An Angel in Stone

by Peggy Nicholson

  We’ll leave at dawn, she promised herself, and not by rubber time. Still she propped her blowgun by her hammock, and strapped her knife to her ankle. “’Night, guys.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs chew you,” countered Baitman, a phrase she had not taught him. He strolled down to the river, and a few minutes later she heard the slow, methodical rasp of metal against a boulder.

  He was sharpening his parang.

  Sleep proved impossible. Each time Raine drifted toward it, she’d picture the dark rectangle of Ravi’s window. Something lurking beyond it, something hungry and heartlessly chortling. Big hands reaching out of the black—She bolted upright, heart pounding, ears straining.

  The one thing she’d learned about the troll, that night, was that he kept on trying. Who’s to say he’ll wait till morning to make his move? If he was crazy enough to throw a woman out a sixth-floor window, then he could be crazy enough to brave the snakes.

  The question then became: was he lucky?

  Was she?

  But trusting your life to luck was stupid beyond words. Hiding in her hammock and praying the bogeyman wouldn’t come? “Get up,” she snarled at herself and reached for her boots. At least she could stand sentry.

  As always they’d camped at the edge of the forest, well above the river’s flood mark. Raine stood by her hammock for a minute, peering across the burned-out campfire at the guides’ sleeping platform. Sometimes she could make out the pale soles of their comically splayed feet, poking out from one end, beneath the steeply pitched little roof. Not tonight.

  The only light to tantalize her eyes came from fireflies drifting through the forest. Patches of phosphorescent fungus creeping over downed and rotting logs. The buff-colored sand along the riverbank formed a winding Milky Way. When her eyes had adjusted as best they could, she picked up her blowgun and padded slowly toward the water, tapping the ground before her like a blind woman. Beat it, snakes.

  A cluster of boulders formed a little island, upstream of where they’d beached the boat. She picked her way out to it from stone to stepping-stone. Hopeful that she’d left all slithery things back on dry ground, Raine settled there, assuming a huddled shape, just one more rock. If he comes at all, he’ll come by water, not through the woods.

  An hour oozed past. Her eyes ached from probing the shadows, her ears turned every splash and rumble of the river into sea monsters. Still nothing happened.

  Nothing was going to happen. This is just a bad case of the late-night heebie-jeebies, she scoffed at herself. Sure, she could jam the pieces of her puzzle together to make Mr. Smirky a murderer—black imaginings were easy after midnight.

  But just as easily, he could be innocent. Their meeting out here might be the purest coincidence.

  She didn’t believe it. Too many coincidences strung together became a pattern. A nasty pattern.

  Not fair! the sleepier half of her mind argued. You want him to be the troll. Because if Smirky was the killer, then that cleared Kincade once and for—

  Splashing, somewhere upriver!

  Raine drew a slow breath, then collapsed her blowgun to a baton and stuck it in her belt. If she couldn’t see to aim a dart, then she’d better rely on her knife.

  More splashing, and now a panting that sounded almost like sobbing? Then a low cry as something rose up from mid-river and stumbled toward the shore.

  The Dayaks cried as easily as they laughed. “Baitman?” she called softly without moving.

  “Raine!” The hunched-over shape lunged for her. Patted her shoulders, then groped for a hand. Dibit—tugging her toward the beach. “Quick! He coming. We go! We go!”

  “Who? Where’s Baitman?”

  “He shoot him, the bad man! And he see in the dark, Raine. Now he coming!”

  “Shhh, hush, calm down. Baitman, does he live?”

  “I don’ know. He shoot in the chest. He run for the trees, run and hide. But, Raine, this one see in the dark. He walk to us where we hide so very well and he laugh—then he shoot Baitman!”

  Tell me he doesn’t have night-vision goggles! Just tell me, please, that you guys aren’t the mighty hunters you think you are. That you gave yourselves away—snapped a twig, or— But if what the kid was telling her was true…Night-vision goggles plus a gun trumped a throwing knife any day.

