Working together, they managed to get a decent coverage over the car after about twenty minutes, and the two wandered away and into the foothills, physically exhausted. Marcus had the gun and the clip.

They walked away from the disabled Fiat, Tia checking Marcus’s spare backup phone they grabbed from the house before leaving. “Oh, Marcus, I am dead on my feet. Can we stop and rest somewhere?”

He glanced around. “We probably should stay out of sight for a little while anyway. Over there.” Marcus took Tia’s hand and led her to a nearby field, another big, knotty tree ready to provide some cover, some shade, perhaps some rest.

The grass was soft beneath her legs, Marcus’s strong arms wrapped around her, as she leaned into him with a tired sigh.

“You don’t know any…fixers or anything you could call?”

“Nobody who could get here in time.”

They sat for a quiet moment, an Ecuadorian hillstar bird singing in the tree above them. Marcus glanced up at the branches. “Think he’ll give us away?”

“You think they’ll be out there looking for us?”

He gave it some thought, leaning back and taking a deep, considered breath. The Cobra in his hand sat idyl but lethal and ready to protect them both to the death if necessary— when necessary. “Hard to say who they are, much less what they’ll do. We’ll just have to hope luck is with us.”

“You know,” Tia said, not sure how to frame her words, “I’m glad. I mean, I’m not glad we’re being chased like this, but…I’m glad we found each other again. I don’t regret it, not any of it. And, well, if we don’t make it out of Ecuador, I just want you to know that…I love you, Marcus Pike, with all my heart and all my soul. I love you, I always have and I always will.”

Marcus kissed her, a strong but gentle touch of his lips against hers, their warm breath gathering between them. “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past. I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.”

Tia smiled to recognize the sonnet, another of Shakespeare’s, always Marcus’s favorite. The other had been their favorite, but this one seemed more than appropriate, the words ringing with a truth she could only then recognize.

“Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, for precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, and weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, and moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.”

But she herself took up the next line, the affection she’d fostered for the great writer yet another gift from the great man himself. “Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, and heavily from woe to woe tell o’er the sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, which I new pay as if not paid before.”

He joined her on the last line, their two weary voices joined in a fragile unison. “But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restor’d and sorrows end.”

But the crackling sound of footprints grabbed their attention, Marcus turning and aiming the handgun.

“¿Qué haces en mi propiedad?”

Marcus answered, “Por favor, disculpen, somos estadounidenses, perdidos y cansados. No queremos hacerle ningún daño.”

“¿Estás a pie? ¿Sin carro?”

“Se rompió.”

It had been more than a few years since Tia’s high school Spanish classes, but she recognized enough of the conversation to understand it: Marcus explained that they were Americans stranded without a car.

The man approached, lowering his rifle as Marcus lowered his handgun. The old dark-skinned man, obviously a local, was dressed in filthy overalls and a work shirt, obviously a farmer.

“Por qué no vuelves a la casa, te daremos algo de comer, un lugar para descansar.”

Marcus nodded and pushed Tia a bit, gently goading her to her feet. “Sí, señor, gracias.”

The farmer turned to lead them across the field toward a little house on the other side of the property.

* * *

Back at the farmer’s homestead, they all sat around the quaint kitchen table. The empanadas were airy and delicious, with flaky and tender crust filled with melted cheeses, meats and eggs, and dried fruits. The farmer was quiet and grim-faced, but his daughter introduced him as Jesse Guapo and herself as Maria and seemed to be in her early teens. Tia was relieved that she spoke fluid English so she could spend more time enjoying the food and less time interpreting the conversation.

“My father refuses to learn English,” she said. She was short and round with big brown eyes and dark skin and an eager smile. “You may be lucky he didn’t shoot you just because you’re Americans!”

It was meant to be a joke, but Tia found it hard to laugh, for a variety of reasons. “He wouldn’t be the only one,” was all she could think to say.

The old man was glaring at their hands, and it didn’t take Tia long to realize what he was looking for and failing to find. Young Maria seemed to know it too.

“You’re not married?”

Tia broke out with a surprised chuckle, even though she’d seen the question written all over the old man’s face, or rather, a declaration.

Tia held up her hand, diamond ring gleaming. “Engaged.”

Tia looked at him, their two hosts examining them in an antiquated stillness, centuries of tradition glaring down at the casual swagger of the modern world.

But a hard knock fell on the door, grabbing everyone’s attention, the cozy stillness shattered, lives about to split apart.