The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

You really are a pigheaded bastard sometimes, Bates.

  He would be able to get past Dawson. The man was no fighter. Then he would need to find Ellie, fast, and get them both out of here. Make their way back to Belize City and alert the powers-that-be. They might turn a blind eye to many of the colony’s shadier activities, but the whole world would be watching once word of this find got out. And Adam would make certain that it did.

  It wouldn’t save the mural. Dawson would tear that to pieces the minute he got the chance. Adam could see the fear in the man so clearly, he wondered how he had missed it before.

  The mural would fall, but at least Adam wouldn’t have to stand by and watch it happen.

  Dawson tossed the hammer and chisel aside and Adam felt a burst of triumph. It faded quickly as the professor reached into his coat pocket and produced a revolver. He leveled it at Adam’s chest.

  His grip on the weapon was white-knuckled. Adam absorbed that along with the tenseness of his frame and his determined expression. It wasn’t the easy pose of a bluffer. Dawson held the gun like a desperate man, and they were the ones prone to pulling triggers.

  “We are going to go up the stairway together. When we get to the top, I am going to call for Mr. Jacobs, and you are going to remain still until he arrives. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Adam said grimly, barely containing the urge to charge at him.

  Not yet.

  His mind churned. He had no doubt what Jacobs’s solution would be to the problem he posed. The man would kill him without a second thought, and without his knowledge as a bargaining chip…

  Ellie would be no use to them anymore, which made her as good as dead as well. And he’d be damned if he’d let that happen.

  Dawson kept the gun on him as they made the long trek back up the twisting staircase and through the tunnel to the narrow sanctuary at the top of the temple. Once there, he pointed his free hand at the bearer who had watched them emerge, wide-eyed.

  “Fetch Mr. Jacobs. Now,” he added sharply when the man hesitated, turning slightly to give the order.

  It would probably be his only chance—and there was only one thing close enough to serve as a weapon.

  Wincing inwardly, Adam grabbed one of the beautifully painted, miraculously intact vases, and shattered it across Dawson’s skull.

  He stumbled back, half falling to the ground. As Adam leaped toward him, Dawson pulled the revolver around and fired.

  19

  THE BULLET PINGED OFF the ceiling of the chamber, sending chips of stone raining down on the pair of them. Adam moved quickly, knowing he had only a moment before Dawson chambered another round. He threw himself at him, knocking him into the wall. Dawson pushed back, fighting for space to bring the gun to bear.

  They grappled, locked like wrestlers, until a sharp, ringing blow to the back of his head sent Adam reeling.

  He turned to see the porter drop a shovel and dash out the doorway. He half tumbled down the temple steps, crying out to those below.

  The blow threatened to fog Adam’s brain. He forced it to clear, whirling to confront Dawson once more, but his opponent had not let the advantage pass. He stood with the revolver leveled, blood streaming down his face from a wound on his forehead where the vase had struck.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  Adam obeyed, standing in the doorway. The brilliant flash of lightning brightened the purple clouds and cast a ghastly illumination over the ruins. A storm was brewing in the darkness overhead.

  “You ever killed anyone?” Adam demanded, the boldness of his tone belying the sinking dread in his stomach: dread and guilt.

  He had told her to trust him. That he would get her out of this. How would he do that if he was dead?

  “Yes,” Dawson replied.

  It was not the answer Adam had been expecting. The man was a college professor, not some hardened mercenary, whoever he might be spending his time with now. An experienced killer wouldn’t have that same look of terror and desperation on his face, and he wouldn’t be holding the gun like a life raft.

  He had to find a way to get him talking. If he could distract him, get him to let his guard down for just a few seconds…

  “Are you really going to do it again for some artifact? Do you want that kind of blood on your hands?”

  “It’s more than just an artifact. You saw that room. Those tables were covered with pieces of modern technology,” Dawson countered harshly. “Objects that the people of this city could not possibly have known about by any natural means.”

  “I’ll admit, it’s a hell of a coincidence—” Adam began.

  Dawson cut him off.

  “Coincidence? Foucault’s pendulum in an ancient Central American temple is a coincidence?”

  Adam could hear the edge of wildness in his tone. The man was stretched near to breaking.

  “What else could it be?” Adam demanded, trying to keep him talking. But Dawson’s reply almost distracted him from his own strategy.

  “The Smoking Mirror.”

  “That’s a myth.”

  “It is also the only possible explanation,” Dawson retorted.

  This is insane.

  That the Smoking Mirror might exist as a ritual object he could allow. After all, legends and myths often had their roots in truth. It was possible the people of this city had possessed an actual mirror that became the center of wild religious associations. There were plenty of people who convinced themselves they could be miraculously healed by touching splinters of the “True Cross,” likely broken off of someone’s discarded coffee table.

  But that the mirror actually worked—that it made it possible to see into the past or future, to know what was happening on the other side of the world, or what would be in centuries to come—was beyond belief.

  There had to be another explanation. And however far-fetched it was, it’d still be better than suggesting that the people of this city had spied on modern museums through some piece of polished glass possessing magical powers.

