Page 49 of Dangerous Liaisons

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Headlights flickered up ahead on the dirt road Jesse and Cole jogged along. She whirled, but Cole grabbed her and dove into the jungle before she could make the jump. She landed on top of him, tensed in readiness to roll away, but his arms tightened around her as he rolled on top. Jesse started to shove him off, then stilled when she distinguished the sound of more than one vehicle approaching. She became aware of the pounding of her heart vibrating through Cole’s chest as she counted three jeeps followed by a deuce-and-a-half zoom past.

“Perez?” she whispered.

Cole shifted his head an inch and whispered in her ear, “Gotta be.” His warm breath on her skin sent a shock directly to her midsection. Damn tease. She would have heard him fine through the radio.

Jesse focused her attention on the sound of the vehicles fading into the distance and ignored the weight of his hard body. The crickets began their symphony again.

“Jess.”

His breath washed over the sensitive hallow of her throat. “Get off,” she ordered, and shoved him.

He rolled off, and she scrambled to her feet. Cole followed as she climbed back onto the road. The new moon peered through breaks in the clouds, providing enough light to move without using their flashlights. She broke into a full run with Cole at her side.

“Those trucks were in a big hurry,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Five hundred meters down the road, Jesse stopped at sight of the sharp left turn twenty meters ahead.

“What is it?” Cole whispered.

“Remember how the road on the satellite photo took a left then circled around to the south for a few hundred meters?” She scanned the thick foliage alongside the road.

“Yeah.”

“We’re there. Which means the hacienda should be…” Jesse pulled her compass from her ops jacket and consulted it as she shifted eastward. “They’ll be watching the road.” She pointed to a spot twenty feet ahead. “We’ll cut through there and come up on the hacienda from behind where they won’t expect us.”

She jogged ahead. Upon reaching the spot, she dove into the undergrowth and was soon crawling on hands and knees. Within five minutes, the underbrush had thickened to the consistency of pea soup, leaving them in total darkness. Jesse pulled fully charged UV glasses from her ops vest and slipped them on. Dense foliage limited her view in the violet illumination, but it beat crawling blind.

The going was painfully slow and Jesse consulted her compass half a dozen times. She had begun seriously considering turning back in favor of the road when she ran headlong into a barrier—a cyclone fence by the feel of wire grid on her head.

“Fence,” she said, spitting a leaf from her mouth.

Cole collided with her ass. Jesse spun around, landing hard on her butt.

“Great,” he grunted, giving his head a shake.

“Watch it, Tex,” she growled, then added, “Some men would kill to run into my ass.” She realized how stupid she sounded and stuffed the compass back in the ops vest.

Cole crawled up beside her as she rose. He stood as Jesse pulled at the foliage entangling the chain link. The plants were overgrown on both sides and so intertwined with the fence they might as well be glued to the metal. She dropped to a squat and clawed at the dirt at the fence base while Cole continued to tear at the vines and large leaves higher up.

“No good,” she whispered, and stood.

She fitted a boot toe into a vine-tangled loop of the fence as Cole did the same. Jesse grabbed him by the waistband and pulled him off the fence. “Whoa there, Cowboy, one at a time. I’ll see if the fence can hold us and what’s on the other side.” She sensed a little of the same male hesitation she’d encountered back at Rayburn’s place, and couldn’t help a private smile as she started upward.

The fence held. At the top, slivers of moonlight illuminated the uniformed glow of the UV light. She tore back the foliage enough to expose a single rusted barbed wire. No razor wire. Perez wasn’t worried. He didn’t have to be. He was the best security. Menendez had thought the same thing. Jesse worked the wire lose, folded it back, and hoisted herself over and down the other side. She moved a few feet forward, scanned the area and found more of the murky, overgrown jungle darkness.

“All clear,” she whispered.

Cole jammed a foot in the fence and climbed upward. A moment later, he dropped to the ground beside her. “Which way?”

Jesse retrieved her compass and got her bearings. “The fence runs almost exactly north and south. Straight head is due east.” She removed the eyeglasses and squinted into blackness. The glasses impeded distance vision by making near objects too bright, like a car’s headlights illuminating the road so that glare made it almost impossible to see objects beyond the beams. She folded and stuffed the glasses into her vest.

“Lead the way,” Cole whispered.

They dropped to their knees and Jesse started forward with Cole close behind. She wondered what he’d do if she gave him another mouthful of ass. Maybe he hadn’t gotten enough the first time to really appreciate his good luck. Or maybe he just didn’t care for what she had to offer.