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quiet. The pilot was leaning against the outside of the helicopter, occupied with cleaning his nails; he certainly wasn’t concerned with anything.
    Long minutes dragged past. The pilot began to fidget, craning his neck and staring into the jungle, though anyone standing just a few feet behind the trees would be completely hidden from view. He looked at his watch, then scanned the jungle again, his gaze moving nervously from left to right.
    Jane felt the tension in the man standing beside her, tension that was echoed in the hand that held her shoulder. What was wrong? What was he looking for, and why was he waiting? He was as motionless as a jaguar lying in wait for its prey to pass beneath its tree limb.
    â€œThis sucks,” he muttered abruptly, easing deeper into the jungle and dragging her with him.
    Jane sputtered at the inelegant expression. “It does? Why? What’s wrong?”
    â€œStay here.” He pushed her to the ground, deep in the green-black shadow of the buttressed roots of an enormous tree.
    Startled, she took a moment to realize that she’d been abandoned. He had simply melted into the jungle, so silently and swiftly that she wasn’t certain which way he’d gone. She twisted around but could see nothing that indicated his direction; no swaying vines or limbs.
    She wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs and propped her chin on her knees, staring thoughtfully at the ground. A green stick with legs was dragging a large spider off to be devoured. What if he didn’t come back…whoever he was. Why hadn’t she asked him his name? If something happened to him, she’d like to know his name, so she couldtell someone—assuming that she could manage to get out of the jungle herself. Well, she wasn’t any worse off now than she had been before. She was away from Turego, and that was what counted.
    Wait here, he’d said. For how long? Until lunch? Sundown? Her next birthday? Men gave such inexact instructions! Of course, this particular man seemed a little limited in the conversation department. Shut up, Stay here and Stay put seemed to be the highlights of his repertoire.
    This was quite a tree he’d parked her by. The bottom of the trunk flared into buttressed roots, forming enormous wings that wrapped around her almost like arms. If she sat back against the tree, the wings would shield her completely from the view of someone approaching at any angle except head on.
    The straps of her backpack were irritating her shoulders, so she slid it off and stretched, feeling remarkably lighter. She hauled the pack around and opened it, then began digging for her hairbrush. Finding this backpack had been a stroke of luck, she thought, though Turego’s soldiers really should be a little more careful with their belongings. Without it, she’d have had to wrap things up in a blanket, which would have been awkward.
    Finally locating the hairbrush, she diligently worked through the mass of tangles that had accumulated in her long hair during the night. A small monkey with an indignant expression hung from a branch overhead. It scolded her throughout the operation, evidently angry that she had intruded on its territory. She waved at it.
    Congratulating herself for her foresight, she pinned her hair up and pulled a black baseball cap out of the pack. She jammed the cap on and tugged the bill down low over her eyes, then shoved it back up. There wasn’t any sun down here. Staring upward, she could see bright pinpoints ofsun high in the trees, but only a muted green light filtered down to the floor. She’d have been better off with some of those fancy goggles that What’s-his-name had.
    How long had she been sitting there? Was he in trouble?
    Her legs were going to sleep, so she stood and stomped around to get her blood flowing again. The longer she waited, the more uneasy she became, and she had the feeling that a time would come when she’d better be