His body was turning beneath her from hot resilient muscle—to jagged stone. Waves of cold seemed to radiate out from his skin, raising goose bumps on hers. “I’ve…heard of it.” His fingers tightened on the fossil as they drew away from her—the cord bit into her neck.
“Ouch.” Cade? What had she said? She went on, hardly knowing what she was saying, simply using her voice to soothe, as she’d have soothed an upset horse. “My uncle, Joe Ashaway, found it—years ago. It was an incredible find. First of its kind in America. It sort of started the family fortune.”
“I know that!” He rolled to one side—dumping her off.
The boulder rasped her skin, not as smooth as she’d thought. “Cade, what’s wrong?”
He sat up abruptly. “Nothing. What could be wrong? I’ve gotten my rocks off and now I’ll sleep like a baby. Who’s complaining?”
“I am.” To go from such playful tenderness—to this? She slid down the stone and into the river, chilly now.
“Well, that’s an Ashaway for you,” he drawled, coolly contemptuous. “Never satisfied. Gimme, gimme, gimme, all the way home.”
Her throat was hurting, a sure sign she wanted to cry. No way would she. “Would you please just tell me—why are you so mad?”
“Who’s mad? How often does a man get to settle a score—by scoring?”
She hugged her forearms across her aching breasts. “That’s what this was to you?”
“What else?” he asked briskly, vaulting down into the water.
To answer that—what it had felt like to her—would only invite further humiliation. “Never mind.” She shook her head in disgust, turned away—then swung back for the last word. “Well, Kincade, for my part? It was nothing but a lapse in good taste.” Off she stalked—not easy to do, wading.
“Hey, no need to apologize,” he jeered. “You tasted just fine!”
OH! She stooped, found a river pebble, hurled it at his dim shape in the dusk.
It bounced off his ribs. “Ouch!” he called after her, laughing.
Not half as ouch as the pain in her heart.
Chapter 23
Raine didn’t cry waking, but maybe she cried in her dreams. Her lashes were stuck together when she woke. She rubbed her eyes, turned over and went back to sleep. She’d get up when she damned well pleased.
She roused again as the mists burned off and the day heated. Lay, listening to the birds calling. The river rushing. A gibbon hooting in the distance. But no sound of Kincade, and no smell of campfire or coffee. With any luck, one of those thirty-foot pythons had found him in the night. Swallowed the bastard, hammock and all.
Finally she unzipped, sat up, and glared toward…where his hammock had hung, last night. Oh, no. You didn’t…
But he had. What a fool she’d been! Fool in every way, to trust, to give. To care.
To leave her kayak unguarded! When she walked down to the beach, she found that he’d stolen the end frames that held it together. Without the stiffening of its Kevlar skeleton, it would paddle like a sock. Shaking with rage, she nearly shredded the note he’d left on top of her plundered craft, instead of unfolding it.
“Tit for tat, babe—or is it the other way round?” she finally brought herself to read.
“You jerk!” She crumpled the paper, threw it across the sand, kicked the kayak. Sighed—then bent to retrieve the wad and smooth it out. His note continued:
I’ll give you the same advice you gave me. STAY HERE. Ngali said he’d bring the boat back here in two weeks, and you can depend on that. Then he’ll camp at this spot till I return. Meanwhile, I’ve left you a week of my rations, and checked your supply. You won’t starve. Just stay put—and wish me luck, in finding the find of a lifetime.
“Yeah, hope you choke on it!” she muttered.
No. On second thought…Even to choke on, Kincade couldn’t have it.
He could steal her pride. Borrow her heart. Amuse himself with her body—but an opal T. rex? No way. That was her dino.
She’d find a way to beat him yet.
On the afternoon of the second day since she and Kincade had parted company, Raine came to another message stick. Her third since that morning.
The waist-high branch had been stabbed into the earth beside the trail. At its top, the bark had been stripped back from the wood, to hang in delicate scrolls and spikes. A series of chips had been cut away along its length, making an intricate pattern of light Vs on a dark ground.
