Las Amazonas, Venezuela.

The double doors at the chapel at La Misión de la Paz slammed open, startling the occupants within. The interloper raced out of the hazy sunlight, brown limbs coated in sweat, breath coming in gasps that punctuated his announcement.

"Guerillas se acrecan. ¡Hay por lo menos cincuenta y llevan armas!"

Guerillas are coming. They are atleast fifty feet of them and they are carrying weapons. Translating the massage Hermione Granger straightened from the pupil she was instructing and looked at Father Benedict to gauge his response.

The priest's benign countenance hardened with concern. "You should have left two weeks ago," he said to her , catching her eye. "Now you 'll have to hide with us."

"My choice, Father" she gently reminded him, her gaze sliding towards the reason for her stay, four-year- old Miguel who sat clutching his slate. She could not have left him, regardless of the political turmoil in Venezuela and the growing treat towards Americans.

"Come," urged Father Benedict, who was British and only slightly less at risk. "Bring the children. We'll all hide in the wine cellar. Pedro, run and fetch Sister Madeline." He added in Spanish. "Hurry."

Hermione gathered the children, instructing them to leave their slates beneath the pews. She scooped Miguel into her arms. Thin as a rail, he scarcely weighted her down especially when he collided his limbs around her. "This way. "Instructed the priest, hurrying towards the sacristy, which was separated from the sanctuary by a curtain. Once within he kicked aside the worn rug that covered the stone floor. A wooden hatch was nestled in the flagging, providing access to the cellar below. He lifted it, exposing steps that disappeared into darkness, releasing a musky smell.

Hermione's fear of closed spaces made her balk. The children bunched up behind her, instincitively silent.

"Take these candles" the priest instucted, thrusting several waxen pillars at her. "Matches" he added, his voice remarkably steady. She stuck them into the deep pockets of her cargo shorts. Lifting a cloth of a basket he withdrew a loaf of bread meant for services that night. "We 'll need this".

God knew how long they would be down there. Or wheather the querillars headed in there direction would avidly hunt them or simply moved on.

"Go ahead" said the priest with a nod at the steps.

With panic threatning to close of her airways, Hermione instructed her little troop to hold the rickety benister and follow her. She took the first step into the bowels of the earth and another.

A spider's web brushed her cheek as the dark coolness

swallowed her. Shivering, she clutched Miguel closer while shaking of her fear for his sake, and for the others. Down, down into the black hole they went until coming to a floor of hard-packed dirt.

As she gazed up at the light, tremors rippled through her. What if she never saw the sun again? . A scurry of foot falls heralded the approach of Sister Madeline.

" I cannot sight of them" the nun divulges, in her nononsence voice. "They're a horde", she added with typical British understandment.

An angry horde. Hermione taught , a cold sweat matting her shirt to her back.

Sister Madeline hustled down the steps. "Whom do we have with us?" She inquered.

"The orphans" Hermione murmured.

"We should let them go" Sister Madeline suggested, glancing up at the priest.

"No" whispered Hermione, clutching Miquel more fiercely.

"Their cries might betray us" the nun argued.

"It's too late to send them up." Father Benedict pointed as he too descended. "Besides, who would take care for them? They would end up in the streets again. Pedro" he called to the hovering teen, a youth hoping to join the priesthood. "Close the door and hide the key, put the rug over the hatch , tell no one where we are. When the guerillas leave, let us out again"

"Sí, padre". answered the boy. With reluctance and apology washed upon his intogeous feathures, he gently lowered the door. It wasn't so dark, not with rays of sunlight siping through the cracks. But then the rug was tossed over the hatch, dousing them in blackness so deep and thick that it paralysed every bone in Hermione's body.

"Let us light a candle and prey" reccomended

Father Benedict

his voice swimming out of the darkness. It unlocked Hermione's frozen joints.

She stiffly put Miguel down, eager to drive back the void. But the task, given her shaking hands, proved virtually impossible. The flare of her trembling match revealed the pale faces of her adult companions and the gleam of four sets of children's eyes. They feasted their gazes on the wick, then looked around once the candle was lit.

Their hiding space was perhaps ten by seven paces, laced in cobwebs and peppered with holes that housed bottles of sacramental wine.

We have plenty to drink,

Hermione thought, swallowing a hysterical giggle.

