“There! Broken branch!” Razi’s voice, speaking Portuguese. “We are right behind him!”
Marten thanked his stars—and himself—for expending the effort to take that Portuguese course.
He tensed as Laffite’s flashlight beam reflected off something dark and gleaming in his other hand. A revolver. Did he mean to shoot on sight?
Marten had discarded his own handgun in Maxixe. He hadn’t wanted to get caught with it if he was stopped while racing back to Maputo.
“What if he’s headed for the boat?” Bakari said, also in Portuguese. His voice sounded strained. “He could maroon us here.”
“The ladders are back the other way,” Razi said.
“Yes, but he could double back along the rim and climb down.”
“Relax,” Laffite said. “I would not leave the Sorcière to be stolen. I removed the fuse to the fuel pump, and I have all the replacements. No one is taking the Sorcière anywhere without me.”
Good to know. Marten had had plans for Laffite’s boat all along. Now he just hoped he’d live long enough to use this information.
“Why would he want to poison us?” Razi said. His tone sounded hurt.
“He is crazy,” Laffite said. “I have sensed it all along. But I did not realize just how cr—”
A retching sound interrupted him as one of the brothers vomited. It splatted on the ground not two feet from Marten’s face, but he froze in position, squeezing his eyes shut and staying statue-still as he held his breath.
Razi blurted something in Ronga, so Bakari must have vomited.
“Don’t tell me you tried that matata!” Laffite said.
“Never! I just feel sick all of a sudden.”
The Frenchman’s voice rose in volume. “Look! It got on your pants. Maybe it goes through the skin! Take them off! Now!”
Another retch but this time the vomit landed farther away. Marten saw Bakari’s jeans hit the ground.
“Come,” Laffite said. “Let’s get you back where we can wash off that leg. We’ll look for Jeukens in the morning. This island is small and he’s not going anywhere.”
Biting back a sob of relief, Marten crossed his forearms on the ground and rested his head on them.
Safe … for the moment.
6
MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
Even after they’d caught their breaths and lay in a quiet tangle of interlocked limbs on Laura’s bed, Rick still couldn’t quite believe it had happened.
Something about her eyes when she’d said “Let’s go to my room” had hinted at this, but even as she’d dragged him down the hall, he’d written it off to wishful thinking.
But then the kissing, the unbuttoning … and then falling onto her bed …
“I needed that,” she whispered, her breath warm on his ear. “You have no idea how I needed that.”
He pulled her closer. “I feel like all my bones have melted.”
An exaggeration, but not a big one.
Laura’s bare breasts pressed against the side of his chest as she let out a long sigh. “I know just how you feel. God, it’s been a long time.”
“For me too.”
She kissed his cheek. “Oh, no. I’ve got you waaaay beat. You’re the first since Steven and I split.”
“But that’s been … years.”
“Tell me about it. Not that it mattered most of the time. At first my anger at Steven carried over to all men and I was happy—no, make that delighted to be alone. And then Marissa got sick and I had more important things to deal with.”
“And now?”
“Now she’s better—thanks in large part to you—and you and I have been dancing around this since that night in Orkney.”
Oh, yeah … their kiss in her hotel room …
He said, “I’ll be honest: The might-have-beens of that night—I mean if Clotilde hadn’t interrupted with such terrible news—they’ve followed me around ever since.”
She lifted her head. “You too? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t know. The time never seemed right.”
He didn’t say that he never seemed right—for her. Still didn’t.
“You know, for such an alpha male, you’ve been awfully beta around me.”
“Fear of rejection. No one’s immune from it. Especially since our relationship is so important to me—even if it never got past friendship.”
“What made you think I’d reject you?”
“Well, I wasn’t picking up anything that said you wouldn’t.”
“I was ready to try another level back in Orkney—surely you sensed that.”
“I did, but we’d both narrowly escaped being killed that day, and we’d just finished sharing two bottles of wine—not to mention haggis, a well-known aphrodisiac—so it may have been just the special circumstances, never to be duplicated again.”
She frowned. “Haggis is not an aphrodisiac, and I thought I was sending signals.”
“If you were, well, not on a frequency I’m tuned in to.”
She gave a soft laugh. “Okay, I admit I’m out of practice in the signal department. But I get a sense there’s more to it.”
Should he say it? Aw, hell …
“Well, yeah. You could do better.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Does this have anything to do with Düsseldorf?”
She’d homed in on that like a guided missile.
“It has to do with a lot of things. I’ve killed…”
“Tell me about it. I saw you gun down four men—right in front of me.”
“Three. The fourth was friendly fire.”
“Which you made sure went into him. I saw that with my own eyes and I’m okay with it. I mean, we’d both be dead if you hadn’t.”
He’d done so much worse.
“It’s not that—”
“It’s got to be Düsseldorf. But you told me all about that.”
No, not all …
“Rick, you have to let go of that guilt.”
“Trying.”
But he wasn’t. Not really. Because sometimes he thought the guilt might be the finest part of him, the part that kept him sane—well, reasonably so—kept him anchored, gave him hope for himself.