Trey had included a page on Punan message sticks in his briefing—but not how to read them. To those in the know, this stick could mean anything from, Look out! There’s a stranger in the forest! to We’re hungry and have gone off hunting pig. To No trespassing! Go back!
To Raine’s uneducated eye, each stick had seemed more “talkative” than the last. This one fairly bristled with intention—but to what end?
Just beyond the stick, a slab of pink sandstone thrust up through the jungle ferns. She inspected it for creepy-crawlies, then sat with a weary groan. Eased out of her pack and set it beside her, murmuring, “Or maybe you guys are just trying to tell me, ‘Party at Pete’s tonight. BYOB. And oh, by the way, who does your hair?’” she comforted herself. Whatever. Welcome or not, she wasn’t about to turn back now.
That first dreadful day she’d tried following Kincade and Smirky—only to find that the river quickly turned too deep and swift for wading, with piles of driftwood blocking its banks. So she’d forded across and cut away inland. After some fearsome bushwhacking, she’d come to a trail that seemed to vaguely follow the water.
It was a path beaten by whimsical and wandering feet, whose owners were more interested in the nearest stand of fruit trees, or a tinkling brook with a spot to kneel and drink, or a good source for palm fronds, than they were in tramping a straight line from A to B. Still, by her compass it was gradually trending northeast. And it certainly was rising. Toward the mountains?
“Sure would be nice to ask some directions,” she told the surrounding forest. Drawing in a full breath, she let out a series of loud hoots—her best approximation of a gibbon’s call—except hers ended in a fit of helpless giggles.
Trey had warned that it was bad manners to speak loudly in the rainforest—human voices scared the game. Long-distance communication among hunters would be by bird or animal calls.
She’d been hearing more and more gibbons, these past two days. Raine sucked air and hooted again, then muttered, “Yeah, you’re too busy holding your sides and rolling around in hysterics, to answer me back.”
While she waited for a reply, derisive or friendly, she made her usual response to a message stick. She pulled out a film can full of beads from her pack. Strung ten red-and-yellow glass beads on a loop of fishing line to make a bright, simple necklace. Hung this peace offering on top of the message stick.
Perching again on the rock, she pulled out a bag of trail gorp, and ate a handful. She hadn’t had much appetite since her fight with Cade at the river. For such sweetness to go so sour… She kept trying to boost her regrets into rage—anger energized, while the blues just dragged her down.
She sighed and made herself eat another handful. This nut mix was part of the week of extra rations that Cade had left her, no doubt to soothe his guilty conscience. “And how’re your supplies holding out?” she wondered morosely. He was bigger than she. Would burn more calories, especially kayaking his way up a staircase of white water. If he’d miscalculated what he needed…
So what? “Hope you starve!” she swore aloud.
No, she didn’t. If he starved to death out here, then she’d never get to see him on his knees, groveling for forgiveness. With a wry smile she swung around to put the gorp away—and turned to stone.
A snake longer than she was tall wound its way up her pack. Its dark head jerked erect at her movement, and now it hung poised, a foot in the air. And about that far from her forearm.
Oh, God. Her throat dried to ashes in an instant—but if she swallowed?
<
br /> His tongue flickered, seeking her body scent. Whatever he was, he had the triangular head and extra wide jaws of a viper. Plenty of room for poison sacs there at the hinges. And he wasn’t shy. Without moving his head, with perfect control and horrid grace, he dragged a coil of his thick body up—that would give him a longer strike range.
Shit, shit, oh, please… She could roll away off the rock—but not fast enough. He’d nail her in the butt. What a way to go.
An arm bite would be better. Possibly survivable. Tourniquet in the first-aid kit, she reminded herself, then all the vitamin C you can swallow.
Meanwhile, God help her, she had to blink.
Die if you do, she told herself. Kincade, you jerk, I wish you’d at least told me why you hate me so.
I wish we’d made love about a thousand times, before you saw my necklace.
