"Where did you bring me?" Mac said, pretending a calm she didn't feel. "What is this place?"
He ignored her question as he might ignore the babbling of a week-old baby. "It seems your party has abandoned you."
"No one abandoned me. It's just that—"
He rounded on her with so much unexpected anger that she backed up a step. "Did you hear me? Your party is no longer here. I see no sign that anyone has been in these ruins. Maybe they found having a woman along more trouble than whatever you paid them was worth."
Mac's resolution to remain calm crumbled like ancient stone. "I didn't pay anyone but the guide. I arrived with a regular tourist group from Flores, to see the ruins like everyone else. So if you'll just give me back my flashlight—"
"And just where do you intend to go?"
That was a good question, but she couldn't let him know how lost she was. "I think I'll do a little exploring on my own, if you don't mind."
"I don't think so," he said with grim amusement. "Whatever your reasons for being alone, you can't go blundering about in the jungle. I'm not such a blackguard to let even a"—he paused significantly—"woman such as you run loose. I've gone to this much trouble already."
"Thank you so much. And why should I trust you?"
There. It was out at last. But he only arched his brow and rested his hand on the butt of his pistol. "You don't have much choice." He noticed the direction of her glance and grunted. "The gun, is it? We and your former companions aren't the only people in the jungle, Miss MacKenzie. There are guerrillas and rebels and petty tyrants in every part of this country. Some are far less scrupulous than I am."
Guerrillas? She'd read about the rebel Maya bands that occasionally ventured out of the Guatemalan highlands and into the Petén, but they weren't any danger to tourists. Her would-be protector saw more potential perils in this jungle than she did.
"I don't think—"
"Obviously not. But have no fear, Miss MacKenzie. Your… virtue is completely safe with me. I'm not remotely tempted to test it."
For the second or third time that afternoon Mac was left speechless. How could you argue with a man who kept coming up with such bizarre comments?
How could you even take him seriously? Yes—that was the key. He was out of his gourd and there was absolutely no point in wasting her energy on anger. In any case, she had to admit that he was right about blundering around in the jungle. There must be some alternative.
Liam Junior's wandering gaze and pose of bored indifference gave her the chance to study him surreptitiously. The jungle's deep shadows only made his features seem more sharply cut, more imposingly masculine. Lines radiated out from his eyes and slashed between his brows. His was an outdoorsman's face that had been exposed to the elements: sun and wind and rain. It was a face that hid far more than it revealed.
What would you think of him, Homer? You'd probably have found him interesting, weirdness and all. You'd probably have learned everything important about him by now, too, and have him eating out of your hand.
But she wasn't Homer. Somehow her attempt to exorcise the Sinclair family demon had gotten far out of hand. Liam Junior was right: she didn't have a whole hell of a lot of choice at the moment. She could either follow her insane impulse to murder him, or take what help he could give and put up with the rest.
"All right," she said. "So what do you plan to do?"
"See you safely back with your people, whoever they are."
"We agree on that, anyway. Since we disagree about where we are, the best thing to do is get to a high place and take a good look around."
He grinned, a flash of white teeth brilliant and startling beside his tanned skin. "You do show occasional sense, Miss MacKenzie."
Sense enough to know that the highest scalable point in this part of the jungle was probably the vine-covered ruin right next to them. Mac grimaced. Her clothes were sticky, her feet were blistered, and the last thing she wanted to do was scramble up the crumbling steps of an unrestored temple.
"You don't happen to know the best way up this thing, do you?" she asked.
"Not here. I know a better place."
And he was off again, pausing just long enough to let her glimpse the direction he'd gone. Mac tried out a string of antiquated and colorful imprecations and followed. The sooner she found out where she was, the sooner she could get back to the real world.
She had to give it to him, though—he knew what he was doing. In a matter of minutes he'd cut his way through dense vegetation to another pyramid temple, this one even taller than the first. Familiar, almost. And from the base up the sloping length of the narrow temple steps, someone had worn out a faint path through the growth that coated almost every stone surface.
