Again, Fernando nodded, and Corisco graced him with a smile before dismissing him with a wave of his hand. For all his intelligence, Fernando was ridiculously easy to please.
Not so himself. The night air was stifling, despite the ceiling fans droning overhead. Rain at dusk had laid a pall of humidity over the Cauaburi, making the fountain in the courtyard outside his office absurdly redundant. He was awash in a water world. Piping in more seemed almost ludicrous.
He picked up the box, appreciating the solid heaviness of the gold. Gabriela Oliveira had played her hand out saving Annie Parrish in Yavareté. The governor of Amazonas, the man who had issued the order to release the RBC botanist at Gabriela's insistence, had mysteriously died within months of Dr. Parrish's release, and the new governor was deep in Corisco's pocket. There would be no more interference in any of his plans. The government of Brazil could twist and turn and natter all it wanted about tapping the potential of the rain forest, but he was the man who would do it, and in a manner no government official could ever have imagined, let alone brought to fruition.
He turned the gold box over in his hand, admiring the exquisite craftsmanship almost as much as he admired the deadly contents. There were a thousand ways to die in the Amazon, but few as exquisitely painful as the kingmaker beetle. The iridescent carapace of the five-inch-long insect contained enough toxic material to dispatch two governors. Once ingested, the hemorrhagic toxins created an internal bloodbath inside the victim and then disappeared without a trace.
Annie Parrish was lucky. She would have a far more glorious death. She'd been so stubborn, so unyielding, a willful prize to be tamed—and he would have tamed her, if she hadn't been taken from him. She didn't know a woman's place, but he would teach her, and this time she would tell him everything. She'd been so soft to the touch, when he'd had her before, so very, very soft.
He set the box aside and shifted his attention to the cylinder, letting his fingers drift down the smooth curve of glass. He didn't understand scientists and all these damned environmentalists. They didn't seem to have any concept of reality, of his reality. They had no idea of the power waiting to be unleashed in the forest.
He did.
His gaze drifted to the large glass tank in the corner of the room, then came back to the cylinder and the exquisite piece of rain forest jungle floating inside.
Scientists came to the Amazon with their degrees and their books, wanting to understand, but only on their terms. They never took the jungle on its terms. Interpreting through the eyes of the rational gaze, they understood nothing, because the jungles of Amazonia did not fit their rational minds. Left to her own devices, Annie Parrish and those like her would have his world crawling with researchers trying to unlock secrets best left alone. Secrets like the one he was building in Reino Novo, like the one residing in the glass cage, and the one inside the glass cylinder.
The delicate orchid was so very lush, its elongate, midnight-blue petals limned with a cream-colored frill, the whole of it dusted with gold flecks like stars in the night sky. He'd confiscated it from her in Yavareté, one of a pair, and known she'd found a rare prize.
In the dark of night, the flower glowed. Even after twelve months of floating in preservative solution, the petals had not browned or withered, and it still emitted light, a mesmerizing, creamy golden light draped with a hint of green along its edge, like a miniature aurora borealis.
Irresistible, he'd thought, and known then that she would return. That she'd collected the flower near the mines was a foregone conclusion, though she'd refused to tell him where. He'd tried beating the information out of her and gotten nowhere, and before he'd had the chance to escalate to more refined torture, she'd been freed by Gabriela and the doomed governor.
The little fool, to have come back. Her timing couldn't have been worse. It was so inauspicious as to seem fated, that she would die with all the others, a lovely, exotic centerpiece to the sacrifice that would put Reino Novo on the map and seal his name in infamy. None would dare defy him then. Anyone who wanted to enter the rain forest, whether to rape it or save it, would have to deal with him. He would be king of the last great wilderness left on earth, King of the Great Green Hell, King of the Amazon.
CHAPTER 4
DARKNESS FELL QUICKLY ALONG THE Rio Negro, and Annie, Carlos, and his son, Paco, finished loading her supplies by the light of the lanterns strung along the path leading down to the river.
