Abdullah considered that, turning from the man as he recognized the validity of the man’s point. “But you don’t just pick them up as if they were stray dogs. You saw how well Manuel did with the mission compound. How can you possibly—”

A rap suddenly sounded on the door and Ramón opened it.

Manual stood, winded and breathing hard. “We have spotted them, sir. Two men and a woman.”

“Good!” Ramón said. “Take them with the tranquilizers.”

Manuel turned to leave. “And Manuel,” Abdullah said. “If you let these three escape again, you will die. Do you understand?”

The guard stared wide-eyed for a moment and then dipped his head.

CASIUS LED them through the jungle at a punishing pace. To make a statement, Sherry thought. The statement that he wanted to leave her and her big mouth for the animals. They moved steadily through the trees, down one slope, over the next, up a cliff, through a creek, only to begin the cycle again.

The man dragging her through the brush was a killer many times over, that much was now painfully obvious. Like the men who had killed her parents. Killers for some abstract cause, ignoring the simple fact that for every one they killed, someone else was sentenced to live with that death. A brother, a sister, a wife, a child. No telling how many nightmares Casius had spawned in his years. She detested the man.

On the other hand, he had saved her life. And every time he spoke she found herself chasing away an absurd sentimentality. As if he were her guardian.

God forbid.

But true enough. It was why she had become so angry at him, she decided. It was as if her parents’ killer had stepped out of her nightmares and come to save her with a flashing smile. One last twist of the knife.

The muscles in his calves balled and flexed with each stride. His bare feet moved effortlessly over the forest floor. Sweat glistened on his broad shoulders. At one point she found herself wondering what it would feel like to run a finger over such insanely massive muscle. She quickly dismissed the thought.

Father Petrus took up the rear, and Sherry thought about his suggestion that she was now on God’s path, waiting for God to reveal truth as he saw fit. And if so, then this man was also a part of God’s grand plan. Maybe somehow connected to the vision. Yes, the vision that came around each night like the falling of a pole-driver. That mushroom growing huge, night after night.

Casius had paused three times in the last fifteen minutes, surveying the land ahead carefully. Now he stopped a fourth time and raised his hand for silence.

A flock of parrots squawked into flight above them. Sherry held a hand to her chest, feeling her thumping heart beneath her fingers. “What is it?” she whispered.