River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  The emeralds and diamonds were another story altogether. Will wasn’t just hauling them someplace for Fat Eddie. He was taking them to Corisco Vargas, according to what he’d told Luiz and Juanio, which meant she and Will were more than heading in the same direction. They were headed for the same damned place, and the man she was trying to avoid was the one he was intending to find.

  When she’d stumbled onto Corisco’s Cauaburi operation a year ago, she’d been so far out in the boondocks, there wasn’t a place she’d stepped that had been on any map. But Will must have a map, and even though at this point in time, he thought the only treasure to be found at the end of it were the gems he was taking there, the man wasn’t an average type of guy. No matter how far he’d fallen off the botanical research bandwagon, he would always look at the forest as a botanist, a brilliant, highly skilled botanist with an eye for plants, which meant he’d become just one more big problem she had to contain. He could have all the Aganisia cyanea he could find, but she doubted if he would find very much. No one had ever found more than a single flower on the Marauiá or anywhere else. Her concern was Epidendrum luminosa, and it was all hers, every last luminous petal and sepal, every glowing calyx and corolla.

  Perched on the galley countertop, her head already in her hands, she let out an exasperated sigh. She was beginning to feel decidedly star-crossed.

  And the damned snake. She’d recognized the sucuri looming up out of the dark, known the serpent for what it was, and would never forget it, whether it had been real or her imagination.

  It sure as hell had looked real, but either way left her on shaky ground and with the uncomfortable conviction that Will Travers was a man privy to more freaky supernatural hoodoo than a person could beat with a stick, the kind of stuff she’d made a career out of avoiding.

  Beneath her, she felt the low throb of the engine slowing to a halt, and she looked up to see Will throttling down.

  “I’ll tie up,” he said, latching the wheel. “There’s some tobacco in that last drawer over there. Blow a little smoke on Juanio. See if you can get him to come around.”

  Tobacco was a cure-all in the Amazon. Nicotiana tabacum was smoked, chewed, made into a syrup, and ingested, all with amazing results. More often than not, it was a shaman’s first line of defense, and that Travers’s first thought was to blow a little smoke on Juanio only proved her point about his experience.

  “Blow a little smoke,” she muttered, rummaging through the drawer. It was full of all kinds of leaves and stems, flowers and buds, some bagged, some not, some labeled, most not. He had at least two dozen small jars holding plant material, a lime gourd, and about a pound of Erythroxylum novogranatense leaves, coca. She finally came up with a cotton bag of tobacco, some whole leaves, some cut, and a packet of papers. Taking the civilized route, she used the papers, rolling a cigarette and licking it closed.

  By the time Travers returned, she was sitting on the floor next to Juanio, blowing smoke rings around the chubby guy.

  “You want some coffee?” he asked, offering the other Brazilian cure-all.

  “Por favor.”

  In a few minutes, he sat down next to her and handed her a steaming hot, sugary sweet cafezinho.

  “Thanks.”

  He took the cigarette from her hand, and she watched as he took a long draw and blew the smoke out, wreathing the Brazilian bandit. “Come on, Juanio, acorda. Wake up.”

  Annie took a sip of coffee, inhaling the fragrant smoke and thinking how cozy it all would be, if it wasn’t ninety-eight degrees with ninety-nine percent humidity, and he wasn’t the single most disturbing man she’d ever met.

  Half the problem, she decided, was the way he looked, a little too wild, a little too far over the edge, a little too beautiful to be the derelict she’d thought he was in Pancha’s. Of course, the bigger half was about Vargas and the gems, and the snake thing, and that he hadn’t denied a word of what she’d said about a shaman getting hold of him.

  “Juanio,” he said softly, coaxingly. “Come back so we can talk, amigo.”

  The half about him kissing her hardly bore thinking about. She’d been kissed, if not by a lot of people, at least enough to know Will Travers did it with skilled concentration and an intensity that could completely undermine a woman’s moral fabric. She’d definitely been left a little frayed around the edges by the experience.

  Frayed and curious. If that’s what his kiss did to her, she wondered, letting her gaze drift to his mouth—what would the rest of it be like?

  She remembered how he’d danced in Pancha’s, and she remembered how it had felt to have his lips moving over hers, his mouth open, the taste of him, the gentle aggression that had kept asking for more, and delivering more every time she gave in. It had felt like sex, at least the sex of her fantasies, the sex no one ever seemed to have in real life.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, and her head jerked up, a blush streaking across her cheeks.

  “Um... fine.” She could hardly tell him the truth, that he’d short-circuited her common sense, and she’d be damned if she didn’t wonder if he could do it again.

  “You’ve got a little color back,” he said.

  Right, she thought, feeling the warmth in her cheeks.

  “So what’s this with Vargas and the gems?” she asked. She didn’t want to think about his mouth, or his kiss. For that matter, she didn’t want to think about Vargas, either, but she’d better.

  “A little business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  He shrugged and took another long drag off the cigarette.

  “I meant what I said back at the cantina, about Vargas being worse than Fat Eddie.”

  He blew the smoke out. “What makes you think so?”