Those blue eyes bored into him. “‘There is no try, only do.’”
He had to laugh. “You’re quoting Yoda to me?”
“Whatever works.” She stretched. “Well, at least now we’ve gotten this over with.”
“‘Over with’?”
“Okay, that didn’t come out right.”
He feigned hurt. “Was it such a chore?”
She kissed his ear. “You know damn well it was anything but. But you’ve got to admit it’s been an elephant in the room ever since we got back. So allow me to rephrase: At least we’ve broken the ice.”
“Yeah, but now that we’re in the water, do we sink or swim?”
“We swim. Synchronized swimming. But we keep it on the down-low.”
“Yeah. I don’t think Marissa’s ready for that.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got that right, so no PDAs.”
“PD—?”
“Public displays of affection.”
“God, no.” Some of her glossy black hair had fallen over her face. He brushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. “So where are we? Lovers? Friends with benefits? Coworkers with benefits?”
“I don’t know. Do we have to call it anything? I don’t take this lightly, Rick. And I don’t invite just any man into my bed. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never invited a man into my bed.”
“I’m honored to be the first,” he said, meaning it.
“I’m not the same woman I was even just a few years ago. Back then I thought I had a faithful husband, a healthy daughter, and a secure sense that the universe functioned according to a fixed set of rules. But then I learned that said husband was having a string of affairs, that mutated cells were trying to take over my daughter’s bloodstream and kill her, and that a legendary cure-all that bre
aks all the rules of science isn’t legendary at all. Everything solid has turned to air.”
He held her tighter. “I know the feeling.”
“I know you do. That’s why I feel connected. We’ve been through a fire together. My whole worldview has been upside down since we returned. But yours has been flipped for a lot longer. How do you do it? How do you handle it?”
He sighed. How to say this?
“When science lets you down and reality proves unreliable, you’re left with people—you’ve got to find people to believe in.”
She cocked her head. “Am I one of them?”
“Most definitely. That’s why I’ve been hanging around, making a pest of myself.”
“You’re anything but a pest. And just for the record, I believe in you. That’s why you’re here in my bed. But I can’t be the only one you believe in. There has to be someone else.”
“Not really. Stahlman, maybe.”
“Stahlman?” She looked shocked, and maybe a little disappointed. “Of all people.”
“I know you have issues with him, but Marissa’s alive because of him.”
“I know, I know. It’s just me being emotional. But of all people to believe in … he’s just about money.”
“He’s comfortable letting people think that, but there’s lots more to him. Anyway, let’s not talk about Stahlman. What about us in the here and now? What have we got here?”
“Well, it’s too early for love, don’t you think?”
Not too early for him. He’d played musical beds since Düsseldorf—he blamed it on PTSD, which might be a cop-out, but as good an explanation as any. He’d cared for each of those women, but loved not a one. He’d never felt about any woman like he felt about Laura.
But he said, “If you say so.”
“We’ve got trust, lust, passion, compassion, a bond of shared experience that few couples ever have.” She smiled as she rolled onto her back and pulled up the sheet, covering her breasts. “They’ll do for now.”
Rick tugged at the sheet. “Don’t cover yourself.”
“I’m not twenty anymore. Allow a mature woman some modesty.”
“You’ve got a goddess body.”
“A goddess with stretch marks, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I did. In fact, I kissed them on the way down, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I had my eyes closed. And speaking of down … where on Earth did you learn—?”
“Uh-uh. A guy’s gotta have his secrets.”
“No, a woman’s got to have her secrets; a guy’s supposed to lay them all out on the table.”
“Well, okay. On one of my many trips to the Orient, I studied with a master of—”
“Don’t say it!” she cried.
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“I do. Tongue-fu, right?”
“You ruined it.”
She laughed. “You must have been an A student. I think I broke my previous record for consecutive orgasms.”
The truth was, he loved to pleasure a woman, and nothing he could remember had given him more pleasure than pleasuring this woman today.
He slid down the sheet and nuzzled a nipple, darker brown against the brown of her skin. “Want to try for a new record?”
She gave a little gasp and arched against him. “It won’t be easy. Especially since we have an early flight tomorrow and I need my beauty rest.”
“I’m always up for a challenge.”
7
DAPI ISLAND
“How are you feeling?” Amaury said in Portuguese.
Bakari’s voice was a barely audible croak. “Sick.”
Bakari had got the worst of it. Amaury and Razi had a drop here and there on their pant legs, but Bakari had caught a big splash from just below his left knee down to his boot.
And now he lay on a blanket, curled into a fetal ball, shaking uncontrollably, his pocked face glistening with sweat. Amaury had seen people in a malaria crisis shake like this.
“Are you cold?”
Bakari only shook his head and continued shaking.
“Your friend tried to kill my brother!” Razi said, his hands opening and closing as if yearning to fasten around someone’s throat.
“He’s not my friend!” Amaury shouted. “He was never my friend!” He lowered his voice. “But I never thought he was my enemy. I never thought he’d … try to kill me.”
