TRAPPED by Beverly Long - The Men from Crow Hollow 03 - TRAPPED

that. He turned when his peripheral vision caught Captain Ramano in the doorway of the plane. The man stepped onto the jungle floor and studied the nose of the small plane. It was pretty much trashed, having taken a beating when they’d first skimmed the trees.
    The majority of the fuselage remained intact—if anyone wasn’t overly concerned about a two-foot hole in the roof. It was hard to tell if Captain Ramano was concerned or not. He barely looked at the rest of the plane before he wandered off in the jungle to take a leak.
    That didn’t make sense. Granted, the man had taken a jolt to the head and no doubt had a slight concussion. But even so, it was his plane.
    Brody had dealt with a lot of aviators in the air force, and his friend Ethan had been a helicopter pilot in the army. Fliers were normally take-charge types.
    They felt very responsible for their planes and for the individuals aboard. Brody knew that if Ethan had been flying a plane that had encountered mechanical problems, he would have been all over the wreckage, trying to figure out what had happened.
    It was almost as if Captain Ramano was trying not to look at it. Which seemed odd. But one thing Brody had learned in recent years, in war-torn countries where no one escaped unscathed, was that everybody coped in his or her own way.
    When the man returned to the plane, it was more of the same. He glanced at the fire, at Elle, and finally at Brody. Then he went back inside without a word.
    Brody could see the questions in Elle’s pretty eyes, but he ignored them. If Captain Ramano was out of the game, so be it. The plane wasn’t going to fly again. His skills as a pilot were of no use to them.
    Almost as soon as Captain Ramano went inside, Mr. and Mrs. Hardy came outside. Mrs. Hardy had raided her suitcase and come up with something sparkly that she spread on the ground. Then she pulled up a log near the fire that Brody had built, and both she and Mr. Hardy leaned back, him with a book, her with a deck of cards, as if the jungle had been a scheduled stop.
    As if anyone regularly picnicked in a place where poisonous frogs, tarantulas and jaguars lingered nearby.

Chapter Five
    Brody wanted to order the Hardys back inside, where they would have less chance of being bitten or stung by something that could seriously compromise their well-being. But he didn’t say anything. If they could pretend that everything was just fine, then more power to them.
    Elle offered the Hardys some bug repellant. Mr. Hardy took some and put it on his wife. Then Mrs. Hardy reciprocated. It was sweet.
    Five minutes later, Mrs. Hardy was jawing on Mr. Hardy for breathing too loud.
    Hell, maybe he ought to thank Elle from saving him from marriage. She had found a big walking stick and she was using it to poke around at various plants. She was smart to be careful. Everything in the jungle sort of blended in, and grabbing hold of a snake was guaranteed to make a bad day even worse. He watched her for about five minutes before he approached. “What are you doing?”
    “The husband of the couple that I worked for in Peru was a scientist, and one of his hobbies was studying plant life in the jungle. He loved to talk about plants, to show the pictures that he would take on his jungle trips. I learned a few things while I was there. The berries on this evergreen tree are allspice. They’re edible. On the other hand, this is a curare plant. Very poisonous.”
    He was impressed. He knew next to nothing about jungle fauna. Her knowledge might come in very handy.
    “I’m not as worried about our food supply as I am our water,” Elle said. “We barely have enough to last a day. But fortunately, there are multiple ways to access water in the jungle. Come here.” She motioned him over to a plant with long green-and-white leaves and a brightly colored flower in the middle. It was literally growing out of the trunk of a tree. “This species is a bromeliad. The leaves overlap and when it