It was still a very long way up.
"You wait here," Liam's clone ordered. "Don't move an inch from this spot until I come back down."
Oh, yeah. He did have these odd notions of female competence—or incompetence. "Just watch me," she said, and grabbed for the first handhold.
The unrestored steps were hardly steps at all, but they were adequate for the job. No different from climbing trees when she was a kid, really. She'd almost forgotten how much she loved sitting among the branches…
Her foot slipped on crumbling stone. A hard body stopped her backward slide; arms like rock closed around her waist.
"Don't get yourself killed just yet," he said, breath warm against her neck. "The view is more interesting than I'd expected."
It took some effort, but she caught her balance just enough to pull free and start again. Her ears were burning. Just what was he trying to prove?
Jaw set, she scrambled the rest of the way without once backsliding. Feeling him right behind her was motive enough. Her body felt like a single live wire, still singing from that brief contact. What in hell was wrong with her?
That was one of several questions she couldn't answer, but she didn't propose to let him guess how off balance she felt.
When she gained the top of the stairs she knelt on the platform crowning the summit of the pyramid, exhausted but triumphant. Behind her was the temple proper with its gaping entrance and decorative carved comb on top. Below…
Below was the jungle. Jungle uncleared, with only a few faint paths visible between the pyramid temples that rose above the green. Temples that were far too impressive not to be well known and explored. Temples that were placed in a pattern identical to that of Tikal.
Mac sat down. She did a quick mental count of the major ruins in the area. Aside from Tikal, the most famous, there were only a few of any size within a day's walk. Uaxactum was north, but it was still a good fifteen miles away and considerably less impressive than Tikal. Its temples were simply not of the size she was seeing right now. El Mirador was even farther away.
Okay. She turned in a circle. To north, south, east, and west the carpet of green was unbroken. No massive clearings by lumber companies eager for the jungle's untapped resources, no smaller patches of settlements or villages. No roads. No airstrip. No sign of habitation.
"It's as I told you, Miss MacKenzie."
Liam Junior settled into an easy crouch beside her, knees spread and big hands dangling between. "I can find no sign that your party has been here within the past week," he continued—without mockery, for a change. He frowned at her. "How long did you say you were alone?"
She wanted to make some wisecrack, but it had managed to get tangled around her tongue. "About an hour after the guide left. Before I ran into you."
"Then where is this guide?"
"I don't know."
"How many were in Tikal?"
"I didn't count the tourists. I didn't come with a tour group. They wouldn't be—" No, don't tell him no one would be looking for you, Mac. Not a good idea. "You're still telling me this is Tikal?"
He only gave her another of those condescendingly half-pitying, half-contemptuous looks. Her head had begun to ache. A large, warm drop of water hit her on the
bridge of her nose and trickled into her eye. More raindrops joined the first in rapid succession.
The square temple entrance provided the only shelter from the cloudburst that followed. Mac retreated just inside. Liam Junior stayed where he was, face upturned.
Mac was grateful for the moment of privacy. A crazy idea was forming in her brain, too ridiculous to think out, let alone speak aloud.
She wiped damp hands on the thighs of her pants, wriggled out of her backpack and unzipped the inner pouch. The photo was as carefully wrapped now as it had been on the day Homer had given it to her. Her fingers were a little unsteady as she pulled it out and held it up to catch the filtered light.
It was almost a shock to see how thoroughly her Liam clone resembled the real thing, even down to his clothing. But it was the ruins behind him and Perry that she examined. The temple framed in the photograph was high and surrounded by jungle, with only a scanty path worn through the greenery that covered the steps to the top. Trees grew on the stairway and on the temple platform, just as they did on the ruin she sat in. The match was almost perfect…
"Where did you get that?"
