“Stay here,” she said to the group.
“Where are you going?” Ian asked, worry lacing his voice.
“I won’t be long.” She glanced up and saw that their rescuer was gone. Apparently he expected that she would remain here, exactly as he had commanded. She would do no such thing.
As she climbed the treacherous wooden steps she was forced to clutch the railing at various points where the stairs disappeared to time-worn nubs. At the top, rice-covered mats dried in the sun. Ahead, the roof of the open-fronted hallway was all that separated it from the verandah. Beyond that there were rows of doorways and an occasional wooden chair outside a door. It was oddly reminiscent of a Western motel. Women sat on mats in groups, weaving and talking. A few stopped to stare.
Just ahead a group of villagers were gathered around her still unnamed rescuer. Just ahead a skull hung from the rafters. An animal skull, she assumed. She walked quietly over to it. She pushed it gently with her finger and it swung around, the whitened, aged bones leering eerily at her. She bit back the fright that threatened to burst out and make her the center of attention. It was a human skull. With the scream still lodged in her throat, she backed up and was stopped by something solid. She turned around and faced a sun-bronzed chest. She backed up farther.
Only moments before he had been in the center of the tribe and now he was here. His ability to glide silently almost through time and space was eerie.
“It’s old. One hundred and twenty years. But it’s good luck so they have kept it.” He smiled. “Even though it is no longer politically correct.”
“Politically correct!” She couldn’t help it, her voice raised an octave. “Malcolm is headless! What kind of barbarian would have done that?” Her gaze went back to the skull.
“What are you suggesting?”
She should have heeded the warning in his voice. But she’d never been good at heeding warnings, especially now, when her nerves were one jangled mess. Hell, they were in the middle of nowhere in a longhouse with a dead skull and Malcolm lay rotting by the river minus his head. It was too much for anyone to comprehend. She only wanted to undo this entire trip. Then Malcolm would still be alive.
“Why would the Iban kill him?”
“They wouldn’t,” he snapped. “Don’t suggest otherwise. Don’t insult them.”
He was walking away from her and not looking back. Leaving her here in the midst of an Iban longhouse with a dead man waiting at the river and a skull leering just behind her. She hurried after him.
On the verandah he said something briefly in a guttural language to another man. Both of them glanced at her and they parted before she could reach them. He was halfway down the stairs before she reached the top.
“Wait.”
She glanced behind her and saw faces of children watching her. A little girl giggled and for a moment she might have been anywhere in the world instead of in an Iban longhouse amid headhunters.
She followed him back down the stairs, past Drew, Sid, and Ian.
He turned around. “Trust me, you don’t want to follow.”
“The lad doesn’t want you to watch while he takes a whiz,” Sid said and chuckled.
“Shut up,” Garrett muttered halfheartedly as heat crawled across her face.
“Did you bring any videos?” The boy they had met on their arrival appeared from where he had been hidden in the long grass by the river.
“Videos?” Sid repeated. “What does the kid think we are, a walking library?”
“Sid,” Garrett warned. “No.” She smiled at the boy. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting to come here.”
“Really? Why not? There’s no one else to visit around here except maybe the poachers, and you wouldn’t want to meet them.” He glanced at Malcolm. “Or maybe you already have. Do you think he was making a deal with them?” His brown eyes were alight and he heaved on his oversized shorts, which were beginning to drag slightly below hip level. “If he got in their way they would shoot him, but they wouldn’t take his head. That’s strange,” the boy added. “No one does that anymore.”
Ian gagged.
Sid glared at Ian. “Get it together.”
“It’s not that bad. I read about it at school,” the boy said cheerfully. “In the old days they grabbed them by the hair and . . .”
Ian ran for the bushes.
“He’s got a weak stomach?” The boy sidled up beside Garrett.
Sid came over. “What’s going on?”
“Let me see that.” The boy pulled Sid’s magnifier from his pocket. “Mine. All right?”
“No! Not all right,” Sid snarled and reached out for the boy, who dodged and disappeared behind the same bush he’d only so recently appeared from behind. “Bring that back, you little shit.”
