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full two months passed before Acosta and his merry men showed up in the village again. The hostages traveling with them were examined by the doctors before being herded away along the border to Peru. Acosta spent one night in her quarters and, fortunately, kept his hands to himself. Six weeks passed before she saw him again.
    * * * * *
    Angelique cursed under her breath at the sound of small-arms fire as she tied off the last suture in the leg of the four-year-old boy lying on her exam table. The ongoing civil war and the war on drugs constantly spilled over the border as a steady stream of predators crossed from the neighboring Colombia. All were heavily armed and dangerous. They stopped at the field hospital the locals were calling Manos de Ayuda when one of them needed patching up. Angelique begrudged them every inch of 4-0 silk used to stitch their wounds.
    Equally as bad were the mercenaries looking to make a profit off the backs of those less fortunate. Rough-looking men with rough behavior, which they often visited upon the women of village. She’d had a couple of scary moments herself, but word got out that the doctor rubia bonita —the pretty blonde doctor—could wield a scalpel with the best of them. That and the fact that Acosta and Boudreaux had claimed her and Able was enough to assure the thugs left her alone. But they continued to take what they wanted from the camp’s limited supplies. Either way she looked at it, the conditions at the relief hospital were less than ideal.
    She put on a clean pair of latex gloves and applied a topical antibiotic ointment, then dressed the boy’s wound. Large brown eyes studied her as she reached into the pocket of her lab coat and retrieved a cherry lollipop.
    “Here you go, little one,” she said in Spanish, handing him the sucker. She called all the children little one , regardless of their age. It was the only way she could think of to remind them that they were still children, in spite of their hardscrabble their lives.
    When the mother moved forward to pick up the child, Angelique stopped her with a gentle touch. “Just a moment. I want to give you some ointment and clean bandages.”
    She put two tubes of antibiotic ointment in a plastic ziplock bag, along with clean bandages and tape, and a bottle of peroxide, reminding the woman again that she would need to clean the wound a minimum of once a day. “Keep him out of the jungle and away from the river until his leg healed.”
    “ Sí , Doctor,” the woman mumbled and hurried out the door.
    Angelique sighed in resignation and began cleaning up her work area. The woman probably wouldn’t heed her instructions. Brass shell casings meant money to the poor, and the children often foraged deep into the jungle for them. Angelique could only hope he didn’t develop an infection.
    “She won’t do it, you know,” a man with a deep voice spoke from the doorway.
    Angelique’s heart thumped when the one man she didn’t want to see echoed her thoughts. She turned to face Acosta, allowing the full force of her contempt to scorch him. She’d never hated anyone in her entire life, but her anger toward him overshadowed most of the tender feelings she’d once held for the man. He’d meant something to her once, back in Darfur when he and his men had defended them against the Janjaweed. When he’d bathed her in the dimness of her little hut and made the horror go away, if only for a little while.
    Angelique had been shocked to see him when she arrived in Manos de Ayuda, and the sense of betrayal was a visceral thing when she discovered Shepherd was right, that Acosta was no more immune to corruption than the next man. He wasn’t the man she remembered so fondly, but she hadn’t really known him, had she? Still, the knowledge she’d misjudged him so badly stung her pride.
    He leaned his long frame against the doorjamb, all but filling the space. Hair long past needing a trim curled damply around his neck, and the