by Susan Napier;Kathryn Ross;Kelly Hunter;Sandra Marton;Katherine Garbera;Margaret Mayo
‘My luck ran out the night you and I bumped into each other in The Hotel Florinda.’
‘Funny, but I’ve been thinking the same thing.’
Brionny dusted off her shorts. ‘Then you ought to be more than happy to agree to my plan.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
She smiled brightly. ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine.’
‘You really are a mind-reader, Stuart. As soon as we get to Italpa, that’s exactly what we’ll do.’
‘I don’t want to wait until we get to Italpa.’ She strode forward and thrust out her hand. ‘Give me my pack and my gun and I’ll be on my way.’
‘On your way to where, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Get that tone out of your voice, dammit! Do you think I can’t find my way to the river? I have a map in that pack. I don’t need your help, not for a minute.’
‘That’s not what you said when we found Ingram dead and the camp ransacked.’ His voice rose in cruel parody of hers. “‘What worries me is how I’m going to get back to Italpa without a guide’” you said.’
‘I was in shock. I’d forgotten I had a map. And you’re the only one who thinks that camp was ransacked.’
He laughed. ‘What’d they do, Stuart? Check it for souvenirs?’
‘Stop trying to change the topic, McClintoch. I want my stuff, and I want it now.’
Slade gave her a pitying look. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t have a chance on your own.’
‘Your concern for my welfare is touching, but—’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, lady. It’s my welfare I’m concerned about. Two people have a better chance of making it out of here than one.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning two sets of eyes and ears offer greater protection.’
‘Against the bloodthirsty savages tracking us?’ Brionny smiled coldly. ‘I’ll take my chances. Just hand over my things.’
‘What have you got in this pack?’ Slade demanded.
She felt her heart kick into her ribs. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, Stuart, it’s not a difficult question. What’s in here? Food? Matches?’
‘Get to the point, McClintoch.’
‘We’ve got a ten-day walk ahead of us, a handful of resources, a map and a gun. Assuming I let you go off on your own—’
‘Assuming you let me? Who died and made you king?’
‘Assuming I did,’ he said with airy disdain, ‘how do you propose we split those things up?’
‘Why should we split them up? They belong to me.’
Slade’s eyebrows rose in mock disbelief. ‘Where’s your sense of morality? Are you saying you’d just watch me set off alone, without any supplies or weapons?’
‘You’re a big boy, McClintoch. You got yourself into this mess—you can get yourself out of it.’
He put his hands on his hips. ‘Is this the same woman who told me she wasn’t entirely without human feelings?’
Color flooded her cheeks. ‘This is a ridiculous conversation!’
‘Yeah. It is.’ He settled the pack more firmly on his shoulders. ‘Sorry, Stuart. Whether we like it or not, we’re stuck with each other until we reach the river.’
‘What you mean is I’m stuck with you,’ Brionny said angrily, ‘because you’ve requisitioned my supplies for you own use.’
‘If that’s the way you see it.’
‘Is there another way to see it?’
Slade sighed. ‘Even with a mountain of supplies and a gun in each hand, you’d never make it back to Italpa on your own.’
She looked as if she wanted to slap his face, Slade thought as he turned on his heel and set off along the trail again without giving her a chance to answer. Not that he cared. This wasn’t about winning popularity contests; it was about survival.
Would she fall in line and follow after him? He smiled grimly to himself. Sure she would. She hated his guts, but she wasn’t stupid. No matter what she said, she had to know he was right, that she needed him to make it back to Italpa.
He sighed wearily. On the other hand, she was dense as stone when it came to some things. The emerald, for instance. The Mali-Mali seemed convinced she had it, or had it stashed. He had no reason to doubt them. He didn’t doubt the Indians’ ability to keep them from reaching Italpa alive, either.
The messages had been easy to read. A trade, the Mali-Mali were saying. Free passage to civilization for the Eye of God.