  “And he shoot me,” Dibit added on a moan. “My arm…”

  “Oh, Dibit, I’m sorry!” But he could still walk, and if Smirky was really pursuing, they made perfect targets—dark shapes on light sand. “Go up to the camp and get your things together.” No way to launch the dugout without Baitman’s strength, and besides, they couldn’t leave him. “I’ll get the harpoons.” And her kayak, which she’d stowed in the boat. “Go now.”

  If Baitman was trunk-shot, then the first thing was to find him. Stop the bleeding. While Smirky waded down the river, they’d cut around him through the woods.

  Snakes were starting to seem like the least of her problems.

  Chapter 22

  Raine was throwing the little casting net she always packed—catching nothing but minnows—when the mutter of a big outboard slammed her heart into overdrive. Her eyes jerked first upriver, then down.

  A long dugout bumped up through the white water, then glided into the pool with—oh, thank God! That was Ngali, beaming and calling from the bow!

  Back at the stern, Cade steered the boat toward shore, his scowl moving from the burned-out remains of her dugout, to Raine’s face and back again. He ran his craft up onto the sand and vaulted out.

  Raine threw her net down. “I need—” She walked straight into his open arms—they wrapped hard and safe around her. “Hi.” She dropped her forehead on his shoulder, closed her eyes and sighed. Leaning bonelessly against him, she breathed in his welcome scent. Hot strength, seeping into her weary bones. Troubles instantly halved.

  “Hi,” Cade said huskily, as he rocked her. His chin rested on top of her head. “What happened? The cracker?”

  “Mr. Smirky, yeah. He burned the boat last night—holed the fuel drums and lit ’em, while we were out of camp. And Cade—he shot my guys. One of ’em’s lung-shot. They’ve got to get to a doctor.”

  “Bastard!” he said with feeling. His palms smoothed down her back, molding her against him. “But…” His lips brushed her temple. “What the hell were you planning to do, if we hadn’t come along?”

  “Feed ’em some supper, if I could catch some damn fish—they positively refuse to eat my freeze-dried meals. Then head out after Mr. Smirky in my kayak. Take his boat and bring it back here.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Cade said wryly, rocking her. “Want to show me your friends?”

  Half an hour later they shoved Cade’s dugout out into the current, pointed downstream. Dibit sat in the bow, pale and fiercely drawn. His left arm was bandaged, but he seemed well enough to play lookout. Baitman lay out of sight, propped and braced midship. And Ngali proudly manned the helm, as he waved a cheery farewell.

  The Dayak insisted he could steer them down to smooth water before nightfall; if he could, then the boat could cruise on without stopping. With a favorable current more than doubling their speed, they should make Long Badu in two days. Putussibau with its clinic in less than three. If Baitman survived that far, they could get him emergency treatment there. After that, Raine had given them airfare for the coast. Once they got him to the hospital in Pontianak, Baitman should be all right.

  “You should have gone with them,” Cade growled.

  “No.” They’d argued this one out already. And there was little more she could do for her guide. She and Dibit had found him just before dawn, where he’d dragged himself deep into the bushes. She’d put an air valve patch of tape and liquid skin over his sucking wound. His lung had miraculously reinflated. The Dayak was incredibly tough. If infection didn’t set in…“No,” she said wearily. “Got a dino to find.”

  “So what about a swim before dark, then I’ll cook you supper? We can discus
s this in the morning.”

  He’d try to dissuade her, he meant, but she’d leave that for later. “Sounds wonderful.”

  Even better was not having to worry about the Dayaks’ tender sensibilities. “For once I’m going to get clean all the way,” Raine declared. Turning her back on Cade, she stripped, dropped her T-shirt and pants and necklace on a boulder, grabbed her bar of soap and walked into the river.

  “Give me a break!” Cade launched himself into a hard crawl across the current. He swam several furious laps while she lathered, rinsed, dipped and came up smiling. But no way could they stay apart. Cade paddled over to where she stood chest deep, too tired to swim, just glorying in the current caressing her body. “Can I…borrow your soap?”

  It was the best pick-up line she’d heard yet in Borneo, but she could top it. “Sure—if you’ll scrub my back.”

