“How could she not know he was thinking about sex? he wondered. It was all he'd been thinking about for the last eighteen hours, give or take a few minutes spent thinking about keeping them both alive. Oh, yeah, and twice he'd thought about food, once about her mother, and once he'd checked to make sure he had an extra mag for his Glock.”

“It worried him. Like him, she had to be exhausted. She smelled like gasoline; her clothes were torn. She had a small white bandage on her forehead where the EMT had cleaned her cut. Dirt smudged her face, her arms, her legs. He knew she still didn't have any underwear, and for the first time, he felt bad about it. Real bad. He wanted to protect her, make her feel secure, keep her from harm—and all he'd done was lose her underwear and practically get her blown up.”

“He'd wanted to take her dirty and take her sweet, take her any way he could get her and every way he could dream up”

“There was a lesson in here somewhere, he was sure. Or maybe he'd offended some ancient, pre-Columbian god while he'd been in South America -because this was a test.”

“It was better to talk, which would be a helluva lot easier if he would just talk back a little. Damn it, it was like pulling a teeth to get him to say anything.Like right now. He'd gone completely silent on her again, leaving the ball in her court, where the ball had been for the last half an hour.”

“That meant Ms. Starkova was his. He'd found her; he'd tailed her; and he'd saved her from Reinhard Klein. By jungle law, even the urban jungle, that made her his.”

“Good God. Johnny freakin' Ramos. Out in the hall. Of course, out in the hall. Hell, he'd spent half his life out in the hall,especially at Campbell Junior High,especially during seventh-grade social studies call. She'd gotten sent out in the hall with him once, her one and only time in the hall ever, the two of them put there to "work things out", and her poor little thirteen-year-old heart had barely survived the experience.”