Bridal Op. Dana Marton

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      RAFE PACKED AWAY his food and lay on his back.

      He would have liked to think if he really went after her, he could get her. Women had always come easy, one of the few areas of his life he never had to worry about. Isabelle, though… She was different. She was too smart by half, one of the things that attracted him to her. Probably too smart to get involved with the likes of him.

      He enjoyed flirting with her at the office—gave him something to look forward to in the mornings. But he never hit on her seriously, despite that she was one of the most gorgeous women he had had the extreme good luck to meet. For one, she was a coworker. Two, he figured she deserved someone better.

      In a different world, if he were a different man… No sense in going there, no matter how many times she’d got him hot under the collar.

      “We’ll resume climbing at first light,” he said.

      “I’ll be ready.” She pulled a straight face, pretending hard that she wasn’t petrified.

      He found it fascinating to watch how she went ahead in the face of any fearsome task brought on by their mission so far. First there would be uncertainty and doubt in her eyes, then she would set those sexy lips into a firm line and seem to draw from somewhere deep within the courage necessary, pulling herself straight and unfailingly rising to the occasion.

      Her sheer determination was a like a force field around her. With her normally soft, fawn-colored eyes turned hard as they were now, if she stood at the rim of their ledge, spread her arms and said that by God she was flying to the top, he would believe her.

      She would conquer the rest of the cliff in the morning, he would bet his new boat on it. When the time came to climb, she would call forth the necessary strength. But for now, with a long uncomfortable night ahead of them, she looked like she could use some encouragement, a reminder of how close they were to their goal.

      “If all goes well we should be at the army base by noon. We’ll do some recon, pinpoint Sonya’s exact location and move in as soon as it’s dark again,” he said, and gained heart from the thought as well.

      In twenty-four hours, Sonya Botero would be safe.

      She’d been nice the few times they’d met socially, long before she’d become a client at Weddings Your Way. They’d flirted once, briefly, at a party, brought together by their common Laderan heritage. Then she’d fallen for Juan DeLeon, one of Ladera’s more prominent politicians. The Laderan community in Miami was all abuzz with the news.

      He felt responsible for her. Not only because he’d known her before, but because, as head of security for Weddings Your Way, securing her wedding would have been his responsibility. She was kidnapped right in front of his building, under his nose. It galled him.

      He hated any man who would harm a defenseless woman, use her as a pawn. He made it his personal mission to bring Sonya back and keep his partner safe in the process. Not to mention keep his hands off Isabelle. Close proximity and overpowering temptation notwithstanding.

      SONYA BOTERO SHIFTED as much as her ropes let her, allowing circulation to return to her left leg, which felt as if a thousand ants were crawling all over it. She held her gaze on the leg to keep herself assured the real army of ants, the ones that had marched right through her prison hut a few days ago, had gone. She saw them now only in her repeating nightmares and would continue to see them there for a long time to come. If she lived.

      Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.

      At least her feet had healed. She clamped on to the one positive thing she could think of. The jute sandals she’d been given at the beginning had rubbed her skin raw, and she’d been worried about developing some infection. But now that she hadn’t been allowed outside for days, her wounds had had a chance to scab over and start to mend.

      She thought of Juan and focused on that. Juan would come for her, Juan and her father—both men formidable in their own right.

      Just a little longer. Almost over.

      Trouble was, she’d been telling herself the same thing for about five weeks now, believing it a little less each day.

      She couldn’t give up. If she lost faith…

      But faith was hard to keep when she was hurt and hungry, when her life was threatened daily. At the beginning she’d got regular meals and trips to a nearby waterfall in the evenings to clean up. Although at the time she’d thought of her captivity as unbearable, now she wished for those times back. She hadn’t eaten in two days, hadn’t bathed in four.

      Were they growing bored with their task of guarding her? Or had something gone wrong with Miami? She’d overheard enough to know that she was being held for ransom. Where was it?

      It’d be here. Soon. Juan and her father would see to it. She had to keep believing that.

      Both men had lost so much already: her father losing her twin sister to leukemia at the age of six, Juan losing his unborn son to drugs and his ex-wife to insanity. She hated the thought that now they had to worry about her.

      From where she was, she could see the small fire and the men who gathered around it, drinking, one of them shoving a needle into his arm deep in the shadows. She still thought of escape now and then but no longer had the strength to attempt it.

      The money is coming.

      The money is coming.

      The money is coming.

      She repeated that over and over in her head. She knew better than to even whisper when she wasn’t asked.

      Chapter Two

      Rafe rubbed his elbow, sore from wielding the machete all morning. “You’re too close,” he said, then paused. Had to be the first time he’d ever said that to a beautiful woman. Man, times were changing.

      Isabelle dropped back.

      Better. They had to keep a healthy distance between them so that if they were discovered they wouldn’t both be taken out by the same spray of bullets. Drug routes crisscrossed the mountains; marijuana plantations were fairly common; poppy fields bloomed in out-of-the-way clearings. And with those came the men who guarded them, the drug lords’ private armies.

      Laderan army base notwithstanding, the locals knew who owned these parts and respected the real power, the men on whom their lives depended.

      “What’s that noise?”

      Rafe stopped to listen. “Trucks. We must be getting close to the main road.”

      Most roads in the area were little more than footpaths that connected the mountain villages. The only paved highway for hundreds of miles led to the army base that guarded the north corner of the country. They’d been hearing planes overhead more frequently for the past few hours but couldn’t see any from the thick canopy above.

      He moved forward, toward the sound of the trucks, his feet sinking with every step into the layers of leaf mold underfoot. Walking on a solid surface would have been nice, but even when they found the road they would have to keep in the cover of the trees. At least he’d be able to stop navigating by his GPS unit and simply go by sight at that point.

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