The forest was settling for the night, crackling as wings brushed against wings, as leaves settled into the carpeted mulch on the forest floor, and as the night creatures prepared to flee the predators that were slowly awakening.
“Damn it.”
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse, man. If it bothers you that much . . . I’d consider letting you off the hook.”
“Thanks,” Aidan replied.
“I said consider. Would I let you off the hook? Get real, my friend. Call this a professional obligation.” Mark winked. “Women really are a bitch, aren’t they? Especially when you’re attracted to them.”
“I’m not.” He stopped, realizing how juvenile his denial sounded. “All right. There’s just something about her.”
Mark slapped him on the shoulder.
“But it’s never going to happen. Wrong time. Wrong woman. Wrong everything.”
“Whatever you say.” Mark laughed.
Aidan frowned. The human condition was a strange thing—he’d seen it often enough, romance, attraction, even love occurring at completely inappropriate times. He thought of his reaction to Garrett. The timing couldn’t have been more off, the place more wrong. But it was as one psychology professor had said—the human instinct to survive is primitive and strong, especially in times where individuals are stripped to survival mode. Problem was, he wasn’t the one terrified of death—he had been the rescuer and his thoughts had been abominable.
“Sorry, old man, you’ve had a rough go of it today.” Mark looked at him sympathetically.
Together they walked slowly along the river. Above, on the verandah, voices still carried, occasionally the raised voice of Sid or Ian, followed by a softer feminine rebuttal.
“Do you suppose I should have offered her my room?” Mark asked. “I could have slept outside. Actually, I was planning to anyway.”
“No,” Aidan disagreed. “She wouldn’t have accepted. She’ll stay with her team. They’re her responsibility.”
“You know her pretty well, considering you just met,” Mark said and laughed. “Interesting. I never thought it would happen.”
“What are you suggesting? Never mind, pretend I didn’t ask that question.”
An hour later, it was silent on the verandah. “Do you suppose they’re all asleep?” Mark asked.
“Maybe.” Aidan was doubtful. “I’m turning in.” It had been an emotionally trying day, not the peaceful excursion he had planned this morning. But when he closed the door to his room he couldn’t sleep. He stared blankly at the four walls until he finally took his blanket to the opposite end of the verandah from the motley crew he had rescued earlier in the day.
As always, he was awake at first light. He stretched and gazed silently over the forest as the sun began to weakly rise, and the night’s mist-filled shroud began to thin. Cooking fires were on and the jungle was awakening.
He was aware the moment she awoke. Expecting answers from him, expecting action.
Chapter Twelve
Garrett stretched and rubbed her eyes. She’d slept very little. Instead of sleep, she’d thought about Malcolm and how he might have died. She’d gone through numerous scenarios and all she had were questions. Why would they behead him? Malcolm was too forest savvy to fall prey to an animal. Who had shot him and why? And had they taken his head?
She sat up. That thought was more disturbing than any of the others. Had it been two different culprits? The thought, when it had first come to her, was so troubling it had kept her awake for the remainder of the night. She had lain quietly for a long time, unable to sleep and trying to still her thoughts. She’d heard Aidan and Mark talking, heard the easy rise and fall of their voices without hearing what was being said, and had fallen asleep for a bit before waking again in time to see Aidan lay down at the opposite end of the verandah. His presence had been oddly comforting, and after that she had slept fitfully.
This morning there were people moving around but they were busy with their chores and paid no attention to her. She walked slowly around the longhouse, taking in the well-made verandah that stretched two hundred feet out. The verandah was where food was prepared, where entertainment went on, and in bad weather there was the covered verandah that fronted each tribe family’s individual unit. The verandah seemed to be the common living area; just yesterday she had seen the elderly women chatting and weaving reed mats there.
She had never been in a longhouse before. She should have been enthralled at the opportunity. Instead all she could think about was the tragedy they’d endured and Aidan. He was the first man in a long time who made her think about things she would rather not. Against all logic, she would like nothing better than to haul him into the jungle and have her way with him. Stroke that sun-gilded skin until he moaned his surrender, taste the silky maleness of him . . . They were ridiculous thoughts, as out of place as everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
And that realization only added to the feel of a walking dream as she found herself drifting down the steps until she stood at the edge of the river.
“Sleep well?” The disembodied voice came from a stand of brush.
It was as if her thoughts had conjured him. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here.” Aidan grinned.
“I don’t suppose I can get a good cup of coffee?” Yeah, that was classic, Garrett, ask for coffee in the jungle. Good move.
“You supposed wrong. You can get a great cup. Hope you don’t like cream, though, that we can’t provide.”
“Excellent.” She turned toward the stairs and reality.
“Look, give me a minute and I’ll go up with you.” He stepped into the clearing, pulling green netting behind him. “I was fishing. Got a few but I want to toss the net again. Do you want to wait?”
