“You should let me talk to him,” Gabriella unbuckled her seatbelt, but Rafael held his arm across her. “He may be a lead for us. I paid one of the schoolboys to follow him after the siesta. He will see who he speaks to and then let Marta in the kitchen know about he finds. It is better if the man does not know we are onto him or he may realize the boy is following him.
Gabriella settled back in her seat, heart pounding. Rafael was right, even if all she wanted to do was shake the man’s shoulders until he told her what he knew.
“Wait and make sure Nico’s vehicle is behind us,” Gabriella said, watching the driver lope over to the Range Rover.
As they pulled away from the outpost, Rafael glared at the rearview mirror and swore under his breath in Spanish.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They were only a few miles away from the outpost when the road began to climb. The road was winding around a small hill. Suddenly, the one-lane dirt road narrowed even more and the ground dropped away on one side. As Rafael rounded a corner, a giant tree lay across their path. On one side was a fifteen-foot drop. On the other, the side of the mountain. There was no way they could drive around it.
Gabriella and Rafael got out and tugged at the fallen tree, but were only able to roll it a few inches before it rolled right back into place. Despite Rafael’s muscles, they couldn’t lift it more than a few inches. The Range Rover pulled up behind them and the Italian and his guide came over and wordlessly began to tug at the tree.
As he lifted the tree, seemingly effortlessly, Nico glanced at Gabriella.
“Did you know Guatemala, was originally called Goathemala, which means ‘Land of trees?’” he said.
“Makes sense to me,” she said, huffing, trying to hold up the smaller end of the tree to help.
Finally, with the four of them pushing and pulling, they were able to shove the tree off to the side, clearing enough of the road for the vehicles to pass. Gabriella thanked Nico and his guide, but Rafael ignored them and climbed back into the Jeep, taking off before the other two men had even returned to the Range Rover.
Gabriella shot a look his way. “So, it was sort of a good idea they were behind us, wasn’t it?”
Rafael stared straight ahead and grunted, a sour look on his face.
At nightfall, they pulled down a small driveway that led to what could be considered a motel. Nico and Gabriella waited by the vehicles in the dark while their guides negotiated the price for four small bedrooms. The two-story structure was home to the family downstairs and then stairs from the parking lot led to an outside walkway with four rooms.
Inside, Gabriella’s small room was little more than a bed with a mosquito net over it. The room didn’t have electricity, only a candle. It also only had three walls. The fourth wall, which had a flimsy screen and waist-high wall, opened to the jungle, which was only twenty feet away. Gabriella threw her backpack under the bed’s mosquito netting and shivered, hearing the jungle start to come alive as darkness fell harder around them. It sounded like the animals were right outside her room, which was still ten feet above the ground, but seemed accessible by anything that was used to climbing trees. Inside her room, a small door led to a sink and toilet. No bath or shower.
The group had agreed to meet back outside and prepare dinner in the parking lot by their cars. The owner of the motel—if that’s what it was supposed to be—had lit a small campfire out front and propped four stumps around it for them to sit on.
When Gabriella came back outside, Rafael and Nico’s guide, Cristo, were busy behind the Jeep heating their dinner of beans and rice on a small kerosene stove. Cristo had contributed some pork sausages to the dinner. When Rafael saw them, it was the first time Gabriella had seen him smile like that. Maybe he’d finally get over being mad at her for wanting to travel with Nico and his guide.
“What the hell is up with the wall open to the jungle? Is this place for people who have a death wish? A sort of suicide camp or something?” Gabriella asked, plopping onto a stump.
Nico gestured at the building behind them, ignoring Gabriella’s sarcasm and grumpiness. “It is an eco-tourist site. I saw it on Lonely Planet. Rich socialites in Manhattan pay big bucks to sleep in those rooms we are in.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Not kidding.”
“The difference is those people, the upper-class ones, you could say, travel with guides who drive small motor homes. The vehicles have showers and kitchens. If the missus doesn’t want the whole jungle experience, she can sleep in the motorhome that night. But they can always go home and talk about their wild adventures sleeping in a room with one wall that is the jungle.”
“They maneuver motor homes through those jungle roads like we took today?”
Nico nodded. “They are smaller, much smaller than you probably think. Would only really sleep one person or two at the most.”
“Motorhome, huh?” Gabriella said, squinting at large parking spaces in front of the hotel with the hookups for electricity that now finally made sense. “That’s really roughing it.”
A few minutes later the four of them ate beans and rice and sausage. After they were done, Gabriella offered to wash the dishes.
Rafael put out his hand. “All included. Meals, clean up. All by me.”
“Well thank you.”
After he walked away, Gabriella excused herself to grab her jacket out of her room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Gabriella returned, Nico was alone.
“Your man and Cristo have turned in,” he said.
“Tomorrow we should reach Uaxactun,” she said taking a slug of water from her tepid tin canteen. “Are you still intent on getting guns at El Mirador?” She shot him a sideways glance as she spoke.
He didn’t answer at first but then shook his head. “I will help you first. If that doesn’t work, we move onto my plan. Getting guns and going to the ranches.”
“Sounds good. I can fire a weapon.”
