Under the Wire (20 page)

With a nod of appreciation, Dallas tucked the supplies into the pack.

"Later," he said, shrugged into the backpack, and headed into the slowly lightening horizon toward a hangar just the other side of the fenced-in airfield. Spotlights shined on three small, ancient aircraft and one lone helicopter that sat on the tarmac. A huge For Hire sign shined under a light on the side of the corrugated-tin building. Inside the hangar, a light flickered on.

"Where's he going?" Lily asked.

"North. Jaffna Peninsula." Ethan's face was grim in the shadows as he watched his brother walk away.

"Jaffna?" Darcy's concern was evident in her voice. Lily understood why. Jaffna was the hub and stronghold of the Tamil movement.

"He'll be fine," Ethan assured them. "And if he's lucky, he might even find a connection or two among the ranks."

"Our boy gets around," Manny said in an attempt to ease everyone's minds.

"He knows some of the Tamil fighters?" Darcy looked skeptical.

Ethan grunted as he packed a duffel similar to Dallas's and nodded toward Darcy to throw some of her things into it as well. "More like he knows someone who knows someone whose name might open a door or two. At the very least see if he can shake any monkeys out of the trees."

"In other words, it's a long shot that he'll find anything out to help," Lily surmised as she made another trip to her medical bag and assembled a medical kit for Darcy and Ethan.

Manny looked grim. "Long shots are about all we've got at the moment."

"At daybreak Darcy and I will hit all the touristy places in and around Kandy." Ethan broke into the silence Manny's stark declaration had bred. "If there's anything to shake loose, if anyone's seen them, we'll find out. And I think it might be time to find out who our new friends are."

"Fuck," Manny swore under his breath. "We've got another tail?"

"Since we left the campground," Ethan confirmed. "Which is another good reason to split up. One vehicle can't tail us all."

"Be on the lookout for an all-night car dealer," Manny said as they piled back in the Suburban and took off down the road again. "We'll need a jeep. Odds are they'll follow you in the Suburban and leave us alone," he added with a glance in the rearview mirror at Ethan.

Before Lily could ask, Manny supplied the answer to her next question. "You and I will head for the hill country."

The hill country. The hill country had caves. Temple ruins and sacred cities. Jungle groves and wildlife sanctuaries. Miles and miles, acres and acres, of mountains and wilderness and tropical forest where it would be easy to get lost—or easy to hide hostages where no one would think to find them.

Her son was a hostage. It was still hard to think about. Was he hidden away in a small, dark cave? In a filthy mud hut? In an insect-infested jungle where snakes and night creatures and God only knew what kind of predator might attack him?

It had been a long time since she'd put much faith in God. She wasn't sure who had caused that break. Her or Him. But for the first time in a very long time, she felt a need to breach it.

Please, God. Please let him be okay. Please, please, let us find him before whoever took him hurts him. Before whoever is following us tries to stop us from finding Adam.

Victoria Reservoir road south of Kandy on the way to Nuwara Eliya

Shielding her eyes against the blinding morning sun's glare, Lily stood and peered over the windshield from the passenger side of the topless and, at the moment, disabled jeep—circa older than dirt.

They'd bought the jeep for a song in Kandy. Apparently, a song had been too much, but the pickings had been slim.

Currently they were three hours south and west of Kandy. Instead of taking the main road to Nuwara Eliya, they'd been following the Victoria Reservoir road on a sketchy lead Ethan and Darcy had picked up in the city.

Unfortunately, the jeep had just sputtered, lurched, then belched up a burst of steam that now spewed out of the motor like fog.

Lily swatted at a fly that buzzed her. This was so not what they needed. Not now. Not when they may have gotten a break.

A mile or so back they'd met an old man and a little boy lugging sacks of potatoes and carrots. As Lily and Manny always did when they encountered locals, they'd stopped. Manny had shown them Adam's photograph. They hadn't seen him. But they had seen a group of soldiers yesterday, some driving a pickup truck, some in a beat-up van, traveling together, heading south.

"Tamil?" Manny asked.

The old man had shushed the boy with a look. Lily understood. The locals were friendly to tourists. Ask them about a temple ruin or a holy shrine and they talked like magpies. Ask them about the Tigers and they closed up like clams.

Sri Lanka was a country of many cultures. Besides the majority Sinhalese and the lesser contingent of Tamil, the island was populated with Moors, Malays, burghers, and even some Christians, none of whom wanted to get caught in the crossfire between the two warring factions. The best way to do that was to simply keep a low profile.

Lily, however, hadn't given up.

"What was in the truck?" she had asked.

"Blan-kaht-tu-vah," the boy answered before his father could stop him.

"Blan-kaht-tu-vah?" Lily repeated, then took a stab at translating. "Blankets?"

The boy nodded.

"Blankets?" she wondered out loud. "Or tarps? Tarps covering a pickup bed?"

