Hot on the Trail

by JoAnn Ross

The waiter had taken their empty plates away and as they lingered over cups of spicy cafe de olla, Davina had begun speaking of her father and how much Jordan Lowell's work had always meant to him.

  "It was all he cared about," she said.

  "But he had a wife. And a daughter," Sam pointed out, lighting a cigarette. For a moment Davina looked inclined to comment on his action. Apparently changing her mind, she began absentmindedly tracing circles on the white tablecloth with her fingernail.

  "I don't remember my mother; she died of a tropical fever she contracted on an expedition with my father when I was very young. As for his daughter..." Her voice trailed off.

  Davina was grateful when Sam remained silent, giving her time to work the words past the lump in her throat. "I really should get used to the idea that my father's work will always come first," she murmured. "I understand his dedication. And I admire it, really I do. Still…"

  Sam knew Davina was fighting back tears and admired her valiant effort. "You were telling me about his work," he reminded her.

  Davina gave him a grateful look before continuing, silently acknowledging his returning the conversation to its initial track. "It really was an all-consuming passion."

  She propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her linked fingers. "Is an all-consuming passion," she corrected swiftly, realizing that she'd been referring to her father in the past tense.

  He was alive, Davina assured herself fervently. There were too many things left unfinished between them, too many words left unsaid.

  "Davina—" Acting on impulse, Sam ran the back of his hand down her cheek. She went very still.

  "No," she whispered. She pressed her fingers against his lips. "Don't say it. Don't you see, Sam, I have to believe he's alive. I can't allow any doubts."

  It was impossible to remain unaffected by the desperation in her eyes. Sam wished that he could give her some hope—no matter how slight—some reason to keep believing. But he couldn't. Not without lying to her. And for some strange reason he didn't want any more lies between them.

  There was already the one. Unspoken, perhaps, but a lie just the same.

  "It means that much to you," he said instead.

  Davina let out the breath she had been unaware of holding. "Everything."

  "Jordan Lowell is a very lucky man." He laced his fingers through hers. "Not many men can claim such love. Or loyalty."

  Davina didn't know which was affecting her more—the warmth in his tawny eyes or the tantalizing touch of his thumb against her palm. Her mouth went suddenly dry.

  "The Lowells are big on loyalty."

  "So I see."

  Her pulse jumped as he pressed his lips against the inside of her wrist. Davina struggled to think of something, anything, to say. "I suppose that's one of the reasons that he was so upset about that horrible trouble in the Amazon basin," she managed weakly.

  Admittedly Sam had not been paying a great deal of attention to the conversation, preferring instead to observe how the speeded-up beat of Davina's pulse under his lips was in perfect rhythm with the pounding of his own heart. But as her softly spoken words filtered into his consciousness, his blood chilled to ice.

  "What trouble?" he asked, knowing the answer and dreading it.

  Confusion came and went in her eyes as she tried to understand what had just happened. The old Sam McGee was back—harsh, aloof, his eyes as hard as agate.

  "Really, you can't possibly be interested in all this," she protested, looking up at the clock on the wall. A check of her watch showed it to be running thirty minutes late. "Besides, it's getting late; I thought you wanted to get an early start to Chichen Itza."

  "We've got plenty of time." He raised a finger, ordering another drink.

  When he looked questioningly toward Davina, she shook her head, silently declining his unspoken offer. Something told her that she would need all her wits about her for the next few minutes. Although he hadn't raised his voice, Davina knew that his quiet request for her to remain with him was nothing less than an order.

  Wondering why Sam was suddenly so interested in her father, when he obviously didn't believe him to still be alive, Davina continued her story.

  "My father has always been fascinated with lost cultures. He'd been interested in a tribe rumored to live in a remote region of the Amazon basin and had tried to get funding for an expedition for years, but the archaeological community was convinced the existence of the tribe was nothing but fantasy."

  "But it wasn't." His tone was rough, gritty.

