Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. Didn’t trust herself to. Thoughts, words, the beginnings of a quarrel simmered in her brain, and the choked-back arguments burned the back of her throat like acid. You told me to grow up, Pearse. Why? Because I wanted a career…adventure…excitement? What’s different about what you do? If growing up means I’m supposed to give up something I’ve prepared my whole life for…if it means that for me, why not for you?

The words she couldn’t say tasted bitter on her tongue, and her lips felt numb as she murmured instead, “Well, so? Do you think you’re ever gonna be ready to come in from the field? To give up the danger?”

There was a long pause, and then his voice came softly. “I thought I was ready, once. It didn’t work out.”

She waited, thinking he meant to say more, to explain. Then, with a little jolt it hit her. He’s talking about his marriage again.

He’d been ready to come in from the cold, to give up the danger-not for her, but for…Kathy, Katie…Carly-whatever the hell her name was. For his wife.

It didn’t work out.

It all came rushing back-first the shock, icy-cold, numbing. Then the pain. Just the way it had happened then…

She’d finished, finally. Finished her training. She was home after being incommunicado for a whole month of grueling survival training in the Louisiana swamps, exhilarated, keyed-up, dying to talk to somebody, even if she couldn’t talk about where she’d been or what she’d gone through. So, naturally, the first thing she’d done was call her best friend…right? Cory had been so much more than that, of course, but first, last and always, he was the closest, dearest friend she had in the world.

The phone at his Washington apartment rings…a recording answers, saying the number is no longer in service. I call Mom and Dad’s house in Georgia. Cory and Dad were close, they’ll know how to reach him…

Even now, three years later, she felt herself go clammy and sick remembering the terrible little silence on the other end of the line, and the awful fear that had gripped her then.

I think, Oh, God. Something’s happened to him. He goes to such awful places, he’s almost been killed before…

Then I hear Mom’s voice, so sad, so gentle, so…embarrassed. “Oh, Sammi June, honey, I can’t believe you don’t know…”

Anger. That was the third thing that had come over her that awful day, and it was anger that came back now to save her. Hot, raging anger. It swept through her like a firestorm, carrying all the heaviness and sadness away with it, leaving her feeling barren and brittle inside, but so much lighter. As if a good stiff breeze would blow her to dust.

“Too bad,” she said to Cory.

And quickening her steps, she left him and moved up to walk beside Tony instead.

“Hey,” she said, favoring him with her best smile as she gave him a nudge in the ribs with her elbow. “How ya’ doin’? Need any help carryin’ those cameras?”

Tony’s appreciative grin and undemanding charm didn’t do much to ease the ache inside her, but they did help to pass the time, and more important, hold the memories at bay.

Not long after daybreak they came to a cluster of huts too primitive to be called a village. The morning mists hadn’t yet cleared, but the ubiquitous raggedy chickens were already pecking and chuckling in the undergrowth and smoke rose lazily from metal chimneys. The smell of cooking and unfamiliar spices permeated the cool mountain air, and Cory’s stomach growled a loud and enthusiastic response.

Again there was no welcoming committee. The three “guests” were herded without ceremony into one of the huts, which, except for a brightly patterned curtain that hung across the width of the hut’s single room, partitioning it roughly in half, appeared to be empty of both people and furnishings. Their escort’s leader, still carrying his rifle but perhaps feeling more secure now that he was on his home turf, directed Sam to one side of the curtain and Cory and Tony to the other. He did so with somewhat less belligerence than he’d shown them up to now, even giving a little bow as he left them, closing the door behind him.

In the sudden silence, Cory heard Sam expel an exasperated breath.

“You get the idea they might’ve done this before?” Tony remarked in a sardonic undertone.

“Oh, I think you can bet on it,” Sam said cheerfully, pulling aside the curtain to rejoin them. “I imagine they run all their hostages through this way.”

“You think maybe they didn’t get the message we’re invited guests, not hostages?” Tony said.

“They’ll be even more cautious with us because we were invited,” Cory said with a long look at Sam. “They know we’d have had time-”

He broke off as the outer door opened. A woman of indeterminate age entered, carrying a stack of folded clothing. Although her own garments were all-concealing and her head covered with a scarf, the fabrics were brightly colored and looked hand-woven in intricate geometric patterns, and she wore a number of bracelets on both arms. Something about her style of dress reminded Cory of parts of Indonesia and Malaysia he’d visited on previous assignments.

