“Mr. Mann,” the general said with a long-suffering sigh. “As it seems you’re not paying attention anyway, perhaps it’s time for a break. Take a walk, soldier. Clear your head and be back here in ten, ready to concentrate. If that’s even remotely possible. Dismissed!”

Taylor flushed. “I... uh, sorry, General.” Taylor nodded to the rest of the men and women in the room. He slipped out, hearing his boss ask the general a question about lunch. Maybe he had been a little distracted. But being told this morning in no uncertain terms that he was taking his vacation time or else at the end of this assignment had created a bit of distraction. Fantasizing about a certain brown-haired beauty, maybe some time on the beach....

Yeah, this long-distance relationship thing wasn’t really working.

With a glance at the time to mark when he needed to be back, Taylor grabbed his phone and jabbed the screen with his finger.

“Hello?” He pictured her, probably on her rounds. Scrubs and stethoscope. Half-distracted from the sound of things. Her voice ripening into an absolute pleasure when she connected the unfamiliar number of his new phone with him.

“Taylor!”

“Angelica! Hey! I’m still coming to see you when this assignment is over. Are you ready for a week on a beach? Maybe two? If your new clinic will allow it.”

There was a long pause. Too long. How much time had passed since he’d called her? Since she’d emailed him? Suddenly, he felt unsure. A knot formed in his throat. He ran a hand through his hair, leaning hard on the wall behind him, half bent over while he strained to hear everything she wasn’t saying in those shaky breaths.

“Um... maybe we should think about a working vacation.”

Her voice was hesitant. Unsure.

“I’ve been working for two weeks. We’re still trying to find Griselda.” Maybe he shouldn’t have snapped. He regretted his tone the moment she responded, her tone detached. Clinical.

“I wouldn’t think that a woman in her physical condition would last long in the jungle alone.”

“Is that your professional assessment, Doctor?” He strove to make his tone light. To take back the conversation in the seven minutes he had left. To restore what his insecurity seemed bent on destroying.

“Don’t get snotty, pussycat.”

He smiled, relieved that she seemed willing to forgive. To play along. “Ouch. I wouldn’t put anything past that one. She shouldn’t have disappeared in the explosion either, but until there’s a body there’s no proof. So, I’ve been busy.”

There seemed to be no response for that. He’d backed the conversation into a corner and was just opening his mouth to ask how she was, how she really was, when she spoke again, her voice all in a rush, like she was half-afraid to say what she was thinking.

“Taylor, do you remember at Enrique’s wedding? When her father talked about that legend of the boy who...”

“Turned into a jaguar. Yeah. I remember.” He frowned, not sure where this was going.

Another pause. Too long. “I have a lion, Taylor.”

Her words were rushed, tumbling over one another in her haste to get them out. For a moment he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“She’s fourteen. You didn’t get my email, then?”

He knew that sound. Whenever Angelica got her hooks into something she made that incredulous sound that made him feel like he wasn’t paying attention in school. He was back on shaky ground. “Seen what? I have a three-star general in a room telling me why I might not have a job next year and the only solution is to get funding. Which, I can tell you, isn’t particularly ethical. Never mind legal; we passed that exit hours ago!”

“I sent you a video, you need to see it.”

“I don’t have time for something you chased down on YouTube...”

“Taylor! Make! The! Time! NOW!”

Taylor growled and swore. Years as a field agent undercover in drug cartels had given him several colorful options. He glanced at the closed door and flipped through the phone until he found the email she’d sent. A movie, not a link like he’d expected. It opened on a medical room and this young... girl? She’d said she was fourteen? He restarted the movie; he couldn’t make it out. Even then, he couldn’t fixate on what he was seeing and time was already up. He sighed and leaned against the door, glancing at the phone, knowing that in a minute a general and a whole lot of brass were going to go on a hunt for him, and it wasn’t going to end pretty.

Then the image stabilized.

Holy shit.

Taylor shot upright. He replayed a section. Then he replayed it all.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course.” Angelica said. “Charra is a very sweet young lady. I would like you to meet her.”

