Show No Fear - By Marliss Melton Page 0,16

jumped from the bed.

He cracked an eye. “Where are you going?”

“To brush my teeth.” His groan of disappointment made her smile. She would have loved to have kept it up, enjoying reciprocal treatment in return. But even Gus knew better than to go that far.

People who fell in lust got stupid. Lucy was too smart to be stupid, especially now, when the stakes were so high.

CHAPTER 4

Lucy saw Gus glance at his watch, the only indication that this unforeseeable delay was getting to him. It sure as hell was getting to her.

In the rear seat of a stuffy little van chartered to drive them to the edge of civilization, they sat motionless on Highway 40, just one link in a chain of vehicles heading into the tunnel that burrowed through the side of a mountain.

Thanks to an avalanche of rock that had strewn debris across the road, the tunnel was blocked. Lucy could see highway workers under the vigilance of Colombia’s equivalent of the National Guard scrambling to remove the obstruction.

If sitting in a stuffy van doing nothing could get her stomach churning, then how the hell was she supposed to come face-to-face with guerrillas and not embarrass herself?

Her slowly drawn breath caught Gus’s attention. “¿Estás bien?” he asked her. You okay?

“Claro.” Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?

She tried to focus on the scenery. To the east, Bogotá sprawled like a patchwork quilt, its lush green parks breaking up squares of steel and concrete. With the mountains looming protectively behind, the megalopolis looked downright picturesque, till one looked more closely and saw the shanties pushed up onto the sides of the mountains.

A high-pitched whistle snatched her attention forward. At last, the road was clear! Engines roared to life and their van inched toward the tunnel. But then a national guardsman waved them down.

Fournier swore under his breath, and a guard leaned into the passenger window demanding to see their passports.

One by one, the peacekeeping team was scrutinized. Lucy fought to hold the guardsman’s gaze as he looked up from her passport to scrutinize her. Her heart sank as he stepped from the vehicle to confer with his companions, taking all the passports with him.

While a ripple of excitement seemed to pass through the ranks of the guards, Lucy sat in a cold sweat, wondering where her composure had flown.

“Mon Dieu,” Fournier muttered, looking as ill at ease as Lucy felt. Cars honked impatiently behind them. If they were detained much longer, they might miss their rendezvous with the FARC tomorrow.

At last, the guardsman returned with their passports. “Where are you headed?” he demanded inscrutably.

“To Villavicencio, to see how the peace is being kept,” said Fournier, answering in a half-truth.

The man nodded. “You may proceed,” he announced, handing back the passports and waving them on.

As the window closed, the entire UN team, Lucy included, heaved a sigh of relief.

With horns urging them to hurry, their driver lurched forward, eager to make up for lost time. They surged into the dark, unlit tunnel, and Gus pinned Lucy against the seat with his shoulder, bracing her with his arm in the absence of a seat belt.

Lucy snapped her eyes shut. Please don’t do that, she wanted to tell him, recognizing his attempt to save her life in the event of a head-on collision.

The tunnel ended abruptly, spilling them onto lush, rolling plains called Los Llanos, where Gus’s vigilance relaxed. Their first destination, Villavicencio, stood less than thirty miles away.

With a squeal of brakes, the van stopped for lunch. Seated at an outdoor café, the team enjoyed a midday meal under the watchful eye of soldiers patrolling the industrial city. Once terrorized by the FARC, Villavicencio was now occupied by the Colombian army.

“Eat well,” Fournier murmured to them. “We have no way of knowing if the FARC will be able to feed us.”

While Gus slipped away to place a call to the JIC, Lucy watched the soldier standing guard across the street. As they boarded their van to continue the journey, he spoke into his walkie-talkie. The suspicion that the army was tracking the team’s movements congealed into certainty as a motorcycle, driven by two more soldiers, pulled out of an alleyway and started chasing them. Lucy met Gus’s eye and he nodded toward the Frenchman.

“Monsieur Fournier,” Lucy called up to him. “I believe we’re being followed.”

With a grimace, Fournier looked back at the motorcycle, then gave directions to their driver to outrun it. “The last thing we need,” he grumbled, “is to lead