by Tara Janzen
He let out a short laugh in disbelief and set his coffee aside.
“Can you explain to me just exactly what it does take to scare you?” He really wanted to know. Hell, he was scared for her. He’d been scared for her since Eddie had dragged that damned head out of the water.
“Fat Eddie scares me,” she admitted—much to his relief. He didn’t like to think she was crazy. “Just not enough to turn me around and send me packing.”
Of course not.
“Nobody needs the kind of firepower you have up on my deck to research peach palms. Israeli Galil rifles? With four thousand rounds of ammo? Hell, you’re better armed than half the Brazilian army. Why?” He arched his brow, demanding an explanation, which—from the look on her face—he wasn’t going to get.
“You opened my crates?”
“Opened, inventoried, and catalogued, and I have to tell you that, including the piece you’re wearing on your hip, you’ve got one hell of an arsenal working for you. I mean, what are you planning on doing with two dozen grenades?”
Her gaze narrowing, she pursed her lips and told him exactly nothing.
“And the dynamite, for God’s sake?”
Still nothing.
“Who is Jackson Reid?” he asked, changing tactics, and because he was damned curious about the man whose name had shown up three different times in her supplies—once on a duffel bag address tag, once in indelible marker on a flashlight, and once on a very expensive camera.
“A friend,” she said after a considerable pause, giving him plenty of reason to doubt her answer, but he’d be damned if he would sink so low as to grill her about the men in her life.
“Well, how about telling me where you got this.” He took two steps across the cabin and reached behind the wheel, pulling out a blowgun dart. He’d found it in one of her packs with a piece of crumpled paper shoved in next to it. “ ‘Leave Manaus,’ ” he quoted the message. “That’s a little too anonymous for Fat Eddie, so I’m guessing Johnny Chang sent this to you?”
“Is there anything I own that you haven’t been through?” she asked peevishly.
“Other than the pockets on the shorts you’re wearing and your fanny pack, nothing.”
The startled look she gave him quickly transformed into one of galled sensibilities, as if he were the real piece of work on the Sucuri.
He wanted to kiss it off her face.
“The dart was stuck in your boat, Dr. Travers,” she said, commandeering the high ground, such as it was. “Certainly, I considered showing it to you, and if you’d been sober yesterday morning I might have remembered to drag it out.”
“Considered?”
“In case it was meant for you.”
“No.” He shook his head, not buying her theory. “Nobody would threaten me with something like this. It’s too simple, a cheap jungle trick meant to scare a—” He stopped suddenly, recognizing his error.
“A woman?” she finished, her eyebrows rising above the rims of her glasses.
“A turista,” he filled in, a concession she seemed to accept, though she was the only woman he would have conceded the point to, her and Gabriela.
“Okay. Let’s cut to the chase. I can pay you a lot more than I already have to get me to Santa Maria. A lot more,” she said, proving that she at least understood that he was holding most of the cards.
But the offer was ridiculous.
With a flick of his wrist, he impaled the dart into the wooden cowling above the helm’s windows. “You’re working on a grant. You don’t even have gas money, unless Gabriela doles it out. So what are you going to pay me with?”
“Guns.”
He added resourcefulness to her list, but shook his head.
“If I can get rid of you, I don’t need any guns. I can patch things up with Fat Eddie, tell him I was mulher louco, crazy for a woman, so I lied to keep you with me for the night.” He reached for his coffee. “He’ll understand that.” At least Will thought it was worth a shot.
She glanced out the window, and he noticed a trace of color tingeing her checks. Intrigued, he looked at her more closely, thinking she couldn’t possibly be blushing—not Amazon Annie.
“And what are you going to tell him happened to me when he notices I’m not around anymore?”
His mouth curved into a quick grin. “This is Brazil, Dr. Parrish, where the most common postcoital response in a woman is to throw something and walk out.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she objected, tossing a glance in his direction and making an absent gesture toward the forest all around. The color across her face deepened to a rosy hue.
Will paused with his cup halfway to his mouth, going from being mildly intrigued to utterly fascinated, wondering if it was the thought of being in a postcoital situation with him that disconcerted her, or just the thought of sex in general—because she was blushing, definitely blushing.
He took a slow, considering sip of his coffee. He should have asked Gabriela more questions about her, more about Yavareté. The old doctor had always been straight with him. She would have told him anything, if he’d asked.
“Being in the middle of nowhere is no deterrent to a determined woman,” he said, “and you, in particular, have proven to be a very determined woman.”
“Money, then,” she offered, tightening her arms across her chest, a body signal he didn’t have any trouble interpreting in and of itself, but when combined with the blush burning up her cheeks, the message got a little more complex. “I will have money, more than grant money, a lot more. You can set your own price, and I’ll pay you when I get it.”
He gave his head another slow shake. “You’re working way too hard here, Doctor. You only have two things I’m interested in, and money isn’t one of them.”