Amaury found it unfathomable. What did Jeukens have to gain by killing him and the brothers? If he had wanted to keep the secret of the island to himself—to guarantee that only he knew it existed—the time for murder would have been on the way back during the first trip. He could have killed Amaury, brought the Sorcière close to some deserted stretch of Mozambique’s coast—no shortage of those—then pointed the boat south and swum ashore. It would have wound up adrift in the uncharted stretches of the Indian Ocean and might never have been found.
He’d always thought the Afrikaner a strange one, but not a murderer.
Amaury realized he felt hurt. Betrayed. And a little sickened.
Why not simply bring a gun along and shoot them? So clean and easy. And manly. Poison was for women. A Borgia game. A slow, painful death.
Did Jeukens hate Amaury so much?
And what had he used for poison?
Taking Bakari’s gloves from atop the cage, Amaury pulled them on and lit a second battery lantern. He approached the Coleman, careful to avoid the splattered matata. The burner was still lit. He turned it off. He remembered Jeukens pouring clear fluid from a plastic bottle into the stew. He’d put it down when Amaury confronted him and—
There! The bottle, on its side, close beside the stove. He held it up to the light. A few drops remained in the bottom. He took a quick, cautious sniff but smelled nothing.
He guessed it killed if you ingested it—why else would Jeukens add it to the matata?—but, considering Bakari’s reaction, it seemed to work through the skin as well.
Movement next to the Coleman caught his eye. A six-inch, blood-red millipede was undulating across the ground toward the spilled matata.
“You might not want to go there,” Amaury muttered.
He watched it wriggle to within an inch or so of a splatter and stop. It raised its head, swayed back and forth, then turned and retreated.
Amaury couldn’t smell anything, but this thing apparently could.
Which gave him an idea.
Squatting, he upended the bottle over the millipede and let the last three drops within fall onto its undulating back. It crawled on, but only for a few seconds. Then it stopped, shuddered, and began a frantic writhing. Within fifteen seconds it was curled into a twitching ball. Very soon after that the twitching stopped.
Amaury dropped the bottle and backed away. So quick. So awful. It looked like every nerve in the millipede’s body had gone wild.
Some sort of neurotoxin.
He clenched his teeth. That was what Jeukens had planned for them? No question about it: They had to find him and kill him on sight. Amaury had never killed a man but he could not allow Jeukens another chance at murder.
Then again …
If Jeukens was truly going to identify these dapis as the missing link, the payoff would be enormous. That made him worth keeping alive.
Why was nothing ever simple?
And why hadn’t he done a background check on Jeukens? Not that he had the resources for a deep backgrounding, but he hadn’t even Googled the man. No reason to. He paid in cash, and cash was king in Amaury’s business. But now that he was thinking of it, how did he know this man had any scientific credentials at all? He could be a psychopath who simply believed he was a scientist.
A psychopath who had decided to murder his fellow travelers.
A nightmare! This simple trip—return to the island, bag some pets, and then go home—had turned into some sort of horror film.
Amaury returned to Bakari, who seemed to be shaking less.
�
��Feeling any better?”
He nodded weakly. “A little.”
Maybe they’d be lucky. Maybe they’d dodged the Afrikaner’s poison bullet.
As he set the second lantern down on top of the holding cage, he noticed the blanket had been disturbed. Had the dapis been at it? He lifted it and saw the injured dapi still inside. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. He didn’t know what to do with it.
“I’m sorry you are hurt,” he said in a soothing voice. “It was an accident. We wish to harm no one.” He thought of Jeukens. “Well, almost no one.”
Then he noticed that the cage latch was partially undone. His fellow dapis must have come down and tried to open the cage while he and the brothers were off chasing Jeukens. He’d have to arrange a better lock.
He glanced up into the trees and gasped as he saw the eyes … just the eyes … countless big blue eyes reflecting the light from the lanterns.
A galaxy of eyes, watching …
8
Once he was sure Laffite and the brothers were well gone, Marten lifted his head and looked around in the darkness.
Shit! Could things get any worse? He seemed cursed. Not that he believed in curses or any of that crap, but someone who did could make a damn good case that the place had doomed him to failure. He was stranded in a rain forest at night with no flashlight and no supplies. If he hadn’t been under such pressure, he might have thought to grab his duffel, but escape was all he could think of at that time. So he had his hat, shirt, pants, shoes, and nothing else.
What else could go wrong on this damn island? Surely the island would think of something before the night was through—if he survived the night. He had little doubt that if Laffite and company caught up with him, they’d drag him back and force some of that stew down his throat.
He shuddered at the thought of what would follow.
He still had a chance. He knew exactly where he’d left his backpack. The canisters were another story. If his luck continued on its present course, both would be ruptured and the VX that hadn’t soaked into the ground would be splattered on all the surrounding leaves.
But … if they’d survived the roll down the hill intact, he could salvage this. It might mean sacrificing his own life in the process, but he was ready for that. This was too important.
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