Page 9 of Knox's Mission

With effort, he managed to bring his left hand up and onto the trunk essentially putting it in a choke hold. He didn’t want to think about all the monsters in the water below. Or the fact he was dangling above a river that could swallow him whole and never spit him out.

His left hand slipped off the trunk.

It was now or never.

Pulling on all the strength he could muster, he grabbed back onto the tree trunk, pulled his legs up to his chest, and shimmied down the base until Lorna could grab hold of his hand and help pull him onto land.

A rustling noise louder than the rain sounded to their left. A figure broke through the trees, coming into view.

“Amy!” Lorna shouted, bolting toward her best friend.

The two embraced as Knox surveyed the area to figure out what had been chasing her.

“Two men with big guns,” she said, motioning in the direction she came. “We can’t stay here.”

The canoe had been swallowed by the river. How the hell was he going to get them out of here alive?

3

“Donnie?” Lorna asked as she was being ushered away from the water’s edge. The river was rising and they couldn’t afford to hang around this area much longer, especially with the threat that had been on Amy’s heels.

She shook her head as her gaze landed on Knox. A one-man cavalry had arrived who was even more gorgeous than she remembered. Knox was six-feet-four inches of pure steel. The man was a sight for sore eyes with tight-clipped dark hair that was almost jet black. His magnetic eyes drew her in, made her want to take a step closer to study their depths. He had one of those carved from granite faces that most would agree resembled more god than man and made her fingers itch to reach out to him, to touch him. The same pull she felt toward himas a fourteen-year-old reared its head, but he’d never seen her as anything but Garrett’s annoying little sister.

She told herself the almost overwhelming attraction gripping her was all about a white knight riding in on a horse to rescue her and not something real. He was here to save her life and, for the first time since this ordeal began, she had a glimmer of hope that she might make it out of this jungle alive.

Would he be enough to navigate them out of this nightmare? “Donnie split off from me. We were running parallel when the men tracking us fixated on me, so he took off in the opposite direction.”

Knox’s jaw clenched. “We need to stay on the move,” he said as they huddled so they could hear each other’s voices on top of the driving rain.

Knox reached for her hand, and then clasped their fingers. Her heart free-fell as electricity buzzed through her from the point of contact. She reached for Lorna’s hand, as much for reassurance as to ensure they stayed together, creating an unbreakable chain as rain battered them. The deafening noise made it impossible to hear anything else as rain flooded every orifice. The only thing Amy managed to hold onto was the camera strapped around her neck. Everything else, what little survival items she’d had, were lost, consumed by an unforgiving environment.

The jungle floor tried its best to suck them in, making every step more and more difficult as they trudged through the mud. Hunger bit like an angry dog. Even with the ‘free shower’ happening, Amy was certain she stunk to high heaven. When it wasn’t raining, the humidity caused a near-constant sweat, making it difficult to breathe. And there’d been no escape from it since A.J. had left them. No sleep. No food. No sign of a break.

Until now.

If anyone could get them out of the jungle alive, it would be Knox.

Knox maskedhis limp as best as he could while leading the trio through the jungle. Confidence was key. Moral saved lives. He didn’t want Amy and Lorna to know just how much pain he was in or how damn hard walking through the mud was becoming.

Pain was a near-constant companion since the crash. The weather made his wrist and ankle stiff, achy. The headache was the worst though. Taking pain relievers would dull his senses, so he wouldn’t take one of the so-called magic pills tucked inside his rucksack. It was meant for emergencies. To Knox, that meant a step away from death. There were two. One for the initial shock and the second to help himmake it to a doctor or hospital or give him time for someone to get to him.

Amy stopped, dropped down to her knees. “I can’t keep going.”

Even muddy and soaked, she’d grown into something beautiful. No, beautiful was too simple a word for the woman. She’d robbed his breath the second she emerged from the trees half an hour ago. He tried to convince himself that his pulse pounded every time he looked at her because of the rescue and not because she had an impact on him like no one else. Amy’s physical beauty was beyond beautiful, but there was something about her presence that drew him in, made him want to get to know her again.

The rain swept over and through, easing in this area. The torrential downpour was like the stomach flu, it hit fast and hard. The good news was that it was moving on quickly. In the jungle, you never knew how long a downpour like this would stick around. If Knox believed in luck, he’d say they were lucky.

Pinching her side, Amy looked up at him. An apology was written all over her face.

“How long since you hydrated?” he asked, dropping his rucksack off his shoulder and kneeling beside it. Lorna had dropped down too, wrappingher arm around Amy. Her friend had lost all color, except for her lips, which were blue.

Amy shook her head and shrugged. She motioned toward her camera. “This is all I had, because it was hanging around my neck when the men found us. I didn’t trust drinking from the river.” She held out her tongue, trying to catch raindrops.

“Good move,” he said as he pulled a small bottle of water from his rucksack. He added a hydration powder like the over-the-counter one runners used. His powder was that on steroids. He poured the contents of the orange packet into the bottle, replaced the cap, and shook before handing over the bottle.

Amy thanked him, took the offering, and attempted to open the bottle. She couldn’t. That wasn’t a good sign. Her physical strength was drained. She needed rest. Under normal circumstances, he would toss her over his shoulder fireman style to keep going, but his ankle wouldn’t be able to take the extra weight and he’d lost track of their location during the run.

“We can’t leave Donnie,” Lorna said, crumpling beside her friend like air being let out of a balloon.

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