She went very still across from him in the cabin, and he knew beyond doubt that he had her full and undivided attention.
“The first thing is information,” he told her, not waiting for her to ask. “And the second...” He shrugged, letting his voice trail off. He had no intention of telling her the second. Her imagination was doing fine at filling in the blank all on its own. Her eyes widened slightly, before shying away from his. Her blush deepened even more, and he pretty much instantaneously figured out at least one thing that disconcerted the hell out of her—him and the thought of sex in the same breath.
I’ll be damned, he thought. She was tough, all right, but he’d bet his boat and everything in it, including Fat Eddie’s emeralds, that whatever Corisco Vargas had done to her, it hadn’t included rape. Her reaction to him was too unabashedly coy, not frightened. She hated reacting to him at all. He could tell. But she couldn’t control it. She couldn’t meet his eyes and think about sex at the same time.
His grin broadened. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to charm the pants right off him, and then there would be hell to pay.
“I’m talking a lot of money,” she said, her gaze firmly focused somewhere in the vicinity of her feet.
“And I’m still thinking Barcelos, by nightfall if we’re lucky. By this time tomorrow you could be on your way to Miami.”
“So you get the guns either way,” she said, flashing him a mutinous look. It was a flat-out accusation she didn’t sound any too happy about.
“Yeah,” he admitted, forcing himself to get back to business. He could fantasize all he wanted, but Annie Parrish was off limits. “I get the guns either way.” And a hell of a lot of use he had for a bunch of guns. Of course, giving them back to Fat Eddie would go a long way toward mending the bridges he’d burned last night.
“I’m not getting on a plane in Barcelos,” she insisted, not surprising him in the least. But as far as he was concerned, it was a done deal. He was going to save her and help himself, whether she liked it or not.
“Well, go ahead and cast off. The idea might look a lot better to you once we get there.” And if it didn’t, Will figured that was just too damn bad. One way or the other, he was getting h
er the hell out of Brazil.
CHAPTER ~ 11
Barcelos came into view shortly before nightfall, its riverfront marketplace bustling with people buying up the day’s last bargains. Merchants up and down the docks were hawking their wares. Fishermen had their catches laid out on pallets, undercutting each other with cries of “Barato! Barato!”
Travers found a mooring on the north end of the waterfront, tying up on the low-rent end of the docks between a small barge piled high with cargo and a riverboat that made the Sucuri look new. Three mongrel dogs patrolled the barge, a brindle bitch and two half-grown pups, all of them emaciated and looking junkyard mean. An old man lay sleeping in a hammock strung between the crates, his arm wrapped around a shotgun. The public launches and the gaiolas were docked to the south, near the fruit and vegetable stands.
There wasn’t a plane in sight.
Annie was relieved, but it was a backhanded victory at best. The day had gone from bad to worse. Travers had finally raised RBC on the radio about mid-morning, but it had been Dr. Ricardo Solano who had taken the call; Gabriela was ill. How ill, Dr. Solano hadn’t felt at liberty to say, but Annie had a bad feeling. Gabriela was a tough old bird, but not even tough old birds lasted forever.
All Solano had promised was to do what he could, which might not include sending a plane to pick up Dr. Parrish. He hadn’t thought the situation warranted such an expensive, unfunded measure, but neither had Travers mentioned Fat Eddie, the shrunken heads, or the guns.
She owed him for that now, along with everything else. If Solano knew what she’d done, he’d be the first to notify the police and have her arrested. Travers had called her situation a medical emergency, and she had to admit that having Solano dismiss her supposed health crisis with a noncommittal “I’ll do what I can” had been disconcerting. Gabriela was her connection to RBC, her lifeline, if she needed one, and without the old doctor, Annie realized she was on her own—or at least she would be, if she could get away from Will Travers.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said, walking out on deck, buttoning his shirt—a first, she was sure. “If the plane still isn’t here by the time we finish and pick up a few supplies, we’ll head farther up the river.”
“Why not spend the night in Barcelos?” she asked, feigning a casual tone.
He grinned, obviously seeing right through her. “Because there are a hundred men here you could talk into taking you to Santa Maria, all of whom would be more than happy to do it for guns or grenades, and most of whom think dynamite is a fishing lure.”
He was right, but she’d figured it was a long shot. She wouldn’t have any reservations about approaching one of the fishermen or caboclos and taking her chances on another boat. She’d been on a hundred boats in the Amazon basin, from private, first-class launches filled with scientific equipment, to dugout canoes, and she’d never gotten into trouble until the Cauaburi. On the other hand, she’d already paid Travers, and he had her cargo. When the plane didn’t come—and she was sure it wouldn’t—he would have little choice but to continue onto Santa Maria.
She changed into a pair of pants and took the extra precaution of tying a long-sleeved shirt around her waist to conceal her handgun. Wearing a pistol was one thing. Advertising it was another.