“I... meet? I can’t. I’m getting my ass handed to me here, I can’t just...”

“I met her because someone broke every bone in her body,” Angelica said sweetly. “On purpose. She said it was a doctor.”

Taylor leaned against the door and closed his eyes. “You’re in Cameroon?”

“Garoua.”

“I should have remembered. I would have suggested Spain for that vacation. There are fabulous beaches... maybe later.” He sighed. So much for vacation time. “In the meantime, I’ll arrange transportation. I can be there tomorrow night.”

He heard her let out a breath she’d probably been holding. He could picture her, hair probably falling down from that knot she tried to scrape it back into, tired and frustrated. And scared to death. He’d heard the fear in her voice. Not of the girl. Of what she’d found out.

“Thank you.” Another pause. Longer. “And Taylor?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not just making this up just so I can see you naked.”

He chuckled. That was more like it. His girl wasn’t one to stay down long. This was no shrinking violet waiting for rescue. This was his partner. The woman who could face down drug lords without flinching. They’d solve this one, too. “This time it’s your turn to be naked in front of the bad guys.”

“That’s a good kitty.”

“Don’t start.”

“’Bye, Taylor. And so you know, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Taylor said as the door behind him opened. He shifted awkwardly, almost landing on his ass as he got out the final words, the ones that mattered. “Be safe till I get there.”

And he meant that.

“I love you, too, Taylor,” his boss said through the crack in the door, “but since you’ve stopped us cold, I’m going to go piss if you’ll kindly let us out of here.”

“Sorry,” Taylor mumbled and shifted to the blank wall next to the door. “Uh, Randall, uh... Something’s come up. I need that vacation time sooner rather than later.”

“Now?” Randall whispered, closing the door behind them. “Are you fucking serious? Half the Pentagon wants us to be reporting to them, and the other half still thinks we’re spreading leaflets with pro-American slogans on them. I swear it’s like we never left the ‘60s. Congress is breathing down our necks and theirs; we’re fighting each other, and you want to go skiing?”

“No, it’s... I had a tip.”

“A ‘tip’?” Randall asked. “A ‘tip’?” He grabbed Taylor’s wrist and brought the phone up where he could see it. “ANGELICA” was on the screen along with a picture of the former beauty pageant winner and doctor. It had been taken before they’d left the Amazon, at a moment when she still had the fire in her eyes and her hair fell around her face in the disarray that only comes from spending a passionate afternoon with someone you love.

“Hello, Angelica!” Randall called into the phone.

“Hey, Randall!” Angelica’s voice came from the speaker. “How’s Lisa and the kids?”

“They’re worried, actually,” Randall said, “because their husband and father might not be working next year, but don’t let that worry you... your boyfriend isn’t.”

“Randall, please. I have something here that... I need him here. It’s about someone hurting children and I don’t know why. Please.”

Randall looked at Taylor. “Do I look like a charity organization? Do I look like someone who... oh hell, just go. The general just asked for you by name, so I’m sure you can’t be all that important to his plans. But you’re still on the clock when I need you I’m yanking your chain, got that, tiger?”

“Oh, shit!”

“What happened?” Angelica’s voice demanded from the floor, loud enough to be heard even from the vicinity of his left foot.

“I...I dropped the phone,” Taylor confessed.

Randall took the phone from him and spoke to Angelica directly. “Listen, you can have him for a few days, but I need him back in working condition, you get me?”

“Thank you, Randall.”

“Don’t thank me, just save me a seat on the bride’s side. I have feeling the groom will forget to send out invitations.”

“He has to ask me first,” Angelica said, a smile creeping back into her voice that left Taylor stuttering, wondering not for the first time just how often Angelica talked to his boss.

“He will; he’s rather dense, but he will.” Randall tossed the phone back to a bemused Taylor. “You had that coming and you know it,” he said, pointing at him, and walked off before Taylor even figured out how to end the call without inadvertently winding up engaged.

“Thank you!” Taylor called after him. Randall waved with a single finger without turning around and headed for the men’s room.