Sure as sneezes and death, the blink was coming. What was God thinking of, when He invented snakes? Tears burned as she fought the reflex.
From the far side of the boulder, a feathery shape wafted—to float down by the snake’s tail. His head swerved fluidly toward the motion.
A second tiny missile sailed straight toward the serpent. Mouth agape, he struck to meet it—as Raine whirled away. She hit the ground running—stumbled, rolled—let out a shriek as she realized she was probably rolling over dozens of snakes! Ending in a heap in the ferns, some ten yards away, she burst into tears and hysterical laughter. “Wow! OH!”
The dart took the viper straight in the tonsils. Gagging as he reared, he cracked himself like a bullwhip—convulsed, coils rippling. Collapsed…twitched…rolled dazedly to show his white belly. And lay still.
Raine wiped her wet cheeks. Tried to rise, then fell back again. No matter how many snakes she might be sitting on, her knees wouldn’t work. She drew up her legs and hugged them. “Th-th-thanks!”
Silence. Not a leaf trembled in the surrounding bushes.
“That…was…s-some really sweet…shooting,” she added in a softer voice. “I would really, really…really like to shake your hand. You’re the Lone Ranger. The Top Gun. My hero.” She made it halfway to her shaking feet—and fell on her butt.
Far off through the trees, came the sound of hooting laughter.
On the third day, Cade came to Smirky’s abandoned dugout.
He’d been expecting this. The river was flowing faster and faster down the rising hills. It dropped in great ragged steps—a stretch of smooth jade water rushing to meet his battered kayak, next a merciless down-escalator of foaming white ripped by stony fangs. Then there’d be another stretch of smooth to sucker him ever onward and ever upward, panting and digging in his paddle to gain every muscle-cracking inch.
Twice, yesterday, he’d simply picked up the damn kayak and carried it, staggering from rock to slimy rock up the cascades. He’d been amazed that Smirky and his guide could flog their much heavier boat up these rapids, even with the help of a big outboard. Unless the river soon leveled out and ran smooth, they’d grind themselves to exhaustion.
And then, when he doesn’t need a boatman? That was the question that kept Cade slogging onward, when all he wanted to do was spin around and go flying back to Raine.
Late in the afternoon of the third day, he jinked out of the current and into the swirling eddy behind a fallen tree—and there on shore lay the dugout. Shit! He froze, ready to wheel and retreat. If Smirky was drawing down on him from the cover of the boat…
But if he was…he didn’t shoot. No smoke, Cade realized as his heartbeat settled. And no fire. His eyes lit on a blackened circle near the tree line. Yesterday’s campfire. He blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, then squirmed out of the kayak and stepped into the shallows.
End of the road, he realized, peering upstream. They’ve gone on, on foot. Beyond this point, the river’s banks rose higher and higher, till a quarter mile on, they formed a narrow gorge. With white water bursting endlessly from its shadowy mouth, it looked like the nozzle on a giant’s fire hose.
Cade hauled his kayak up onto the sand. He prowled around the stern of the dugout—and stopped short.
The boatman crouched on the ground, with a sharp rock upraised, ready to throw. His face was a mask of hatred—and desperate hope. A galvanized chain stretched from his bloody ankle, to encircle the trunk of the nearest tree. Rugged padlocks secured the links at each end.
When Cade ran short of curses, he went back to his kayak. He dug out his water bottle, a packet of jerky, some dried fruit—and the little hand ax that he’d brought along for firewood. He fingered its fragile cutting edge, meant for kindling; it would never cut chain. And if he broke the tool on the lock’s steel shank…With a grimace, he glanced toward a gap in the trees.
The clouds were mounding to the west like purple mountains. If it stormed tonight, with these slopes to funnel the rainfall? By morning this stony little beach could be twenty feet under the raging river.
He returned to the Dayak, set the food within his reach, then walked warily around him. The guy was half-crazed with fear, and if he did know any English, by now he must figure it for the language of lunatics and liars. Cade’s acts would have to do the talking.
