Page 5 of The Forgotten Wife

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

Father Tom, looking a lot less pale than he had a few hours ago, answered. “We heard the soldiers talking—luckily, they spoke French so I got the gist of it. They’re moving us to another location at sundown. As soon as the boss returns from wherever he’s gone. He disappeared into the jungle an hour ago.”

So she’d been right. This wasn’t Mwana’s permanent bolthole. The new information struck a fresh chord of fear in her heart.

She was still praying she was wrong, that they wouldn’t be moved, when Charles Mwana returned and summoned them. He clutched a satellite phone and used it several times before they left the small camp. During his last call, his eyes strayed to her enough times to make alarm skate over her.

That he possessed such advanced technology didn’t surprise her. But had the leader discovered who she really was? The rebels had her passport, along with everyone else’s, but although she’d never gotten round to changing her name, it would only take a couple of calls to learn her true identity.

If he found out who she was, her ransom value would increase a thousand-fold. Provided he intended to keep her for her ransom.

Mwana led the group through dense underbrush for over an hour. Sharp leaves and thorny branches whipped at her face and tore at her clothes, while terrifying questions ricocheted through her mind.

She jerked to a stop as the thick foliage ended abruptly, and a steep cliff rose before them. Terror froze her blood, until his sharp bark jolted her into movement.

Try as she might not to imagine why he’d brought her here, she couldn’t prevent horrific scenarios from invading her thoughts.

She jumped again when he rapped the butt of his gun against the cliff face. But the sound was hollow, and on closer examination, she realized a large block of wood, coloured to blend in with the rock, had been wedged into a hole, with the natural camouflage of foliage cleverly maneuverer to hide the opening.

There was an exchange of words as Captain Mwana spoke to whomever was behind the wall. Then the heavy wood was lifted away.

She could see nothing but a dark cavern as the soldier stood back to let them enter. Renewed dread paralyzed her legs.

“Enter, please,” Mwana said from beside her. The sound propelled her forward, the fear of being struck momentarily swamping the fear of whatever lay ahead of her.

Muttering a silent prayer, she took one step. And another. Until she was just inside the cave door.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she looked around. The cavern was a camp of sorts. Thin blankets were strewn about on the ground, and on a small camp stove, a pot of what smelled like the locally grown tea was brewing. Here and there, rust-coated kerosene lanterns burned but provided little illumination. She saw the rebels she’d noticed leaving earlier moving around within.

Relief eased down her spine. So she wasn’t about to be shot and left in the cave to rot. A hand at the small of her back shoved her toward the far end of cave. Here blankets had been laid side-by-side but set apart from the area where the rebels were camped.

Her heart plummeted.

Far from being rescued or set free, as Father Tom had wistfully foreseen, it seemed they were bedding down for the long haul. Because surely if the rebels had gone to the trouble of providing shelter for them, then they didn’t plan on setting them free anytime soon.

She stared at the bedding…counted the places…

And rounded on Mwana. “Why are there only three beds?” It wasn’t a simple matter of insufficient bedding, because a stack of blankets stood next to the opposite cave wall.

“Because you, Miss Jones, will sleep elsewhere. Somewhere more comfortable.”

A dark premonition iced up her veins. “Where?”

For a moment he didn’t answer, and in the dim light of the cave, his eyes travelled from the top of her head and past her shoulders to her breasts, where he paused for a moment before moving down to her grimy, ripped, almost blackened linen trousers, to her severely tattered sandals and back up again.

With his lazy scrutiny, she knew exactly why there were only three beds on this side of the cave. His next words confirmed it.

“You sleep over there.” With his gun, he indicated a smaller cavern lit by a dim lamp and concealed by a soiled, torn, makeshift curtain, which she hadn’t noticed before. “With me.”

CHAPTER 2

Five days! She’d been missing for a total of five days!

Nick Andreakos recalled every second of the conversation with his head of security and the interminable phone calls that had followed, even now, forty-eight hours later. The longest forty-eight hours of his life, during which every subsequent report received from Jameson, his head of security, had brought worse news.

He raked a hand through his hair, his shoulders tense as he braced himself against the reinforced steel door of the cargo plane he’d hitched a ride on to keep from being thrown by the turbulence.

He looked around at the other occupants of the plane—seven men in all. Highly trained, highly expensive mercenaries. Men he wouldn’t normally interact with in his role as CEO of Andreakos Shipping, a conglomerate that spanned the globe and held a market position that made financial analysts drool.

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