Free One Touch of Topaz by Iris Johansen Page A

better about parting with them. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll give a fancy dinner party, a famous art critic will see one of my statues, and I’ll be discovered. Perhaps you’ll be able to sell them for enough to make it worth the trouble of lugging that load down from the caverns.”
    “It’s worth the trouble now. I have no intention of selling them.”
    “Then they’ll be something to remember me by,” she said softly. “I’ll like that even more.”
    An emotion Samantha couldn’t identify flickered on Fletch’s face before he gave her an equally baffling smile. “I have no intention of remembering you, Samantha.”
    Hurt tore through her. Stupid. She was so stupid to react like this. Why should he want to remember her? she thought. A fleeting sexual encounter with a clumsy, inexperiencedvirgin, twenty-four hours of discomfort and danger. “Well, I’ll remember you,” she said tremulously. “My very first tycoon and my first—oh, God,
run
, Fletch!” She grabbed him by the arm and broke into a dead run toward the helicopter.
    A bullet tore past her ear.
    “The patrol,” Fletch muttered. “They must have sighted the helicopter last night and been waiting for us.”
    Soldiers were pouring out of the rain forest and thundering across the glade toward them.
    They still had several yards to go, but she could see the passenger door of the helicopter being thrown open and heard the engine revving.
    Another bullet screamed by her, this one much closer. She cast a desperate glance over her shoulder. A soldier with a drawn pistol was gaining, but he wasn’t pointing it at her now. He was aiming at Fletch, the larger target!
    “No!” Without thinking, she fell back,dashing between the soldier and Fletch’s broad back. Agonizing pain tore through her, and for a moment she didn’t comprehend what had happened. Then she realized she’d been shot. Was she going to die? There was blood …
    “God!” Fletch’s features were drawn with pain in the moonlight. “Why—” He broke off as Samantha started to crumple to the ground. He snatched her up as if she were a rag doll and covered the last few yards to the helicopter in a desperate sprint.
    “Take off!” he shouted as he jumped into the passenger seat.
    “The door—”
    “To hell with the door!”
    The helicopter rose from the ground just as the first soldier reached the open door. The soldier grabbed, missed, then dropped back to the ground, cursing as the helicopter rose another twenty feet and skimmed toward the opposite end of the glade. A spray of bullets hit the metal of the helicopter.
    “Cripes,” Skip yelled. “I hope they didn’t hit the gas tank.” He rose another thirty feet, barely skimming the tops of the trees where the glade ended and the rain forest began. “I think we’re out of range now. Can you reach over and close that door? Open, it doesn’t make for great speed.”
    Fletch shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t want to move her until I find out where she’s been hit.” His arms tightened around Samantha’s slight body. “I’ll see if I can stop the bleeding before she regains consciousness.”
    “Do you think it’s bad?”
    “How the hell should I know?” Fletch’s voice was harsh with pain. “I’m no doctor. She could be dying and I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
    “I couldn’t see much in the darkness. Why did she fall back? She could have made it if—”
    “She was protecting me. She took the bullet for me.” Fletch’s mirthless laughter held a thread of desperation. “I should have knownshe’d do something like this, if she had the chance. I swear the woman has a martyr complex. Dear Lord, she did it for me.”
    Skip cast him a sidewise glance. “She must be a pretty brave woman.”
    “She doesn’t think so.” Fletch’s hand was trembling as he smoothed back the chestnut hair from Samantha’s face. She was as pale as marble in the dim light cast by the control panel. Fear clutched at his