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Was she braless? Was that the delicate press of nipples under the shirt? Her breasts were small. No. Not small. They were just the right size for a man’s hands and mouth…

“Finished.”

His head jerked up. “What?”

“I said, I’m finished with…”

He snatched the canteen from her outstretched hand. Did she know he’d been looking at her tits? Her expression gave nothing away and besides, what if she did? Back in the real world, catching a man’s eye would have been what she wanted. All that blonde hair streaming down her back, her face covered with artfully applied makeup instead of dirt, her slender body draped in designer clothes that would probably cost what he made in a year…

“Time to get moving,” he said brusquely.

He turned his back on her and started walking. He was going faster now that he’d let her drink some water and take a few minutes rest.

Maybe pretending to know something about snakes was part of who she pretended to be. Anything was possible. Big cats became coats, scary snakes became shoes. It was none of his concern. His concern was getting her back to the States in one piece, and they had miles to go before he even got them off this fucking trail.

* * *

The good news was that near as he could tell, nobody was coming after them.

They took a short break every forty or fifty minutes. They drank some water. She ate a power bar. He waved off her offer to share a bar with him, and he listened for pursuers.

Nothing.

Howler monkeys screamed from the treetops. Birds sang. Insects buzzed. Once, he heard the huffing and tooth-clacking of wild pigs.

“Peccaries,” he said softly, and motioned her to remain still.

But he heard nothing human. No voices, no bodies pushing through brush.

Good news, all of it.

But there was bad news too.

They definitely weren’t making the time he’d hoped for.

Yes, people hadn’t used this trail for a very long time.

Tanner saw lots of animal sign—pigs, coatimundi, ocelot and jaguar had all come this way—but animals used a trail differently than people. If there were obstacles of any kind— downed trees or branches, thorny bushes, mud, piles of dead leaves and rotted vegetation that made for excellent tarantula and fer-de-lance habitat, animals simply went over, through, around, even under them.

People lacked some of those options.

They tended to edge past obstacles by skirting the trail.

Not a good plan out here.

He’d already spotted a tarantula the size of his hand squatting on a rotting log. Contrary to popular lore, tarantula bites didn’t often kill—but they were painful as hell.

He’d also seen a fer-de-lance, the snake’s dark-diamond-patterned skin making it close to invisible as it lay in a pile of dead leaves. The snake had been far enough into the undergrowth for them to avoid it, so he’d paused, reached back for Alessandra Wilde’s wrist and said, very softly, “Snake. Venomous. Stay in my footsteps.”

“I know. Fer-de-lance.”

Okay. Maybe she did know snakes. She certainly wasn’t stupid, this rescued hostage. And she was doing her best to keep up.

He had to give her credit.

She hadn’t complained, hadn’t even asked for longer or more frequent breaks, but each time he looked at her, he could tell that she was close to dropping from exhaustion. Her breathing was labored, she’d sweated through her tattered clothes, and she was limping.

Tanner’s mouth thinned.