TWICE A HERO

by Susan Krinard

  Mac rose shakily. It was so damned hard to think of Liam O'Shea as this pile of bones. She didn't take out the photo, though she wanted to. As if that could bring him to life again.

  She forced herself to turn back to the wall. She needed to clear her mind. There was something regular and soothing about the glyphs and ritual figures carved into the limestone surface. Repetitive and patterned, yet elegant and profound. Eternal, as human life was not. She followed each line of glyphs from right to left and back again, trying not to think of Liam O'Shea.

  Had he been afraid when he died? Had he cried out for someone to care, someone to hold his hand as Mac had done with Homer?

  Had he cursed the Sinclairs with his dying breath?

  She laughed a little and leaned her folded hands against the wall, one stone chip still nested in each palm.

  "I wish I could undo it, Homer," she said. "His death, the curse, everything. Maybe you'd still be alive. Maybe Dad, and Mom—Oh, this is insane. But if I could go back…"

  In her right hand, Perry's stone chip flared like a burning brand. In her left, Liam's did the same. A wave of overwhelming nausea caught her by the throat and twisted her innards, propelling her away from the wall. Her fingers spasmed helplessly around the pendants even as they seared her flesh.

  A black stab of pain shot into her skull, and she knew she was going to faint. She flailed blindly for the wall again, catching the brim of her cap and knocking it from her head. Her fists struck something solid, and the impact drove the broken edges of the pendants into her palms with enough force to pierce the skin.

  The slow welling of blood startled her into a moment of lucidity. She opened her hands. At the precise moment the pendants dropped to the ground, the wall she was leaning on vanished.

  She fell. It seemed she traveled toward the ground for a much longer time than distance or gravity could account for. The nausea redoubled, accompanied by a pounding in her skull that drove out anything resembling a coherent thought. When she hit the floor it was as if she landed on something soft rather than unevenly laid stone. A moment later she felt the impact and rolled into a compact ball, waiting for the temple to crash down on top of her.

  It didn't. She straightened carefully. The sickness and pain were miraculously gone, but she was in total darkness. Her flashlight had been knocked from her hand; she couldn't tell where the tunnel walls were, or how far she'd fallen. Logic dictated that it couldn't have been more than a few feet. But what in hell had happened to the glyph wall?

  "Hidden trap doorways?" she murmured, getting to her hands and knees. "Never heard of those, either." She kept up a steady stream of talk, listening to her onesided conversation echo back from unseen walls, reminding herself that she'd never really been afraid of the dark. She'd grown up in a big echoing house with a thousand rooms full of mysterious and often scary objects—or so it had felt to a child.

  She checked her backpack by feel; okay. Her body was still in one piece. Watch still functioning—she'd been in this place for almost an hour. Next thing was to find the flashlight—and Homer's cap, which she'd been clumsy enough to knock from her own head.

  As for the pendants—they, too, were gone, and the ceremony of repentance had yet to be performed.

  She groped along the floor, scraping her hands on rough edges where blocks met unevenly. She felt up and to the side and connected with a wall—flat and damp and uncarved. She oriented herself by that and crawled in what she thought was the way she'd come.

  No carved glyph-wall met her searching fingers. But the flashlight rolled against her knee, and she grabbed it with a gasp of relief. A quick test showed that it was still working, though it had been switched off sometime in the fall.

  She swept the beam ahead of her, pushing to her feet. Sure enough, the walls were there on either side of her, exactly the same as they'd been before. But the glyph wall wasn't there, and neither were Liam's bones nor the pendants. Either she'd gone flying yards into the tunnel, or she'd become totally disoriented in the darkness.

  Panic was not a familiar emotion, or one she had any desire to become better acquainted with. Okay—the glyph wall had to be either one way or the other. Once she bumped into it, she'd know where she was.

  She played a quick mental game and chose one of the directions. After a minute she knew it couldn't be the right one. She turned around and marched back the other way with a speed that was just a bit reckless in the dark.

