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and, with a lot of huffing and puffing in the heat, she was able to get his head off the floor and braced on her opposite thigh.
    If her friends could see her now, she thought as she stretched her back. Safe and cautious Acadia Graytrapped in the back of a speeding van driven by kidnappers with not just one good-looking man sprawled all over her, but two.
    She inspected Zak’s stubbled jaw and closed eyes as she undid the Velcro on the pocket over her left breast and took out a sealed pack of antiseptic wipes. She had to clean the blood from his face so she could assess his injuries. It was stifling inside the van, and she had to stop what she was doing to catch her breath. Since she was hardly qualified to treat any injury more severe than a splinter, his unconscious state was for the best, she thought as she gently wiped around the gash.
    Qualified—ha! Being the only conscious person in the back of the van practically made her a doctor.
    Cupping Zak’s bristly jaw in her palm, she inspected him at close quarters in the sliver of hot white sunlight seeping through the doors. Most people looked vulnerable when they slept. Not this guy. He looked tougher. Edgier. What in God’s name had she been thinking last night? He was no tame house cat to pet, he was a wild exotic jungle animal.
    Strong, stubborn jaw, blade of a nose. All those scars. … A fighter. Because she couldn’t help herself, Acadia traced a gentle finger across the wide expanse of his chest, through his thin blue cotton shirt. Internal muscles she’d only recently discovered contracted in response.
    â€œWhat’s your last name, soldier?” she whispered, tracing his hard, thin slash of a mouth, which was set firmly, as if he were fighting even in his dreams. Maybe he was.Given the way he’d handled himself in the hotel room, maybe he was all too used to brawling with strangers in dangerous places.
    Acadia had a Technicolor memory of kissing and licking her way down the crisp hair on his chest and following the arrow all the way down to … Her cheeks turned fiery hot.
    So much for her prediction that he’d leave her room while she slept, after they’d made love. So much for her certainty that she’d never, never see him again. Wasn’t that what one-night-stand guys did?
    There was that whole be-careful-what-you-wish-for thing that she’d never appreciated the irony of until now. She carefully wiped around the bump and worked carefully at the crusted blood on his temple with the pungent wipe. The bleeding had stopped. That was a good thing. But he was still unconscious after all this time—a bad thing.
    â€œDirt roads, armed men, jungle,” she said briskly. What she wanted was the magic button she could press to reanimate these guys. “They are not taking us to a fiesta, boys, so can you please wake up sooner than later and help me figure out what we’re going to do when we finally stop? I would really, really like to have a plan.”
    Acadia did not like chaos or uncertainty. Life went much more smoothly when things were anticipated and planned for. She made lists of her lists; she anticipated, strategized, and planned ahead. Boring, her friends insisted. But Acadia knew that the way she did things left no room for horrible surprises.
    The smorgasbord of current possible “surprises” made her heart pound. She tried to keep track of when they turned and when they went straight. Hard to do without visual clues. She made a mental note of the condition of the roads they traveled, which kept her mind occupied and her dwindling hopes up as her mind filled with “ifs”: if they could escape; if they could make it to a road; if they were actually able to walk and able to backtrack.
    Her heart skittered as the bald tires of the van bumped off a paved road and turned left onto something rougher and a lot more ominous. God … a dirt road could go anywhere. Be