Slade thought it sounded more than fair. The problem was convincing Brionny Stuart. Even after she’d seen what the headhunters had done to the rope bridge at El Kaia, she’d refused to tell him the truth.
But she would, eventually. It was just a matter of time. She was pigheaded and stubborn, but she wasn’t dumb.
And, much as he hated to admit it, she was also beautiful. He liked his women in soft chiffon and delicate high heels, wearing discreet jewelry and smelling of Joy. Brionny Stuart was dressed in faded denim shorts, boots and an almost shapeless cotton T-shirt. She wore no jewelry, and the only things she smelled of were sweat and herself, and still she was sexier and lovelier than any woman he could think of.
His body tightened as he remembered that glimpse of her he’d had as she’d floated in the jungle pool, her hair drifting like yellow petals around her face, her breasts rising from the water like ivory globes tipped with the palest pink silk.
Dammit, what was wrong with him? He wasn’t a boy, given to sweaty fantasies. He’d been busy as hell lately, yes, flying from one on-site emergency to another, but he hadn’t lived like a monk. There’d been women. Hell, there’d always been women, attracted first to his muscles and then to his money. Heaven knew, there was nothing special about this one—unless you were turned on by snotty, ill-tempered bitches. Brionny Stuart had a cold heart and a sharp tongue and a grim determination not to tell him what she knew about the Eye of God, even if it meant that the two of them might end up as miniaturized objets d’art hanging on the wall of some Amazonian thatched hut—
‘Ouch!’
He swung around. She was dancing from foot to foot, waving her hands in front of her face. Anyone who didn’t know better would think she’d lost her mind.
‘Mosquitoes?’ he said, almost pleasantly.
The look she shot him was filled with fury.
‘Of course mosquitoes,’ she snarled. ‘There’s repellent in my pack, if you’d let me get at it.’
‘Dousing yourself with bug spray once they start biting is useless. You should have done it hours ago.’
‘Thanks for the advice. Now give me the bug spray.’
Slade shook his head. ‘I don’t want to stop now. You can use the stuff when we make camp.’
‘And when will that be?’ Brionny blew an errant wisp of hair from her forehead. ‘If you figure on doing another million miles before then, tell me and I’ll drop out now.’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’ve given enough blood to the mosquitoes to win a medal from the Red Cross.’
‘I said to keep your voice down.’
‘Listen McClintoch, I don’t know where you get this Genghis Khan complex from, but—’
She gasped as he caught hold of her shoulders.
‘I get it from my basic instinct to survive,’ he growled. ‘You’ve got a pocket full of degrees—aren’t you bright enough to figure out that you’re making too much noise?’
‘Sorry. If I’d known human speech would disturb your thought processes—’
‘Have you forgotten about the Mali-Mali?’
‘Oh. Right.’ Brionny gave him a dazzling smile. ‘The little men in grass skirts.’
‘Actually,’ Slade said coldly, ‘they probably wear bark cloth.’
‘Of course. Bark cloth. And plugs in their earlobes. And in their noses.’ She shot him another bright smile. ‘Just like in National Geographic.’
‘Are you making a point?’
‘
Just that it’s late, I’m tired, and I’m fed up being smorgasbord for the bugs.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘Well, then…?’
‘We’ll stop when I decide we’ve put enough distance between us and anybody who might be following.’
Brionny nodded. ‘The cannibals,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I keep forgetting.’
Slade’s eyes narrowed. ‘Come on, Stuart. You’ve spent snough time rubbing your academic credentials under my nose. What’s with this sudden show of ignorance about Amazon tribes?’
‘I’m just deferring to the man with all the information. That is you, isn’t it?’
‘I’m too tired to play games, lady. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, shut your mouth, grit your teeth, and hang on another few minutes. If I remember right, the place I figure on stopping at is just ahead.’
Brionny’s eyes rounded with exaggerated surprise. ‘A place the vicious headhunters won’t know?’