  When she hit the next firm, hard surface it was definitely not a wall. Her hands came up to steady herself and pressed against warm, damp fabric covering equally warm and unmistakable contours. Hard, sculpted contours. Masculine. Definitely masculine. And they didn't belong to the skinny boy who'd guided her to this place.

  The smell of sweat and green and earth and man filled her nostrils. Deep, harsh breathing gusted past her ear. She dropped her hands and backed away, holding the flashlight low so as not to blind him.

  "Am I glad I ran into you," she said. "I've been wandering inside this tunnel for what feels like hours." She heard the rapid patter of her own words and realized how nervous she sounded. She had absolutely no idea who this guy could be. "I… seem to have gotten myself turned around. I thought I was alone here."

  He gave a low grunt. In the faint illumination radiating from the flashlight, all she could see of him was solid height, light-colored clothing, and a glitter of eyes.

  "What are you doing in here, boy?"

  She stiffened, every other concern momentarily wiped clean from her mind. The lapse was brief. How many times had this happened to her during childhood? It wasn't such an easy mistake to make now that she'd grown, but in all fairness she knew she contributed to the problem because of her preference for loose, comfortable, practical clothing.

  This guy couldn't see her clothing, or much of the rest of her. She knew her voice was husky and low, a little rough now with nervousness. That must account for it. She made herself relax and decided that perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea to let him think she was male. At least for the time being.

  A hard, very large hand caught her arm. "You're American. How did you get here?"

  She held her arm very still in his grasp. "Yeah, I'm American." As if it's any of your business, buster. "I came to see the ruins. I walked. I didn't know this tunnel went so far."

  The man felt up the length of her arm. "Just how young are you? Where's your party?" His voice was deep, with an edge of roughness—eminently masculine, like his grip and size. She began to feel more than a little annoyed.

  "Party? Did I miss the celebration?" she quipped.

  He gave a bark of laughter, but in the dim glow she could see his eyes narrow. "Who did you come with? I didn't see anyone else in the jungle. The Indians said no one's been here for months."

  No one here for months? She snorted and pulled her arm free. "Look, friend, I don't know who you are or where you've been, but if you go a mile or so south of here you'll run right into Tikal. Which is where I intend to be very shortly." The minute I've finished what I came here to do, that is.

  "Tikal," he repeated. "I would have known if anyone else was here."

  Great. She'd had just the luck to run into a lunatic in a very dark tunnel. She backed away. "Whatever you say. If you don't mind, I have business to take care of."

  She calculated how best to slip around him and had gone a few yards when he reappeared beside her. His footfalls were eerily soundless; the hair stood up on her neck.

  "I'll join you, lad. My lantern broke, and I'll need your light."

  Great. "Well, uh, that would be fine except I have something to do before I leave—"

  "Nonsense. This is no place for a child." His hand fastened around her arm again before she could dodge out of the way. The masculine scent of him, as primal as the jungle itself, nearly overpowered her. His strength was irresistible, though Mac had never been weak. Fighting him didn't seem like such a good idea just now.

  "You can take me to your camp wh
en we're out of here," he said, steering her along. "I have supplies to replenish, and I want to see who arrived without my knowing about it."

  He sounded disgruntled, she thought. What did he expect—to have the entire jungle and its contents to himself? He'd be plenty annoyed when he saw all the tourists at Tikal.

  "I can show you the trail back to Tikal," she said. And you can bet we'll part company the minute I get the chance.

  "Will you, then?" he said, and gave an inelegant snort. "I'll appreciate the help."

  She thought better of saying anything more at that point, though she was constantly aware of his presence at her side. He was big and well built, of that much she was certain. If he was crazy, she'd have a hard time throwing him off. Maybe he was some kind of hermit who'd come here to live in solitude. The Petén might be a good place for that, if you didn't mind rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flies and didn't stick too close to the tourist traps at Tikal.

  Maybe this guy had been a hermit too long.

