Free Show No Fear by Marliss Melton Page A

you.”
    With mistrust still brimming in his eyes, the commander ordered Deputy Buitre to stow his gun. Then he and his assistant turned
     their attention to the soldiers who’d been wounded.
    Lucy and the others sat on the muddy trail and waited. Dazed by the hostilities they had endured already, they consoled each
     other with murmured words of solidarity and encouragement.
    “Things can only get easier from here out,” Fournier assured them.
    Lucy slid a wry glance at Gus’s carefully blank expression. Could the man really be that naive?
    Within an hour, the Turkish woman started vomiting—altitude sickness. They had climbed the mountain, relentlessly, for hours.
     Too weak to keep her seat on her mule, S¸ukruye was foisted off on Lucy, as the men’s mules were already overloaded. Now Lucy
     was soaking wet, covered with mud,
and
had vomit on her right boot.
    They journeyed on, relentlessly, crisscrossing trails, possibly even doubling back to confuse the UN team members.
    Then they came to a river so swollen with rain it had carved a gorge of boiling, rushing water. Their only way to cross it
     was via a box, drawn by pulleys across a steel cable.
    Hell, why not?
Lucy thought, choking down the sudden, near hysterical urge to laugh as she met Gus’s grave gaze. “Fire with fire,” she said
     to him in Spanish, earning quizzical looks from the others.
    By the time they stepped onto land on the other side, S¸ ukruye had nearly fainted from fear, and even Lucy felt weak in the
     knees. Having left the mules behind, they were forced to walk again, into a jungle that grew increasingly dark.
    Her stomach began to burn from hunger, yet they neither spoke nor stopped for food. The only sound besides the splashing and
     stamping of their feet was the incessant chatter of jungle creatures. Higher and higher they climbed, into the deepening gloom.
    An exchange between the FARC leaders broke the silence. Suspending the march, they decided to make camp, right there in the
     thick of the jungle.
    Let the bugfest begin,
thought Lucy, scratching at half a dozen bug bites on her neck.
    Gus scooped a glob of dirt off the trail and smeared it on his face. “Here,” he said, offering some to Lucy. “It’ll keep the
     bugs off.”
    She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Mud? Are you kidding?”
    “What’s worse? A little mud, or malaria?”
    He was right, of course. With a shudder, she accepted the glob of cold soil and applied it delicately to her face and neck.
    The rebels, in the meantime, had hacked a clearing with their machetes. Lashing bamboo together with vines, they built platforms
     for their guests, stringing hammocks for themselves around the periphery of the camp. A fire was lit to boil the rice and
     quickly snuffed out.
    Huddled on their platforms, each team member was offered a cup of rice to eat and a sweet beverage of boiled sugar cane called
panela.
With nightfall came the emergence of still more insects—buzzing, whirring, and screeching until Lucy longed to cover her
     ears.
    They were ordered to relieve themselves and go to sleep.
    Lying on their bamboo bed, shivering with cold, and soaking wet, Lucy felt nothing but relief when Gus pulled her on top of
     him. She shuddered silently against him, shamelessly absorbing his body heat.
    “How’s the hip?” he whispered in her ear, placing a gentle hand over the area in question.
    “Fine.” It had hurt until he touched it, his hand warm and soothing.
    “Your feet?” he breathed. “Any blisters?”
    Her feet were used to worse punishment than a hike. “Nope,” she assured him, cringing as a flurry of wings tickled her cheek.
     God, she hated camping! “Could you find your way back?” she heard herself whisper.
    “It’d take me a while,” he admitted. “It’s too late to change your mind now, Luce,” he added.
    “I haven’t,” she assured him.
    “Good. Try to sleep,” he urged in a voice too quiet for anyone else to overhear. “Tomorrow