Minutes to Burn

Floreana groaned, lacing her hands dramatically around her belly, as if carrying a load of laundry. She stood, arching forward to stretch her back. When she saw the expression on Cameron's face, her smile van-ished. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Cameron shook her head. "I'm sorry to alarm you." She looked down at her boots, her men's size-ten feet. "As if you don't have enough on your mind right now."

"What?" Ramon asked. His thumb twitched against the scar of his index finger.

"Well, that thing you talked about, whatever it was, it may have killed one of our men. I'm just concerned… I'm concerned if it comes near here that you… the baby…I don't know." Cameron's face was flushed, though she had no idea why. She fought to keep the softness of her emotions from seeping into her voice. "I would stay here myself to stand guard, but I can't. It would be breaking orders."

Ramon smiled at her affectionately, and Cameron realized how fool-ish she must sound to this kind, simple man-a woman offering to pro-tect his house.

"We'll be all right," Ramon said. "Though I thank you."

"For what?" Cameron asked.

Floreana stepped forward, resting her hands on Cameron's shoulders. "For your thoughts," she said. "For your kind eyes."

Cameron looked down. She twisted her boot on the dirt ground, leaving the imprint of a fan.

"You are not like most of the others, you know," Floreana said, tilting her head in the direction of the soldiers' base camp. "We have watched them, joking and planning and quarreling." She shook her head. "You are not like them."

The urge to respond defensively rose in Cameron's throat-just as quickly, it quelled. "Why?" She surprised herself. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes felt loose, as if they were slipping in their sockets.

Floreana raised a hand, laying it gently on Cameron's cheek. Cameron had not been touched like that by anyone except Justin since childhood. She felt suddenly young and naive, powerless. "You have so much to give," Floreana said.

Cameron raised a hand, gripping Floreana around the wrist and pulling her arm away. She smiled once, curtly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm…not used to… " She studied the small fireplace, feeling Ramon's and Floreana's eyes on her.

She turned to leave, then stopped herself. Slowly, she raised her head, again meeting Floreana's eyes. She saw her own trembling hand pointing at Floreana's stomach. "May I?" she asked.

Floreana nodded. "Of course."

Cameron reached out and laid her hand across Floreana's full belly. Her knees felt weak, on the verge of buckling, so she sank down, planting them on the dirt floor. Floreana pulled the blunted edge of Cameron's hair off her cheek and drew her softly toward her stomach. Cameron turned her head, resting her ear flat against the globe of Flore-ana's belly.

She closed her eyes and listened.

Chapter 44

Savage was back in the forest. Sometimes he felt he belonged there- that was his curse and his blessing. A kid from the bad side of Pitts-burgh, a city of smokestacks, drab concrete, and cigarette butts in gutters, and yet he'd spent more time than he'd care to remember sur-rounded by nothing but fronds and trees and things that went hiss in the night.

Slung low in the fork of a tree as if awaiting prey, body streaked with dried mud and grime, eyes beading white behind a mask of filth and the dusty tinge of a wild man's beard, Savage cocked his head and listened for the faintest sound. Camouflaged with mud, he blended into the branch, coiled along its length like an anaconda. He dropped from the tree and stepped into the hunt.

Stalking through the wilderness, hunting and being hunted, it made his balls tighten with the thrill. He could still remember the way it felt when he belly-crawled up behind a cluster of gooks on a stakeout, stood with his M-60 hammering in his arms like a living thing before they could even turn around. Like he'd shattered the third plate with as many baseballs and won the fuckin' Kewpie doll.

He was shirtless, streaked with mud and rain and sweat. He moved effortlessly, picking through the terrain like a native thing, whistling behind tree trunks, easing through underbrush, flowing through show-ers of vines so precisely that he blended with their movement.

Using no compass, he navigated through the darkness, feeling the plants wet against his face. He paused about a half mile from the spot where the creature had struck, pulling the Death Wind from his ankle sheath. He flexed his arm, curling his fist to his chin, and made an inci-sion along the backside of his forearm. It was not deep; it would let blood, but not too much blood, and it would heal quickly.

Turning his face up so the rain fell across his cheeks, he exhaled deeply, the noise whisked away in the wind, then continued through the mud and the leaves.