‘A place they won’t find, if we’re lucky. Anyway. I suspect they’re more interested in tailing us for a while than in attacking.’
‘How good of them to keep you informed.’
‘Dammit, what’s this all about?’
Suddenly she felt incredibly tired, too tired to go on with their verbal warfare. It had been a long, wearing day, and it wasn’t over yet.
‘Nothing,’ she said. Sighing, she slumped back against a tree, slid down its length and plopped down on the ground. ‘I need a breather, McClintoch. Just five minutes.’
He gave her a long, measuring look. Something that was a cross between admiration and pity welled inside him. He could see that she really was exhausted. Actually, that she’d managed to push this far was more than he’d expected.
‘All right,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You sit there while I take a look around.’
Brionny nodded. ‘Fine.’
He looked at her again. Her legs were drawn up and her arms lay limply across her knees. Her head was tilted forward so that the softly vulnerable nape of her neck lay exposed. There was a welt on her arm from a mosquito bite or a thorn, and he fought down the impossible urge to bend and put his lips to it.
Slade swallowed hard, forced himself to look away. The brush alongside the trail was a bramble-filled tangle. He could see a thick tree trunk rising perhaps fifty feet from where he stood. Was it the place he remembered?
He looked back at Brionny. She hadn’t moved, except to let her head droop even further forward. That was how he felt, too, tired to the point of collapse. Neither of them could go much further tonight.
‘Stuart?’ She looked up. ‘Will you promise to stay put?’
She laughed wearily. ‘Do I look as if I could go anywhere?’
No, Slade thought, she certainly didn’t. With a grunt, he dropped the pack from his shoulders.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, and stepped into the bush.
The instant the dense foliage closed around him, Brionny sprang to her feet. Heart pounding, she pounced on the pack and all but ripped it open. She’d never dreamed she’d get lucky like this, that McClintoch would just drop the pack at her feet and walk off.
She hadn’t lied about staying put. She was worn to the point of collapse and besides, she wasn’t foolish enough to try and make a break for it at night.
But the emerald, she thought as she fumbled for the tea box, the emerald was a different story entirely. She could dig it from its hiding place, put it somewhere else.
But where? Her hand closed around the stone. Where could she hide the thing? It was only twenty or thirty carats in size, not huge, but bulky enough to—
Only twenty or thirty carats, she thought, biting back a gurgle of hysterical laughter, and only worth—what? A million dollars? Twice that? More?
‘Stuart?’ Brionny’s heart leaped into her throat. She looked up wildly, her eyes sweeping the wall of brush. ‘Stuart,’ Slade hissed from somewhere behind it, ‘do you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ she said. Where to hide the emerald? Where?
‘This place looks OK. Grab the backpack and come on through.’
Think, Brionny, think!
Swiftly she dug into the pack again. There was a package of tampons at the bottom. Her hands shook as she opened it, shoved the emerald deep inside, then closed it again.
She shut the backpack and was just rising to her feet as the bushes parted.
‘What’s taking so long?’ Slade demanded.
Could he hear her heart trying to pump its way out of her chest? Brionny gave what she hoped was a lazy shrug.
‘I told you, I’m tired. It took me a while to get myself together.’
She looked more than tired, Slade thought; her face was white with strain, her eyes dark pools of exhaustion—but whose fault was that? It was her fault they were on the run from a tribe of savages.
‘My heart breaks for you,’ he said coldly, ‘but we’ve got more important things to worry about than you needing a night’s sleep.’
‘Forgive me, McClintoch.’ Brionny’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘I keep forgetting. The jungle’s alive with enemies. They’re behind each tree, under each leaf—’
The breath whooshed from her lungs as he grabbed her and yanked her hard against him.
‘This isn’t a game,’ he said harshly. ‘And I won’t permit you to act as if it is, not while you’re playing with my life as well as your own.’
‘You’re right,’ Brionny spat, ‘this isn’t a game! And I’m tired of pretending it is. Who are you kidding, McClintoch? The only thing we’re in danger from is your over-acting.’
