Volcano by Patricia Rice

She still wasn’t getting out.
    She sat stonily with arms crossed as Charlie and Monica held a hurried discussion in patois. The woman looked angry and frightened as Charlie talked. Anger apparently won out. She gesticulated and replied furiously, scaring the goat into the jungle and the rooster into hiding under the porch. More than once she pointed up the mountain, until Penelope feared she was telling Charlie they had to travel even farther up the treacherous road. She would climb out and hike back to civilization, if that was the case.
    Finally, after another round of hugs, Charlie waved farewell and loped back toward the jeep. Penelope didn’t want anything to do with the deceitful bastard, but she couldn’t help noticing the worried frown between his thick eyebrows. If she were the imaginative type, she’d think she read real anxiety in the tightening of his unshaven jaw as he started the jeep again. But she wasn’t imaginative. She wasn’t even curious. She would simply sit here until he put her out.
    He threw her a quick look as he shifted the jeep into reverse and swung it around to head back down the mountain.
    â€œI always thought women talked too much. Can I count on the silent treatment lasting much longer?”
    She hadn’t thought he’d even noticed. “Far be it from me to intrude upon your weighty conversation with yourself. Just consider me part of the hardware.”
    He snorted and turned his attention back to the road. “The hardware I know about has a useful function. Other than looking good, what’s yours?”
    He couldn’t have found a better means of slapping her. All her life she’d worked toward being something more functional than a pretty face on a magazine cover. She scorned men who wanted to use her as a trophy piece on their arms. She shoved her brains and knowledge into every conceivable corner of her life until people expected her to have all the answers. And now this muscle-bound punk was comparing her to a hood ornament.
    â€œI don’t pack picnic lunches and flirt with the natives, if that’s your meaning,” she replied stiffly.
    â€œAll right, you don’t cook and you don’t sew. So what else can you do? You can talk, can’t you? Or must we discuss the theory of relativity before you unbend?”
    Penelope cast him a curious glance but she couldn’t tell anything from his square jaw. “You want me to ask questions?” she asked incredulously.
    â€œYeah. I’m used to women chattering. Makes me nervous when they shut up.”
    â€œIt makes you nervous when they shut up,” she repeated flatly. “We’re running from a murderer, driving like maniacs on roads that could collapse if a bird lands on them, and my silence makes you nervous. Forgive me if I don’t laugh.”
    â€œLook, I didn’t mean to drag you into this, all right? I thought I’d just get in and out with nobody the wiser. I haven’t been back here in ten years. Nobody should have recognized me. There’s something going on here that I can’t explain. But I have to find Raul. You wouldn’t leave your sister if she were in trouble, would you?”
    â€œI have left my sister and she’s in trouble,” Penelope asserted. “That’s why I have to get back as soon as possible. That’s why this job is so blamed important to me. And you’ve gone and ruined everything. What makes your plans more important than mine?” Because she couldn’t hold out any longer, she added, “And who the devil is Raul?”
    He shoved his hand through windblown hair and gave her a suspicious look. Apparently losing some internal argument, he explained. “I own a construction business and Raul’s my foreman. He’s disappeared with the project funds. Maybe he just got drunk and wandered off, but I have to know .”
    He didn’t explain further but threw her an