“Sid, why do you have to be such a Neanderthal?” Garrett asked. “You might have had a hope if you’d been civil with him.”
“Yeah, right,” Sid sniped. He glanced around. “Where’s jungle boy? It doesn’t take that long to take a whiz. I think he’s gone and buggered off.”
“Now what?” Drew leaned against the stairs. “I’m sick of waiting around. What are we supposed to do now?”
The jungle danced rich emerald green, a lush trap for anyone wanting to venture in, for anyone who was unfamiliar with its wiles. Garrett had no desire to begin that journey now. Wild Man hadn’t returned and he’d had ample time to take a whiz, as Sid had so indelicately put it.
“Malcolm was killed and maybe someone here knows something. I’m going back upstairs,” Garrett replied. “Who knows when our rescuer will return.”
“He’ll be back.”
She turned at the sound of the new voice to face a man whose dark skin and short stature immediately identified him as Iban, and who seemed to have silently emerged from the jungle.
The man smiled at her. “Mark is how the English know me. My real name means fish, but it’s not really appropriate in London. I just got back. Love it there. And of course I have business,” he said in answer to her unasked question. He looked sharply at her. “So who do you think did this besides one of us?” He cleared his throat. “Of course, by one of us, I don’t mean this particular tribe. We’re not all one uni-tribe and we don’t all know each other.” He smiled. “Just for the record.”
Garrett looked sharply at him. His English was impeccable and carried a slight touch of an upper-class British accent.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, but you did mean it was someone like us, did you not?”
“You were eavesdropping,” she accused.
“Don’t feel bad. You’re out of your element. How would you think otherwise? The land of the headhunters and your mate is missing his head? Who else? Look, I’m sorry and all, but I’m also pretty darn sure he wasn’t attacked by headhunters.”
“Then who or what? He’s missing his head.” Garrett hated stating the obvious, again.
“Any number of people. There’s a lot of illicit money being made here, timber, jewels, the animals, much of it illegal or running on the cutting edge of legal. Maybe he got caught in something like that. Whoever it was may have been trying to pin the blame on someone else. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.” He stroked his chin. “Now the head, that’s another matter. Probably an animal. I’ll take a close look later.”
“What do you mean?”
He waved a hand backward over his shoulder. “Go back upstairs, find a corner on the verandah. You’ll sleep there. I don’t know when Aidan will be back. He can be unpredictable that way. I’ll get you some water and some supper.”
Aidan—was he talking about their reluctant guide or someone else? But he had already turned his back on her and was heading over to the stretcher and Malcolm.
She followed him. “What are we going to do about our guide?”
“Go upstairs. I’ll take care of it.” Mark waved at them in a little motion of his hand, like he was shooing children.
&n
bsp; “C’mon, guys, let’s get up the stairs and find a place on the corner of the verandah. We’re staying here tonight.” Ian’s voice was unnaturally high.
“You’ve got to be kidding?” Drew’s voice was soft.
“He’s losing it again. Snap out of it, Ian,” Sid demanded roughly.
“Sid,” Garrett warned as she glanced at Ian. She swung back to Mark. “The body?” she asked quietly.
“Don’t worry.” Mark squatted down beside Malcolm’s body. “There’s a small storage shed by the river. It’s tight. Even the monkeys can’t get in.”
“We have to get to Kuching as soon as possible. We need to report this to the authorities.”
“True, but around here, I am the authorities.”
“You?”
“No one else volunteered.” His smile showed white teeth against full lips. At another time, in another place, she would have considered him attractive.
“I’ll report this to Kuching as soon as I can. In the meantime, let’s get some food and water into your team here before you all drop dead. Looks like it’s been a deadly day.” He grimaced. “Sorry, bad set of puns.”
“That’s all right,” Garrett replied. “I’m curious, the man who got us here. Aidan? Is that him?”
He arched his brow. “He didn’t tell you his name, did he?” His laugh was more a short, harsh bark than a sound of amusement. “Aidan does like to keep his secrets.”
Aidan. So, Mr. Irrelevant had a name.
