followed by an armed guard who stopped in the doorway.
He held the water to Camille’s lips. She turned away, not about to let it pollute her body. The man chased her mouth with the bottle and nudged at her closed lips a few times. Poking her with a spoonful of rice, he shouted in Spanish and gestured to the window. When she didn’t relent, he moved to Aaron, who also refused. Only two minutes after arriving, the man and his guard left.
“Wish I’d paid more attention in my high school Spanish classes,” she grumbled.
“He said this is your last chance for food until he returns tomorrow morning. And that you would be stupid to refuse.”
Of course the Golden Boy spoke fluent Spanish. But she had to admit, the skill might come in handy when they escaped. And they would escape, she thought as she wiggled her wrists, teasing the rope against the barb.
Hours later, long after the room had gone dark and Aaron was only an outline as he sat in silence a few feet away, Camille felt the rope finally give. Her hands bore the evidence of her effort with countless scrapes and puncture wounds from the rusty barb. Thank goodness she kept up with her tetanus shot.
Once free, she bent to work on the ropes binding her feet.
“What the …?” Aaron said.
“Those idiots shouldn’t have used such old chairs. Mine had a sharp edge perfect for sawing rope.”
“Good thing, too, because the clock’s ticking, Blondie. We don’t have time—”
Camille’s first order of business as an escapee was to make one minor but vital point with Aaron. “Let’s get something straight—don’t ever call me Blondie again. Or Sweetie or Doll or any of those derogatory nicknames you’re so fond of. I hate it. Understood?”
“Okay, I got it.”
Satisfied, Camille began untying the rope around Aaron’s wrists.
“Like I was saying,” he continued, “we don’t have much time before frog man and his bodyguard bring us breakfast at gunpoint.”
Camille looked out the window at the first glow of predawn. If they were lucky, they had maybe an hour or two to devise a plan. “As far as weapons go, we’ve got this rope and these chairs, but that’s not enough. I’ve got another idea, but it’ll take some time to prep.”
“Care to explain?”
“Not yet.” What she had in mind would open her up to all kinds of ridicule, so she decided to keep mum until she was certain it would work. While Aaron freed his legs from the chair, Camille slipped to the darkest corner of the room and took off her bra.
Aaron’s heart pounded so loudly, he was surprised Camille couldn’t hear it. Without weapons to defend themselves, they were as good as dead. And what weapon could they find in this room that would be any match for automatic rifles?
The chairs were too ungainly. The guard would have plenty of time to react if he saw a twenty-pound metal chair coming at him. He tested the individual spokes and chair legs, hoping to break one off and use it as a club or knife, but no such luck. He could wield a shard of glass from the window, but if anyone were in the courtyard, they would hear it break.
“Camille, I’m running out of ideas.” He glanced in her direction.
What he saw was so at odds with what he expected that words died in his throat. Trying to ignore the taut points of her nipples beneath her thin white camisole, he watched her bite a hole in the beige bra she held.
“You got a weapon stashed in there or something?”
She ignored him and pulled a long, thin wire from inside the bra cup, then snapped it in half. “Bet you didn’t know underwire is flat like a screwdriver.”
“No, can’t say I’ve thought much about bras except how to get them off as quickly as possible.”
Rolling her eyes, she turned away and put her bra on. Still confused, Aaron gaped at her back. Once she’d righted her clothes, she knelt before the door that led outside. Using the blunt end of the underwire, she loosened the doorknob’s screws.
“Throwing a doorknob at them is better than nothing, but hardly game changing, MacGyver.”
She glanced sideways at him. “You’re a dense man. We’ve been over this already. I hate nicknames. Take off one of your socks so we can put the doorknob in it. We can do serious damage to someone’s head that way.”
Aaron grinned, genuinely impressed. Even so, he couldn’t stem the urge to tease her. “I didn’t think a chick would be so handy to have around.”
She jumped to her feet and rushed him. With fiery eyes, she poked him hard in the chest and waved the underwire beneath his nose. “You ought to show more respect to the person who’s saving your life.” She poked him again. “I’m not one of those helpless cupcakes you waste your time with. I graduated head of my class at the police academy and was the first female Special Forces Officer in San Diego. Those sons of bitches have no idea what a mistake they made messing with me.”
Aaron held up his hands in surrender. The gesture lost significance by the fact that he was chuckling. For some sick and twisted reason he didn’t care to analyze, he liked her when she was all riled up this way. “Cupcakes?”
Camille snorted and went back to work on the doorknob screws. “Yeah, well, that’s what they look like to me with their poofy hair and fake nails and fluffy clothes—little pink frosted cupcakes with sprinkles. Completely free of substance.”
Aaron gawked at her. Not for the first time since their ordeal began, she’d rendered him speechless.
She was right. Most of the women he knew were a bunch of cupcakes compared to her, a woman so self-sufficient and physically capable that she was the one planning to save his life. She was the one fashioning tools out of her bra and improvising weaponry. He supposed he hadn’t noticed sooner because they’d never been in a clinch situation before, but the lady was a badass.
He was fascinated … and irritated as hell to realize it.
Well, he had no intention of standing around and letting Camille be the only hero. While she finessed the external doorknob to stay in place, he removed his sock, slid the interior knob inside and took a few practice swings. As far as bludgeons went, this one would do nicely.
“The guard’ll have a gun, so the trick will be to catch him unaware,” he deliberated.
Camille stood and adjusted her skirt. “I thought of that, too. That’s where our rope will come in handy.”
Their animosity forgotten, they scooted their chairs together and hashed out a plan. Stripped of sarcasm and defensiveness, Aaron was surprised by how similarly their minds worked. Within minutes, they knew how to proceed and the role each would play.
They took positions on either side of the hallway door and waited. Feeling more confident than he had since being taken hostage, he smiled at Camille, who responded with a sly grin of her own.
In the two years he’d known her, this was the first time he’d ever seen her smile. He liked the effect it had on her features. It didn’t
