Just a Kiss Away by Jill Barnett Page A

waiting for. The camp would be disrupted for only about ten minutes. Then Luna and the escort would be gone and the guards would watch him even more closely, not wanting to risk the loss of their prisoner while their commander was gone. If that happened, heads would roll.
    But that wasn’t Sam’s problem; escaping was. He shook off the ropes and pulled his dagger from inside the top of his boot. He sawed a U-shaped opening large enough to crawl through in the corner of the hut, and slowly pushed open the cut section. As it opened, he bent so he could see outside.
    There were five other huts in view, which meant five huts could clearly see the back of this one. That was a problem and a hindrance to his escape. But it was also a challenge. Suddenly his bruised body didn’t ache so much. His fingers were able to move freely; his expression came to life. Sam needed this.
    The area in back of the hut was clear. Ignoring his bruised ribs and sore hands, he crawled through the opening. Crouched, he quickly replaced the section of grass wall so the hole was undetectable. He crept along the back of the hut, pausing when he reached the corner.
    An alert guard stood by the door. He’d play hell getting by that one. The man had that zealous-guard stance. To Sam’s right was a wide open space, then another hut. Laughter echoed from inside along with the smell of food. It was the mess hut. Damn. The busiest place in a camp. Quickly he moved back to the other corner. The coast was clear. He rounded it and moved along that side of the hut. A thick copse of banyan trees stood about fifty yards away to the south, protected by two rows of looped barbed wire. He heard footsteps. They came from in back of the hut.
    Sam took off at a full run, jumped the wire, once, then twice. His feet hit the ground, jarring his aching ribs so hard that he lost his wind. The second he felt the cool shadow of the trees he dove for the ground, gasping for air and rolling into the damp, yard-high guinea grass that grew beneath. He lay as still as stone, his ribs aching like the very devil and his breath coming in shallow pants, which he fought to keep silent.
    The men stopped about ten yards away. The fetid scent of the oozing wet ground hit his nose. He waited. They moved on. Slowly he got to his knees, moving in a crouch toward the riverbank that bordered the encampment. Time was running out. His mental clock ticked. Soon they’d discover he was gone.
    Reaching the bank, he belly-slid down into a blanket of deep green lotus pads that floated on the murky river water. He made his way along the mangroves lining the bank, moving beneath the thick acrid-smelling branches that hid him from view. The racket of a steam pump chugged and clattered in the air.
    He stopped. A boat was close by. The river narrowed and turned; the mangroves stopped. Someone had cleared this section of the bank. Sam moved away from the bank, out to a thick stand of water bamboo—a new source of cover. His head was the only part of him above water, and it was obscured by the thick swamp reeds.
    Here the width of the river almost doubled, forming an inlet where a long, gray-weathered wooden dock stood on bundled bamboo piers tinged green with river slime. A faded green and white river trawler sat on the north side of the pier, and fatigue-clad soldiers milled about the dock and decks, some on guard and others readying the boat to cast off. White steam spit a cloud into the already wet air, and the clunk, chug, and clatter of the steam engine drowned out any conversation Sam might have overheard.
    Fully loaded, the boat had a conglomeration of splintered wooden crates and gray, rust-banded barrels along the port side. Once black, but now half red with the ever-prevalent rust of the tropics, the steam engine rose from the middle of the ancient river trawler. Next to the rusty boiler, a palm frond canopy served as a roof for the small pilot wheel.
    Huddled around the open bow of the boat like