  Davina looked at Sam cautiously as he tossed down the tequila and immediately returned the glass to the waiter for a refill. "No," she agreed quietly. "It wasn't. The tribe really existed, Sam." A sudden shadow moved over his eyes. "At least it did."

  He felt a fist twisting his gut. "But not anymore."

  "No. Not anymore." She lowered her eyes to the tablecloth. "Well, to be entirely honest, there are a few scattered members left, but in order to survive, they've had to assimilate into other tribes. So even the ones who managed to live lost their entire culture."

  When she met his studiously bland gaze, her eyes blazed with anger. "He killed them, Sam. As sure as he took a gun to the heads of every man, woman and child in the tribe and pulled the trigger."

  Sam inhaled deeply on his cigarette before commenting on Davina's heated accusation. "You're not talking about your father any longer, are you?" he asked fatalistically.

  "Of course not," she retorted. "I'm talking about Palmer Kirkland. He's the one who funded the expedition. And he's the one who single-handedly destroyed an entire civilization."

  Not single-handedly, Sam corrected silently, crushing out the cigarette with undue force. "You're right," he said suddenly, pushing away from the table. "It's late. We'd better call it a night."

  Davina stared up at him as he stood over her, wondering what it would take to begin to understand the man. She'd never known anyone to run so hot then so icy cold all in the span of a few swift seconds. How she'd love to know what was going on behind those hard, amber eyes.

  When he met her questioning stare with a shuttered, inscrutable gaze, Davina reminded herself that she didn't give a damn about Sam McGee's quicksilver moods—just as she didn't care one iota about the man himself. But since she did care about her father, she'd have to put up with this man until he managed to take her to Naj Taxim, where, as far as she was concerned, he could fling himself off the nearest pyramid.

  "That's a splendid idea." She rose from the table and walked regally out of the dining room.

  Tossing a few colorful bills onto the table, Sam followed. Perhaps it was only his overactive imagination, stimulated by two drinks in swift succession, but he could have sworn he saw a crown perched atop Davina's blond head.

  They didn't speak in the elevator, the heavy silence smothering them in the small wrought-iron cage. When they reached Davina's door, Sam muttered a curt goodnight before continuing on to his own room. Although he did not look back, he could not miss the sound of Davina's door slamming shut with a decisive bang.

  6

  An hour later, as he sat out on the balcony, Sam's stomach was still tied up in knots. It was obvious that Davina trusted him; no woman would go trekking off into the jungle with a man she didn't trust. Strike that, he corrected grimly. The woman had already proved herself to be a rotten judge of character; hadn't she blithely handed her luggage over to Manuel? Sam wondered what Davina would say if she knew she'd put her life in the hands of a man who—however indirectly—was responsible for genocide.

  A harsh word, he mused, drawing on a cigarette. The bright flare momentarily glowed orange in the darkness. But an accurate one, just the same. In his own defense, he hadn't wanted to go to work for Melanie's father. But the Kirkland Foundation had been in dire need of a manager, and if there was one thing Sam knew how to do, it was to make money.

  More than one envious individual in those glory days had accused Sam of selling his soul to th
e devil in exchange for insider tips on the stock market. Everything he touched inevitably turned to gold, to dividends, to profits. The word on Wall Street was that Samuel Matthew McGee could do no wrong. In an odd sort of way, Sam himself had begun to believe his own press—until that fiasco in the Amazon.

  A person would have had to have spent the past twelve years of his life camped out on the dark side of the moon not to have heard of Palmer Kirkland. Most people, if asked, would call him an archaeologist, and although he possessed no actual degree in the science, Kirkland would be the last person in the world to contradict the description. What he was, Sam reflected bitterly, was a talented showman.

  Palmer Kirkland was a television star of the highest magnitude. More famous than J.R., richer than Carson, even more revered than Cosby, Kirkland took the armchair explorer on assaults up the icy side of Mount Everest, treks into ancient Indian burial grounds and expeditions into Africa, China and South America. Thanks to the wonder of satellite dishes, the entire world was able to watch, enthralled, as the man opened ancient tombs, searched out sunken treasure ships, traced ancient trade routes.

