Fatal Intent

by Ryshia Kennie

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Aidan’s second beer sat untouched. “Andrew wasn’t able to find anything more other than the bullet was Chinese-made.”

  “Pretty compelling evidence that it might have been that group you saw earlier.” Mark set his beer down.

  “Maybe,” Aidan replied. He couldn’t mention the feather, not now, for admitting that one piece of evidence was too painful. He couldn’t mention it, or the cowboy hat that he had so adamantly denied so few days earlier.

  “Don’t look so dreary,” Mark said as he slouched back. “Civilization has been a long time coming. Enjoy, my friend.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s not that late, maybe you want to file that police report. Let them know there isn’t much we could add to what they already have.” He shook his head. “Too bad really. An interesting case but a dead end.”

  Across the room Andrew was chatting it up with a group of associates. The bar was busy despite the fact that it was close to suppertime on a weekday.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, distracted.

  Blue. He couldn’t believe there was a connection and yet he held the evidence in his hand. He twirled the feather. The feather linked to Blue, and the thought of the possibilities made him feel physically ill. How was his Iban family involved? What had Blue done and what did Akan know?

  He stood up. “Look, you’re right. I need to file that report. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Better yet, I’ll come with you,” Mark said, and together they left the bar.

  * * *

  “The tribes are talking up- and downriver,” Chief Lieu said thirty minutes later. “I got word just a few hours ago. Of course, that’s only because I put out the word to report anything out of the ordinary. And this group is definitely that.” He looked at Aidan. “What happened to the woman and the rest of her crew?”

  “They’re here in Kuching.”

  “Are you sure?” The police chief smiled good-naturedly. “I heard some fool scientist, a woman no less, is trekking through the jungle. I expected that you were guiding them.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”

  Something froze in Aidan’s throat and for a moment he was silent before spinning on his heel. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

  “It might not be her,” Mark said beside him.

  “You’ve seen a lot of foreign women scientists in the rain forest lately?” Aidan snapped.

  “Jeez, man,” Mark said and put his hands up. “Keep your shirt on, I’m with you.”

  “Who took her back in?”

  The police chief shrugged. “A local guide, I imagine.” He stood up. “Do you need reinforcements?”

  “No,” Aidan replied adamantly. “I have to do this on my own.”

  “Let me know what you find.” But Chief Lieu’s words were cut off as the door slammed behind them, and soon Aidan was striding down the sidewalk with Mark at his heels. Was it possible she went alone? But even as he asked the question he knew, just as surely as the feather he’d tucked in his shirt pocket, that she hadn’t.

  He had to find her. And if what he suspected was true, time had already run out.

  There was only one way back into the jungle in record time. There was only one person crazy enough to venture in with a major weather system threatening and monsoon season clipping its heels—Eric.

  Two hours later they found Eric in a local bar. Fortunately, Eric had not gotten too far into his drinking for the night and was still coherent. Since the tragedy when his shaky old plane had crashed, killing one of the passengers, Eric had drunk copiously and was drunk by sundown most nights.

  “What are you up to tomorrow?” Aidan asked as he settled into a chair opposite Eric.

  He shook his head in the negative as the waiter came over and asked for his order.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to take a chance and fly on that piece of crap you call a plane. Tomorrow. I’m going home.”

  “The longhouse?”

  “No.” He knew exactly where she was headed and it wasn’t to the longhouse. She would find that colony. This meant more than anything to her. He finally got that, despite the fact that she had told him so many times and in so many ways. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. Whatever dangers she might face, her passion would blind her and the jungle was deadly. He rubbed the back of his neck as sweat tingled on his skin.

  “Back to Rumah Muleng.” He would walk from there and still beat the group to their destination. That is, if the plane got off the ground at the first sign of daybreak tomorrow.

  “Hey, for sure. But it’s no piece of crap. Got me a brand-new plane.”

  “Brand-new?”

  “Yeah. Blue got it for me.”

  How did one describe the moment when the bottom dropped out of their world? Aidan had felt that once before. When Sunrise had died. And although Blue hadn’t died, in that moment it felt like he had.

  He tried to push thoughts of Sunrise from his mind. She had been so young and it had been so unfair. He knew that was some of the reason that he strove to find justice in a world where there often wasn’t any. He turned his attention back to Eric.

  “Tomorrow morning, daybreak work for you?”

  “Deal,” Eric replied. “I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  He would have said tonight but it was too late to fly in. The thought of waiting until daybreak seemed intolerable, the time interminable. As they strode the short distance to their hotel, his thoughts focused solely on Garrett. His stomach twisted and for a moment he felt like throwing up as he thought about his last meeting with Andrew. The blue feather was nagging at him. There had only been two like it—he had one, and he had given the other to Blue.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  He longed for civilization. For the cosmopolitan taste and feel of well-heeled crowds, for history and sophistication and a pace that left one breathless—London permanently. But all that cost money.