The priest sat, folding his long limbs to make more space. Hermione hunted for a place to put the candle, out of reach of the children. Finding a crack in the wall, she wedged it in like a torch.

"Sit down," she instructed the children, doing the same.

Miguel scrambled into his customary seat—her lap, his hair tickling her nose. Hermione's eyes stung with regret that she couldn't shield him from harm any better than this.

"Beloved Father," began the priest, his voice quiet and grim yet amazingly calm,

"look down upon us and cast your mantle of protection over us, we pray you . . ."

As his sonorous voice droned on, Hermione's thoughts wandered.

She hushed Fatima, who whimpered in fear as she burrowed into Hermione's side. Prayers couldn't hurt, Hermione acknowledged, but neither would they necessarily help. God knew she'd expended many a prayer to keep from losing her pregnancy and then her marriage.

Unlike the priest and the nun, Hermione wasn't in Venezuela to save souls. She was here to continue a healing process that had begun last summer, only to be cut short when her teaching job necessitated a return trip home.

This summer, she'd come back—not for healing but to complete the adoption process she'd begun nine months before. In doing so, she'd turned a deaf ear to government warnings that the political environment was unstable. Her refusal to acknowledge the dangers could well end up getting her killed.

Therat-tat-tat-tatof gunfire suspended Father Benedict's prayer. They all listened, holding a collective breath.

Had the guerillas killed one of the villagers visiting La Misión? Or were they merely announcing their fearsome arrival?

The threat of a disturbance had seemed so unlikely in this remote jungle mission, though for weeks newspapers had warned of Populist uprisings, urging Americans to leave the country.

Hermione didn't concern herself with politics. The children of Las Amazonas needed her even more than her students at home did.

She touched each child, rubbing their narrow shoulders to comfort them. She would protect them with her life, if necessary, especially Miguel, who was exactly the age her baby would have been. Small and defenseless, he had found a special place in Jordan's heart. She was so close to being able to take him home with her. Come hell or high water, she wouldn't leave him now

Suffolk, Virginia

Special Agent Ronald Weasley read the freshly painted sign at the head of a tree-lined driveway.

SECOND CHANCE, HIPPOTHERAPY RANCH

With a stab of his finger, he curtailed the haunting aria from the operaCarmenand turned down the graveled driveway, braced for disappointment.

The Jillian Granger he knew was a nurse in Fairfax, not a horse rancher in Suffolk, Virginia. Still, having seen the name on a roster of incoming calls, he'd decided to pay this house call in order to see for himself.

Mature oak trees gave way to a butter-yellow farmhouse in need of a fresh coat of paint. The front porch listed. Bushes and shrubs overran the walkway. A newly constructed barn stood fifty yards away, displaying a ruddy stain and a fence so recently erected that the tempered wood still looked green.

Ron cut the engine and reached for the file. Jillian Granger had made thirty-one phone calls requesting FBI assistance.

As he approached the front door, he listened, hearing only the sloughing of wind and the twitter of a bird. The heels of his Ferragamo shoes sounded out of place on the planks of the sagging porch.

Before he could knock, the door popped open. "Yeah?" said a boy of perhaps fourteen, his gray eyes hostile.

"Special Agent Weasley, FBI," said Ron, softening the rasp produced by his injured vocal cords. "I'm looking for Jillian Granger."

"She's in the barn," said the boy, eyeing the scar on Ron's neck.

"Who are you?" asked a young girl, poking her head out from under the boy's arm.

"He's the bogeyman," said her brother.

"Nuhn-uhn."

"Well, he could be. Go back to your room and play. We don't talk to strangers."

"You can't tell me what to do."

With a grimace, Ron backed away. How long had it been since he'd overheard siblings squabble? Eight years, now, long enough that the memories had faded.

Crossing to the barn's open doors, Ron peered into the mellow shadows. The faint odor of horse manure mingled with the scent of fresh straw.

"Hello?" he called, following a scuffling sound along an isle of empty stalls.

The ears and eyes of a huge bay crested the dividers. The horse gave a whinny, and the stall door slid open. A woman peered out.

"Ron!" she gasped. Her long, golden hair was caught up in a ponytail. She wore shorts and a T-shirt stretched taut across her pregnant midsection, but he would have recognized her anywhere.