Travers's boat rocked on the water at the end of the dock, its white form barely illuminated by a low-wattage bulb hanging from a pole on the docking shed. The riverboat was a thirty-footer with two cabins, a helm forward and a smaller cabin aft with an open walkway in between. A short rail around the upper deck made it a good place to store cargo. Up close, she could see the boat needed paint, but the deck felt solid beneath her feet, and she couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement at being on the river and knowing in the morning she would be heading upstream, back to the Rio Cauaburi, the land of all her dreams.
After storing the last of her cartons, she and the men exchanged good-nights, and Carlos and his son headed back up the riverbank to the hacienda's compound. Annie stayed a moment longer to double-check the lashings holding down her supplies. She also wanted to make sure Johnny Chang's crates were well hidden by the rest of her cargo and the tarps she'd bought to keep the rain off her equipment. Waterfront lowlife or not, she doubted if Travers would appreciate her dragging ill-gotten goods on board his boat. In fact, she was damn sure that was just the sort of thing that would get her kicked off his boat. It was certainly why booking fare on one of the public “birdcage” riverboats had been out of the question.
Even so, in Gabriela's office she'd come damn close to changing her mind about going with him. Damn close. Only the risk of staying in Manaus another day had kept her from telling Will Travers he'd talked himself out of a passenger.
Jaguar bait.
She jerked one of the tie-down ropes, her mouth tightening in irritation. What gall. She'd never heard it put in quite those words, but she knew exactly what he meant—and he was dead wrong. She wasn't anybody's entrée. If anything, he'd be surprised to know just how much alike they were, or had been before he'd lost himself in the rain forest.
Her mouth curved into a brief, knowing smile. Having met him twice now, she'd put a dollar to anyone's dime that Travers had never been lost a day in his life, and certainly not for a whole year.
No, she mused. He'd known exactly where he was and probably knew exactly how to get back. Not that he was telling.
Something more than intelligence was burning in the depths of his dark eyes, and against her better judgment, part of her was damned curious to see how much she could find out about him in three days, beginning with where in the hell he'd been, and moving on to what in the hell had happened to change him from a scientific legend to a waterfront has-been.
Holding on to the last tie-down, she stood on the boat's aft deck and looked down the length of the Rio Negro. Jungle rose up on the near bank, dense and impenetrable, a hothouse of plants and mysteries. The river's black waters reflected a white stream of moonlight all the way to the lights of the city farther to the southeast. She had a year on her visa. By the time she returned to Manaus, there would probably be rumors running all over town about her. Like Travers, she planned on being “lost” for a while herself. Unlike Travers, she planned on coming back a hero, not an outcast. If the Amazon and its creatures had devoured anybody's life, it was Dr. Will Travers's, not hers.
A soft noise coming from the other side of the boat brought her head around. In the next second, she heard a soft thud and the sound of running feet racing up the dock toward shore. Moving quickly to the walkway between the two cabins, she barely caught sight of a man before he veered off the lantern-lit path and disappeared into the palm trees on the riverbank. The palms' fronds gleamed silver in the moonlight, great swaths of curves silhouetted against the sky. Below the trees, all was darkness.
Curious, but not overly disturbed, Annie turned back into the walkway and came to sudden halt, her gaze riveted to the blowgun dart sticking out of the aft cabin's door. The small wad of white kapok fluff on the end shone brightly in the moonlight.
Alarmed, she looked back to the shore to make sure the man was gone, before she moved in closer to the dart and saw the scrap of paper pinned to the door. With a quick tug, she pulled the dart out of the wood and held the paper up to the light.
The message was short and ominously direct: LEAVE MANAUS.
CHAPTER 5
Sunlight streamed through the windows fronting the Sucuri's helm, making a hot band across Will's face where he lay in his hammock between the wheel and the door, slowly rousing to the day. The thought of opening his eyes to such a blast of brightness was too painful to contemplate, so he gingerly rolled himself over into a spot of shade. A soft groan escaped him.
