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didn’t give a fuck how many soldiers died, but let it be a female and they’d all bust a gut.
    As far as the General was concerned, women and children were far more expendable than a good fighting man. But the world was full of sentimentalists.
    This time tomorrow Carew would be having a temper tantrum, and the General would have everything under control. Everything he’d worked for. Everything Winston Sutherland had played with and jeopardized like a spoiled child.
    But the General had taken care of Sutherland. And he’d take care of anyone or anything else that got in his way.
    Including anyone who might know anything about the night Sutherland died.
    *       *       *
     
    There was only one bathroom in the tiny cottage, and that was downstairs. It was already getting dark, and Annie had put off descending that narrow flight of stairs for as long as she possibly could. She wasn’t ready to face James again. Not until she got a firmer grip on her temper, on her misgivings.
    But her body wasn’t giving her any choice. There wasn’t a sound coming from the ground floor of the cottage, and the murky twilight barely pierced the gloom of the now tidy rooms. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked around her, carefully, for signs of her reluctant host.
    He was nowhere to be seen. There was no door to his bedroom, and for some reason she felt an urgent need to look inside. It looked like a monk’s cell. Narrow bed, made with army-like precision. Some drill sergeant could bounce a quarter off it, Annie thought absently.
    There was nothing else there. No books, no pictures, no personal possessions. Nothing to fill the days and weeks he’d been there. The place was empty, soulless.
    The dishes were washed. She found a can of chili and heated it on the gas burner, aided by a few soggy crackers. She was sitting at the scrubbed table, eating her way through theunappetizing meal with dogged perseverance, when she heard a sound out on the porch.
    Her panic was immediate. He’d told her it wasn’t safe, and all sorts of horrific thoughts came to mind. Someone had followed her, some crazed assassin, and James was out there, lying in a pool of blood, an innocent victim destroyed by her feckless determination. The man who had killed her father was out there, she felt it with an intense paranoia that bordered on certainty. She could stay in the kitchen, hiding, until he came after her.
    Or she could go face him herself.
    She pushed away from the table silently. She heard the noise again, a faint scrape, a breath, perhaps even the telltale beating of a heart, just beyond the sagging screen door. She moved slowly, carefully, closer, focusing on the silhouetted figure. Tall, powerful-looking in the shadows, he was standing in the corner of the porch, looking out into the surrounding jungle, and she thought she might be able to make it past him, running, into the jungle.
    And she knew she wasn’t going to do it.
    She needed to look her father’s killer in the eye, even if it cost her her life. She needed to see what her father last saw, and the risk didn’t matter. She moved toward the dark figure,completely silent, reaching out her hand—
    A moment later she was slammed against the wall, so hard that her vision blurred, her breath left her body, and all she could feel was agonizing pain washing over her. She clawed at the creature that imprisoned her, at the arm that had shot out, the hand that manacled her neck, and she knew she was losing consciousness. She wouldn’t see him. She would die before she knew who’d killed her father, and that defeat was more than she could stand. She summoned up one last surge of energy, kicking at him, and suddenly she was free.
    The shock of it was almost worse than the attack. She collapsed on the rough porch flooring, holding her throat, gasping for breath, and her entire body prickled with sharp nettles of reaction.
    When she looked up at the monster towering over her,