Free Running Wild by Susan Andersen Page A

BEEN camping since she was a kid. Well, strictly speaking she’d
made
camps with friends but had never actually gone camping with tents and sleeping bags and stuff. Mostly she’d run wild with the kids of the families her folks ministered to. And although the gritty urban streets of Tacna, where they’d lived until she was six or seven years old, were about as far from the wilderness as things got, during the years that she and her parents had lived in the village of Onoato, the lush northern Amazon had been her playground. She and the village children had spent long carefree hours exploring and playacting. And building camps.
    She sneaked a peek at Finn while he set up their camp with economical proficiency. As he moved in and out of the shadows cast by a small battery-powered lantern, she watched his features change back and forth between the spare, angular beauty and hatchet-carved cheekbones of an old-time saint to a hollow-eyed, shadow-misted visage that she entertained herself by assigning more demonic labels to.
    She tried to picture him as part of those old simplistic childhood games, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She could, however, easily see him swinging on vines through the rain forest the way the older boys had done, and had a sneaking suspicion that if he had been part of her childhood gang, he’d have thought he was the boss of them.
    She muttered,
“As if”
under her breath.
    “You say something there, Goldilocks?”
    She started. Then, slapping back the bump of guilt over...darned if she knew what, she said, “Nooooo?”
    As if it were a
question
, for pity’s sake. Holy crappacino. She was so tired she was rummy.
    Finn strode up to her and, as if he’d read her thoughts, waved a hand at the small tent he’d set up. “It might be close quarters, but it’s out of the elements.” He gave her a wry smile, no doubt thinking the same thing she did: that it was dry and still amazingly warm given it was the middle of the night. He shrugged. “Such as they are.”
    Looking at the minuscule tent, she felt a moment’s qualm about those close quarters. But,
lord
, she’d give a bundle to lie down. So in the spirit of getting some rest, she sloughed off her misgivings.
    “I thought about setting up just the fly instead of the whole tent,” Finn said. “It’d be cooler and we’d definitely have more ventilation. But I don’t know what kind of critters are around here so I decided to err on the side of keeping them the hell out.” The night was alive with the sound of small rustling, chirping things. The crickets had gone dead silent when she and Finn first climbed out of the car, but it hadn’t taken long for them to grow accustomed to the humans in their midst and they were now back to their full nightly chorale.
    “That works for me.” She headed for the shelter, but then stopped halfway there. “But first I’ve gotta pee.”
    He offered her the lantern. “Take this and wait here a sec. I’ll grab you some TP from my pack.” He unzipped the entry flap and tossed it back. The tent’s opening was larger than she expected and he bent in half but entered it easily enough.
    He was back in seconds and tossed her a plastic bag with a flattened roll of toilet paper inside. “You want me to go with you?”
    She was half-tempted, but if she could handle wildlife when she was a little girl, she could darn well handle it now. “No, I’m good. I’ll just be a minute.”
    She was back not a whole lot longer than she’d predicted and found him still standing next to the tent.
    “Let me take that.” He reached for the battery-operated lantern. “I put your purse thing in the vestibule.” He indicated the fly that stretched out beyond the boundaries of the tent, then made an after-you gesture. “Pick whichever side you’re most comfortable on. I only have the one mat and sleeping bag, but it’s so warm I doubt we’ll need to cover up so you can sleep on whichever you think will work