Keeping her eyes averted from the two men, the woman went straight to Sam and spoke to her in a low, halting voice. Sam replied, a few brief syllables of acknowledgment, and the woman handed her the stack of clothing, bowed her head and quickly went out again.

“What’d I tell you?” Sam said as soon as the door had closed behind the woman. Her eyes were bright and sharp as a squirrel’s, with an excitement Cory couldn’t quite understand. “We’re to remove our clothes and put these on instead. Ours will be washed, dried and returned to us-as a courtesy.” She gave a smug little chortle. “Courtesy, hah. They want to check them for bugs-and I don’t mean the creepy-crawly kind.”

Tony muttered one of his favorite profanities. “Do you s’pose they mean everything? Underwear, too?”

“I’d imagine,” Cory said, with more equanimity than he felt.

“Well,” said Sam, “I don’t care what they said, I’m not giving ’em my underwear.” She shuddered delicately. “That’s just…no.”

“Sam.” Cory gave her an amused look. “You’re the one who said they’re afraid of us. Don’t you think you’d better do as they say? This is no time to be stubborn.”

After a long mulish glare, she gave the curtain a yank and subsided behind it, swearing and muttering under her breath. A moment later various articles of brightly colored fabric came sailing over the top of the partition.

“Would you rather I take the single room…let you two love-birds be together?” Tony asked facetiously as he simultaneously snatched several of the pieces of cloth from the air and dodged to avoid being hit by flying flip-flops.

“Very…funny,” came from the other side of the curtain.

Cory didn’t say anything. Sam’s voice had a bumpy quality, and he had a sudden vivid mental picture of her undressing with those quick jerky movements of hers, the way she did when she was in a hurry or out of sorts. The image was clear and bright in his mind…

Long, supple athlete’s body, abs arranged in a softer, gentler version of the six-pack, buttocks taut and firm with shallow indentations on the sides, breasts high and round, but with a lot more fullness than anyone would suspect, seeing her fully clothed. Only I know how incredibly pale and fine the skin is there… Not much about Sam can be called soft, but there, and low on her belly and especially between her thighs…

“Hey, man, you want the green or the purple?” Tony was holding up two brightly patterned lengths of coarse fabric, one in each hand.

The images shivered and faded from his mind, and his heart knocked hard against his ribs, as if he’d been caught doing something illicit.

“I’m not fussy.” He snagged the garment Tony lobbed at him-the green one-with one hand and showed Tony how to put it on, wrapping it around his waist and rolling the top edge over, like a towel.

“Hey,” he said with a shrug when Tony gave him a dubious look. “Whatever works, right?”

“Easy for you to say,” Tony muttered, uneasily surveying the portion of one muscular leg that was protruding through the edges of the fabric that barely met around his broad girth. “You’ve got more overlap than I do.”

Ignoring what sounded like muffled laughter from the other side of the curtain, Cory finished dressing in the loose-fitting shirt and flip-flop sandals that had been provided. The whole ensemble was surprisingly comfortable, though he couldn’t see himself trekking through snake-infested jungles in the wraparound skirt and open sandals.

He and Tony had just finished folding their own clothing into more or less neat piles when the curtain twitched back and Sam’s face appeared at its edge.

“You guys decent?” Her eyes had that squirrel-brightness again, and her lips seemed to quiver with a grin held in check.

Cory felt a buzz deep in his chest, the urge to grin back at her the way he would have done in the old days. The old days…back when they’d so often found the same things amusing, not always at appropriate times, and would exchange that secret look of barely suppressed laughter.

“What would you have done if we hadn’t been?” Tony was making no effort to suppress his grin.

“Well, then, I’d’ve taken a good long look,” she shot back at him in an exaggerated Georgia accent, thick, sweet and sassy as molasses.

“So, since you seem to be the expert on how these people operate, what are we supposed to do now?” Cory asked, frowning to disguise the pleasure he was getting just from looking at her. The rich, fiery colors she’d chosen-red, orange and yellow-had turned her hair to sunshine and her skin to honey, and she reminded him of some lush exotic flower…the kind that was probably concealing something deadly among its petals.