The mere fact of the sunlight's existence told him he'd overslept and missed the dawn departure time. He wondered, briefly, if Annie Parrish had found another boat and left without him. Or better yet, if Gabriela had come to her senses in the night and canceled the woman's project.
“A-hem.” A purely feminine voice sounded from the doorway.
No such luck.
By pure force of will, he lifted his head a bare fraction of an inch and pried one eyelid open. It was her, all right, looking incredibly fresh and lovely, and incredibly annoyed. With a pained sigh, he sank back into his hammock.
He didn't blame her. He was pretty annoyed himself. It had taken half the night and two bottles of cachaça, before Fat Eddie Mano had relinquished the map. Bitching and moaning had been the first two items on the fat one's agenda. The old thief had been robbed, a load of merchandise taken out of one of his warehouses right out from under his nose and undoubtably by one of his own jagunços, henchmen, the only people with access to Eddie's various hidey-holes. Eddie hadn't said what had been stolen, but Will had a pretty good idea of the kind of goods Fat Eddie traded in and out of Manaus, and none of it was legal. The man couldn't go to the police, especially since whatever had been stolen from Fat Eddie, Fat Eddie had originally stolen from them—a fact the man had let slip sometime after they'd cracked open the second bottle, then repeatedly forgotten as he'd bemoaned the fate of “honest” businessmen at the mercy of corrupt police officials and perfidious employees. Vengeance had been sworn, with various tortures amply described—hour after hour and shot after shot of brain-numbing cachaça.
Will had gotten the point, however unnecessary. He had no intention of stealing the contraband Fat Eddie had given him in Pancha's. For Will, meeting with Corisco Vargas face to face to deliver the goods was far more important than the bag of gemstones Fat Eddie had entrusted in his care. The map was what he'd come to Manaus to get, not a clutch of rough-cut diamonds and emeralds.
He carefully slipped his hand into the front pocket of his pants, felt the folds of paper and told himself the end had justified the means—a reasoning he usually found spurious at best.
His body told him it was still damn spurious thinking. Everything inside his skull had congealed into one, big, giant throb of hangover pain. His mouth felt as if a hundred pistoleiros in dusty, old leather boots had tromped through it, and he and Eddie had been drinking the good stuff.
“It's seven-thirty,” Miss Bright Eyes said with an edge to her voice. “I've been here since five, and this is the first time you've budged.”
Definitely irritated, he thought.
“I thought maybe you'd died.”
Close, he could have told her, and still in critical condition.
“Can you get up? Or do I need to go get Carlos?”
He was tempted to tell her yes, go get Carlos. Not because he couldn't get up, but because running back to the hacienda might help her work off some energy. She sounded pretty keyed up and a little on the bitchy side, and with his head pounding, what he needed was a smooth slide into the day, a nice quiet unmooring and a slow drift into the current.
Yeah, he thought. That's what he needed, a nice and easy slide into consciousness—or back into oblivion. There was no reason to hurry, now that he had the map. Hell wasn't going anywhere without him. It would still be up on the Cauaburi, whether it took him a week or two weeks to get there. With the hangover he'd made out of two bottles of rotgut and less sleep last night, his money was on the two weeks.
“Are we going to make it out of here before noon, or not?” she demanded to know. “I am on a schedule. A tight… very tight schedule.”
He snorted in disbelief—and damn near blew his head off. A groan of pure pain lodged in his throat, right behind a foul curse. Tight schedule? There was no such thing in the Amazon. A person had their choice of two speeds on the river, slow crawl and dead stop, with reverse a possible third. Nobody ever went anywhere on a schedule, tight or not. Anybody who tried was destined for the loony bin.
Then he remembered something Gabriela had said.
