Return to Tomorrow (16 page)

R
ACHEL SAT WITH HER BACK
to the outside wall of the teak clapboard hut and watched the men sitting around the bonfire in the center of the small village. Laughter and crude jokes, recognizable despite the unfamiliar language, a mixture of Thai and Burmese, carried clearly on the cold, damp mountain air. Her stomach rumbled and growled but so far the three harried women, serving food to the twenty or so men, hadn't offered her anything to eat. And she was just too tired to go serve herself from the kettles of rice and vegetables cooking over smaller fires nearby.

Behind her, inside the hut, Ahnle stirred restlessly in her sleep. Rachel held her breath a moment, hoping the baby wouldn't wake, also. She would go and see that he was properly covered just as soon as she rested a little longer. She pulled her knees up under her chin, curled her arms around her legs to warm herself and watched the men.

She could easily pick Brett out of the crowd. He was taller than most of the men who comprised this segment of Khen Sa's private army, of course, although that wasn't as apparent when they were all seated. Rather, it was his dull gold hair that caught the firelight and set him apart from the dark-haired, dark-eyed Shan and hill tribesmen, like a gold coin among iron filings.

Rachel closed her eyes, resting her forehead on her knees, letting fatigue settle over her like a heavy cloak. She and Ahnle and the baby were no longer on their own in the jungle hills, it was true, but how much better off in this situation were they? She still had no idea where, exactly, they were. They were not bound or gagged or locked up in a cage, but, as far as she was concerned, they were virtual prisoners of a ruthless warlord. And a very angry Tiger Jackson.

The aroma of rice and cooked vegetables and roast meat teased her nose. Rachel raised her head from her knees and found herself confronting Brett. He balanced easily on the balls of his feet, his face level with her own. His expression was stony; his hooded blue eyes held not the slightest flicker of emotion. She thought he might be tired, too, but the fatigue didn't show, wouldn't be allowed to show. He looked fit and hard and dangerous, a man well able to hold his own with Khen Sa or anyone else. Rachel shivered and wrapped her hands more tightly around her knees.

“I brought you something to eat.” He set the bowls of food and chopsticks on the floor beside her.

“Men don't bring women food in this part of the world.” She made no attempt to pick up the food, although her mouth watered at the sight of it. When they had first arrived in the camp, one of the women had given her some kind of ointment. Her blistered hands were still sore but no longer so stiff she couldn't bend them, so at least she could feed herself.

“They do when the women are a business investment.” Brett rested his forearm on his bent leg, watching her.
He nodded toward the food. “The meat is wild boar, not dog.”

“Did you think I'd refuse it, if it was?” She looked him straight in the eye. “I've eaten it before. When you're hungry you eat anything that's put in front of you. Anything.” She was surprised at the venom in her voice. To cover the lapse, she picked up the vegetables and dumped them over the rice. Her hands were shaking. She willed them to stop. She had to be so careful around this man. The temptation to tell him secrets she'd kept for years was strong, even when he was so angry with her. “What did you tell our host about us, anyway?”

“That Ahnle and the baby ran away from her brother with your connivance.
Farang
missionaries have been interfering in people's lives in this part of the world for the last hundred and fifty years.”

“Did he believe you?” If she didn't look at him, she wouldn't remember how it felt to be touched by him, to be held and comforted and loved by him.

“I think so.” He sounded faintly pleased with himself. She risked a glance from the corner of her eye. “I told him we came across you just before the patrol of Thai Rangers jumped us. I hadn't planned on looking for the two of you until we completed our business here, with the general. By the way, for the record, I'm taking Ahnle back to her brother for a good beating and you back to the mission camp for Father Dolph to deal with. It's always better to stick to the truth whenever you can.”

Rachel stirred the rice in her bowl with the chopsticks, not brave enough to meet his eyes.
Don't remember how he held you and comforted you. Don't remember how close you came to rediscovering yourself as a woman
with him. Just stick to the truth as much as you can.
It had become her private motto over the past two years. “Sort of like killing two birds with one stone?”

“Not to mention doubling up on my…recovery fee. Khen Sa appreciates that. He's quite a capitalist at heart.” The corner of his mouth twisted upward in a hard smile. He brushed at a patch of dried red mud on the pants of his fatigues. His hands were big, the knuckles dusted with gold hair. His wrists were strong, his forearms corded with muscle. They could hold a woman so easily, make her feel so secure….

“There's blood on your arm.”

Brett glanced at her sharply. There was panic in her voice and nothing she could do to hide it. She clutched the rice bowl so tightly she thought the cheap pottery might break from the pressure. She would not touch him, reach out to offer comfort, to be comforted by the rock hardness of his muscled arms.
She could not.

“It's just a scratch.” He dismissed the wound.

“I don't have anything to treat it with. Only the ointment one of the women gave me for my hands.” She turned her palm upward, looking down at it unthinkingly.

“How the hell did you get those blisters?” He circled her wrist with his fingers, holding her still.

“Rowing across the Mekong.”

“I'll be goddamned.” She had the satisfaction of hearing the disbelief and respect in his voice. It brought her back to herself.

“I had no choice. My date left without me.” She tried to pull her hand away. He let her go. “I'll get the ointment. Out here…infections…” Her voice trailed off as
he tipped her chin up with his knuckles to make her look directly at him.

“I'll take care of it later. I promise. Stop worrying.”

“I'm not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“At least you didn't tell Khen Sa I was your mistress when you made up your cock-and-bull story about why the three of us were wandering around out here alone.”
Whatever had possessed her to say that?
Was the brush of his hand on her skin enough, now, to make her lose what little sense she had?

“I have to admit I considered doing just that.” He picked up her discarded chopsticks, popped one of the untouched pieces of meat into his mouth and chewed. “It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw you sliding down the hill behind Lonnie. Then I saw Ahnle and the baby and I didn't know what else to say.”

