The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  No. At best, she had to assume they would be searching for her. Of course, they had no way to know that Ellie was already following the map. She had seen for herself how hard it was to find a guide. Jacobs would know that. He would expect her to be hiding somewhere in Belize City. He would scour it, looking for her.

  Were she and Adam to go anywhere near town, Jacobs would know. He would be waiting for her.

  Unless…

  Unless Dawson had managed to transcribe the map during the hours it was in his possession.

  It was not an impossible presumption. And if it was true, then they wouldn’t waste time trying to find her. They would start moving quickly. For all she knew, her enemies could already be on the Sibun, perhaps just a few miles down the dark water that stretched out behind her. How much of a lead would she have? Would they come upon the Mary Lee tonight?

  Fear bubbled up, sudden and primitive. She wanted to tell Adam to fire up the boiler, to keep moving.

  No.

  She fought for calm. There was no point panicking, not when she didn’t know anything… except that there could be no going back to the city. Whether she met them in the harbor or on the river, Dawson and his cold companion would be waiting for her. And they would not let her slip away again.

  She would have to find an unimpeachable reason why there was no choice but to push forward.

  Ellie reminded herself that it was entirely possible she wouldn’t have to. After all, the Mary Lee might be able to navigate the caves just fine. It was better not to risk rousing Adam’s suspicion unless she had to.

  She’d also have had several hours by then to think up a good excuse.

  The thought left her feeling uneasy. She seemed to be doing quite a lot of lying lately, particularly to Adam Bates. She’d lied about the origin of the map, lied about Jacobs… He didn’t even know her name, she realized. He still thought she was Constance Tyrrell.

  She knew she couldn’t remedy that without unraveling the rest of it, but that didn’t stop her from feeling a sharp pang of guilt.

  She pushed it back.

  “Let’s give it a try,” she said firmly, and was relieved when Adam accepted her answer with a nod.

  “So after we get through the caves—if we get through—we’re watching for this rock.”

  “‘A black pillar which draws the compass,’” Ellie said, translating it from memory.

  “Must be magnetic, like that bauble of yours.” Adam ran his finger along the torn edge of the old map, then glanced up at her meaningfully. “Any other landmarks I should know about?”

  Ellie shifted awkwardly. “A few. I’ll show them to you when we get closer.”

  “Still don’t quite trust me, huh?” He gathered up the two maps, folding them together and sliding them into the cylinder.

  “That’s not… It isn’t precisely…”

  “Relax. I know the deal. Just don’t leave it too long, all right?”

  She nodded, and he returned the cylinder to the crate, taking out a pair of tins. He set a pot on the still-hot boiler, punched them open, and poured out a thick mess of beans. They started to hiss against the hot steel.

  “We’ll have canned food while we’re on the boat, but it’ll be different once we start cutting cross-country,” he remarked. He opened the firebox, using a pair of tongs to remove one of the glowing coals. He touched it to the wicks of a pair of lamps, blowing the flames to life, then tossed it into the water. The landscape around them was growing dark quickly, and the lamps added a welcome glow to the little world of the boat.

  “I can’t imagine it being worthwhile to carry tins,” Ellie commented. Her stomach rumbled. She was surprised. It seemed like all she’d done that day was sit in the bow, yet she was starving.

  “We’ll bring some dry goods for emergencies, but for the most part we’ll have to find what we need as we go. There’s usually fruit this time of year, and we’ll try for game. I don’t suppose you’re any good with a rifle?”

  “We don’t do much shooting in central London.”

  “I’m pretty handy with the express.” He nodded toward the large gun that leaned against the rail. “We’ll find game. But you should know that some of what will be on hand won’t be quite what you’re used to.”

  “Like what?” she challenged. As hungry as she felt now, it was hard to imagine anything she wouldn’t eat.

  “How do you feel about termites?”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “What do they taste like?”

  “Kind of nutty.”

  “Doesn’t sound bad,” she concluded.

  Adam took a pair of bowls from one of the crates and ladled out the beans. Ellie accepted hers gratefully, though it was almost too warm for her to set on her lap. Adam dipped the pan into the river, set it aside to soak, then sat down beside her on the deck with his own bowl.

  They ate in silence. Then, her hunger somewhat sated, Ellie’s thoughts turned to the question that had been dancing at the back of her mind all day as they’d chugged along the slow, remote waters Adam obviously knew so well.

  “How did you come to this?” she demanded, setting her bowl aside.

  “Eating termites?” Adam asked around a mouthful of beans.

  “No,” she dismissed. “This.” She waved her hand, taking in the thick forest overhead, the dark river—all of their remote and beautiful surroundings. “Was it something you always knew you wanted?”

  “No. I didn’t figure this out until pretty late in the game. Mostly I just knew what I didn’t want to do.”

  “And what was that?”

  “What my father does,” he replied flatly. He reached over and collected Ellie’s empty bowl, then leaned over the side to give everything a wash.

  “And what’s your father do?” she called, turning awkwardly away from the admittedly nice view of him leaning over the rail.

  “He owns a very successful insurance firm. Robinson, Bates, and MacKenzie of San Francisco,” he recited.