“Peach palms,” he muttered under his breath. Annie Parrish was supposed to research the peach palm harvest around Santa Maria—something he could have done in his sleep.
No, he thought, remembering a little more of the conversation. The peach palm thing was just a cover for something else, but he'd be damned if he could remember what.
“You oughta just go home,” he mumbled, too hungover to sort through the mess.
“I beg your pardon?” she said, her voice reaching a new note of stridency.
Merda, he swore to himself, oblivion forgotten. Where was that kitteny, soft-looking woman he'd met yesterday in Pancha's? And who had let this sanctimonious alley cat into his cabin?
“How did you get in here?” he asked, working to raise his voice above a hoarse whisper. With Fat Eddie's gems on board, Will had felt compelled to take a few precautions. Locking the door had been one. The pistol digging into his rib cage was the other.
“I picked the lock,” she said without even a trace of apology in her voice.
So much for sanctimony, he thought. She was just plain angry with him and not afraid to show it.
Once again, he could hardly blame her. He could have told her there was a law against breaking and entering, even on a boat, but he was getting the idea she wouldn't give a damn. He was also beginning to think Gabriela was right. Annie Parrish was a woman on a mission— and her mission didn't have a damn thing to do with peach palms. That's what Gabriela had said, or rather, implied. Dr. Oliveira didn't really know what Dr. Parrish was up to any more than he did.
And he was stuck with her on his boat.
“Go get Carlos,” he suggested, every word grating across his aching brain. “And coffee.” If she wanted to leave before noon, he was going to need Carlos, and coffee wouldn't hurt.
Muttering something about it taking more than coffee to get his sorry hide moving—to which he could only agree—she turned and walked out the door.
Blessed silence descended, and every cell in Will's body begged him to go back to sleep. He ignored them. Putting one hand on his brow to keep his head from exploding, he carefully swung his legs over the side of the hammock and put his feet on the floor. Whether hell was going to wait for him or not, he would be better off out of Manaus.
But twenty minutes later, when Dr. Parrish returned with Carlos, he hadn't gotten so much as an inch closer to leaving. He was still sitting on the side of the hammock, his head in his hands.
“Como vai, Guillermo?” the old man asked, shuffling into the cabin and over to the small gas stove sitting on the cou
nter. Carlos was part Indian, about five feet two, and as wizened as an old tobacco leaf.
“Vou bem,” he answered, his voice little more than a croak. I'm well.
The old man cackled at his obvious lie, showing blackened teeth, then set about getting some water on to boil.
Stationing herself by the door, Annie watched as Carlos pulled handful after handful of vegetal whatnot out of a cloth bag slung over his shoulder. Most of the debris went into the pot. Some went directly into a tin cup. Considering the shape the specimens were in, she wasn't surprised not to recognize anything, but she trusted Carlos to know what he was doing. Every grad student who had ever worked for RBC knew about Carlos's famous hangover remedies—and William Sanchez Travers was undeniably, colossally hungover.
The man had practically paralyzed himself, she thought with disgust. She'd purposely kept her expectations and qualifications for a boat captain low, but as of five o'clock that morning, he'd bottomed out below any base minimum requirements. She didn't mind that he'd gotten drunk. In fact, after yesterday's confusing conclusions, she took some small comfort in the verification of his cheap and easy character—but his timing sucked. Dawn, he'd said. She did a quick check of her watch, and her lips thinned. They'd be lucky to cast off by ten o'clock.
The last thing Carlos pulled out of his bag was a sheaf of wild Piperacea leaves, his shinki-shinki. He began shaking it over Travers's head and shoulders, and her expectations slipped even lower. When the old witch doctor started to chant, Annie knew they were sunk.
Noon, she groaned inwardly. If Carlos thought Travers needed a full-blown healing ritual, they were going to miss half the day.
This was what she got for depending on a down-on-his-luck river rat given to drink and waterfront alliances not so very different from the one making it necessary for her to get the hell out of Manaus.
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