  The problem with such activities was that they required considerable funds—even more than the lucrative television contracts provided. It had been Sam's task to locate the monies needed to keep the cycle going—a task made easier by the fact that success inevitably begat success. For each expedition that attracted public attention, hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into the coffers of the nonprofit "scientific" foundation.

  Even as he continued to provide the money for the expeditions, Sam viewed his father-in-law's work as more entertainment than science. The first time he accused Palmer of being nothing more than a carnival huckster, the man had surprised him by laughingly agreeing.

  "But you have to admit, Sam, my boy, we give them one helluva show for their money."

  Part of the success of the Kirkland Foundation was due to the fact that Palmer insisted on hiring noted experts in the various fields. Want to search for buried treasure off the coast of China? The Kirkland Foundation located an expert in Oriental maritime history from Stanford. Interested in ancient fossils of dinosaur eggs? The foundation turned to an expert from the Smithsonian's department of paleontology.

  And when Palmer Kirkland heard of Jordan Lowell's conviction regarding a group of people, distantly related to the Txukahamei warriors of the Amazon basin, living a Stone Age existence deep in the jungle, the calculator the man had for a brain envisioned the Nielsen ratings going off the chart.

  It had taken a year to organize the expedition. After that came another six months in the jungle, following trail after trail, dead end after dead end. Finally Sam was forced to report that the project was several hundred thousand dollars over budget. It was his recommendation that the crew give up the futile search and return home. Before his message could get to the tenacious explorers, led by Jordan Lowell, the men had gotten lost. In their attempt to find their way back to civilization, they had stumbled across the village of the Peixotos Indians, a group of people so innocent of the outside world that they had never seen metal, did not know of something as basic as cloth.

  Vastly removed from their distant cousins, the Txukahamei, these Peixotos were no warriors. Although some might erroneously refer to them as savages, the tribe disproved that description by welcoming the explorers with open arms. They had immediately offered their visitors food and water and tried, with hand signals, to communicate. Contact had been made; the team had been ecstatic.

  It was then that the problems had begun, Sam recalled bitterly. A few of the members of the exploration team, Jordan included, had argued the necessity of keeping the existence of the tribe a secret. They had insisted that the Indians were too peaceful, too ingenuous to survive if they were suddenly overrun by the outside world.

  Palmer had not hesitated to remind the outspoken group exactly who held the purse strings for this trek into Amazonia. The special would be filmed, on schedule. After reading the reams of paperwork sent back to the States, Sam had come to the conclusion that it was imperative the tribe be left in peace. Later perhaps, after years of careful, controlled contact, they would be prepared to cope with the changes civilization would bring. But not yet.

  He had argued heatedly again and again with his father-in-law over the question of the Peixotos. As the bitterness between the two men had raged, the sham of Sam's marriage had finally crumbled. Sam had not been surprised by Melanie's defection; he had always known where his wife's loyalties lay. He'd left the home they had shared for three years without a backward glance. Unfortunately, there had been nothing he could do to forestall Palmer's intention to air the program.

  Within weeks, hordes of archaeologists had descended on the village. They were soon followed by scores of wealthy tourists and other curiosity seekers. As predicted, the group began to slowly disintegrate. The outsiders brought with them a myriad of previously unknown commodities, from simple trinkets to manufactured goods— battery-operated televisions, chain saws, and one well-meaning individual had actually given the chief a twelve-speed blender. Such things served to instill a jealousy that had always been absent in the group-oriented society, and a culture that had never known violence suffered two murders in the first six months after the television special aired in prime time.

  With their routine disrupted by the presence of so many outsiders, the villagers failed to plant all the sweet potatoes, squash, peanuts and corn they needed and became undernourished. Slowly, insidiously, their children began suffering from malnutrition.