“You will wait at Uaxactun. Take in the sights. See a few ruins, maybe?”
“Take in the sights?” Gabriella felt her face grow red. “I’m probably just as good a shot as you. I didn’t come halfway across the world to look at ruins. I came here to find my husband.” She had stood and was pacing.
“My apologies. You are right. I will not try to protect you. What is your plan?”
Staring at him and his face in the light of the fire, she couldn’t see his scar. She fought back a desire to ask him how he got the jagged ripple. Right now, she needed to find Donovan. This man could help her and that was all that mattered.
She settled back onto the stump. “Okay. My plan is to walk the ten-mile radius in a grid pattern. We can split up four ways, or pair up. Either way. It should take all day to do the first portion.”
Nico listened and nodded. “Why don’t I pair with Cristo and you pair up with Rafael since they are the experts, the guides? That way we won’t be two more gringos lost in the jungle, eh?”
“That’s what I was thinking. With your help, it should only take two days instead of the four I had planned. So, thank you for that.” She peered at him under her eyelashes, a little abashed for lashing out at him a few moments before.
“Yes. It is a good plan.”
Nico prodded the fire, which was slowly dying. He looked around for more firewood. “I don’t think I can go to sleep this early.”
“Me, either,” Gabriella said. The coffee Rafael had handed her at dinner packed a powerful punch. And the thought of lying in bed for hours under that mosquito netting listening to the sounds of the jungle outside seemed like torture.
Nico searched the parking lot and then disappeared behind a small shed. He came back triumphant, holding two large logs.
He put two of the logs on the burning embers and then stoked and blew them until the flames had risen again, casting orange shadows on their faces.
Gabriella leaned forward warming her hands. “This is nice. Reminds me of going campi
ng on the coast with my uncles when I was a kid.”
“I would have liked to have known Gabriella the girl. I bet you were a handful for your parents,” He said it with a small teasing laugh.
But Gabriella tensed. He noticed and quickly became sober.
“Was that out of line? I apologize.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I was a handful and my childhood was amazing. For the first few years.”
Nico looked at her, waiting.
“My sister was kidnapped and killed.”
“That is terrible,” Nico said. “I’m so sorry.”
Gabriella nodded staring at the fire. For a few seconds they both sat there in silence.
“Excuse me. I have a brilliant idea, possibly my best idea yet.” Nico stood and headed for the back end of the Range Rover. In a few seconds, he returned with a bottle of cabernet in one hand and two crystal wine glasses.
“I was saving these for Uaxactun, but this is a much better occasion.”
When Nico held the bottle out to her, Gabriella recognized the vintage as one out of her price range at the same time the firelight reflected off his watch. A Patek Philippe. The least expensive Patek Philippe watch sold for about ten thousand dollars. The most expensive one for eight hundred thousand dollars. It was like walking around with a luxury car or a five-bedroom home on your wrist.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hire a guide with a motorhome,” Gabriella said staring at his watch when he sat back down.
He flashed an embarrassed smile and shrugged. “Let’s just say that the watch, the car, the clothes ... my life hasn’t always been like this. So maybe I hold some luxuries too dear. It is a fault of mine, a weakness, or a character defect you might say. I like the finer things in life because for so long I didn’t have them.”
Handing her a glass of the wine, he leaned forward and stared into the fire, watching the flames lick the black night.
Gabriella thought about his words, shooting sideways glances at his profile cast in an orange glow. He’d mentioned that he had grown up in Southern Italy. The poorest part of the country. Most people who lived there were desperately impoverished. Somehow he had escaped his poverty. But how? It wasn’t as easy as it was in America. She wondered if it was his job.
“I didn’t know the Italian government paid so well.” She said it lightly, but pointedly.
He scoffed. “Ha! I married into money.”
Gabriella sat back shocked. He caught her glancing down at his left hand. There was no ring.
“I’m a widower.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was a marriage of convenience. I cared for her, of course, but only as a dear friend. She was much older than I. She married me so I would always be there to escort her to her charity events and be by her side in public. You could say I was a trophy husband. And, naturally, she wanted me for sex.”
Naturally. Gabriella burst out laughing. “Well, she obviously was a smart woman.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she was embarrassed. She looked down into her wine glass, feeling her cheeks grow warm. Why did she say that? The wine must be stronger than she realized. Even so, she took another large gulp to cover her embarrassment and give her time to recover.
Nico gave a quick glance to the jungle behind them.
“The natives say the jaguars are the least of your worries if you get lost in the jungle.”
“Huh?” Gabriella wrinkled her nose.
“Cristo said not to stay up too late because during the witching hour the sisimite and the sihuanaba come out.
Although, if I had a choice of the two, I’d rather contend with the sisimite,” Nico said, taking a swig of his wine. “It’s a ghoul who lures you into the deep jungle only to steal your ability to speak.”
He paused.
“Forever?” Gabriella shot a quick glance into the jungle.
“Apparently. I didn’t ask if it was a temporary state or not.”
“What’s the other one, the sig-something do?” Gabriella reached over and poured herself a second glass of the wine.