‘Are you crazy, woman?’
‘No.’ Her jaw shot forward. She hadn’t meant to tell him she was on to him, but what point was there in letting him go on playing her for a fool? ‘And I’m not the impressionable jerk you think I am, either. This whole incredible story of yours, about the natives and—’
She cried out as Slade’s hand whisked across her mouth. His arm went around her waist, inflexible as steel. In one swift movement he lifted her from her feet, jerked her off the narrow trail, and into the dense underbrush.
Branches tore at her hair; brambles raked her cheek. She kicked against his shins, yelled silently against his palm. Her teeth sank into his flesh, but though he cursed her under his breath he didn’t let go.
And then, suddenly, she heard the sound.
A pulsebeat, deep and primitive, throbbed through the jungle.
She went still in Slade’s arms.
‘Do you hear it?’ he whispered into her ear.
Brionny nodded frantically. His hand fell from her mouth and he drew her back with him through the bushes until they were standing in a small clearing. The drumming sound intensified, and Brionny turned without thinking and burrowed into Slade’s embrace.
‘Easy,’ he whispered, while his hand stroked gently down her spine.
‘What—what is it?’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘Our pals are sending a message.’
Of course. They were listening to the sound of hands drumming on a hollow log. How could she not have recognized it? A shudder went through her as she answered her own question. It was one thing to read about this ancient form of communication in a textbook but quite another to hear it yourself, in the humid darkness of a rainforest.
‘It—it doesn’t sound the way I expected,’ she whispered.
Slade nodded. ‘It never does.’ His arms tightened around her. ‘It goes right through you, doesn’t it?’
Oh, yes, it certainly did. The drumming seemed to be all around them, defying her to tell where it was coming from. She knew only that it was the most primitive and frightening sound she’d ever heard. It was like listening to the heartbeat of some great, primordial creature, waiting out there in the darkness.
Brionny shivered again. Slade drew back a little, took her face in his hands, and lifted it to him.
‘It it helps,’ he whispered, ‘I don
’t think it’s the prelude to an attack.’
She made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. ‘Don’t tell me. They’re using Morse Code and you learned to read it in your days as a Boy Scout.’
He smiled. ‘It wasn’t such a hot idea to be Boy Scout where I grew up. Wearing a good guy’s uniform was bad news in my neighborhood.’
Brionny pressed her forehead against his shoulder. ‘Then how do you know what they’re saying?’
‘I don’t. But if they wanted to rush us, they’d have done it by now.’
‘Well, that’s reassuring.’ She looked at him again. ‘So, what kind of message do you think it is it? “Dear Jane, I’ll be late, don’t hold dinner”?’
Slade laughed softly. ‘Something like that.’ His thumbs moved lightly across her cheekbones. ‘I think they’re sending out word that they know where we are, more or less, and that everything’s under control.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘It is, when you consider the alternative.’
‘An attack, you mean.’ Brionny took a deep breath. ‘You’re sure they’re not planning one?’
‘I can’t be sure of anything, Bree. But I can make a pretty good guess. The tribes I’m familiar with—’
‘The tribes you’re familiar with?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve traveled a bit through this part of the world and I’ve been in a few other places where primitive peoples still exist.’
Yes, she thought, looking at him, at the hard, masculine planes of his face, the sweep of dark hair, the proud yet sensual mouth, he would be a man who traveled in such places. He was a man drawn to adventure and the endless search for treasure, committed to nothing more than following the sunrise.
Why did the thought make her throat tighten?
Slade drew in his breath. ‘The drumming’s stopped.’
‘I guess the telecommunications office shut down for the night,’ Brionny whispered, trying for a smile to match the quip, but she failed miserably. Slade drew her closer.
‘We’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘They’ve had plenty of chances to hurt us, if that’s what they wanted to do.’
‘What do they want, then?’
The emerald, he thought, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say it when she already looked so frightened.