"Jillian." A feeling of intense satisfaction rushed through him.

"Oh, my," she breathed, putting a gloved hand to her heart. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Nor I," he admitted, loving the sweet timbre of her voice, the periwinkle blue of her eyes.

"What brings you to Suffolk?" she asked in delight.

"I transferred from D.C. eight months ago," he explained.

"You're here because of my phone calls," she guessed.

He indicated the file. "I wondered if it might be you." Not only had she soothed him in the ER as he'd choked on his own blood, but she'd visited him daily in the weeks following his recovery.

"I'm so happy to see you again," she said, pulling off her glove, extending her hand.

Savoring the warmth and softness of her fingers, Ron realized this was the first time they'd ever touched.

"Do you live here in Suffolk?" he asked, releasing her regretfully. "I thought your husband was with the Fairfax police."

She looked away, putting her gloves down. "I moved here to start a therapy ranch. It's for veterans who've lost limbs in the war. Riding helps them regain muscle and get their balance back."

I had no idea," he admitted, intrigued. He eyed her belly inquiringly.

"You caught me mucking out the stall," she apologized, ignoring the look. "Come into the office," she suggested. "I have so much to tell you."

Ten minutes later, with the promise that the FBI would do everything in their powers to help locate her sister, Jillian watched Ron leave.

With graceful ease, he slipped into the Cutlass and donned his seat belt. She had never seen him dressed in anything but pajamas, yet it came as no surprise that he wore a designer silk suit of unrelenting gray, a snowy white shirt, and no tie. Even in pajamas there had been something elegant about him.

As he smiled at her, a lightness buoyed her heavy heart, easing the crush that kept her so despondent. How nice to have seen him again, a friend she'd cherished for a short time and then lost, especially since she'd lost so much lately.

With a deft hand on the steering wheel, he backed up and pulled away, and her sorrow returned.

She hadn't even told him she was widowed. Every morning she awakened to the panicky realization that her family's welfare rested on her narrow shoulders. Her baby, Gary's surprise legacy, would be born in two short months, and she had so much left to do before she could give their baby the attention it deserved.

With a weary sigh, Jillian turned to gaze at the barn. She must've been crazy to think she could honor her and Gary's dream alone. But now that she'd started, she had no choice but see it through.

Las Amazonas, Venezuela

"What's the plan, Senior Chief?" whispered Petty Officer Vinny DeInnocentis as he slapped at a mosquito boring through the camo paint slathered on his neck.

With night falling, the insects were swarming worse than ever.

Draco Malfoy, aka Maco, took his eyes off the rebel-occupied Misión de la Paz long enough to send Vinny a glacial stare. Given the pale, almost colorless gray of his eyes, glacial stares required little effort on his part.

"What?" the kid demanded with inner-city bravado. "We've been lyin' here for like six hours, watching these jackasses scare the locals. When're we gonna pursue the objective?"

"We haven't been lying here," Draco corrected him. "We've been observing."

"True," Vinny acknowledged, giving Draco brief hope that he might one day make chief, but then he added, "and I have observed that a big-ass beetle is climbing up my right leg heading straight to my balls. There's a venomous snake dangling five meters over our heads, and the vines that we're hiding in look a lot like poison oak."

"It's trumpet flower," Draco retorted, nonetheless attuned to Vinny's restlessness. "We're going to penetrate at zero one hundred hours. You, Teddy, and Gus will sweep the enclosure while I locate the recovery targets. We find them, flexicuff them, and get them out. Harley and Haiku will meet up with us at the rendezvous point."

Vinny's white teeth flashed in the gloom. "Hooyah, Senior Chief. I gotta get this bug outta my pants," he added, shaking his leg in what looked like a rendition of the hokey pokey as he backed out of the vines.

Draco thumbed his interteam radio to contact the sniper team.

"Four hours to Operation Extraction," he warned the spotter and shooter.

"Roger," Harley murmured back. Now that darkness was falling, he and Haiku were making their way along the top of the missionwall,

over a ceramic-tiled roof of the outdoor kitchen, up and into the bell tower of the seventeenth-century chapel, an ideal vantage point from which to guard the recovery team's blazing entrance and subsequent search.

Draco set his watch to perform a countdown.