  Now you're really letting your imagination run away with you. . . .

  "There," the man said suddenly. "The entrance."

  And sure enough, there was a faint patina of illumination along the tunnel walls. Mac heard a faint hiss that grew louder as the brightness increased.

  Rain. Not merely a drizzle, but torrents and buckets of rain, sheeting across the bright square that defined the exit.

  Great. She'd deliberately come to Tikal during the August dry period, but apparently she'd cut it too fine. She'd be drenched, and the trail back to Tikal would be a soup of mud.

  Her unwanted companion showed no surprise at the downpour. Before she could turn to examine him in the light, he said something unintelligible and pushed past her.

  Mac stopped just inside the shelter of the tunnel. The man had plunged right out into the rain and stood with his back to her, hands on hips and head flung back in defiance of the weather. The rain made short work of plastering his shirt and pants flush to his body, confirming what Mac had already guessed by touch alone.

  He was tall. Over six feet, she guessed, and not in the least skinny. Broad shoulders, taut back, firm buttocks. Wavy pale brown hair, just brushing the back of his collar, darkened to a deeper hue as the rain slicked it down. He was very impressive, even from a rear view. Perhaps even especially from a rear view…

  Mac felt a jolt of chagrin at the direction of her thoughts. She'd never really let herself admire men in a purely physical sense, not since that one disastrous and very brief relationship in college. She had no use for the male fixation on butts and breasts and beauty, or similar female obsessions; that kind of ritual preening would never be part of her world.

  But now she looked. Damn it, why not? This wasn't Berkeley or San Francisco. She wasn't part of the meat market people referred to as dating. She was out in a comparatively safe jungle where no one knew her, where all bets were off and magic waited just behind the next tree.

  Maybe that was it, why she studied the man with such fascination. He was…

  Yes. He was part of the magic. He was the opposite of the grim reality of Liam's bones in the tunnel, or curses that echoed down the generations. He was the incarnation of adventure itself, like an ancient idol brought to life. He was an integral part of his surroundings—the ruins, the jungle, even the rain and mud. He owned the place. He belonged here.

  Mac let herself share in that belonging, experience the feeling of being suspended in time and space, free for the moment of any lingering guilt over a past she'd had no part of.

  Slowly she stepped out into the rain. It baptized her with fierce joy, making a close cap of her hair and soaking her clothing in a matter of seconds, bathing face and arms and legs. She felt water trickle under her shirt and between her breasts. A tingle of awareness tightened her nipples.

  Primal. Primeval. This was nature in its glory, and somehow it passed a little of that glory on to her. She wasn't plain, ordinary Mac anymore. She was a goddess of the forest, a dauntless heroine ready to meet any challenge…

  "I'll be damned. You're a woman!"

  The man's deep, husky voice snapped Mac out of her reverie. He had turned around; a retort was already on her lips before she got a good glimpse of his features.

  "Gee, thanks for clearing that up. I—" She found herself gazing into eyes that gave new meaning to the hackneyed phrase "steely gray." For a moment all she could do was stand in gaping silence as the man examined her with insulting thoroughness.

  "I don't believe it," he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  But she wasn't really listening. She didn't have time to resent his critical tone or his arrogant questions or the fact that he was acting just as she'd expect a typical male to act when confronted with the unimpressive MacKenzie Rose Sinclair.

  All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart and the startled rasp of her own breathing. And all she could see was his strong and powerfully masculine face.

  A face she recognized. A face she'd first seen months ago. A face she'd been carrying around in her backpack ever since she'd left the San Francisco International Airport for the wilds of Central America.

  The man was the spitting image of Liam O'Shea.

  Chapter Three

  The best of prophets of the

  future is the past.

  —George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron

  MAC FELT HER mouth go completely dry even as the rain trickled from her nose onto her lips and dripped from her chin.

  "I don't believe it," she whispered. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  She had the vague notion that his lips moved in some kind of reply, but there was a buzzing in her ears that blocked out any sound. All she could do was fight off the impulse to burst into frankly hysterical giggles.