  He was getting distracted. Jacobs would be here before long. If he was going to get out of this, and stand a chance at saving Ellie, he needed to act.

  He started to turn, and his eye fell on the shovel lying on the ground between him and Dawson. His head still smarted from where the porter had struck him with it during their fight. Dawson would expect Adam to run. If instead he moved toward him… he could grab the shovel as he rushed, get in before Dawson thought to pull the trigger.

  Now or never, Bates.

  He whirled, getting ready to leap, but stopped as he saw the gun droop in Dawson’s hand.

  “All the way to the floor, please,” Ellie said calmly. A knife was in her hand, pressed against Dawson’s throat. The blade was bent, but still sharp enough to prick his skin.

  He obeyed, dropping the gun. Ellie kicked it over to where Adam stood. He bent down and retrieved it. Questions warred for precedence in his brain.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard a gunshot. I figured it must have been aimed at you.” She moved to his side as Adam covered Dawson with the gun. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.”

  For a moment, Adam thought she was about to check for herself. The look in her eyes was both skeptical and worried. Instead, she stepped back.

  “Well. That’s good,” she said stiffly.

  He drank in the sight of her. She had lost her jacket somewhere along the way, but apart from a few scratches, dirt, and a leaf stuck in her hair, she seemed to be intact. The thought filled him with relief.

  He should have known better than to think she would be helplessly waiting for his arrival. He glanced down at the battered knife in her hand. What exactly had she been up to?

  There would be time to find out later.

  As if to punctuate the thought, a gunshot cracked against the stones beside them. Dawson dived to the ground. Adam pushed Ellie to the side, behind the pillars that framed the entrance to the sanctuary. Keeping her
behind him, he peered down the temple stairs.

  Jacobs stood below, rifle balanced on his shoulder as he took expert aim. Adam ducked back just as another shot sent shards of stone splintering down on them.

  “Got any suggestions?” he asked, his back pinning Ellie to the wall.

  “Always,” she replied pertly, pushing herself free of him and quickly adjusting her clothes. “This way.”

  She led him to the window cut into the stone of the rear of the chamber.

  “He will find you,” Dawson called over from where he crouched by the wall. He winced as another bullet pinged off the ceiling. “I suspect he’ll enjoy it.”

  “Let’s go,” Ellie urged him, and Adam followed her through the window.

  The back of the pyramid had no staircase, only massive shelves of stone making up its steps, some half-tumbled into rubble. It looked treacherous in the darkness, and probably was, though Ellie had scaled it quickly enough the first time. Of course, then she had been hurried by the fear of what she’d find when she reached the top.

  It had taken her only a few minutes to run to the temple after she heard the gunshot, but her imagination had used them fruitfully. The silence from above her as she climbed had been terrible, filled with visions of Adam bleeding to death on the floor.

  What she had found at the summit was hardly better—him, unarmed and vulnerable, staring down the barrel of Dawson’s gun.

  If she had been a minute longer, she could have lost him.

  The thought made her hands shake.

  Almost equally disturbing was the memory of what she’d nearly done once she did save him. She had barely been able to resist the overwhelming, instinctive impulse to throw her arms around him.

  It was all terribly confusing—and now was hardly the time to try to sort it out.

  “Follow me,” she ordered, and began scrambling down the steep faces of the stones until she finally hopped to the ground. An uneasy wind, ripe with the promise of moisture, stirred the dry leaves at her feet as Adam joined her. Thunder rumbled low through the darkness around them, and was then punctuated by more shots pelting them from above.

  “Move,” Adam ordered, shoving her forward.

  They raced along the base of the temple, and Ellie cursed the skill of the city’s ancient builders. The paving stones of the temple district had been laid with elegant precision, blocking the overgrowth that had crept over so much of the rest of the ruins. The only cover Ellie could see were the crumbling walls and buildings, and they were uncomfortably far away.

  A stone by her feet suddenly cracked, chips of it stinging against her ankle. Another crack sounded to her left, and she saw a small explosion of white shards rise from the ground.

  She jumped, dodging to the side.

  “How far till we’re out of range?”

  “Just keep running,” Adam ordered, grabbing her arm and hauling her into a sprint.

  They bolted across the open courtyard, shots pinging off the stones around them. Voices rose from behind, shouts of alarm that Ellie knew meant the whole camp was being roused against them.

  The courtyard ended in a low wall. Ellie mounted it, then hesitated. Below her, the ground was precipitously far away.

  Adam turned, grasping the edge of the wall and dropping down to the stones below. He landed with the grace of a cat, then held up his arms.

  “Jump.”

  “You can’t possibly expect to catch—”

  “Now, princess.”

  The wall six inches from her thigh exploded under the impact of another round.

  Ellie leaped.

  The rush of empty air was replaced by the grip of strong, solid flesh as Adam caught her. The warmth of the accidental embrace shocked her to silence.

  Then her feet were on the ground, and Adam shoved her into motion.

  “Go.”

  The brush had succeeded in encroaching on this lower level of the city. Leaves and branches whipped against Ellie’s skin as she stumbled over the uneven paving stones.

  She felt a bullet whiz past her ear, and Adam cursed behind her.