He stood for a moment, sizing up the trunk—massive—and the way the tree would probably fall. He drew a deep breath, rolled his shoulders and started chopping.
With every muscle aching from her snake-evasion acrobatics, Raine took to her hammock early that evening. In the dim light filtering through her mosquito net, she propped Szabo’s journal on her bent knees. She’d barely had the heart to look at his writing since the night she read aloud to Cade. And what she’d learned hadn’t been pretty.
Five of the twelve paratroopers had crawled out of the butterfly lake. Muddy and miserable, they’d huddled together, hands clapped over their ears to block out the terrible screams. At dawn, they gone looking for more survivors, but their friends had vanished beneath the lily pads.
Among the lost were both officers—along with the squad’s field radio, the compasses and maps that the top men had carried. Also sunk was most everyone’s gear and food. Only Szabo and Peckham had managed to drag their heavy packs to shore. They had perhaps a week of rations left, to feed five.
And Tilley had kicked off his jungle boots as he swam for his life. “He’s a goner,” Szabo noted privately, “but what can we do? Can’t carry him piggyback through the jungle for five hundred miles.”
That was their calculation; they were that far from any coast—and if they ever got there, they’d face a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Without a radio to signal for a nighttime extraction, they were marooned.
Yet not entirely leaderless. The “old man” of the unit was a thirty-year-old Texan who’d worked as an oilfield geologist before he volunteered for the army. Nicknamed “Professor,” Peckham had seemed a quiet, bookish loner till now. But it was he who rallied the shattered little band, got them on their feet and moving north.
During their flight they’d been told that their destination was Borneo. Their mission was to contact the natives of the interior, befriend them with gifts of beads and tobacco. If the Americans could inspire the islanders to rise up against their Japanese occupiers, by all means they should lead a revolt.
If that proved impractical, then the squad should recruit guides to take them down one of Borneo’s mighty rivers to the sea. They were to map and gather data about the enemy’s locations, airfields and troop strength as they proceeded, in preparation for a future invasion.
Once they’d gained the coast, the plan was to find a deserted beach, signal for a nighttime pickup by PT boat. They should be back at base, eating steak and fries and ice cream, within three weeks.
“I’d give my right nut to have whoever dreamed up this SNAFU along with us now. See how he’d like the jam he got us into,” Szabo had written wistfully in his tiny script. “Better yet, wish he’d dropped dead-center in that friggin’ lake. Be nothing left of him, by now, but his belt buckle and
a crocodile’s fart.”
Resuming the story at that point, Raine read, with the page almost touching her nose.
Professor figures if we can climb that saddleback mountain to the north, maybe we can spot a river. He says the middle of this island is highest, so any river takes you to a coast. Seems like as good a plan as any.
But the going was brutal. And on the second day, Tilley stepped on a snake. Szabo had written:
Just a little gray thing, no bigger than a hognose. But he swoll up something terrible and started screaming.
Professor had applied a tourniquet. He’d slashed the wound, then as he bent to suck it, several small brown men rushed out of the bushes, along with their hunting dogs.
Their leader grabbed Prof and wouldn’t let him suck Tilley’s foot. Prof argued some, but I reckon he got the picture. Anyway, Tilley was having fits by then. And damned if those ignorant heathen didn’t sit right down in a circle around him and cry—sobbing like a bunch of sissies—till he was gone.
So we buried poor Tilley.
Then the Punan—at least Raine would bet they were Punan—had led the soldiers off through the forest.
After we’d gone a ways, the headman’s dog went on point. A big ugly white brute, but the leader took his word for gospel. Off those two went, and we went on. When they caught up with us, the headman was carting a deer on his back that was near as big as he was.
The evening concert of wails and whoops, insect creaking and buzzing, was tuning up. Raine squinted to make out the last lines on the page. The hunters had taken their strays to a camp, or “if this is their idea of a village, then they’re in trouble,” Szabo had noted scornfully. “Nothing but some little-bitty huts on stilts, and a fire.”
An Angel in Stone Page 19