Dangerous to Hold Read Online Free Page B

powerful men on the Hill. According to Adam, the senator had already heard through his own intelligence sources about the rebel raid and had pieced together enough to know that the U.S. had some involvement or interest in the action. He didn’t want any damn details, Chandler had informed the president. He only wanted assurances that his daughter was safe.
    There wasn’t any way the president could give Senator Chandler those assurances, Maggie thought grimly.
    Not yet.
    Tucking the sweep of her hair behind her left ear, she reclaimed her seat at the command console. “Okay, Joe, let’s get back to work.”
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    Despite his years in the jungle, Jake had never become accustomed to its lightninglike transitions from light to dark. In the evening, there was no dusk. Just a sudden graying of the air, then a blackness so swift and intense he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
    Dawn sliced through the canopy of fig and mahogany trees with the same startling speed. One minute he was stumbling along the narrow trail, straining to see the faint moving shadows of the men in front of him with the aid of the low-light goggles. The next minute those shadows had taken on context and contrast and the goggles instantly became superfluous.
    Or at least that was the way it usually worked.
    This morning, however, the figure directly in front of him refused to take shape. Jake shook his head, unable to appreciate the dedication that would lead someone to don a heavy,shapeless black robe in the oppressive heat of the jungle. His own khaki shirt already clung to him like a second skin, and the sun had only been up a few minutes. His jaw tight, he watched the woman lift her arm to wipe her face with a corner of a voluminous sleeve. She had small hands, he noted. Small and fine-boned, with short, blunt nails and work-roughened skin.
    Frowning, he moved up alongside her. “That habit may have saved your life last night, but it’s the worst possible getup for this climate. Your superiors ought to have more sense than to send you sisters into the interior wearing something like that.”
    She looked up at him then, and Jake saw her face for the first time in daylight. Framed by the limp white wimple and black veil, it was a composite of high cheekbones, an aristocratic little nose and a firm, pointed chin. Dirt streaked her forehead. Sweat and the pallor of exhaustion filmed her skin. But nothing could dull the impact of the most stunning eyes Jake had ever seen. Wide and luminous and a clear, translucent aquamarine in color, they shimmered like jewels in the morning light. They also, Jake noted, raked him with undisguised scorn.
    â€œI wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand matters of the cloth, Mr…. Mr….”
    â€œYou’d better just call me ‘gringo,”’ Jake replied, recovering slowly.
    She turned away, declining to call him anything at all.
    He fell back into line behind her. Jake swore under his breath, slowly, savagely. The beads of sweat clinging to his cheeks suddenly felt clammy. All hell was going to break loose when the men with him got a good look at the woman they’d taken.
    It was too late now to even think about taking out the patrol strung out ahead of and behind them. They were within a mile of the camp. The intrusion-detection devices that ringed the hideaway had signaled their arrival for the past half hour. If gunfire broke out now, the rest of the rebels would be on thescene before he had the exhausted woman and her charges halfway back down the winding mountain trail they’d spent the past five hours trudging up.
    His mouth grim, Jake reviewed his options.
    He had only one, he decided as the narrow trail suddenly emerged from the tall, heavy forest into a debris-strewn clearing. He’d have to bluff it out.
    The rebel camp sat high in the foothills of the Teleran Mountains, a line of jagged peaks extending from the Canadian Rockies