“Aidan, man of the jungle. I guess in the old days he would have been considered a Wild Man—kind of Tarzan like, you know,” Mark said and laughed.
“How appropriate,” Garrett murmured. “Wild Man.” She began to climb the stairs, clinging to the railing as she glanced back at Mark, who followed behind her, and their conversation continued as they climbed.
“Hardly. An investigator, but I suppose for six months of the year Wild Man will do.”
Her hand trembled on the railing and her knees began to shake. She had to keep it together. This was no time for a delayed-reaction meltdown.
Focus, Garrett, she thought. She reached the top and the verandah. Heat shimmered off the rocks below and overhead the sun shone, brutally hot on this part of the verandah where the overhang did not reach. Mark joined her, and behind them the rest of the team plodded.
“You mean this isn’t his home?”
“Of course not. Comes here to unwind, at least that’s what he says. I find it hard to believe. I go to London myself to unwind. That’s home for me.”
Investigator. Somehow, Wild Man seemed so much more fitting. Wild Man. Aidan. Malcolm dead and headless. Her thoughts spun, and as she reached the verandah the stress of it all hit her full force and the world turned gray.
Chapter Nine
“Hey! Are you all right?” The voice was distant.
“Get back, Mark. I’ll take care of it.”
Aidan—he was back. Garrett’s head fell back on wood so smooth it was almost soft, and this time the world went black.
The next voice she heard was Ian’s. “Garrett! Garrett, wake up. Shit, Gar, fainting isn’t about you. That’s me. I’m the fainter. I’ve got hysteria all wrapped up. There’s not room for another participant. Wake up, damn it.” His voice sounded rather panicked, but surprisingly it was minus the usual hysteria.
Something wet and cold trickled down her forehead.
“Enough. You don’t want to drown her.”
Aidan’s voice, and then a hand, warm but unfamiliar, traced her forehead and guttural words in a woman’s voice wrapped around her.
She opened her eyes and she was alone. Something shifted in her vision and then there was an old woman who gazed deep into her eyes and . . . her eyes fluttered shut. And for a while she slept. Was it a dream or was it real? The voice came from nowhere on a cloud of rancid breath.
“You should have left the body.” A man’s voice registered somewhere in her consciousness. “You don’t belong here. Leave before others die.” For a minute there was only silence and then a hand traced a gentle trail along her forehead. “Anne.”
Who was Anne? she thought vaguely, but there was no energy to contemplate further, to open her eyes. She only wanted sleep. She shuddered as the disembodied voice growled deep and chilling before she fell back into unconsciousness.
The next time she awoke, the smell of a wood fire stung her nostrils. She didn’t know how much time had passed. The smell was unfamiliar, thick and strangely sweet. She opened her eyes and the face that hovered over hers was smooth brown, with deep wrinkles around her eyes. The face blurred and a voice grunted in a gravelly, throaty way.
The old woman sat back on her haunches. An aged cackle echoed in the stark room. She lifted a wooden cup. “Drink.”
Garrett hesitated before taking a hesitant sip.
“Stay,” the old woman commanded and pushed firmly against Garrett’s shoulders.
“All right, for now.” Her words were slurring—What? A man’s voice played somewhere in the fog of her memory but she couldn’t remember the words, only the chill that had followed at their meaning. She shuddered and fell back on the pallet. Outside, someone was speaking but the murmured words were indistinct. Still, she had the oddest feeling they were talking about her. She needed to get out there. But there must have been something in the drink she was given a few minutes ago, that was the only explanation for the room beginning to spin.
“Drugged . . .” The words trailed into an incoherent mist. She was alone and then she blacked out.
* * *
“What’s going on, Akan?” Aidan asked the man who had once been his mother’s lover and who would always be like a father to him. “If another tribe has started taking heads, what does it mean? Can we rule out tribe warfare? Or is it something else masquerading as that?”
“I don’t know. Seriously, Aidan, I don’t like the look of this.” His attention was focused on the jungle that surrounded them. “So much for your vacation,” he said as he pushed off the railing and turned around.