All she could think about was keeping her eyes from another part of his anatomy covered with a worn piece of cloth. In a short time it seemed to have become his trademark. She looked up, morning mist drifting between them as their eyes locked for a moment, his lips curved in a subtle yet definite smile, and he made no attempt to hide the fact that he had seen where her gaze had just been resting. She smiled back at him and let her gaze drop down, sweeping across his chest. Down. She couldn’t do it. She looked up.
“Do I make you uncomfortable?”
“Why would you think that?” She made her tone as businesslike as possible. “If I’m uncomfortable it’s because this is a difficult situation. I have a dead man literally rotting in the jungle. Well, maybe not a jungle, but a shed on the edge of a rain forest.” A dead man, and that alone should have deterred her ridiculous thoughts, but as a scientist she knew otherwise. It was a primitive survival mode, and instead of ignoring the survival gene when it reared to the surface, she had indulged it, that had been wrong.
“He’s buried.”
She started. “You did it without me?”
“Tribal tradition,” he said and looked away.
“I don’t believe you. Tribal tradition doesn’t work that fast.”
He smiled briefly at her. “You’re right. Mark and I thought it would be best to get him buried now, not to involve you as that would just mean involving your team. They’re rather difficult, if you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ll give you that, but why the rush? We would have taken him with us today.” She looked up at the longhouse. “We do have communications now, don’t we?”
“There’s no plane—not today.”
“And you buried him.” She shuddered. “But there was no choice,” she murmured, resigned.
“No,” he agreed. “There wasn’t.”
She wrapped her arms beneath her chest, as if warding off a chill or the sign of worse to come. “Malcolm’s death kept me awake most of the night.”
He stood silent as she wrestled with thoughts that roamed half-finished even in the reality of daylight.
“Was it possible that someone removed his head after he die
d? I mean, long after he died. Someone other than the person who killed him?”
He was looking somewhere over her head into the forest beyond.
“I’m on to something, aren’t I?”
“I don’t think that’s realistic.” He still wouldn’t look at her.
“Don’t or won’t admit that it might be? Seriously, how long does blood take to congeal? Was Mark able to find evidence of that?”
“Let’s not talk about this. It’s an open investigation.”
“His tendons were ragged.” She willed back the bile that rose in her throat. “It was a hack job. Why?”
“Don’t think about it.”
She was so close she could touch him. “What did you find?”
“I can’t say.”
“It was amateur. Akan said so.”
“Akan talks too much,” Aidan growled.
“I overheard,” she admitted sheepishly. “You were talking right outside the shaman’s room. I just caught a bit of your conversation before I fell asleep.”
“Discount much of what Akan says.”
“There was no blood,” she persisted.
“He’d been in the river.”
She began to cough. He imagined she might be choking on the revulsion that roiled hot and tight and so very close to the surface. It was as if the horror meshed with passion, flared into anger and acted as a front for what she didn’t want, and had already done—physically break down.
He reached for her, his hand rubbing her back, his other resting on her shoulder. The coughing subsided and there was only the heat and closeness between them. She was pressed against a half-naked man in a loincloth. Somehow all of it was too much. She pushed free.
“I’m fine,” she said, frantically sucking in a breath. “So, someone killed him and then hours later someone removed his head?” She couldn’t help it, she had to persist. She sensed the truth behind what she was saying. “You are taking your findings to Kuching?”
“Of course.”
She looked at him as if analyzing each of his features would gain the truth. He looked almost guilty, like he was hiding something. “When?”
“Mark is competent at this. He’s trained with the best. He has enough evidence for when he meets with the Kuching investigators and pathologist in a few weeks, hopefully less. We’ll see. Maybe tomorrow even.”
“A few weeks or maybe tomorrow? What are you saying? The communications are still down?” Something wasn’t right here. His answers no longer flowed and his body language appeared almost stilted.
He looked at the river before redirecting his attention to her. “Hopefully Akan will get things running today. If not, we have two choices. Stay here and fly in with Mark whenever we get an Otter in. If Akan doesn’t get communications fixed in the next two days, then we have a serious problem. So we wait or . . .”
“What if we wait for a boat? Would that be faster than the other options?”
“You don’t want to do that. The tributary is rough enough, but where it meets with the river it becomes even more deadly, especially for a small boat. But you’ve probably already seen that. The logs coming down from the logging, the current . . . Need I say more?”
“No, apparently you’ve said enough.”
He watched as she ran up the stairs.
* * *
Stupid bitch.
Why anyone could be so hyped up about the plight of a mere woman was beyond him. There was so much more to life than a woman, money for one. Money took you to a world beyond the putrid green borders of this never-ending prison. Money brought comfort and luxury and love if you needed it. Comfort. This was the land of barbarians and he couldn’t escape it soon enough.
They had gotten greedy and that was what had placed him here. Here at the mercy of his partner’s impetuous stupidity, and Aidan, whose blonde hair and Nordic features were completely at odds with this place and yet fit like he never could. Aidan, it had always been Aidan. Everyone in the tribe had loved him from the beginning.
Prison.