She flinched. Liam Junior stood over her, his hand already reaching for the photograph. Mac snatched it away before his dripping fingers could take hold.
"Hey! Be careful—that's an antique!"
He shook his head, spraying water from his golden brown hair. "Antique?" he echoed. "How did you get it?" His tone sharpened, and he dropped into a crouch. "Do you know Perry?"
For a moment she wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. "What?"
He clamped his fingers around her wrist. "Perry. Did he give this to you?"
Mac stared at him. "This is too much. If Homer were alive he might have pulled something like this—"
He shook her, just enough to get her attention. "Perry Sinclair. This photograph was taken the last time we were in Tikal. Perry had it in his rooms."
Mac worked her wrist free of his grasp and tucked the photo behind her. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said carefully. "This photo was given to me by my grandfather. The men in it have been dead for decades—"
"Miss MacKenzie," he said between his teeth, "when Perry left me in this jungle he was very much alive. And I am most assuredly not dead. Did Perry think I was?"
She had heard him correctly, but her brain refused to process the information. "Ye—no." She breathed in and out, grateful that her physical functions seemed to be operating normally. "Uh… you never did… tell me your name."
"Remiss of me. But if you know Perry—"
"I don't. I mean—"
"—you must know my name is Liam O'Shea."
Mac sat very still. Of course his name was Liam O'Shea. He recognized the photograph. He knew about her great-great-grandfather. He came from San Francisco. It all made perfect sense.
Who could have set this up? She didn't have any friends or relatives capable, financially or otherwise, of such an elaborate scheme; Homer was dead, she wasn't close to her uncles, and Jason was too lost in his research to call her more than once a year. No one at the museum would have bothered. Even if they'd known the story behind the photograph…
No one would have bothered. No one cared enough or knew enough. But there were only two other explanations she could think of. The most likely one was that she'd managed to hit her head on the wall in that tunnel and was in the middle of some sort of delusion or dream.
Yes. There'd been that feeling of nausea and disorientation right before the wall had disappeared and she'd lost the pendant. She'd never felt anything quite like it before—as if the ground were vanishing beneath her feet. Maybe that had been the last real thing she'd felt before she'd lost consciousness, and the rest was a concoction of all the elements that had been in her mind when the accident had happened.
She pinched herself. That didn't work; she felt it and didn't wake up. This was definitely a new level of dream. Or delirium. Maybe she was even dying. Odd how the idea didn't trouble her.
Maybe because she couldn't quite believe it. But the third possibility…
Her giggle turned into a cough. There is no such thing, Mac. Except in your own possibly delirious mind.
"Miss MacKenzie!"
She grinned at him. That drunken sense of unreality had come over her again. She braced her hands on her knees to keep from swaying. "I'm… fine. Just…
let me get this straight. You say your name is Liam O'Shea, and this is Tikal. Correct?"
He regarded her as a jaguar might a particularly succulent deer. "Yes."
"And, uh… what year is this?"
Liam-who-claimed-to-be-the-real-thing smiled. "I'll wager you know well enough, Miss MacKenzie. The date is the fourteenth of August, and the year is 1884."
Chapter Four
They say miracles are past.
—William Shakespeare
THE WOMAN WAS evidently an actress of considerable talent. Or she was quite mad.
"1884?" she repeated, her low voice hoarse. "Did you say—eighteen eighty-four? But that's not possible."
Liam regarded her stunned expression with suspicious bemusement. Simple insanity did fit hand in glove with the rest of her: thin, wiry, distinctly peculiar with her cap of short hair and bold dark eyes, sharp-tongued, dressed top to toe in men's clothing of an odd cut, and carrying a newfangled electric lantern the likes of which he had never seen in all his travels. And alone here in the jungle, first claiming she'd been with a full party of explorers and then insisting that no man had brought her.
And then there was her odd manner of speech, her absurd assertions of hotels in the jungle and omnibuses from Flores, her reaction to Tikal—as if she'd expected to see something entirely different, though she claimed to know the ruins.
