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“Don’t you dare pass out on me,” she muttered, but he was out. What was she supposed to do now? Put him over her shoulder and pack him out in a fireman hold? He slipped from her grasp and went straight to the ground in an unconscious heap.
She wiped at the sweat and blood trickling down her face and grabbed J.T.’s arms, pulling him inch by excruciating inch away from the wreckage. Shoulders screaming, Hope managed to pull his deadweight far enough away from the plane before she collapsed beside him, breathing hard.
Okay, now what?
She was in the middle of the Mexican jungle, her pilot was injured and she had no idea how the hell they were going to get out of there alive, much less reach the South American compound.
Hope bit her lip as a wave of helplessness swamped her. It wasn’t like her to cry, but at the moment she wasn’t going to begrudge herself a few tears, because let’s face it...
They were screwed.
2 (#ulink_58faa5f9-e72e-5ec5-9905-bc8c960faa4f)
J.T. AWOKE TO the mother of all headaches—worse than any hangover he’d ever experienced. If he’d had a hammer handy, he would’ve buried it in his skull to stop the pain—but then he remembered that he was lucky to be alive.
He struggled to open his eyes, but when his vision finally cleared, he saw the leggy doctor curled up next to him in a leafy bed that he knew for a fact he hadn’t put together.
He gingerly touched where his head throbbed and found a respectable goose egg where he must’ve smacked his nob on the control panel when they were going down. Best guess, mild concussion, which would explain why he’d passed out.
Hope stirred and she awoke, rubbing at her eyes as she sat up with a tired yawn, clearly relieved to see him still alive.
“Thank God,” she breathed, her hands fluttering to her chest, where her formerly fancy cream blouse was now tattered and torn. “I was so worried you were going to die in the middle of the night.”
“Ye of little faith,” he grumbled, scooting to a sitting position, wincing as his head protested the small movement. “Takes more than a bump on the head to put me down. Trust me—others have tried.”
“Well, tough guy, you’ve no doubt suffered a concussion, and if your brain had continued to swell, I would’ve been helpless to do anything about it.”
“Lucky for me, I woke up just fine,” he replied dryly, surveying their situation. Great, they were somewhere in the Mexican jungle. Deep. Which put them squarely between up a creek and wedged against a hard place. He rose to his feet, groaning without shame at the way his body screamed with pain. “Been a long time since I had to bring a plane down like that. It’s as shitty as I remember.”
“You’ve done this before?” Hope asked, rising to her feet as well, swiping at her behind as if that small motion were going to make a difference in the grime they were covered in. “You might’ve mentioned that before I chartered your service.”
“Settle down, Doc. It was a long time ago, in another life,” he said, scanning the jungle, looking for something that might tell him where they’d gone down. Thunderclouds rolled ominously on the horizon, temporarily blotting out the early sun. “My guess is that the plane didn’t blow up?”
“No. I was afraid that it might, though, so I pulled you away from it.”
Awww, she cares. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Well, don’t get the wrong idea. You’re still on the clock, Mr. Carmichael. I need you to get me to South America.”
“Lady, my plane is in pieces. How am I supposed to do that exactly? Put you on my back and flap my wings? We’re going to have a bitch of a time getting out of this jungle alive, much less finding another plane to fly your happy ass to Timbuktu.” He paused, then added, “And I told you, my father was Mr. Carmichael. It’s J.T. or else I’m not answering.”
“Fine. J.T. Here’s the situation as I see it—we need each other to get out of this jam, so I suggest we work together instead of against one another so we can survive.” She squared her shoulders and adjusted the fluttering sleeves of her mangled blouse and asked, “Do you have any idea where we might’ve landed?”
“Best guess? Somewhere in the Lacandon Jungle, likely the southern part of the Yucatán Peninsula.” He bracketed his hips, squinting against the morning sun playing peekaboo with the clouds. “And if that’s the case, we’re well and truly screwed.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, because we have two possible situations and neither is good.”
“Which are?” She gestured impatiently.
“First, we have the potential of running into Mexican guerrillas who are using the jungle reserve to grow their illegal crops and guard their crops with semiautomatic weapons and a ‘shoot first, leave the body for the bugs’ mentality, or second, we have the potential of running into the last Lacandon Maya, who don’t interact with outside cultures and don’t take kindly to strangers. I think they might even be cannibals, but don’t quote me on it.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” she murmured in distress.
And since he didn’t believe in sugarcoating things, he added, “Yeah, and that’s not counting the bugs, snakes and apex predators that call this patch of earth home.”
