might be tempted to wander off…exploring. You understand-the jungle can be very dangerous…”

“My wife and I appreciate your concern,” McCall said without inflection. He turned to relay the instructions to Ellie, adding a low-voiced, “You go first,” as his eyes gripped hers in desperate communication, sending messages he’d no reason to expect she’d understand.

“Ask him-” she began, breathlessly.

“Not now.” And he was silently pleading with her, asking as she’d once asked of him: Play along with me…please.

A moment…a heartbeat…and then she nodded and turned away.

“Be careful,” he called after her as he watched her pick her way through undergrowth and disappear into the jungle.

Beside him, he heard a soft chuckle. He turned to find the smoker watching him, and there was both amusement and satisfaction in those hard eyes. “¿Perdoneme?” he asked coldly.

The smoker smiled around the stump of his cigar. “I understand now, señor, why it is you do not take my advice regarding your wife. I think…you care for her…very much. ¿Es verdad?” He waited for McCall’s reply, and after a moment of stony silence, gave a small shrug. “I see it in your eyes when you look at her. Ah well…perhaps the little one is more woman than she appears. A little tiger, eh?” He laughed, and his eyes glinted like black water. “Be careful, señor…even very small tigers have claws.”

“Es verdad,” said McCall, with a shrug of his own.

He hoped so, anyway. In fact, he was counting on it.

Ellie had been fighting the fear for so long… Much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to think the fear might be winning.

It was the roller-coaster ride that was wearing her down-periods of cautious optimism alternating with episodes of self-doubt, spiced with moments of utter terror. When they’d shot the car, for instance-that had been the worst, of course, those few seconds when she’d thought-she’d been so sure-they’d killed McCall. Probably the most terrible moment of her life-so far. And she devoutly hoped and prayed she never had to experience a worse one. Then-a moment later, the almost equally terrifying explosion of relief and joy when she’d heard him cry out her name.

Looking back, she realized that together those two events had been a major milestone in her life…one of those turning points by which everything else is measured. Henceforth, Ellie thought, her life would forever be divided into two parts: Before that moment, and after.

Since that moment, it seemed that all her perceptions, her perspective had been influenced by one thing: McCall. The bad times-the moments of fear and doubt and despair-were when he wasn’t with her. As long as he was at her side, as long as she could see his face, hear his voice…touch him, she felt certain that somehow, some way, everything would be all right.

There. She’d faced it. Admitted it. That, in itself, was a kind of relief, though it certainly wasn’t the way she wanted to feel, and acknowledging the feelings gave her no joy. It was rather like accepting the diagnosis of a debilitating though probably not fatal illness, she thought. It simply was, and there was nothing she could do about it now except make the best of it.

Though that was hard to do right now, when he’d been taken off somewhere, God knew where, presumably to talk business with the cigar-smoking smuggler. To do her job, the job she’d been trained for, while she was left here under armed guard to worry and wonder. Up to now she’d been treated well enough-she supposed she should be grateful for that, at least. After a surprisingly delicious meal of pit-roasted pork wrapped in banana leaves, she and McCall had been given a tour of the ruins, and at last shown the animals they’d supposedly come to buy. That had been hard, seeing those cages filled with so many beautiful birds and animals, many of them endangered in the wild, knowing most of them wouldn’t survive the journey that was planned for them. Hard to contain her rage, to ask only the questions that were expected of her, the interested buyer, to remember to keep the camera in her sun visor focused on the evidence before her…

After that, they’d been brought to this palm-thatched shelter, a large lanai backed up against a wall of the ruins and furnished with camp chairs and string hammocks. Ellie had been told to wait there, with guards posted on all three open sides, while McCall went off with the cigar-smoker, laughing and joking in Spanish like longtime buddies.

He’d been gone a long time. She’d tried not to worry. She’d told herself to trust McCall. She tried not to imagine what might be happening…wherever he was. He was good at thinking on his feet. He wouldn’t let her down.

But…she’d let him down, hadn’t she? The truth was, she’d sent him off to negotiate with armed and dangerous men…unprepared. Lacking one vital piece of information. Why? Because she hadn’t trusted him enough.

She hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the money.

But they hadn’t been left alone together, not for a minute, since they’d arrived in the camp. And now, all she could do was hope and pray he’d remember what she’d said to him back there on the trail about insurance. Hope and pray…and vow that she’d tell him everything…everything…the minute she got the chance.