  “Robinson, Bates… I’ve heard of that,” she realized, surprised, then explained. “My uncle works for a shipping company—he’s their chief accountant.”

  “They mostly cover shipping,” Adam confirmed. “Since I was a boy, both my parents assumed I would take over the company. I’m pretty sure my mother still thinks that,” he added dryly.

  “But you didn’t want to,” she finished for him.

  “No. It’s all… keeping clean-shaven, playing nice. Not rocking the boat.” He shook his head, distant. “I know there are plenty of people who’d think I’m crazy, walking away from a life like that. There’s a hell of a lot of money, and all the things that go along with money. But the whole thing’s just a puppet show. Everybody going through the motions, pretending to like people they can’t stand, looking for a chance to stab their friends in the back. It’s business.”

  “Not everyone feels that way about it,” she pointed out.

  “Of course not. I know that. My brother, Robin—he’s great for it. Reliable, and he loves playing the game. He would’ve been happy with it. But I’m the older son.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose he is happy with it, now.”

  “You don’t hear from them?”

  “My mother writes. I send her a letter every now and then. But it’s always the same thing—come home, be responsible. When am I going to grow out of this.”

  “And your father?”

  “He doesn’t much like it when people don’t do what he tells them.” He glanced over at her wryly. “So you might be able to guess how well we got along. To be honest, I think he’d given up on me long before Cambridge.”

  “Cambridge?” Ellie perked up, frowning. “As in the university?”

  “That’s the one.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them lazily.

  “You went to Cambridge? But you lived in…”

  “San Francisco,” he filled in.

  Her eyes widened. “That’s halfway across the world.”


  He shrugged. “My mother insisted I go to her father’s alma mater. And my cousin Arch was going to be there at the same time.” He shook his head. “Thank God he didn’t turn out to be a stuffed shirt—I was sure he would be, when I went over there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the Fourteenth Earl of Scarsdale.”

  Ellie stared at him as he tugged off one of his boots, then the dirty sock beneath it, baring a set of somewhat filthy toes.

  “Your cousin is an earl,” she said dumbly.

  “And a genuinely down-to-earth guy, which is the surprising part.”

  “So your… grandfather…?”

  “Was the twelfth earl.”

  “Tell me you’re joking,” she said flatly. Adam raised an eyebrow and shook his head. She burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, really. It’s just… well, you’re probably the last thing I’d expect in an earl’s grandson.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Arch fits the bill—he’s head-to-toe the proper nobleman. He was just lucky enough to be born with a sense of humanity.”

  “So, heir to an insurance empire, earl’s grandson, Cambridge—then British Honduras?”

  He laughed. “Well—you can blame Fairfax for that part.”

  Ellie felt her heart skip a beat.

  “Fairfax?”

  Adam continued, oblivious to her startled tone.

  “I met him in a mathematics course. He talked me into coming with him to his Greek history lecture. Fairfax is that kind of guy—too earnest to say no to. I got hooked.”

  “Hooked?” Ellie echoed numbly. He couldn’t possibly be talking about her cousin Neil, the man she’d essentially grown up with. But…Fairfax. Cambridge. Her mind reeled.

  “Suckered. I couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Greece, Rome, ancient China—didn’t matter where. I’d never felt like that about anything before—never wanted more of something. It was always less. Less rules, less formality, less bull.” When he looked at her, his eyes were bright. “He converted me, is what it comes down to. And I wasn’t the only one. He lured Arch into it, too, and another classmate of his—guy by the name of Perry. Trevelyan Perry.”

  At the sound of the name, Ellie twitched. There was no use denying it now, no hoping Adam was talking about some other Fairfax from Cambridge. She knew Perry, had sat and listened to him and Neil discuss excavation reports, picking apart their lecturers. She had stood in the back garden and mimicked Perry’s strange and elegant movements until she could put Neil into a stronghold with little more than a twist of her body.

  “All lovely girls should know how to take care of themselves,” he had said with that heart-fluttering smile.

  And on some of his visits home, she realized, she had heard Neil mention this man—the stranger she had unwittingly teamed up with halfway across the world. The Yank, he had called him. The cowboy.

  She’d traveled across an ocean to a distant continent and ended up on a boat with her cousin’s school chum.

  Neil was going to kill her.

  If he ever finds out, she silently amended. As far as Adam Bates knew, she was Constance Tyrrell, a girl from London with no connection to him or anyone he knew. And there was absolutely no reason it couldn’t stay that way.

  Adam was still talking, fortunately oblivious to the turmoil in her brain.

  “History was what started it, but for all four of us it was archaeology we really fell for. And of course, Cambridge wasn’t much use for that. Too new a discipline. What we wanted to know, we had to learn on our own. So we did,” he concluded. “Made ourselves an unofficial club. Met once a week in a room over a pub on Magdalene Street.”

  “Yes, it was the same at London,” she murmured absently, her mind still whirling from the revelation. “No official course for it.”

  Adam frowned, suddenly alert. “Are you talking about the University of London?”

