The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

one is likely to guess to where, much less why.”
    After one last glance around the clearing, he turned and fell in beside Phillipe. They made their way into the jungle. No one had even suggested spending the night in the slavers’ camp. Instead, they’d set up a makeshift camp in the clearing where they’d left their packs and supplies.
    Caleb walked into the clearing to find crude tents already erected and a fire burning brightly beneath the cook pot. Aromas much more enticing than the charnel scent of death rose on the steam. They all sat—all but slumped. They checked wounds, then when the meal was ready, everyone ate.
    Largely in silence. There were no songs around the campfire, no tall tales told. They’d all killed that day, and while they were accustomed to an existence in which life was too often cut short, as the energy of battle ebbed and left them deflated, they each had their own consciences to tend, to appease and allay.
    The fire burned low, and quietly, with nothing more than murmured good nights, they settled on their blankets and reached for sleep.
    Tomorrow, they would embark on the next stage of the mission.
    Tomorrow, they would take the path to the mine.

CHAPTER 2
    “John told me at breakfast that he doesn’t know how much longer he can drag his heels over opening up the second tunnel.”
    Katherine Fortescue glanced at her companion, Harriet Frazier; the pair of them had elected to stretch their legs in a stroll around the mining compound during their midmorning break from their work in the cleaning shed.
    Of course, the real purpose of their stroll was to facilitate communication; while they walked, they could talk freely, with no one likely to overhear their exchanges.
    The “John” to whom Harriet referred was her sweetheart, Captain John Dixon, the erstwhile army engineer who had been the first of their company to be kidnapped from Freetown. When Dixon had refused the mercenary leader Dubois’s invitation to plan and implement the opening of a mine to exploit a newly discovered pipe of diamonds for unnamed backers, Dubois had merely smiled coldly—and the next thing Dixon had known, Harriet had joined him in his captivity.
    The threats against Harriet that Dubois had used to force Dixon to acquiesce to his demands were, quite simply, unspeakable. Harriet carried a fine scar on her cheek that Dixon still regarded with sorrow and remembered horror. But Harriet bore the mark with pride. In her eyes—indeed, in the eyes of all the captives now there—Dixon had only done what he’d had to, what he’d been forced to do to ensure he and Harriet survived.
    And he and all of them continued in that vein, using that as their touchstone; if they didn’t survive, they couldn’t escape.
    Despite their carefully cultivated appearance of being resigned to their lot, every man, woman, and child of their company had banded together, and all were unswervingly committed to escape.
    Escape first; retribution could come later.
    Katherine had long grown accustomed to keeping her features composed; she and Harriet maintained unconcerned, outwardly unperturbed expressions as they paced slowly around the well-worn clockwise circuit that would take them from the cleaning shed, where they worked at chipping heavy concretions of ore from the rough diamonds extracted from the mine that had eventually been constructed, past the eastern end of the long, central, main barracks building in which Dubois and his band of mercenaries worked and slept when they weren’t on guard, either at the gates of the compound, pacing the perimeter, escorting groups of captives to fetch water from the nearby lake, or perched in the high tower that stood at that end of the long building.
    Shading her eyes, Katherine glanced up at the pair of mercenaries on lookout duty in the tower. “Given how our output from the shed has been dwindling,” she murmured, “I can—sadly—see John’s point.” She glanced at Harriet. “Let’s