He had to keep calm. The rails had slipped beneath them. He had to get them back in place. His partner’s actions had placed the entire operation in jeopardy. He was so pissed he could barely look at him. It was all up to him, and if he didn’t keep all the players in sight, prison would be exactly where they were headed. It was an unfortunate fact that had him fighting to keep his façade in place.
But he was sure if he held his cards close to his chest he could turn the game around to his advantage. In the end, he would be a rich man, more so than even now, and he’d never hear the name Fish again. He couldn’t stop the smile.
In the end he’d be the last man standing.
Chapter Thirteen
“Any news?” Garrett asked as she approached Aidan the next day. “Are we able to phone out?”
Aidan was silent for moment. He hated lies. “No.”
Garrett picked up a river rock. It rolled slick and smooth along the palm of her hand. She put it down, as if it felt wrong. “It’s still down, isn’t it?”
Aidan nodded. “Akan’s working on it. He could fix it quickly if he had the part but he may be able to work around it. In the meantime he’s sending one of the boys to the longhouse north of us to see if they have what we need.”
“So what does that mean?”
“We should hang around at least through tomorrow because an Otter is the best way out of here. If it’s not working by then, well, we might have to walk out. We can leave for Muleng first thing Saturday if communications aren’t up and running.”
“That’s another two days.” Her voice rose slightly along with, it seemed, her frustration.
He shrugged. “What was Ian’s relationship with Malcolm?”
“Ian’s gay,” she said softly. “But you know that, and he had a thing for Malcolm.” She eyed him. “But Ian wouldn’t hurt anyone. What happened out there almost killed him.”
“Was there any time when Ian wasn’t with you?”
“Once when Malcolm first left, Ian followed.” She bit her lip. “That was the last time we saw Malcolm alive.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Ian couldn’t kill anyone and definitely not someone he cared about. I know I’m repeating myself, but I won’t have any of my team blamed.”
“What about the others?”
“No. They were with me right up until Malcolm didn’t return. That’s when we began searching.” She glared at him as if that would stop his questions. “I’ve known Ian all my life. It’s just not in him.”
Aidan shrugged. “I never said it was. I’m just exploring the possibilities.”
She shivered and rubbed her arms. Her white-blonde hair lifted in a breeze that sent wisps around her delicate features, and all he wanted to do was hold her.
“Stop it.” Her words were halfhearted.
“You feel it too.”
“Feel what?”
“You know what.” His voice, even to his own ears, was uncharacteristically graveled and thick. He glanced down to the river, where her entire team was attempting to fish with nets with the help of a couple of the Iban boys.
“He would never do it,” she repeated. Her eyes were troubled. “No one on my team would.”
Their conversation broke as a shout came from downriver.
They turned to see Ian flopping in the river and Sid doubled over laughing. Drew had obviously tried to wade in and pull him out but Ian was tangled in the net.
“He can’t swim. The current.” Garrett broke into a run.
Within seconds he had passed her as he raced to the bank. Aidan bit back panic. There’d been more than one drowning in this river and one he never wanted to remember. It had been long ago and he could never forget. He ran faster. Reaching the bank in a rush, he waded through the water past shouting men and yelling boys, all thrashing around trying to untangle the net and no one providing any clear direction. His knife slipped easily into his hand and ripped through the netting, freeing Ian. And with one arm he
pulled Ian out, man and net together in one tangled lump. He literally tossed him to shore.
“You’re okay?” Garrett asked Ian as she removed the remains of the net.
He pushed wet hair back from his forehead. “Fine. Just feel a little ridiculous. Tangled in a net. Shit. I just want to get the hell out of here. When are we leaving? I can’t take this much longer.”
“I’m working on it.”
Garrett patted Ian’s hand. “Look, stay here. The sun will have you dry quickly.”
“You saved his life.” Her eyes locked on Aidan’s. “Thank you.”
“The water wasn’t that deep.” Aidan sucked air and tried to sound casual. Tried not to remember the time when he hadn’t been there.
“What’s wrong?” She lifted her hand from Ian’s. “Aidan?”
“Wrong? Near drowning, nothing else.” He forced the quip as he wrestled with the dark panic that had fallen on him as he rushed to save Ian.
“You’re upset.”
“No.” He glanced at Ian. The man was soaking wet and pale but he was going to live. He turned away. He couldn’t take any more questions, any more drama. He needed to be alone. He needed the forest. And somehow he had to survive without solitude for at least another five days. He took a deep breath and began to walk and wished he never had to stop.
Her light footsteps sounded behind him. Her natural scent wafted a tentative seduction around him.
“We need to get out of here. I don’t know how we’ll make another day.” She was beside him.
“Look, if Akan hasn’t fixed the thing tomorrow morning, we’ll go on a field trip. One day. Take your mind off things.”
“A field trip,” she said then hesitated. “You’re sure you won’t have the communications fixed by then, aren’t you?”
“Takes ten hours just for a trek to the next longhouse. He’s going to need that part if they have it. So, yeah. Probably not. But a good chance we’ll have the telephone working after that.” Guilt was a hard thing to ignore. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He strode ahead.
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