“Lucky for me, you think fast on your feet.”

“Why is that?” He popped another piece of meat in his mouth and offered one to her. It smelled delicious, hot and spicy. He tilted his head, watching her eat. She looked away, focusing on the patch of tanned skin at the open collar of his shirt. It seemed so intimate and sensual an act to accept food from his hand. But so was looking at him. She wanted to kiss the spot at the base of his throat where his pulse beat slow and strong. Rachel swallowed too quickly and almost choked.

“You didn't answer my question,” he reminded her, offering a sip of slightly muddy-tasting water from a gourd hanging from the porch railing.

“No reason, really.” He waited with the patience of the jungle cat he was named for. “It's just that you might
find it very awkward sharing this hut with Ahnle and the baby and me, that's all,” she finished lamely.

“If I'd told them you were my mistress, our hosts would have arranged for us to have a hut to ourselves. I would have insisted on it.”

“Brett…don't.” She felt tears of humiliation and desperation push against the back of her eyes and tighten her throat.

“Why did you run away from me? How did you come to be wandering around in these hills by yourself with a sick woman and a baby?”

“Ahnle was frantic to get her baby back. I…I had to help her.”

“By robbing me and running off? You could have trusted me, Rachel.” His words were quiet, evenly spoken, but she knew, then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how much she'd hurt him.

“I'll pay you back, every cent,” she said, the words tumbling over themselves to get out. “Lonnie's car's all right. He told me so. He won't press charges. I…apologized for stealing it,” she added, feeling like a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar, instead of a woman who had betrayed the only man she had been able to care about for what seemed like a lifetime.

“To hell with the money.”

Rachel had never heard such cold anger in his voice, yet she refused to flinch.

“I would have helped you find the baby.”

“I had to do it myself.” Rachel rose to her knees. How did she explain the need to challenge the mountains and the jungle that had held her captive so long? That by doing so, she also challenged the darkness and the
cowardice within herself? “I have to go. Ahnle is still feverish. The baby will be waking soon and he'll be hungry.”

If she stayed beside him much longer she would throw herself into his arms and cry away the terror that had pursued her for so many days. She couldn't do that. She didn't know what she wanted. She never would find herself if she could mask those fears, her memories, her reluctance to face the past in his arms. She would lose herself. Brett was addicting, like Lonnie's heroin, and every bit as dangerous to a bruised and battered soul like her own.

He stood up, pulling her with him. The softening in his expression had disappeared. He jerked her abruptly upright, scattering her thoughts. The diamond-hard edge was back in his voice, in his eyes, in the jut of his chin. He had sensed her withdrawal, read her reluctance in her eyes. “Don't get any more ideas about running off. The sentries in this place will shoot you down, women or not, baby or not. Understand?”

“What
is
this place?” she asked in a whisper that was no more than a breath of air between them. In the background the party seemed to be breaking up. Shadows moved about the fire, shouts and laughter in the unfamiliar mixture of Burmese and Thai carried to them.

“It's Khen Sa's main base camp on this side of the border. He's a wanted man. We're his guests but that doesn't mean he's going to stand by and let us do anything to jeopardize his safety.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Don't ask, Rachel.” It wasn't a request, it was an order.

“I don't think you brought him in a shipment of guns,” she said, deliberately provoking him because she wanted him so desperately to tell her what was going on. “Two ponies couldn't carry enough guns to make the trip worthwhile. But they could carry enough money….” She recalled how heavy the oblong bundles seemed to the men unloading them. “…or gold.”

“Rachel.” There was a warning in his voice she found hard to ignore.

“Did you come prepared to trade for something else? Something even more deadly?”

“Shut up and get inside.” He raised his voice and took her by the arm, not hard enough to bruise but enough to let her know who was boss.

She lifted her chin and opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell. His refusal to answer her was as damning as a confession of drug smuggling.

“I said, no more of your mouth.” He raised his hand as though to strike her. Rachel stared open-mouthed, so angry she thought she would explode. Instead of hitting her, Brett gave her a shake. “Inside, woman. I won't tell you again.” She saw movement from the corner of her eye. A man was standing by the porch, observing them, watching, waiting.

“A woman is often better for a good beating,” he said conversationally in heavily accented but passable English.

Brett never even looked in his direction. “We do not beat our women. At least not in public.”

The other man laughed. Rachel risked a glance at him from beneath lowered lashes. Instinct had taken over. This man held power, the power of life and death over all
those around him, including herself, including Brett. He was small and compactly built, his face weather-beaten and pockmarked. He was wearing fatigues, clean and well-mended. His air of command was unmistakable, like Brett's.

“That is why you have so much trouble in your country. Women in America do not know their place.” He stood, rocking on the balls of his feet, watching the scene before him with interest.

“Perhaps you are right, General.” Had Brett emphasized the title every so slightly to give her a clue to the man's identity? If so, she didn't need it. She was face-to-face with Khen Sa, the Opium King. That was why Brett was here. That was why the village was here, to collect and refine the raw opium gum into morphine base or possibly even heroin.

Brett was a part of it.

“Let me go.” She twisted in his grasp. He released her so abruptly she took a step backward, coming up against the wall of the hut.

“Get inside and get some sleep,” he said. “We're leaving first thing in the morning.”

She went. This was no time for theatrics. Or heroics. She had a part to play and she was good at make-believe. Especially when her life, and the lives of others, depended on it.

 

W
ALKING AWAY FROM
R
ACHEL
was one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his life. If he got out of this deal alive, got all of them out alive, he'd tell her everything.

If he made it out alive.
Until then, he couldn't afford to
confide in her. Even less could he afford to admit he was in love with her. There was too much at stake.