  Out of all the things that could have happened to her in this incredible place, nothing could be quite so unbelievable. Or so appropriate. She'd come seeking absolution from Liam O'Shea, and she'd found him. First his bones, and then his modern-day clone.

  Her discovery stared at her and she stared back, so struck by the absurdity of it all that her shock faded quickly into a curious detachment.

  Yes, the likeness was almost flawless. This pseudo-Liam was a little harder, a little more daunting than his photographic counterpart. His hair was a little longer, his eyes paler, his face more weathered with experience. And, if possible, more handsome.

  Oh, not in the conventional sense. He was Harrison Ford and Daniel Day-Lewis and Timothy Dalton rolled into one, with perhaps a dash of a young Charlton Heston thrown in. Masculinity personified, with not one iota of boyish softness. His jaw was set, and she could tell he wasn't too happy about something.

  Why shouldn't he be happy? Mac was feeling almost giddy, no longer quite tethered to reality. Or to anything else that would normally send her hotfooting in the opposite direction—such as the critical gleam in his eye that surely found her wanting.

  "I'll be damned," he said again, this time with a more pronounced drawl of disgust. "Who in hell was idiotic enough to bring an American woman to the jungle?"

  "Excuse me?"

  His gaze swept the surrounding jungle before fixing on her again, dark with annoyance. "Whoever did it should be horsewhipped. How did you get separated from him?"

  "Him," who? The guide? Horsewhipped? "I think that might be sort of a severe punishment," she said, "considering I only paid him five dollars to guide me here from Tikal."

  He cast her an even more dubious glance, if that were possible. "Then where's the rest of your party?"

  "Doing the cha-cha in Tikal, probably."

  He was not amused by her lame attempt at humor. "The men you came with. The fools who thought a woman could manage in a place like this."

  Mac was in far too strange a mood to be annoyed. With a little effort, she could almost imagine that this was the way the real Liam would have talked. He'd have been a product of his times—in other words, a born male chauvinist. Whoever this guy wa
s, and whatever his problems, he was unwittingly playing the role to a tee.

  "Well, la-dee-dah," she said, tapping her cheek. "I came to this big bad jungle all by my little old self. What's getting into women these days?"

  The glint of annoyance in his eyes had become something of a disturbance to rival the tropical storm overhead. "By yourself," he repeated with patent disbelief.

  "Yup. Amazing but true."

  Liam's double took a step forward, crowding her close to the ruin behind her. "Miss—" He looked her up and down again in such a way that his assessment of her person could not have been mistaken. "I presume you are a miss? No man in his right mind would let his wife come to the Petén."

  No man in his right mind would make such bizarre statements. She returned the favor of examining his nicely revealed physique. The slopes and valleys of his chest and midriff were prominently delineated through the wet fabric of his shirt. Both it and his trousers were a little unusual in cut, as were his mud-splotched boots. He wore a heavy leather belt and some kind of bandoleer hung with small pouches and loops. Expedition wear of the sort you'd see in a '40s safari movie.

  Another surge of recklessness moved her mouth before her brain could stop it. "It's Miss," she said. "MacKenzie's the name. But I think it's 'Ms.' to you."

  He didn't get it. She could see it went right over his head. Maybe it was time to start asking a few questions of her own. "I didn't catch your name, Mr…"

  His gaze made another sweep from her boot toes to her dripping hair. "Dressed as you are and in such a state, Miss MacKenzie, I doubt you could catch anything but the grippe."

  She guessed what he implied. She knew how she must appear, in waterlogged jeans and camp shirt, not in the least pretty or delicate or curvaceous in the way that seemed to attract the opposite sex. She had no reason to want to be attractive to a man like this. She'd thought she was well past caring.

  But, oddly enough, she wasn't.

  "Charming," she said. "What century did you emerge from, pray tell? The first? Or maybe a little earlier—the Precambrian era, perhaps?"