Midnight Rainbow by Linda Howard

somehow he managed to
get his feet and legs in front of him. Then they were sliding down in a fairly upright
position, rather than rolling. He dug his heels in and their descent slowed,
then stopped. " Pris ?" he asked roughly,
cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face so he could see it. "Are
you hurt?"
                  "No, no," she quickly assured him,
ignoring the new aches in her body. Her right arm wasn't broken, but it was
badly bruised; she winced as she tried to move it. One of the straps on the
backpack had broken, and the pack was hanging lopsidedly off her left shoulder.
Her cap was missing. He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, and Jane wondered
how he had managed to hold on to it. Didn't he ever drop anything, or get lost,
or tired, or hungry? She hadn't even seen him take a drink of water!
                  "My cap came off," she said, turning
to stare up the slope. The top was almost thirty yards above them and the slope
steep enough that it was a miracle they hadn't crashed into the rocks at the
streambed.
                  "I see it." He swarmed up the slope,
lithe and surefooted. He snatched the cap from a broken branch and in only a
moment was back beside her. Jamming the cap on her head, he said, "Can you
make it up the other side?"
                  There was no way, she thought. Her body
refused to function any longer. She looked at him and lifted her chin. "Of course."
                  He didn't smile, but there was a faint
softening of his expression, as if he knew how desperately tired she was.
"We have to keep moving," he said, taking her arm and urging her
across the stream. She didn't care that her boots were getting wet; she just
sloshed through the water, moving downstream while he scanned the bank for an
easy place to climb up. On this side of the stream, the bank wasn't sloped; it
was almost vertical and covered with what looked like an impenetrable tangle of
vines and bushes. The stream created a break in the foliage that allowed more
sunlight to pour down, letting the plants grow much more thickly.
                  "Okay, let's go up this way," he
finally said, pointing. Jane lifted her head and stared at the bank, but she
didn't see any break in the wild tangle.
                  "Let's talk about this," she hedged.
                  He gave an exasperated sigh. "Look, Pris , I know you're tired, but—" Something snapped
inside Jane, and she whirled on him, catching him by the shirt front and drawing
back her fist. "If you call me ' Pris ' just one
more time, I'm going to feed you a knuckle sandwich!" she roared,
unreasonably angry at his continued use of that hated name. No one, but no one,
had ever been allowed to call her Priscilla, Pris , or
even Cilia, more than once. This damned commando had been rubbing her face in
it from the beginning. She'd kept quiet about it, figuring she owed him for
kicking him in the groin, but she was tired and hungry and scared and enough
was enough!
                  He moved so quickly that she didn't even have
time to blink. His hand snaked out and caught her drawn back fist, while the
fingers of his other hand laced around her wrist, removing her grip from his
shirt.
                  "Damn it, can't you keep quiet? I didn't name you Priscilla, your parents did, so if you don't like it take it up with them. But until then,
climb!"
                  Jane climbed, even though she was certain at
every moment that she was going to collapse on her face. Grabbing vines for
hand holds, using roots and rocks and bushes and small trees, she squirmed and
wiggled her way through the foliage. It was so thick that it could have been
swarming with jaguars and she wouldn't have been able to see one until she
stuck her hand in its mouth. She remembered that jaguars liked water, spending
most of their time resting comfortably near a river or stream, and she