“The sihuanaba is very sneaky. She usually comes out on nights like tonight—dark, moonless nights. She is usually naked and at first men only see her from behind. From behind she looks like a beautiful woman with long hair and a very shapely body. Sometimes she takes on the appearance of a man’s girlfriend or wife. Men can’t help themselves and follow her deep into the woods. When the man gets close enough she turns around—she actually has a skull or horse for a face.”
“Lovely.”
“But you needn’t worry as much about her. She only wants men and I think, but I could be wrong, that she usually only wants unfaithful men.”
“Really. That is so perfect,” Gabriella snickered, feeling the wine hit her hard. “What does she do to them?”
“She either scares them to death or eats their faces.”
“Only the unfaithful guys?”
Nico nodded.
“That sounds fine to me.”
As she leaned back to get the last of her wine out of her glass, Gabriella felt something large fall on the back of her head, in her hair. Before she could react, Nico leaped from the stump he was sitting on and hit her head with his palm in a scooping motion. Stunned, Gabriella saw a huge tan spider fall onto the ground in front of her.
She jumped back as the spider landed upside down near the fire. It instantly flipped over in what seemed like fury. It’s long furry legs extended about six inches out from its body. Nico grabbed a stick and prodded it.
To Gabriella’s astonishment, the spider reared up on its hind legs and started scuttling toward Nico and the stick, exposing what looked like a juicy bright red mouth.
Nico calmly pounded the stick down onto the spider. The spider was so big, the blow didn’t squish it, just stunned it or killed it.
“Aha. Mama was protecting her babies. She didn’t mean to go after you. She was probably just coming down to the ground out of the tree to hunt to feed her babies and accidentally landed in your hair.”
Looking up, Gabriella saw she’d been sitting under a small branch that had extended out from a nearby tree. It must have dropped from the branch onto her head. An accident? The spider didn’t mean to go after her? Gabriella didn’t buy it. Anything that big didn’t seem likely to do something “by accident.” She couldn’t help but think the mama spider was ticked off and wanted to bite her for some reason. It was irrational to think so, but something about being deep in this jungle made her believe it.
Normal things—people, shadows, spiders—took on a surreal cast. She looked back up into the boughs of the trees and shivered, imagining hundreds of little spiders plotting to find her room in the night. Like in Charlotte’s Web, but instead of sweet little things, these were malicious killers waiting to pounce.
Using two sticks, Nico scooped the furry limp insect into the fire, making sure to bury it in the ashes. “I was right,” he said. “She has a belly full of babies.”
Relief filled Gabriella. The babies were right there, not watching her from above with their millions of eyes.
Gabriella, still huddled a few feet away where she had jumped back away from the spider, watched with wide eyes as the flames licked at the spider’s body.
“What the fuck was that?” she finally said.
Nico chuckled. “That beauty was the famous Brazilian Wandering Spider. The deadliest spider in this jungle. Something I had hoped to avoid during our travels here.”
“It could eat a mouse.”
“Yes, it could.”
“What would have happened if it had bit me?”
Nico’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you would have died. It is the most venomous spider I know. And we are deep in the jungle. At the very least, if you were exceedingly lucky, you would have been extremely ill for a long time.”
Gabriella tried to brush off her revulsion and the shiver that ran down her back at his words. Normally she wasn’t a
fraid of spiders. But the biggest one she’d seen in San Francisco in her entire life had been an inch long. Not five inches long. And the spiders in the Bay Area didn’t rear back on their hind legs and attack you when you thwarted their bite.
Swallowing she looked down around her feet in case there were more. Maybe the babies’ daddy or something was coming to seek revenge for the mama’s death.
When she looked up, Nico’s face was right in front of her. His mouth sought hers. It was warm and tantalizing. Her body betrayed her and reacted, hungrily matching his urgency. Soon every part of her body was pressed against his.
But then realization struck and she drew back. She pushed her hands on his shoulders and moved him away. “I’m married.”
She stood and turned away. Her reaction, her ready response, must have been due to the adrenaline rush from seeing the spider. He came up behind her and kissed her neck. “Donovan is dead, Gabriella. It’s time you face that.”
In one smooth motion, she pushed him away and turned around, eyes wild with fury.
“Don’t ever say my husband’s name again.” She gritted the words out.
“I’m sorry.” Nico looked chastened and took a step toward her. If he came a step closer, she was going to push him, Gabriella thought. But he stopped a foot away. “But I’m not sorry for kissing you. It is clear that you desire me as I desire you. It is natural. Normal.”
“I don’t want you that way,” Gabriella said, knowing that her lie was obvious to both of them. “I want your help in finding my husband. That is the only thing I want from you.”
“I respect that. Although you cannot deny the chemistry between us, I accept that it is obviously not to be.”
He leaned over and before she could back away, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I will see you in the morning.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lying in her bed under the mosquito net, Gabriella tried to take her mind off all the spiders she imagined surrounded her bed. Ever since she’d run into Nico, things had taken a surreal bent. She didn’t feel like herself at all. Her life back in San Francisco seemed like a dream. All that seemed real was what she could feel and touch right before her in the middle of the jungle.
Blessed are the Peacemakers Page 5