  Ellie felt a quick panic. She should backtrack, she knew, invent a cover. But something in her rebelled at the notion. Why shouldn’t he know she was educated? They were equal partners in this expedition. He might as well be aware that the woman he traveled with was well qualified for the undertaking.

  “Yes,” she replied tartly. “The University of London. I graduated five years ago.”

  “I should’ve figured as much.”

  She felt a flash of temper.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”

  “Just that you’ve got the right sort of chip on your shoulder,” he replied easily.

  “A chip on my shoulder,” she echoed coldly, feeling her fury begin to rise.

  “You got a better word for it?”

  “Bluestocking, perhaps? Harpy? Battle-ax—that’s a nice one. Virago. Harridan. I suppose there are any number of appropriate terms for a woman who fights her way into an education the rest of society thinks she should be forbidden. Bitch—that’s a particular favorite, I think.”

  “Hold on to those horses just a minute,” he said gently. “Let me set the record straight before we go any further. As far as I’m concerned, a woman should have as much right to an education as anyone else, if that’s what she wants.”

  “How very forward-thinking of you. And magnanimous, since the common trait of those who go through with it is apparently a recognizable degree of shrewishness.”

  Was that hurt that slipped into the end of her clipped tones? She desperately hoped not. After all, what did she care if this man thought she was a shrew?

  He sighed, running his hand through his hair.

  “I’m sure I’m going to step into something here, but what the hell… Princess, there’s a certain sort of attitude a girl acquires when she’s gotten so used to everybody telling her what she can’t do, she walks into a room ready to roll over anyone who looks at her sideways.”

  “And I strike you as the type?” she retorted.

  “How exactly would you describe your state of mind just about every time I’ve had the pleasure of running into you?”

  “I don’t really see how—”

  “How about ‘hostile’?” he cut in with a drawl.

  She felt the rebuttal spring to her lips, the quick instinct to cut as harshly as she could. She bit it back, forcing herself to calm.

  It was true, of course. She had been spitting mad at Adam just about every time they’d been in each other’s company, up till the moment he’d agreed to help her. Not, she countered inwardly, that she had been entirely unjustified. Though she also had to admit that however uncouth his methods, his various invasions had been made with the intention—misguided or not—of helping her.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “It’s not unwarranted. I can’t guess half of what you’ve gone up against to get where you have, but I’d reckon it’d put just about anybody on the ornery side.”

  “You reckon,” she echoed a bit numbly, struggling to take it all in.

  “It’s got to be hard enough just getting through the door, never mind what sort of attitude those smug public-school types would’ve given you. I got a taste of that myself before they realized the uncivilized Yankee wasn’t afraid to give them a jab in their well-bred kidneys.”

  The image made her smile in spite of herself.

  “So London. Did you specialize?”

  She nodded. “Natural science and ancient history.”

  “Figures,” Adam said, mouth pulling into a smile. “And what about after?”

  “After what?”

  “University. You said you finished five years ago. What’ve you been doing since?”

  “Not what I would’ve liked,” she said quietly, looking at the wild, foreign world around them. The night was rich, trees thick with birdcalls and animal hoots, the river lapping warmly against the hull. There was not so much as a glimmer of lamplight breaking the darkness that surrounded them. No human voice, no smoke or clopping of hooves. They were alone in a true wilderness, a new and strange territory. It was what she had yearned for since she w
as a girl, listening to Neil’s stories of discoveries in far-off lands. This was Adam Bates’s life, and from what she could read in the easiness of his posture, it fit him as comfortably as an old shoe.

  “You still haven’t told me how you ended up out here,” she said.

  “Not much to it. Perry convinced me to take the civil service exam and they offered me the spot.”

  She tried not to let the words hurt. Of course it had been that simple. Even if he hadn’t been a Cambridge scholar and the descendant of nobility, all he needed was a decent score on his exam to get where he belonged. He was a man.

  Well, she admitted—perhaps he would have to have done a bit better than “decent.” The position of assistant surveyor general wasn’t one they would have handed out lightly.

  She found that the implication did not surprise her. She must finally be breaking the habit of underestimating Adam Bates. It was both a warm and an unsettling realization.

  He stood, yawning widely.

  “We should get some sleep. Long day tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. She slipped past the mosquito net and climbed up into her hammock, somewhat ungracefully. Adam reached up and turned down the flame of the lamp, letting the warm darkness enfold them. The Mary Lee dimmed into a softer moonlight and the jungle gleamed.

  “Good night, princess,” he said, the ropes of the hammock creaking as he shifted, settling in.

  Princess. She realized that the term had ceased to grate on her, as it had back in the city. It had become something warmer and more comfortable.

  “Sleep well, Mr. Bates,” she replied.

  8

  THE DREAM STARTED LIKE the others.

  She was standing on a platform in the courtyard of Burlington House, the headquarters of the Royal Society. A sea of reporters was in front of her. Flashes burst with puffs of smoke, cameras whirring and clicking. A stuffy little man stood at the podium in front of her, wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “And now, I am honored to introduce the society’s most eminent new member, the explorer responsible for the discovery of the final resting place of Atlantis—Miss Eleanora Mallory.”