Just a Kiss Away (25 page)

“I do not care how many silver pesos the girl is worth. One thing she is not worth is the trouble a ransom demand would bring upon our movement.” Andres Bonifacio, leader of the Katipunan insurrectionist rebels, stopped pacing in agitation behind his desk and looked Sam in the eye. “You have made a mistake, my friend. Your government will have my head if we hold her for ransom. Her father will see to that. We have got too much trouble with the Spanish right in our backyard, as you say. I need any U.S. support I can get. It is worth more than the ransom could ever be. Ambassador LaRue has too much influence. I cannot take the chance of losing U.S. backing. Too many Filipinos have fought hard and for too long to lose it for some quick thousands.”

Sam watched the rebel leader pace. Any hope of his bonus died faster than a candle in the wind. He had the sudden urge to punch something. He rammed his fists into his pockets. “What are we going to do with her?”

“Not we.” Bonifacio gave him a pointed look. “You.”

Sam stood there for a stunned moment, then started to back away, his hands out in front of him. “Oh, no. Not me. I’ve been stuck with her for days. Let some of the men take her back. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

“You brought her here. You will take her back.”

“And if I refuse?” Sam suddenly felt as if he were trapped by artillery fire.

Bonifacio’s face changed, his anger now showing clearly. “Then you will not get paid for anything.” He slammed his fist down on the table.
“Madre Dios,
Sam! What were you thinking? I need the American support. If I send her back with my men it will look as if I took her, not Aguinaldo.” He began to pace again as he spoke, “No, you might not want to, but you have to take her back. You are American and you will convince them that I had nothing to do with this.”

“Let Cassidy do it. He’s as much an American as I am.”

“No.” He held up a hand and looked at Sam as if he’d lost his head. “The girl would never make it there . . . untouched. You know that as well as I. Put a woman within a meter of him and she will be under him in ten minutes. No. You will take her back.” He paused a moment, then looked Sam in the eye. “She
is
unharmed?”

“Yeah. I’m not that stupid.” Sam clenched his hands inside his pockets and stared out the window, not seeing the night but instead remembering two accusing blue eyes.

He didn’t like that, or the idea that he was going to have to travel with her again. He’d miscalculated. Andres was right, but that didn’t make the whole thing any easier to swallow, nor did the desire to punch something fade.

There was no bonus—something that would have made his rare bout of guilt a bit easier to live with—and the fact that he’d put up with her for free didn’t please the mercenary in him at all. Also at stake here was his soldier’s pride, which was bruised from the bad judgment that had almost jeopardized his job. He’d never done that before.

The clincher was that he was stuck with Lollie LaRue, ordered to take her back to her daddy, a job that he didn’t relish and that would be more difficult because she knew, since he’d revealed, in his conversation with Cassidy, what his plan had been all along. That was the biggest screw up of all.

He turned around and leaned against the wall with a nonchalance he was far from feeling. “We’ve got a little problem.”

“What?”

“She knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That I’d planned to get paid for her.”

Bonifacio swore, then mumbled,
“Estapido.”

“You’re right, it was stupid on my part, but I’ll tell you, one day with that woman could turn Machiavelli into a moron.”

The room was silent. Sam rubbed his forehead in thought. He needed to find a way to undo his mistake. He thought for a moment longer, recalling his conversation with Jim. She knew he was going to hold her for ransom.

No, he amended that. All she knew was that he would get paid. He pushed against the wall and walked to his commander’s desk, placing a hand on either end and leaning over to convince Andres of the idea. “She only knows I planned to get money when I brought her here. It’s possible that we could convince her that she misunderstood.”

“We?”

“I’ll need your help. We have to make her think that we planned all along to return her to her father safely, with no ransom. But I’ll
need
your help. We need to make her think the money I spoke of was my reward for saving her.” Sam paused, suddenly aware of something he might have forgotten. “You don’t suppose a reward has been offered already, do you? Or maybe you could persuade her father to pay one.”

One look into his commander’s eyes told Sam he wouldn’t get a red cent. The Chicago street kid in him had to give it a try. He shrugged. “Forget I asked that.”

“Always the mercenary, eh, my friend?” Bonifacio gave a quick laugh, then sat down at the desk. “Do whatever you have to do to convince her. I will send a message to her father, telling him we have found her and she is safe and that you, a trusted American will be bringing her back. I will leave the arrangements open in case the ambassador wants to meet you. I do not want him or anyone else to know where we are. The guns are due any day. We cannot miss that shipment.” He looked up at Sam. “I will tell her we were concerned only for her safety, and I will help convince her of the reward story, but until we hear from her father, she is your responsibility. I have too much to do with the Spanish so near.”

Damn, he had his orders. He was stuck with her. “Where is she?” Bonifacio asked.

“I had her locked in that shed by the supply hut,” Sam answered distractedly.

A loud knock pounded on the door of the bungalow. The door opened, and a soldier entered. His shoulders went ramrod straight, and he saluted Bonifacio, then Sam. “The woman has escaped.”

It took them
only ten minutes to find her.

