Read Midnight Rainbow for Free Online

But it did, somehow, and she felt strangely vulnerable.
    He eased himself to a sitting position, and when she didn’t say anything, he sighed. “Why did you jump me like that?” he asked in resignation.
    â€œI’m afraid of the dark,” she said with quiet dignity. “I couldn’t hear you breathing, and I can’t see a thing. I panicked. I’m sorry.”
    After a moment he said, “All right,” and got to his feet.Bending down, he grasped her wrists and pulled her up to stand beside him. Jane inched a little closer to him.
    â€œYou can see because of those glasses you’re wearing, can’t you?” she asked.
    â€œYeah. There’s not a lot of light, but enough that I can make out where I’m going. Infrared lenses.”
    A howler monkey suddenly screamed somewhere above their heads, and Jane jumped, bumping into him. “Got another pair?” she asked shakily.
    She could feel him hesitate, then his arm went around her shoulders. “Nope, just these. Don’t worry, Pris, I’m not going to lose you. In another five minutes or so, it’ll start getting light.”
    â€œI’m all right now,” she said, and she was, as long as she could touch him and know that she wasn’t alone. That was the real terror: being alone in the darkness. For years she had fought a battle against the nightmare that had begun when she was nine years old, but at last she had come to accept it, and in the acceptance she’d won peace. She knew it was there, knew when to expect it and what to do to ward it off, and that knowledge gave her the ability to enjoy life again. She hadn’t let the nightmare cripple her. Maybe her methods of combating it were a little unorthodox, but she had found the balance within herself and she was happy with it.
    Feeling remarkably safe with that steely arm looped over her shoulders, Jane waited beside him, and in a very short time she found that she could indeed see a little better. Deep in the rain forest there was no brilliant sunrise to announce the day—the sunrise could not be seen from beneath the canopy of vegetation. Even during the hottest noon, the light that reached the jungle floor was dim, filtered through layers of greenery. She waited as the faint gray light slowly became stronger, until she could pick outmore of the details of the lush foliage that surrounded her. She felt almost swamped by the plant life. She’d never been in the jungle before; her only knowledge of it came from movies and what little she’d been able to see during the trip upriver to the plantation. During her days at the plantation she’d begun to think of the jungle as a living entity, huge and green, surrounding her, waiting. She had known from the first that to escape she would have to plunge into that seemingly impenetrable green barrier, and she had spent hours staring at it.
    Now she was deep within it, and it wasn’t quite what she’d expected. It wasn’t a thick tangle, where paths had to be cut with a machete. The jungle floor was littered with rotting vegetation, and laced with networks of vines and roots, but for all that it was surprisingly clear. Plant life that lingered near the jungle floor was doomed. To compete for the precious light it had to rise and spread out its broad leaves, to gather as much light as it could. She stared at a fern that wasn’t quite a fern; it was a tree with a buttressed root system, rising to a height of at least eight feet, only at the top it feathered into a fern.
    â€œYou can see now,” he muttered suddenly, lifting his arm from her shoulders and stripping off the night-vision goggles. He placed them carefully in a zippered section of his field pack.
    Jane stared at him in open curiosity, wishing that the light were better so she could really see him. What she could see gave wing to hundreds of tiny butterflies in her stomach. It would take one brave hombre to