Hope paled and a bridge of soft brown freckles appeared on her nose. “I don’t like snakes.”
“Yeah, I don’t either, but we did land in Satan’s armpit, otherwise known as the Mexican rain forest.”
“So what do we do?”
“Try not to die?”
Her mouth firmed with exasperation. “Obviously. What about a road? There has to be something that eventually leads to civilization around here. It’s not as if we fell onto an uninhabited planet. We’ll just follow the river. That should lead somewhere.”
“Yeah, right over a cliff. Look, the plane didn’t blow, which means by this point it’s not going to. I’ll trek back to the plane, grab a few flares and other survival supplies, which, thankfully, include a compass and a map. We’ll regroup after that.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No, you should stay here,” he argued, but she wasn’t going to budge. “Lady—”
“Stop calling me that. If I’m supposed to call you J.T., you can call me Hope. That’s the deal. One more ‘lady’ or ‘Doc’ and I’m calling you Mr. Carmichael, and since you seem to have an aversion to that, I suggest you pay attention to what’s falling from your mouth.”
“You’re a bossy bit of goods, you know that, Hope?”
She took that as a compliment. “A common enough label for a strong woman. I’ll wear it with pride.”
He barked a short laugh. “All right, fine. Let’s get to the plane and see if we can’t find our way out of this place.”
They started making their way back to the plane, being mindful of their steps, when Hope asked, “So, why do you hate being called Mr. Carmichael? Did you have a tense relationship with your father?”
J.T. pushed away a large leafy branch and held it so she could pass. “You could say that. Me and the old man didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. He thought I was a mouthy, disrespectful punk and I thought he was an overbearing, arrogant asshole.”
“Were you?”
“Was I what?”
“A disrespectful punk.”
“At times.”
Hope glanced back at him. “Well, maybe he was an overbearing jerk because he was trying to provide some discipline to a kid who was, in his opinion, going down the wrong path.”
“And maybe he was just a controlling closet alcoholic who cheated on every woman he ever tricked into loving him and at his core was a narcissistic waste of oxygen.”
Way to go, J.T. Why don’t you pull up a leaf and start spilling your whole life story while you’re at it. “It doesn’t matter what he was, anyway. The old man is dead to me and I’m done talking about it.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”
Touch a nerve? She’d done more than touch it; she was standing on it. “You know, in the short time I’ve known you, I’ve been shot at, my plane crashed and now I’m pissed off about a man I haven’t seen in eight years and haven’t spared a thought for, either. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were bad luck.”
She scoffed. “There’s no such thing as luck.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Luck has kept me alive and you can thank your stars you hitched a ride on that luck because you’re alive when that crash should’ve killed us both.”
To illustrate that point, they broke the clearing where the plane had crashed and J.T. groaned at the damage. It wasn’t as if he’d actually thought there was hope the plane could be fixed, but maybe, in the back of his mind, he’d clung to the irrational idea that it could be.
That is, until he saw the poor busted-up heap of metal.
“Damn,” he breathed, rubbing the stubble on his jaw as he saw Blue Yonder’s aspirations go up in smoke.
“I’ll buy you a new plane,” Hope said, hoping to soften the blow. When he cast her a dubious look, she added, “I told you, my company has deep pockets. Get me safely to South America and you can add the cost of your plane to the bill.”
“Where the hell do you work?” he asked incredulously. “The Pentagon?”
Hope offered a short smile, but didn’t answer. “Your flares?” she prompted.
Yeah, right. The more he found out about Hope, the less he actually knew.
And he had a feeling that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
Eye on the prize, Carmichael. Eye on the prize.
All he wanted was to get out alive.
* * *
WHILE J.T. GATHERED up the supplies from the fallen plane, Hope dug through her backpack to find some protein bars she’d stashed for the flight. She also found her cell phone, but, as expected, there was no service. However, she hoped that when she didn’t show up at the designated point, her colleagues would start tracking its GPS.
She tucked the phone back into her pack and tried to repair her bedraggled blouse. There was no help for it—the top was ruined—so she gave up.
J.T. emerged from the wrecked cockpit with an Army-style pack of his own and dropped to the ground.
“I never thought I’d have to use this, but thank God Teagan made me keep one in the plane at all times.” He lifted the pack and shouldered it. “The water-purifying tablets might save our bacon. You don’t want to know what kind of bacteria swim around these parts.”