  An Iban heritage was rich not in money but in the history and the guardianship of the jungle. He wanted none of that. If he believed in reincarnation he would have said his birth into the tribe had been nothing but a cosmic joke. Always he had yearned for civilization that sprang from the crowded centers of the world, where commerce moved at warp speed. Not here in Borneo, where even the little city of Kuching was too small, too provincial. None of it could satisfy him. That’s why he’d agreed to the deal. It was a deal that he had come to regret. For his partner was more unstable than he had imagined. How anyone could be that upset over the death of a woman, he could not imagine. There was so much more to life. He had known Anne, and there had been nothing special about her. She was like any Iban girl, too simple for his taste. But Blue was crazed. His obsession over a dead wife was more than evidence of that. He only wished he’d known all of that before they had ever struck a deal. All he could do now was hold it all together long enough to get what was his and get out.

  Soon it would be over. He would have it all and leave the primitives, those who called him family and the others, far behind. For in the end only one man could win and he had no doubt who that might be.

  * * *

  Daybreak had well passed before they began the trek back into the jungle. Drew had a case of traveler’s illness overnight, and for a few hours in the early morning Garrett had considered sending him back to Kuching. It was only at Drew’s insistence that they had waited, and it wasn’t until seven a.m. that they had headed out.

  The first few hours had been an easy trek and she’d found Blue a pleasant companion. He was quick to point out the various plants and animals and it took all Garrett had not to stop to examine many of the areas dense in insect activity. She had to focus on one thing, beetles that farmed. Everything else could wait.

  “You’ve known Aidan for a long time?” Garrett asked Blue later in the morning, knowing part of the answer but wanting another perspective, a chance to better understand the man she was growing to love. She grimaced; if she were truthful with
herself, she loved him already.

  “Since he was eight and he arrived sullen, scrawny and pale-faced and my father called him son.” His grin was slightly lopsided and his eyes twinkled behind the finger-smeared lens. “I was appalled.”

  “But he became your brother?”

  “He did. And for a time I loved him.”

  Garrett stumbled on a vine.

  “Are you all right?” Blue was at her side, his tone solicitous, the smudged lens of his glasses filming his eyes.

  “Fine, thank you.”

  He dropped her elbow and moved forward, continuing to break trail. “Aidan was destined to be more than this.” There was something off in his voice.

  “You miss him?” she guessed.

  He swung around to face her, as many feet away her team followed their broken trail. “Miss him. I prayed that he would leave.”

  Garrett couldn’t stop her gasp.

  “Don’t be shocked. It took many years for it to come to that.” Blue’s smile turned wistful. “I remember when he was ten he was bit by a centipede on our first trek through this same jungle.”

  “He could have died,” Garrett said, fumbling with the wild turn the conversation had taken and trying to restore some sort of equilibrium.

  Blue scowled. “Never. I wouldn’t let him. I took care of him and carried him back to the longhouse.”

  “Carried? How old were you?”

  “Twelve.” Blue’s scowl dropped. “And he was big for his age even then. It was a bugger getting him to safety. But I’d never have left him here.” He shaded his face with his hand and peered into the horizon before turning his attention back to the trail. “Not then . . .”

  The words trailed like a hint of frost between them.

  “You’ve never left the longhouse?” she asked, trying to gain back the easy rapport they’d shared earlier that morning. Whatever was disturbing Blue it was becoming more and more apparent that it was going to adversely effect this expedition if she didn’t get him back on the right track.

  “The autopsy showed no bruising. It takes a lot of force to remove a head.” Blue grinned, ignoring her question. “You didn’t know, did you? Or that he took the body to Kuching and had a proper autopsy done there.”

  For a moment it felt like her heart had stopped beating. “Are you saying that he wasn’t buried at the longhouse? How did he get the body out?”

  “Plane.” Blue smiled slightly and the continual gleam from his glasses seemed to wink obscenely at her.

  For a moment Garrett couldn’t make eye contact. Then her chin came up and she met Blue’s smirk head-on. “There was no plane available.”

  “There was Eric’s. Piece of junk that shouldn’t be in the air. Not like the new one that hit the air just the other day.” He grinned broadly. “I got him that. I’m a rich man now, or at least I will be soon.”

  Garrett hesitated. It was a strange comment and yet Blue’s attention was fixated on her like he expected an answer. “That’s great,” she said weakly, unable to put enthusiasm into the comment.

  Blue scuffed the ground with his hiking boot. “We took a chance on getting Malcolm’s corpse out.”

  “Why didn’t Aidan say anything?” she asked more to herself than Blue.

  “He’s always gotten what he wanted.” Blue’s voice quivered slightly. For a minute it seemed that it might be tears that glinted in his eyes.

  She was leery of going any farther with him despite that they were heading to what might well be the find of the century. On the other hand, they were too far into the jungle to make it back on their own. Tentatively, she touched his arm. “Blue?”

  “Leave me.” He shook her hand off his arm and stormed away.

  “Blue,” she called, hurrying after him.

  A slash of green slipped across his face and for a minute she could only see his eyes. Eyes rich and dark like the earth, and just as mysterious.