  “Fat Eddie likes being a honcho in Manaus. He likes pushing people around with his money. Even the head-shrinking thing is to make a big macho statement about what a tough character he is, about how people better not mess with him. But Vargas...” Her voice trailed off. Talking about Vargas was dangerous. She didn’t want to stir up too much of what she’d put behind her.

  “Vargas is what?” he asked, watching her more carefully than she liked.

  “Unpredictable. You can’t count on him going for the money. His idea of power is far more refined than Fat Eddie’s. He likes mind games, and he’s very good at them.”

  “Are you afraid of him?”

  “I’d be a fool not to be, and so would you.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  She should have seen that one coming, but she hadn’t.

  “No,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, giving him that much even if it was half a lie. “I’m not afraid of you. I figure we have at least one more day together on this damn boat, probably more, unless my luck takes a big swing to the good, and I would like to forge some kind of working relationship. You are Dr. William Sanchez Travers. Or were. I’ve read all your books, and we haven’t shared so much as a single insight on Amazonian botany. All we seem to do is—”

  “Run for our lives,” he filled in for her, then took another drag off the cigarette and blew it over Juanio. “I’ve read your work, too. You were last published in the Journal of Ethnobotany two years ago.”

  Annie couldn’t help herself, she was ridiculously pleased. “The article on beekeeping by the Barasana?”

  He nodded, squinting at her through the smoke. “I had an entomologist on board just last week. She’d read it, too.”

  She? “Who?”

  “Dr. Erica Grunstead, brought her down from São Gabriel. Do you know her?”

  Did Annie know the lovely and brilliant Dr. Erica Grunstead?

  “Um, yes. We’ve met a couple of times at RBC.” A couple of times when Erica had proven over and over again that it was possible to be a Class A scientist, a Grade A field researcher, and a perfect lady at the same time. Annie had been frankly amazed at the woman’s sophistication.

  “She’s a nice person.”


  “Very nice,” Annie had to agree. The woman had treated her with all the kindness of a sister.

  “Smart, too.”

  “Harvard, wasn’t she?” Annie asked, though she knew perfectly well that Dr. Erica Grunstead indeed came from the same prestigious Harvard line of Amazonian research scientists as Dr. William Sanchez Travers.

  “Three years behind me. I knew her in Cambridge.”

  “Oh.” Annie was completely disgusted with what that little news item did to her.

  “She hasn’t changed much. Still real pretty. Knows how to use a comb. Doesn’t know how to detonate a grenade.”

  He was baiting her. Annie knew it, and still rose to her own defense. “It’s the humidity that makes my hair fluff out like this.”

  “Right.” He laughed. The bastard laughed, and her cheeks burned. “Annie, we’re going to have a hell of a lot more than one more day together on this damn boat. Barcelos was supposed to be the solution. It wasn’t the problem.”

  “Barcelos was your problem,” she pointed out. “I’m not the one being chased up the river by a couple of garimpeiro jewel thieves.”

  “No. You’re the one with the piranha-toothed, machete-wielding psychotic on your trail.”

  Damn him. She was too tired to fence with words. “You should really let me win once in a while just to keep the game interesting.”

  “You can have the galley award,” he conceded graciously. “Erica didn’t cook, and you’ve done a real nice job with the meals.”

  She shot him a look that would have killed a lesser man, and ran into a grin that was pure, unadulterated mischief. It curved the corners of his mouth, lit the depths of his eyes, and did the most awful thing to her heart.

  “Are you going to make a career out of teasing me?” she groused, trying to counteract the damned sense of longing his grin inspired.

  “But it’s true,” he said, all innocence. “She couldn’t boil water, or gut a fish, and not once, the whole week she was on my boat, did she make me want to back her up against a wall and kiss her until our eyes crossed.”

  Innocence should have been difficult to hold on to after a statement like that, but he managed without so much as breaking a sweat. Annie couldn’t say the same for herself. The picture he’d put in her mind made her feel flushed all over. She wanted to tell him that he must be mistaken, because for the most part, men did not find her particularly attractive, especially after they got to know her.

  But he wasn’t most men, and he had no reason to be intimidated by her intelligence, or her degrees, or her wealth of experience tracking over a large section of the world’s last unknown rain forest, a deed that set her outside the realm of most men’s egos. And he certainly didn’t have any reason to be intimidated by her reputation. His easily exceeded hers on all counts, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and would continue to do so right up until she brought back the Epidendrum luminosa. Then all bets were off.

  “I don’t know why not. She’s damned pretty.” She shrugged, holding on to her nonchalance by a thread.

  “And you are something else,” he said, his smile fading. “Did you know your nose was crooked?”

  “Yes,” she said acerbically.

  “And when you smile, which you don’t do very often, one of your eyes scrinches up more than the other?”

  “Don’t you have a life?”

  “God, I used to, Annie.” A sigh left him, and he took another long drag off the cigarette. “Up until about two days ago, I had a life I was working real hard to keep, but you have thrown a giant wrench into my plans. I’ve got to get rid of you, and I don’t have a damned place to put you.”