If she got the chance…

There. He was coming back. Her heart gave the little leap of joy she’d come to expect at the sight of him, the sound of his voice, though the voices were still some ways off, the speakers screened behind a stone wall festooned with vines and broken with moss-covered carvings. She would know his voice anywhere now.

Then the guards posted outside the lanai were tossing away cigarettes and straightening up alertly as two more guards rounded the end of the wall and came toward them with McCall between them. And they were laughing and talking together in Spanish like old compadres, Ellie noted jealously, having gone weak in the knees with relief.

And now, of course, seeing that he was not only unharmed but had obviously been enjoying himself immensely while she’d been worried sick, fear and concern morphed instantaneously into anger. Already seething with resentment at being excluded from the business discussions solely on the basis of her gender, and now on top of that being forced to accept her new and terrifying-and uniquely feminine-vulnerability concerning McCall, she was tense and riled and, as Aunt Gwen would have said, spoiling for a fight.

“Well?” she snapped the instant he ducked under the overhanging thatch. Her arms were folded beligerently across her chest. Yes, and all she needed, she thought, were the rolling pin and the furiously tapping toe and she’d be the image of the classic shrewish wife. He couldn’t-mustn’t-know the folded arms and snappish tone were meant to hide trembling weakness and a wildly beating heart.

He straightened beside her, swaggering a little, and gave her a lazily superior look. “Well, what?”

Ellie sucked in air and took a step back, all at once overwhelmed by his nearness. “You stink,” she said accusingly, to cover it. “Of cigars and-” she sniffed delicately “-tequila.”

McCall lifted the cigar he was holding and smiled smugly at it. “Cuban, if I’m not mistaken.” He gave a cackle of half-inebriated laughter, and then, snaking an arm around her waist, caught her hard against him and kissed her-loudly and with gusto.

For several moments Ellie was too surprised to respond at all. Surprised? No…stunned would be more like it. She went rigid, forgot to breathe, absolutely could not move. The shock of his body against hers was like an instantaneous paralyzing drug…his mouth-sensitive lips tasting sharply of tobacco, prickle of beard stubble, warm breath laced with tequila-a straight shot of whiskey. Her world rocked; her head swam.

Over the thunderous pounding of her own pulse she could hear the guards laughing as they watched. Incensed, humiliated, she hauled in one burning, outraged breath…and as she held it, cocked and primed, she heard McCall’s urgent whisper.

“This is the only way I can talk to you. Play along…” His arms gentled around her. Tipsy laughter gusted past her ear.

Dazed and oxygen-high, Ellie felt him walking her clumsily toward the back of the lanai, as far from the listening guards as they could get. As he walked, interspersed with laughter and nuzzling kisses along the side of her neck, he was whispering, “Pretend you’re glad to see me, dammit…”

Shaking and jerky, she managed to lift her hands to his shoulders, then laced them together at the back of his neck. “Like this?” Her whisper was like sand in her throat.

“That’s better. Maybe you could laugh a little…”

Laugh? Dear God… She tried, but it was a high, nervous giggle, nothing at all like her own husky chortle.

“Our friend the smoker…” and his hands were moving on her back…touching her everywhere-her waist, the ticklish sides of her ribs, the flats of her shoulder blades, the nape of her neck.

“Yes?” It was an airless gasp; she dared not breathe. Her pulse fluttered like a frightened bird’s wings against the taut muscles of her belly.

“His name’s Israel, by the way. Israel Gavilan…” He seemed so short of breath…and was that his heart she felt, beating so fast and hard against her chest? “Okay-” and wasn’t his voice growing hoarser, too? “-pull away from me a little bit. Pretend you’re mad at me…”

No problemo. “I am mad at you.” But it was breathless, unconvincing.

“Not too much. Just a little. Tell me I’m drunk.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. Dammit, it’s an act. Come on-”

She swayed back against his embrace, flattening her palms against his chest as she aimed her very best glare at his chin. “You’re drunk,” she said in a quavering voice.

And, oh, how her fingers wanted to rub against the warm, damp roughness of his shirt, to learn the hidden, forbidden textures of skin and hair and flesh that lay beneath. Tears sprang to her eyes; her fingers trembled. In desperation she snatched her hand away from his chest and would have slapped his cheek with it, except that he caught it in time and, laughing, carried it to his lips instead.

“Only a little, my dear…only a little,” he said with jovial overconfidence. And then, in a low growl that resonated through her body, bowing his head close to hers, “Good girl…”