“I’m a molecular biologist. Chances are I know more about the microbes and bacteria than you,” she said with an enigmatic smile that J.T. found immediately inappropriately arresting and annoying. She was the prettiest know-it-all he’d ever come across, that was for sure. “What else is in your survival pack? I have some protein bars. That should help blunt the hunger pains for a while.”
“It’s no meatball sub, but it’ll do,” he said, wishing he’d been able to grab his sandwich before the bullets had started flying. Good ole hindsight. “Tarp and rope, which we’re going to need if it—”
As if on cue, Mother Nature rumbled and a torrent of rain began falling from the sky, instantly drenching them both, forcing them to climb back into the plane to escape the deluge.
Dripping from head to toe, J.T. laughed at Hope’s expression. “You look about as happy as a wet cat.”
She shook the rain from her hands and removed her glasses as she wiped her face. “You called this place Satan’s armpit?”
“Yeah.”
“Fitting.”
Thunder rumbled as a flash of lightning lit up the sky, and the rain pelted the metal frame of the plane, sounding like a barrage of gunfire.
Huddled in the downed plane, Hope sighed and broke into the protein bars, offering one to J.T. “Might as well have a bite while we wait out this storm,” she offered.
J.T. accepted the chocolate bar and broke it in half, then handed her the other half. When she looked at him in question, he explained, “We should ration what we have for food. God only knows how long we’ll be trekking through the jungle.”
“Good point,” she agreed, shuddering delicately, as the reality of their situation was hard to ignore. She stuffed the other bar back into her bag and slowly chewed her half of the protein bar.
He startled her when he reached across, brushing her belly as he leaned to grab something at her feet. “Excuse me?” she exclaimed at having her personal space invaded. “What are you doing?”
“Gotta take advantage of the water falling from the sky,” he answered, lifting a canister and causing her to blush at her reaction. He fashioned a hook from some wire he had in a small toolbox and before long had the canister hanging out the pocket door, catching the rain. He grinned, saying, “No need to filter the rainwater. That way we can save our purifying tablets.”
“Another good point,” she murmured, shifting in the seat, wondering why she reacted so viscerally when J.T. was close. Of all the inappropriate times to notice that rugged physique and those tight, trim hips. A bit of protein bar snagged in her throat and she began to sputter. Horrified, she tried to swallow, but it seemed stuck.
“Here, drink,” he instructed, pulling the canister inside to give it to her. “Talk about fortuitous. Or, as some might say, lucky.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed what water was in the canister, relieved that her throat had stopped spasming. “Thank you,” she said, her voice ragged. Hope sagged against the worn leather of the seat and returned the canister so he could hang it out the door. When he returned to his seat, she added, “Still don’t believe in luck.”
J.T. shrugged, then settled in the seat, stretching his legs out as far as he could, which wasn’t too far in the cramped cabin. “We have time to kill. Tell me why people are shooting at you.”
“I already told you that it was better if you didn’t know too many details.”
“I don’t usually tempt fate by asking what else could happen, but, really, we’re staring down the business end of some really craptastic circumstances already, so what’s the harm in telling me what you’re running from?”
“I’m not running from anything,” she said, frowning. “I told you, I work for a pharmaceutical company.”
“Last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies didn’t offer hazard pay because their researchers were going to have to dodge bullets. What’s the real story?”
The real story? She was carrying, quite possibly, the most dangerous virus known to man in a special case in her pack and if she didn’t reach the South American facility...well, a pandemic of the most devastating proportions could be the result.
Or if the virus fell into the wrong hands...
Hope shuddered to think.
And yes, the people who shouldn’t have a biological weapon of this magnitude were the ones shooting at her.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, her eyes welling with tears she hadn’t allowed herself to shed until this moment. Tessara Pharm had their hands in so many pies, but this project had eclipsed everything else.
Her boss, Tanya Fields, was dead, and even though the police had deemed it a robbery gone wrong, the fact that Hope’s house had been trashed the same night had sent her running.
Well, that and the fact that Tanya had suspected that someone within Tessara had sold proprietary secrets about the virus, which was why Tanya had entrusted Hope to destroy it.
“Hey, where’d you go?” J.T. asked.
Hope shook her head, not about to share. “I said I don’t want to talk about it. I’d appreciate if you respected my privacy.”
She didn’t blame him for his questions, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of another person dying because of this virus. Especially when, if things had been different... No, she wasn’t going to go there. Dating had never been easy for her. She sucked at small talk because she saw little point and first dates were almost entirely comprised of the useless chitchat that she abhorred.