  His answer was a groan—he didn’t quite lunge for her. She laughed and turned around, and they stood for a moment with his big hands resting on her shoulders. Closing her eyes, Raine drew a tremulous breath and tipped her head back. So good. No more wishing and wondering. Let it begin.

  “The soap?” he demanded on a strangled note.

  “Oh.” Could he really be a man who believed in foreplay?

  He was. He played—seducing her with a bar of soap, then his slippery, sliding hands, while she purred and swayed to his lingering touches. “More.”

  “Soon enough,” he growled, nuzzling her ear. And now that he’d soaped her thoroughly, he caught her around the waist and lifted her back—using her as the bar of soap to lather his chest, his hard hot stomach, his—

  Wow. “You swim with a parang?” she teased, as she clamped her thighs around him. After that, nobody had any thought of foreplay. They lost the soap, they stampeded the fish; their cries at the end were a jungle sound, exultant and wild.

  When at last they could move again, Cade sighed—then walked slowly toward a boulder that split the rushing current.

  “Not yet,” she murmured dazedly, her legs wrapped around his waist. She’d hooked one arm around his broad neck; her other hand gripped his hair. Stay in me, oh, stay!

  “Not…yet,” he agreed, propping his hips against the rock.

  They sat that way for a long time, Cade seemingly in a trance, with his mouth pressed to her shoulder; she with laughter bubbling inside. Shuddering with aftershocks. Why didn’t we just do this the first night we met? All the precious time they’d wasted!

  But if her joy was wholehearted, Cade…“Where are you?” she wondered at last and kissed his ear.

  His arms tightened automatically around her. “Right here.”

  He wasn’t. When she leaned back to see his face, his amber eyes were focused somewhere far beyond this glorious present. Men, always making life so damnably complicated! She sighed, traced the crow’s wing shape of his eyebrow and slipped gently free.

  And he didn’t protest.

  We’re still opponents, Raine realized with a pang. As much as I trust you, as much as I want you, there’s still something between us.

  But she was damned if she’d let his grudge get in the way of…this. She needed answers, then once she understood his problem, why, she’d blow it out of the water. But not yet. Give him time. Talk about safe things first.

  While Cade built a campfire on the sand, then boiled the water for their meal, she showed him Private Szabo’s journal—then had to backtrack and explain Trey’s research. The tale of the twelve missing paratroopers. “And that’s why Mr. Smirky’s out here beating the bushes. He told me back in Singapore that his grandfather was missing in action in Borneo, during WWII. That he’d come to find out what happened to him.”

  “He’s come for more than that,” Cade growled, as he dropped a couple of meal bags into the roiling stew pot. “You don’t murder and shoot people, just to check out your family roots. When he passed through Long Badu, he pistol-whipped Ah San—made him tell where he’d gotten the watch and the tooth. He’s after the dinosaur.”

  “Lia,” Raine agreed, nodding somberly. “If she had the smarts to pinpoint us as likely bone buyers, track us down on the Internet…”

  “Then somehow she found this guy—stirred him up. Do you remember, on the bridge, she said she had another bidder for the watch?”

  “She did, didn’t she? Talk about calling your own fate down on your head!” Raine shivered, then opened the journal. “Anyway, this belonged to one of the twelve. Maybe even Smirky’s granddad? I’d just gotten to the point where they were headed out on a night drop, he didn’t know where.” While the food simmered, she studied the next page. “He wrote this, it looks like, without any light. Or running full tilt.” She cleared her throat, then read:

  “Christ, what a friggin’ disaster! We circled our landing zone twice, a big field way up on a plateau, range of mountains to the south. Middle of nowhere, not a light in sight. I stepped out of the plane last, and with the full moon, I could see ’em floating down to the target. Really pretty, they looked like moonflowers drifting down on a big black butterfly. I wondered why anybody’d clear a field in such a raggedy shape.”

  “Oh, God!” Raine pressed a hand to her throat. The journal continued:

  “Wasn’t a field. It was a friggin’ lake! Covered in the biggest lily pads in the world, was why you couldn’t see reflections. Before I hit, I could hear the guys yelling, tangled and drowning. I tried to steer clear—didn’t quite make the bank, but I landed close.