  “Too close,” he snapped. “Faster.”

  She burst out of the foliage with a snapping of branches and found herself at the top of a crumbling stairway. A bright flash of lightning revealed the space in front of her. It was long and narrow, lined with steep walls more than twice her height. Tiered seats topped the walls, revealing it to be a sort of arena that Ellie recognized from her reading. It was a ball court, the playing field for the ancient American game of war and sacrifice.

  She had seen them only in illustrations. The real thing was far more impressive.

  On the far side, the jungle loomed, thick and mysterious. They would be able to disappear there—if they could reach it.

  “Quickly,” Adam ordered, pushing her into motion. Ellie obeyed, half tripping down the stairs.

  She reached the surface of the ball court. The flat, even stones were mostly obscured by years of drifting, rotted leaves, slippery with moss. Sharp calls resounding off the stones told her that their pursuers were not far behind. She pushed for more speed, knowing just how vulnerable they would be, caught between the high walls of the court.

  Then, with a brittle crack, the ground gave way.

  Ellie reached out frantically as she fell, fingers clutching desperately for the edge of the hole that had opened up beneath her. She succeeded in grasping it, stalling her drop. The material under her hands wasn’t stone. It felt like thin wooden planking, buried under years of decaying leaves.

  Like the cover of a well, she thought numbly as her legs swung helplessly over a deep, empty space.

  She scrambled for a foothold but met nothing but air. The plank creaked ominously under her hand.

  Then Adam was there, rushing toward the fragile remains of the cover, the determined expression on his face telling her exactly what he intended to do.

  “Stay back!” she protested. Then the wood under her hands shifted, tipping precariously. Ellie closed her eyes as she was showered with a fall of mulch and splinters that brushed past her before vanishing into the gloom below.

  What sounded like a soft, distant splashing echoed up from some untold depth beneath her.

  She shifted her hands, trying to get a better grip on the plank. The wood creaked ominously, and then Adam was throwing himself across the camouflaged boards, flattened out and reaching.

  “No, Bates!” she protested. “It’s not—”

  Her last word was swallowed in a shattering of wood as the fragile platform he lay on gave way and the pair of them plummeted into darkness.

  20

  SHE LANDED IN WATER. It swallowed her up like a stone, cold and utterly dark. She fought against the instinct to flail and instead let her buoyancy pull her up.

  She broke through the surface and took in air with a deep, shuddering gasp. She looked around frantically, her eyes stubbornly slow to adjust to the deep gloom. She swam until she found the wall. The floor of the cavern was shallower there, enough so she could keep her head up without treading water. But the ground shifted and rolled beneath her feet as though covered in some unsteady rubble.

  Bates. She had felt him fall with her, knew he must be down here. Her mind flashed through images of his body dashed against unseen rocks, or floating facedown and still somewhere in the darkness around her.

  His name rose in her throat, but as she opened her mouth to cry out, a hand covered it, a powerful arm circling her waist and pulling her back.

  “Quiet.”

  Adam’s voice was little more than a murmur, hot against the back of her ear. She obeyed, going still, and tried to let her understandable relief at discovering he was intact distract her from the somewhat less comfortable awareness of how very nice it felt to be pulled tight against the firmness of his body.

  He continued to hold her, both of them remaining as still and silent as possible as the sound of voices echoed down from the opening above.

  “The
y fell in here, jefe.”

  “Get me a lantern.”

  There was a shuffling and Ellie looked up to see the opening overhead obscured by a dark form.

  She noted the space between her and the distant silhouette. It’s so high.

  The figure pulled back and she heard more talk. A few pebbles were tossed down shortly after. They splashed into the water a few feet from where she and Adam hid. The droplets struck her face.

  “Should we call for them?” one of the men above asked.

  “He’s not a fool.” Jacobs’s voice was clear, and Ellie sensed in the way his tones rang down that he was speaking as much for them as for his men. “If he is alive, he will stay there and hide rather than reveal himself and be shot.”

  His shadow moved back and Ellie let herself relax with relief. From Jacobs’s last statement, it seemed clear that they were giving up.

  She heard a sharp click, the sound echoing down the walls of the cave. Behind her, Adam stiffened, his grip tightening.

  “Deep. Breath,” he whispered harshly in her ear.

  The urgency of his tone overrode her protest. She took in a quick gasp of air and, just as the first bullet cracked against the stone, Adam shoved her down into the water.

  She could hear the muffled impact of the shots as Adam pulled her deeper. She felt a sharp sting on her arm as the bullets buzzed around them, a veritable swarm.

  Ellie’s lungs screamed for air, but Adam’s arm was like iron around her, pinning her down. She fought against him but his grip only tightened.

  At last, when she felt certain she could stand no more without opening her mouth to the cold water, she felt him push up, bringing them to the surface.

  They broke through with a quiet splash that was of a kind with the impact of bits of rubble dropping into the pool around them, loosened by the barrage. Ellie gulped in air as quietly as she could. She did not need Adam’s warning grasp to remind her of the danger. The silence above them had to be deceptive.

  It held for a few moments that felt like an eternity, then at last she heard a voice from above.