Yes, one could almost be convinced that she was in a state of mental disturbance—if not for the photograph she had so carelessly allowed him to see. The one taken here in these very ruins four years ago.
"What did you expect, Miss MacKenzie?" he asked. "Maybe you have been in the jungle too long."
Her dark brows drew down, and her gaze grew unfocused. "Okay, Mac," she muttered. "Time to wake up. This isn't happening."
Was this act a way of protecting herself, avoiding his questions because she'd revealed too much? Liam couldn't forget the shock he'd felt when he'd seen her with the photograph. Until that moment she'd been only an unforeseen burden to dispose of in the nearest safe place, some eccentric suffragist amateur explorer who'd been lost or deliberately abandoned, left for him to save.
After what had happened yesterday, he'd never considered doing otherwise.
The sharp sting of recent memory made the bitterness rise in his throat: Perry's revelation, the knowledge that Liam's trust in his partner had been entirely misplaced; the fight, drinking to drown the rage and loss, waking up this morning to find the bearers, mules, and nearly all the supplies gone. With Perry.
Abandoned. Betrayed by the one man he'd thought he could trust. The man who stood beside him in that damned photograph.
He'd thought the girl in far more desperate straits than himself. She was of the weaker sex, in spite of her ridiculous beliefs to the contrary. But now—now he felt a grinding suspicion in his gut, wild thoughts fully as mad as the woman's incoherent ramblings and disjointed explanations.
Liam scowled at Miss MacKenzie's inward stare. She wasn't the only one with wits gone begging. A woman?
Even Perry wouldn't sink so low. And there hadn't been time. But since yesterday nothing seemed beyond possibility.
And their meeting had seemed more than merely coincidence.
He studied her, chin on fist, allowing himself full rein to his imagination. Perry would never assume that his erstwhile partner would be distracted by a woman like this. She was hardly beautiful. Her hair was short, her jaw too stubborn, her figure too slender. Though she'd proven she was, in fact, female enough when the rain had soaked through her shirt.
He found
himself gazing at her chest. More there than he'd first noticed; come to think of it, she couldn't pass for a boy, not unless that loose shirt were completely dry…
You've been without a woman too long, O'Shea. He snorted. No. At best Perry would expect him to be delayed further, getting the girl back to civilization. That would neatly fit in with his intentions.
Liam's hand slammed into the wet stone of the temple. Perry knew too damned much about him. He knew Liam wouldn't leave any woman alone in the jungle, no matter what his circumstances—without supplies or bearers or even a single scrawny mule…
Because you trusted him. The rage bubbled up again, and with very little effort he could imagine his fist connecting with Perry's superior, aristocratic face.
By the saints, it wasn't over yet. When Liam got back' to San Francisco—
"That's it."
He snapped out of his grim reverie. Miss MacKenzie—"Mac," the name she had called herself and which suited her so well—had apparently recovered her senses. Or ended her game. She was on her feet, looking out over the jungle.
"I'm going back," she announced.
Liam rose casually. The top of her cropped head came almost to his chin; tall for a woman. He hadn't realized that before.
"Back where—Mac?" he drawled.
Her stare was no longer unfocused. She looked at him as if she'd like to pitch him over the side of the pyramid. "Only my friends call me Mac," she said, "and you're not my friend. You're a figment of my overheated imagination."
He gave a startled bark of laughter. Whoever and whatever she was, she had the ability to make him hover between laughter and outrage. She was too damned good at keeping him off balance. Was that her purpose—and Perry's?
To hell with that. If there was anything to his suspicions, he'd learn soon enough.
"So," he said, "you don't think I'm real?" He took one long step, closing the gap between them, and felt her shudder as his chest brushed hers. He could feel the little tips of her breasts, hardening through the shirt. He felt an unexpected hardening in his own body. "What proof do you need, eh?"
TWICE A HERO Page 6