  “At least I had a minute before I splashed in, to get my knife out, and start unbuckling my pack. If I hadn’t gotten free of that, I’d have been a goner. Sunk under sixty pounds of gear. Those poor bastards. You couldn’t stand on the pads, and you couldn’t swim through ’em—stems like rope—and I think, God help ’em, there was something out there. Crocs? The screams…Every time I try to sleep, I hear those screams. Yelling for help, then yelling for God, then yelling for their—”

  “For their mamas,” Raine finished in a husky whisper. She shut the book and set it aside, and wiped a wrist across her lashes. “Oh…”

  “Hey…” Cade came and sat in the sand behind her and pulled her back between his knees. “Come here.” He folded her in his arms and rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Long time ago, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “I know.” He kissed her temple, then rose to serve her on a tin plate. “But try not to cry in your macaroni and cheese.”

  They ate in companionable silence, shoulders touching. As her stomach filled with the first meal in a day, good American comfort food, Raine started yawning. “So-orry. Didn’t get a wink of sleep, last night.”

  “Mmm,” Cade glanced up at the trees. “Not long till dark. I wonder if I should keep watch tonight? If the Cracker came back…”

  “Yes. But he definitely moved on. Once I’d patched up Baitman, I slipped down to the river to check. Saw his boat head out.”

  “Guess he’s more intent on stopping us, than killing us,” Cade allowed.

  “Whichever’s more convenient,” she guessed darkly. “Doubt if it matters much to him, either way.”

  “Why did your guys sneak up on his camp like that? Looking for…souvenirs?”

  Raine shuddered. “Could be. I’m afraid I told Baitman he was a bad man. I suppose I thought he ought to be warned. But also, Dibit told me this morning…Smirky’s Dayak yelled for help, when their boat passed us. And I saw why, when I crept down to their camp and watched them leave.” She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. “He’d chained his guide to a tree.”

  Cade swore softly, viciously, at length. “Well. There’s reason enough for following, right there.”

  After they put out the fire, they hung their hammocks, sneaking glances at each other as they did so. Making love in a bivouac hammock covered in mosquito netting was, if not impossible, at least a contortion for the record books.

  “One more swim?” Cade suggested and his voice had roughened as it droppe
d half an octave.

  “Mm-mmm…” she hummed doubtfully—then shot him a look of glinting mischief. “Last one in is a bowlegged kangaroo!”

  With a shout, he raced after her—smacked her bottom as he passed.

  Cade stood stripped—and very ready—knee deep in the river, by the time she tossed off the last of her clothes and waded to join him.

  “Missed you!” he said on a groan, as she rose on tiptoe to meet his kiss. Hooking his arms around her waist, he lifted her and twirled her around and around—they fell with yelps of laughter, tumbling in the rapids.

  Otter time. Thoughtless, fearless joy.

  They ended their romp a quarter mile downstream, on a boulder worn smooth by a thousand wet seasons. Stretched out on top of Cade, still hugging him within, Raine pressed her ear to his chest, listening…in vain. The rapids must be drowning him out. “Can’t hear a thing,” she teased. “Does that mean you’re heartless?”

  Running his fingers through her damp hair, he murmured blindly, lazily, “Don’ know. I’ve wondered that, from time to time.”

  She winced—and he slipped free. “Oops, darn!” She wriggled higher upon him, so they lay nose to nose, her breasts flattened to his chest. “Well, nothing good lasts forever.”

  “Hmm.” She could barely see his smile in the dusk. He traced the curves of her mouth, smoothed the long line of her throat till his fingers encountered—“What’s this?”

  “My necklace. Forgot to take it off.”

  He followed its stones down to the central pendant. “Isn’t the same one you wore the first time I saw you, at the museum.”

  “It’s got some of the same opals, restrung. And then the piece you’re holding is extra special—a fossil feather. The Ashaway family totem, I guess you could call it. Have you ever heard of Archaeopteryx ashawayensis?”