  Despite injections of penicillin, continuing contact with the civilizados exposed the Indians to illnesses for which they had built up no natural immunity. During the first nine months, a score had died of influenza. Skin diseases broke out among several of the villagers, while others fell victim to respiratory illnesses. Within two years, the small band of peaceful Indians had been nearly wiped out—ravaged by the forces of civilization.

  Guilt had lain heavily upon Sam McGee's broad shoulders. It did not help to remind himself that he had argued Lowell's case and failed. Neither did it ease his conscience to know that he had left the Kirkland Foundation the day the television program had run, coincidentally on his thirty-fifth birthday.

  The undeniable fact was that by raising the funds for the expedition, he had been an important member of the team. There was no way he could not hold himself culpable for the project's fatal outcome.

  Now, smoking his cigarette as he watched indigo clouds scudding over the crescent moon, Sam wondered what Davina would think of him if she knew the truth. As if conjured up by his bleak thoughts, Davina chose that moment to come out onto her adjoining balcony.

  "I couldn't get to sleep," she said by way of explanation.

  "I can imagine you'd be excited about tomorrow." He could not trust himself to look at her.

  "That, too," she murmured in agreement.

  A forthright individual by nature, Davina wanted to explain these strange feelings, to admit that it had been thoughts of Sam that had kept her awake. But nothing in his tone or his demeanor encouraged such candor; he kept his gaze directed out over the sleeping town.

  They shared the night for a time. As the soft scent of Davina's perfume drifted on the warm night air, it mingled enticingly with the fragrance of tropical flowers from the courtyard below. Sam tried to remember when he'd wanted a woman more than he wanted Davina at this moment and came up blank.

  Davina cast a surreptitious glance his way, sensing a hunger that equaled her own. But there was more than that. Although she knew she could probably be considered certifiable for even considering such an outlandish idea, she couldn't help feeling that Sam was as confused as she was.

  "It's a lovely night," she said softly. When the conversation drags, talk about the weather. "I feel as if I could reach up and grab a handful of those stars."

  "The clouds are coming in again," he said gruffly. "We'll have more rain before morning."
r />   "I like rain," she offered.

  Her friendly attempt at conversation went unappreciated and unreturned as Sam continued to stare out into the well of darkness. Davina stood still and silent, her hands on the wrought-iron railing, watching the glow of Sam's cigarette flicker in the blackness like a firefly.

  After what seemed an eternity, Sam reluctantly gave in to her silent appeal and turned his head toward her. He sucked in a harsh, painful breath as the power of Davina's soft smile slammed into him. In that frozen instant, Sam found himself wishing that he had met this woman years ago. Before Melanie, before Palmer Kirkland, before Jordan Lowell and his damned Indians.

  "Are you always this reckless?" he asked, not taking his eyes from hers. Somewhere in the distance the soulful song of a Spanish guitar mingled with the evocative music of female laughter in the sultry night air. A slow flame began to spread through him. "Or do you just enjoy playing with fire?"

  Davina laughed softly and tossed back her hair. She was wearing it loose tonight; soft, shimmering waves tumbled over her shoulders. The golden strands silvered with moonlight gleamed in the darkness like the glow of the Milky Way.

  "If you want the unvarnished truth, this trip to the Yucatan was the first reckless thing I've done in my entire life."

  He flipped the cigarette down onto the flagstone courtyard. It glowed for a fleeting moment like the flare of fireworks, then went out.

  "Just be careful you don't get more than you bargained for," he warned.

  Davina was shaken by the thundercloud that moved across his rough-hewn features. At the best of times, Sam McGee was a long way from movie-star handsome. Now, his face darkened with some emotion she could not quite discern, the man was a very imposing force.

  "Really, Sam," she protested, "I'm not some hothouse flower that's going to wilt at the very first sign of trouble. I've been on explorations before." She tried a slight smile, hoping to encourage an answering one from those grimly set lips. "And as you can see, I certainly lived to tell about it."