  “Put me where I paid you to put me, or help me get my canoe and put me up on the Marauiá.” She could make it to the Cauaburi on her own from there.

  “Actually,” he said, turning his attention to Juanio and giving him a shake. “I’m thinking about leaving you here.”

  “Here?” She didn’t understand. They weren’t anywhere. Then it dawned on her. “The hell you will.”

  “Nice island in the middle of the river. You’ve got enough firepower to blow half the state of Roraima to hell and back, if half the state of Roraima decides to come up the river—and I can return in a couple of weeks to pick you up and take you to the Serra da Neblina on the Venezuelan border. We’ll go straight up the Marauiá and find your Aganisia cyanea.”

  “I won’t let you do it, Will,” she warned him. “I won’t.” Being stranded on an island in the middle of the Rio Negro during her prime orchid-hunting weeks was out of the question, unacceptable, but she didn’t believe for a second that he hadn’t already made up his mind. Like her, he was running out of options.

  “And how are you going to stop me, An—”

  The last thought he had was that, damn, she could really move fast.

  CHAPTER ~ 14

  It was the dead of night when Will awoke, the only sounds the flowing of the river and the hum of cicadas on the shore. He lay on the floor where she’d left him. No lantern was lit inside the cabin or anywhere on the boat. They were moving slowly through the water with Annie at the helm, piloting by the light of the moon, the engine throttled down, the sky above them a ribbon of darkness studded with stars.

  Mutiny, he thought. That’s what they called what she’d done. Mutiny. She’d put a pillow under his head, though, and that was sweet. He didn’t hurt anywhere, and it took him a minute to remember exactly what she had done to him. She hadn’t kicked him, or hit him. She’d grabbed him. Grabbed him on the side of his neck and checked him out like a library book.

  He turned his head one way and then the other, making sure he still functioned and having a look around. There was no pain, no permanent damage—and no Juanio.

  Now what in the hell had she done with the garimpeiro? Will wondered. Probably the same thing he’d been planning on doing. They seemed to think a lot alike. He just hoped she’d asked all the right questions before she’d gotten rid of him.

  He carefully stretched his legs and arms, and again found no damage. Actually, he felt pretty good, pretty rested. It had been a hell of a last few days, with not much sleep to go around. His inadvertent nap might have been just the thing he needed.

  Stretching himself out again, he folded his hands under his head and settled in to watch her. She was hell on a man. She was hell on him. Where he was going, she couldn’t go. Where she wanted to go, he couldn’t let her. And where he needed her to go was a place he couldn’t get to from where he was.

  Damn. The island had been his best idea, maybe his last idea.

  “I think we’re in love,” he said, loud enough to make sure she heard him. “What do you think?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “I think we’re in trouble. How do you feel?”

  “Refreshed.” He told her the truth and was heartened to see her relief. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. “So what do you call what you did to me?”

  “Vulcan death grip,” she said without batting an eyelash.

  “Will you teach me?”

  “Nope.” She turned back to the helm and made an adjustment with the wheel. He felt the Sucuri respond.

  “Is that what happened to the Woolly Monkey garimpeiros?”

  “Mostly.”

  An ambiguous answer if he’d ever heard one, or maybe a warning that she had plenty of other tricks up her sleeve.

  “With a Vulcan death grip on our side, we should be unbeatable.”

  “I doubt it,” she said, tilting her head to look up through the window at the sky. A small tree limb slapped against the bulkhead, plastering the window with leaves, before snapping off.

  She didn’t budge, but Will leapt to his feet. “Whoa, Annie. You’re way too close to shore.”

  He reached for the wheel, but she’d already killed the engine.

  “Shh,” she said. “Listen.”

  He cocked his head and soon enough heard what she wanted him to hear.

  “Plane,” he said.
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  “Look.” She pointed out the window, at a small beam of light rising out of the trees on a bend in the river. “This is its third pass in the last hour.”

  The light quickly grew bigger, and Will realized it was a spotlight shining down on the river, sweeping along the shore, looking for something.

  He didn’t have a doubt that something was the Sucuri. “What did you do with Juanio?”

  “Well, I thought about dumping him overboard, but I didn’t do it until we were just above Losas, so I’m not sure that counts. All he had to do was float down and hit the dock. I watched somebody pull him in.”

  Losas was a fishing camp north of Barcelos. Two or three boats were usually in residence, and others were always coming and going. It was exactly where Will had planned on dropping off the Brazilian.

  “Did you question him first?”

  “Wrung him out all the way down to his skivvies, took every salient fact he had in his head, and almost got enough information to fill a thimble.”

  “So you didn’t learn anything.” He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. Luiz had been the one they should have dragged on board. Juanio had just been taking up space.

  “Well, he did have one thing to say, just one, and he said it over and over and over, babbled it, actually. To be honest, whatever brain cells he had before he got on your boat were scared out of him the minute I opened that cabin door, and now he’s running on empty. Or so I thought. He obviously had enough gumption left to tell somebody about us, somebody with a radio. I don’t know what in the hell else they’d be looking for out here at three o’clock in the morning.”