"Which could hide anything from supplies, to ammunition, to hostages," Manny speculated, following her line of thought.

It wasn't much, but it was in keeping with a lead Ethan and Darcy had called them about, so they had pressed on.

Until the jeep had given up the ghost.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked, wiping the dust from her forehead with the back of her hand, then crossing her arms over the top of the windshield.

"It's not working," came Manny's mumbled response from underneath the open hood.

Well, yeah.
That much she'd figured out. Just like she'd figured something else out. Ever since Manny had let his guard down at the camp last night and held her, he'd gone to extremes to keep his distance—both physically and emotionally.

Okay. She got it already. He wasn't pleased that he'd been nice to her. Was ticked that he'd actually felt some empathy for her—maybe even more than empathy— when his big bad self was determined to play the hate and loathing card every chance he got.

Give him some time,
Darcy had said.

Lily was trying. Just like she was trying to keep calm in the face of what could be a major disaster. It was their third day in Sri Lanka. They weren't any closer to finding Adam. Her nerves were splintered. Her temper on a very tight leash.

And now this.

"I know it's not working." She dug deep for patience when his long fingers clamped around the edge of the hood. "What, specifically, is the problem?"

His face was hard as he rounded the jeep and reached into the backseat. Sweat trickled down his jawline, disappeared in the open collar of his white shirt as he dug into his ALICE pack that held their share of food, supplies, and weaponry. "Busted radiator hose."

She wasn't heavy into car mechanics, but from the grim set of his mouth as he rifled through the contents of the pack, she could tell that wasn't good.

"Can you fix it?"

Coming up empty, he swore, then zipped up the pack with a disgusted scowl. "Not without a new hose or a damn good sealant, neither of which we seem to have."

"Sealant? As in tape?"

"If I had some, yeah. That'd do it." He planted his hands on his hips, looking all male and macho and mad—which triggered a response she couldn't have stopped if her life depended on it.

"I thought you special ops types never went anywhere without your duct tape."

The driver's side door opened; his weight bounced the jeep as he wedged his big body behind the wheel and cut her a sharp look. "Clearly, you've been watching the wrong movies. Unless there's a service station over that hill, and I wouldn't make book on it," he said with a hitch of his strong chin down the curving road, "we're walking from here."

Despite the seriousness of the broken hose, after being made to feel like a liability for days, Lily was actually going to enjoy what happened next. She turned around, stood on her knees on the front seat, and reached for the medical bag she'd stowed on the floor behind her. When she surfaced it was with a roll of wide white adhesive tape. "Will this work?"

Manny jerked his gaze her way. He spotted the tape. His eyes didn't exactly brighten. He didn't exactly smile. But he came close.
Damn close.

"You're making me look bad here."

Miracle of miracles, he did smile then. Slow. Reluctant. Dazzling.

Something inside Lily's chest gave like a sigh. Something that had been coiling and knotting since she'd seen him in the ER back in Boston. Something that gripped like a fist clenched so tight it had become painful.

One smile and the fingers of that fist slowly uncurled.

That's all it took to ease the hurt. Ease the stress. Ease it just a little. Just a very critical little.

So little, she almost didn't smile back. Didn't quite trust herself to believe the monumental significance of that smile. But it
was
significant.

He'd just extended an olive branch. A small, fragile peace offering. An end to the hostilities.

Give him some time,
Darcy had said.

It seemed too much to hope for, but maybe that time had come.

Almost light-headed with the prospect of relief from his unrelenting anger, Lily dipped another toe in untested waters. "Yeah, well, 'Be prepared.' That's my motto. Mine and the Boy Scouts'. But then you know that. Being an old Boy Scout and all, right?"

He snagged the roll of tape that she dangled toward him on her index finger and gave up another quick grin that sent her heart racing and launched a series of little electric pulses humming through her system.

"It's not nice to rub salt in a wound, Liliana."

Liliana.

He'd called her Liliana. She doubted he even realized it. It had just come out. Spontaneous. Unguarded.

Liliana.

It took her back. Took her away from the urgency of their search. God, how she used to come unglued when he said her name in Spanish. Of course, she was usually naked and he was usually inside her, or under her, or kissing her with a carnal dedication that made her weep.

She almost wept now. Almost cried with joy over his ever so unexpected transition from hostility to good humor. But she kept it together. Replayed the brief exchange again and again until she was convinced it had actually happened.

And as he went back to work under the hood, Lily clung to the promise of a minor but meaningful shift in the wind between them.

Manny steered the jeep around a rut as they bounced down the winding reservoir road. So far, the tape was holding on the radiator hose. So far. According to the map, the next town was just a mile or two over the next ridge.

Town. Hell. More likely a village—one of a few remote little settlements dotting the mountain road. He didn't hold out a lot of hope that they'd find a replacement hose there—or a fuel pump, as theirs, he suspected, was in the throes of a long, gasping death.