  The branches dropped and Blue was standing in front of her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and something in his face softened. He brushed a knuckle gently across her cheek.

  Garrett jumped and took a few steps back. “Don’t, please.”

  “Don’t? Anne, I love you.”

  Garrett flinched and pushed away from him even as he reached for her. What the hell was going on here? Behind her she could hear her team still struggling through the last tangle of brush that concealed this small clearing. They’d be here in minutes. That’s all the time she had to get Blue back to reality. For it was obvious that his mind was somewhere else.

  “Anne? No, Blue, my name is Garrett.” Her body tensed and her feet itched to run, for the look in Blue’s eyes was not sane.

  “I . . . He pushed his glasses up his pug nose and for a moment confusion muddied his deep brown eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Garrett took a deep breath. “Who is Anne?”

  “No one. It doesn’t matter.”

  “She mattered to you,” Garrett pushed. Something had him on an emotional edge. And the one thought that terrified her was the possibility that Aidan knew nothing of his brother’s emotional turmoil. And that thought brought others and a seed of doubt that was rapidly expanding. Did Aidan know about this expedition or had Blue lied? The farther they trekked the more that thought grew into a viable and chilling reality.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Let’s get moving,” Eric commanded. He was dressed in combat boots, a worn wanna-be soldier beret and a T-shirt that sported U.S. Army emblazoned in faded letters across its olive green background.

  Some things never changed. Eric had never been in the service. But he had a collection of stories about nonexistent combat encounters during Desert Storm.

  Aidan ducked his head as he climbed up the narrow ramp into the plane. He should have known how badly Garret not only wanted but needed this discovery. But the weather was the other factor. Why would Blue have taken her back when he knew that to stay too long in the jungle would be a danger not just to those he led but to himself?

  He shuddered at his inability to stop what was roaring into a full-scale disaster.

  “You couldn’t have stopped her,” Mark replied.

  Aidan swung on him. “How do you know?”

  “She would have found another plane, a boat, whatever it took.”

  Aidan said nothing. He couldn’t. All he could see was Eric and the gleaming hull of the new twin-engine Otter. How had Blue managed to afford it? He wouldn’t make enough on the occasional gigs as tourist guide. There were only a few ways to make that kind of money and Aidan didn’t want to consider any of those possibilities. When he spoke to Blue the whole matter would be cleared up. Despite his gut churning on the possible bad outcome, his brain said there was a logical explanation. He was sure of it.

  Still, as the plane banked over the Borneo rain forest, his gut tightened. He had the dull feeling that this was the beginning of an end. He stretched his legs out and closed his eyes and prayed with everything he had that he was wrong.

  Who would have thought Blue of all people might have accepted money from men who raped the forest, his home? He wouldn’t think of it. He had to think of it. He was an investigator and his personal feelings had to be put to the side. There was too much at stake. He sucked in a deep breath.

  “Nothing’s for sure yet,” Mark reminded him.

  Aidan pulled his gaze from the window.

  A knot sat in his throat and dread lodged low in his belly.

  Aidan shook his head. The blue feather pretty well clinches it, he thought. But it wasn’t just the feather that convinced him, there was something else, and it was that that he didn’t want to consider. For it changed everything.

  The plane bounced and settled into a landing.

  “Well, troops, should you accept this mission,” the jovial Eric shouted over his shoulder as the plane came to a halt. “Open the hatch, let’s march.”

  Mark stood up. “We’ll tie this baby up and get a move on, shall we?”

&
nbsp; Aidan resisted the urge to smack the flippancy from both their faces. Garrett was alone with Blue, her team, and an unforgiving jungle. He wasn’t sure which scenario terrified him more.

  On the other side of the dock, the speedboat and driver he’d booked the night before bumped gently against the dock as the current pushed against its fiberglass hull. Aidan threw his knapsack into the speedboat before going to speak with the driver.

  He sucked in a deep breath of clean air mixed with the turgid scent of outboard motor fuel as he and Mark sank into seats behind the driver. The speedboat backed up from the dock before spinning ninety degrees in the powerful current. Overhead the Borneo sun spun hot and ominous as the jungle crowded closer. He leaned back, closed his eyes and tried to breathe calmly. Their time together replayed like a litany.

  The boat began to slow and he opened his eyes. Unease churned deep and uncomfortable in his gut. It was an unease he’d learned long ago not to ignore. Only one word played over and over in his head and through the noise that wouldn’t stop. His gut clenched and all he could think of was her and that ridiculous, masculine name.

  “What are you going to do?” Mark asked as the boat bumped up against the dock and he followed Aidan’s leap to land.

  “There really isn’t much choice. They left from here this morning, there’s still time to catch them.” Aidan passed a hand across the back of his neck. “The description that’s coming from everyone we’ve spoken to matches Blue.”

  Mark looked down before meeting Aidan head-on with a glare that matched Aidan’s frown. “Bastard.”

  “He has his reasons,” Aidan said.