Booktree.ng_Forgotten-Witness

“Is there a problem?” Josie asked.
“If Hannah is being held prisoner here as you suspect, I’d be
disappointed to walk into some den of crime and find a knife
to my throat. You’re a pretty thing, but no one is worth that
and, while I am dashing, I cannot be mistaken for James
Bond.”
“I didn’t say she was kidnapped,” Josie pointed out.
“Besides, I thought you worked with these people. How long
have you been delivering supplies here?”
“Six years, but it’s not like we’re gossiping around the water
cooler with the folks. They fax their orders and my boys over
here meet the boat and deliver the supplies. I don’t have what
you’d call a relationship really,” Stephen muttered.
“Has anybody ever pulled a knife on one of your guys?”
“There’s always a first time for such a thing,” he
complained.
“I promise, it won’t be today.” Josie patted his hand, slid it
off her arm, and headed down the path that cut through the
tropical forest.
“Could be that you’re crazy,” Stephen grumbled as he
followed. “Maybe you have a knife.” He raised his voice. “It
dawns on me that could be the case.” He lowered his voice to
grumble some more. “They won’t be happy if I bring a crazy
woman here. I’m just saying that it would have been polite to
call.”
They walked that way for a bit and then he took a hop and a
skip and came along side her.
“In for a penny,” he sighed, but Josie wasn’t paying
attention any longer.
She was tuned to the turn of the earth, seduced by the place
in which she found herself. Whatever was going to come, she
was glad it would come here where the plants had leaves made
of satin and flowers of velvet, where the perfume in the air
was blown on trade winds, the ground was dappled by sunlight