Dangerous to Hold by Merline Lovelace Page B

watching. Close watching.
    Jake shepherded the sister back toward the children. “I think we need to review a few of the ground rules here, SisterSar—” He stopped himself, remembering her objection to the way he said her name.
    She waved an impatient hand. “Oh, just call me Sarah. It’s…it’s permitted in most orders now, you know.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t know.”
    Jake frowned, not at all sure he wanted to drop her title. He hadn’t realized that he’d been so patronizing when he used it, but at least it had kept a nice, neat barrier between them. Sarah sounded far too…human.
    â€œWhy don’t you just join the kids by the stream?” he suggested curtly, uncomfortable with this business of names. “I’ll go see if I can find something other than beans for lunch.”
    He recrossed the clearing some time later, juggling two cans of tuna fish that had cost him an infrared starlight rifle scope. The scope’s loss wasn’t critical, since Jake had another that slid onto the special grooves in the barrel of his .45. With a little modification to the mounting, it could be fitted to the automatic rifle, as well. Still, he was running through his equipment at almost as fast a clip as Sis—as Sarah was running through his personal possessions.
    He tossed a can in the air, then almost missed catching it as he halted in midstride. Eyes narrowed, Jake searched the shadowed spot beside the stream where he’d left his charges. They weren’t there.
    Spinning on his heel, he strode to the hut and yanked open the door. Even before his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior, Jake knew they weren’t inside. No little girl’s giggles echoed in the silence. No little boy demanded that Sarita take him in her lap. Tossing the cans aside, Jake grabbed his automatic rifle. In a movement so swift and instinctive it took less than three seconds, he pressed the magazine release, checked that the clip carried a full compliment, then snapped it back in place. Jaw clenched, he headed back out the door.
    He hadn’t heard any screams. There hadn’t been shouts. Any muted laughter or disturbance among the men. A swift, gut-wrenching fear rose in him that Sarah had decided to carry her unexpected streak of independence to the extreme. Despitehis warnings, she might have taken the children and tried to slip out of camp. It would be easy enough. The rebels didn’t mount much of a guard. They didn’t need to. One of the skills Jake had “sold” them was how to arm the ultrasensitive intrusion detection devices that now ringed the camp’s perimeter. The motion sensors concealed tiny built-in computers that differentiated between sizes and shapes and body heat. Small animals wouldn’t set the sensors off, but humans would. Even humans as slender and slight as Sarah….
    A cold sweat chilled Jake’s body. If detonated, those devices wouldn’t leave a whole lot of Sarah and the children for the jungle scavengers to feast on. He cursed silently, savagely. He shouldn’t have left them alone. Even for a second. He shouldn’t have—
    â€œSeñor Creighton! Señor Creighton!”
    At the sound of Teresa’s high-pitched shriek, Jake dropped into a crouch and whirled. The scampering girl stumbled to a halt a few paces away, her mouth dropping at the sight of the gun leveled at her. A short distance behind her, three other faces registered varying degrees of surprise and shock.
    Jake’s breath hissed out. He raised the barrel skyward and straightened slowly. His eyes blazed at Sarah, searing her small, delicate face, her incredible eyes, her high cheeks and full, pink lips, into his mind, to replace the image that had knotted his stomach just moments before.
    â€œWhere the—?” He bit off the blistering words he would’ve used with any other person in similar circumstances and tried again,