It took five men almost half an hour to cut her out of the barbed-wire barrier in one piece. With only torchlight to work by, the job was that much more difficult. Sam flipped his pocket watch closed and slipped it back into his shirt pocket. He bent, retrieved the torch he had stuck in the ground, and straightened, holding it up higher so the men could see in the dark. He rested a booted foot on the sandbags piled five high on the jungle side of the camp’s perimeter and moved the torch closer, watching the extraction of Lollie LaRue.

She must have tried to crawl through the spiraled loops that were used as protection against invading forces. When they’d found her she was trapped like a ragged pink worm in a cocoon of barbed wire. It looked to Sam as if almost every sharp barb was caught on or wrapped in her dress or her hair, and what wasn’t caught was tangled like fishing line about her feet and hands. In one of those hands was a crowbar.

One look at her and he knew, absolutely, there was no way on this earth he was going to travel through the jungle with her again, no way at all. If he had to take her back, he’d do it on the mountain road where he could stick her in a cart pulled by a carabao and ride with her to Manila, or wherever that daddy of hers wanted to meet them. Sam didn’t care if they had to dress like peasants, natives, the Spanish, whatever, but he was not going into the jungle with her again. No way.

The men finished cutting her out, and one of them pried the crowbar out of her hand—something for which Sam was especially grateful. He had a hunch that she’d have swung it at him the first chance she got.

They pulled her to her wobbly feet, grinning and talking in their own native Tagalog. She shook her head and looked at them for a moment, her face confused and a little frightened. The soldiers still grinned at her, and Sam could see the relief ease her stiff shoulders. Of course she had no idea what they were laughing at. They’d called her
lasing paru-paro,
a drunken butterfly.

One look at her and anyone could see the name was appropriate. Pieces of wire jutted out from her messy blond hair like insect antennae. Her skirt was caught in long ropes of wire that poked out from her clothing, and the fabric draped outward like drooping pink wings. His first urge was to tell her how she looked, but he knew anything he said would be so soaked with sarcasm that she’d get mad. Then they’d never convince her that she was not going to be ransomed, but instead taken back to her daddy.

She tried to take a step and wobbled again. He moved toward her and reached out to steady her. She jerked her arm out of his grasp and gave him a scathing look. “Don’t you touch me!”

He and Andres exchanged looks. Covertly, Andres pointed to his chest, indicating he should give it a try. Sam watched.

Andres stepped forward, giving Eulalie a gallant little bow, one in which his hat actually swept the ground. “Miss LaRue, I am Andres Bonifacio.” He straightened and smiled at her. “I am so sorry you were . . . were inconvenienced by our primitive surroundings.” He waved a hand at the log fences, ditches, sandbags, and barbed wire that surrounded them for as far as one could see in only the torchlight.

She shook her skirts with an indignant snap, and a few pieces of wire bounced onto the ground while others recoiled outward, then sprang back like broken guitar strings. “Well, I should think so. Of course I suppose you need all this . . . this prison fence to keep your hostages.” She waved her hand around, and it caught on a piece of wire, pulling her hair. She winced and jerked it out of her hair, frowning at the blond wad of hair that hung from the wire.

Andres stiffened. “Hostages? I do not understand.” He looked from Lollie back to Sam, his face shocked.

Good work, Bonifacio. A little exaggerated for my taste, but still good work.
Sam smiled.

She tossed the wire over her shoulder. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean you have to treat me as if I’m stupid. I heard him.” She glared at Sam, raising an accusing finger and waving it around his face.

He never took his gaze from hers, but smiled. “What was that?”

Her jaw jutted out like a mule just before it kicks. “You told your friend that you intended to get paid for me, and when he asked how much, you said it was up to you.” She turned her accusing finger on Bonifacio.

Andres laughed and shook his head as if this whole thing was some great joke. Sam joined him. Her shoulders went back, and her chin went up in pure indignation. She wanted to hit them. Sam could read it in her icy eyes.

“There has been a big mistake, Miss LaRue. Sam was talking about his reward for bringing you to the safety of this camp.” Andres smiled.

She eyed both men with the same wary look that Little Red Riding Hood must have worn when she looked at the wolf in her grandmother’s bed. Sam and Andres exchanged a scheming look.

“We are very close with the United States government,” Andres told her. “I have already sent a note to your father telling him that you are safe, thanks to Sam, and that he will be bringing you back to Manila as soon as we can ensure your safe return.”

She was very quiet, then tore her gaze away from his commander and looked at Sam.

He smiled as innocently as a one-eyed mercenary could. She watched him, then crossed her barb-scraped arms and said, “How do I know that?”

She was learning. Not bad, he thought, watching her with a glimmer of respect.

Andres lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I cannot prove that I sent the note.”

“Can you prove that you have ties with my government?” She raised her chin a notch.

Two good questions, Sam thought. Amazing.

“Ah, now, that I can prove.” Andres picked up a torch and placed it near the sandbag wall. “See this?” He pointed to some writing on the bag.

Lollie walked over and looked. Sam knew it said “U.S. Army issue, property of the United States of America.” He had bought them from a supply officer out of the Presidio in San Francisco, a man who, for the right price, would supply him with anything that belonged to the army. However, she wouldn’t know that.