Outside the sky was darkening and the moths flitted with their oversized wings along the verandah, their wren-sized bodies attracted by the torches burning intermittently across the wooden expanse.
“Should get the verandah wired,” Akan muttered.
“Big job,” Aidan observed, considering the fact that the deck stretched across the entire longhouse.
“Yeah, that’s why I haven’t done it yet.”
“It wasn’t one of the tribes, was it?” Aidan asked.
Akan shook his head. “I went down and took a look at the body. Whoever severed that head had no idea what they were doing. Mark’s already determined that the head was removed after death, quite a bit after death. Mark is sure a knife took off that head—so that eliminates an animal.”
“Really?” Aidan sucked in a surprised breath. Mark hadn’t told him that. But then he hadn’t had much time to speak to Mark. He’d only just gotten Garrett’s team settled. They were a demanding group. “How’s he sure?”
“Not enough blood.”
“He was in the river,” Aidan added practically.
“True, but he still would have bled out. He didn’t. There’s still quite a bit of congealed blood in his body.”
“You cut him?”
“Don’t sound so horrified. Considering what that body’s endured, Mark’s makeshift autopsy was no biggie.”
“Are you nuts?”
“No, just practical. Which is what you’re going to have to be if you’re going to get the woman and her team out of here.”
“What are you saying?”
“C’mon, Aidan. I haven’t seen you so flustered since you were a little boy and your mother arrived with you in tow. Now that was flustered. I thought you were going to kick up a tantrum right there on the boat dock.” He smiled, his teeth yellow and cracked with age, but his skin, although leathered, still showing hints of the beauty of the younger man.
“I never ha
d a tantrum.”
“True, and you never would, but I didn’t know that then. I just saw a spoiled little white boy.” Akan lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of gray-blue smoke and watched as it wafted around him. “I didn’t know many white boys.”
“Still don’t.”
“The woman, she’s not like any of the women around here. She fights her power.” Akan stubbed out the cigarette. “Don’t much like the taste of the bought kind. Actually, I prefer my pipe.” He ground his heel into the dirt and then picked up the half butt. “She’s having a time of it with those men of hers but she’ll handle them. They’ll learn to respect her. Any other woman would have given up, a white woman anyway, probably not one of ours. Of course, they would never have gotten themselves into that situation.”
“Aren’t you being rather racist?”
Akan swept his arms across the verandah. “Look at it, this land is all ours. There’s no one else here. Racist—I can afford to be. I don’t have any neighbors that I need to be sensitive about.” He faced Aidan, his expression serious. “That girl is trouble. Trouble for you.” He smiled. “Or didn’t I say that?”
“You did. You figure you say it enough times and I might believe you.”
“Something like that.” Akan pulled another cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
“The hunting tourism is coming too close for comfort,” Aidan said, changing the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Garrett with Akan. The old man sensed too much already. “Found a monkey, shot. A group of Chinese hunters were probably the culprits. But I didn’t get a chance to see who was guiding them. I followed them to the river but the guide was just out of sight. And just after that is when my distressed scientists decided to make an appearance.”
“Sounds like an LA freeway rather than a tropical rain forest. Makes you miss the old days.” Akan took a long drag and blew a smoke ring. “Okay, maybe not. I’d be lost without my laptop.” He looked at Aidan. “And you, you’re still in the last century. Loincloth.” He laughed lightly and shook his head.
They exchanged a smile. The loincloth wasn’t unheard of but it was a throwback to yesteryear. Aidan didn’t care. He could get away with it here and it only added to the feeling of freedom a two-week vacation here gave him. But as for the rest of it—life had changed. It was obvious that technology and the rain forest had met years ago with the introduction of satellite. The longhouse now had television and telephone. Men like Akan had embraced the technology as an opportunity in an isolated environment to feed their curiosity and remain in touch. Unfortunately, Internet access was still nonexistent. Akan claimed that the laptop allowed him to keep his records in order, and on his trips to the city he could get immediate access to the world. Since the laptop, Akan’s excursions into the city had increased to once a month. Aidan suspected he was succumbing to the lure of the Internet.
Fatal Intent Page 5