As she came back out on deck, Travers was paying a group of children to watch the Sucuri. Ragged and cheerful, they eagerly caught the coins he pitched in the air and could be counted on to hang around for the promise of more on his return.
With their band of diminutive guards on duty, and a few more in tow, they wove a path through the waterfront marketplace, heading in the general direction of a cantina sporting a sign proclaiming Carne e Cerveja.
“Why the kids, if no one ever boards the Sucuri?” she asked.
“Keeps them out of trouble for an hour.” He stopped and bought a dozen pieces of cana, sugarcane, on sticks. The children jumped and laughed around him, scrambling for their share of the sugarcane, while one of them ran the extras back to the boat.
“Um... thanks,” she said, when he handed her a piece.
“My mom used to buy these for me all the time when I was a kid.”
“Your mom?” Now that took a stretch of Annie’s imagination, thinking of the six-foot gringo with snakes tattooed down his back as a little kid at his mother’s side, sucking on sugarcane.
“Elena Maria Barbosa Sanchez Travers,” he said. “She’s Venezuelan. I was born in Caracas. How about you? Where were you born?”
“Wyoming,” Annie said slowly, casting him a disbelieving look. “You gave Fat Eddie your mother’s name?”
“She’s in the States, has been for twenty-five years. I don’t think there’s much chance of her running into Fat Eddie Mano. What about your folks?”
“Probably not going to run into Fat Eddie, either,” she granted wryly, wary of where he might be going with this sudden rash of personal questions.
He chuckled from deep in his throat, looking at her from over the top of the sugarcane in his mouth—and Annie had to admit that he made sugar look good. She also had to admit that having the chance to get rid of her had improved his mood.
Greatly improved.
It was almost insulting.
“I meant where do they live,” he said.
“My dad is in Wyoming.” An easy enough answer to come up with.
“Great place, Wyoming. And your mom?”
“Tahoe or Vegas. Or sometimes Jackson Hole. She’s hard to keep track of.” She took a taste of the sugarcane and hoped that was the end of the “mother” conversation.
“Like her daughter?”
Annie nearly sighed. He was plowing some pretty old ground.
“Look,” she said, wiping the juice off her chin with the heel of her palm. “You can draw all the conclusions and similarities you want, and you won’t get a fight from me. I’ll be the first to admit I’m permanently scarred from my mother’s abandonment, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that’s how I ended up down here in the middle of nowhere with a washed-up botanist like you, waiting for a plane that isn’t going to come, when all I really want is to get back on the river and get to Santa Maria.”
“Washed-up?” He laughed again, obviously unfazed by her opinion. But then, he was William Sanchez Travers, and she knew for a fact that he’d been called worse—much worse.
“What else would you call a Harvard man smuggling gems for the likes of Fat Eddie Mano?”
He grinned down at her, his unrepentant smile broadening. “Hungry,” he said. “Come on.”
At the cantina, he chose a table outside in the small courtyard fronting the bar where they had a full view of the river and the docks. Vines and greenery draped over the top of the patio wall, bougainvillea and fuchsias entwined with lacy fronds of dryopteris. A pair of scarlet macaws were for sale in a cage across the alley, their raucous cries cutting through the diminishing hum of activity on the waterfront.
“We’re wasting time here. There’s no plane,” she said, helping herself to the manioc flatbread the waiter had brought.
“Not yet,” he agreed.
A thin string of lights came on around the patio, sparking to multicolored life and giving the dingy little place a festive air.
“There’s not going to be. Rick Solano would just as soon I died as to ever darken RBC’s door again, and that’s a direct quote heard through the grapevine.” She dipped her bread in pepper sauce and sprinkled it with salt. “He was the only vote against my proposal, and he was a loud one.”
“What does Solano have against you?”
“Professional jealousy.” She took a bite and felt her eyes start to water and her tongue start to burn. It was heaven.
Travers paused with a piece of bread in hand. “He can’t afford to be that irresponsible, not as the director of RBC.”
“Tell him that.”
“I did. This morning,” he said and gestured at her soft drink. “Do you want another guaraná?”
&nbs
p; “Sure.” She nodded.
“Moço, mais um cervejinha e um guaraná,” he called to their waiter, then turned back to her. He took a drink of beer before continuing. “Gabriela said you’re not here to study peach palms. She thinks you’re up to something else.”
She didn’t so much as blink an eye. “That’s interesting.”
“Yeah. Real interesting,” he agreed. “She also said if there were any wonders to be found in the forest, you would be the one to find them, not me.”
Unbidden, Annie’s mouth curved into a grin, and she reached for another piece of bread. “Then she hasn’t seen your tattoo, because you sure as hell found something out there. Or, from the looks of it, something found—” she stopped suddenly, her gaze snapping up and slamming into a pair of darkly amused brown eyes.
“No,” he said slowly, “Gabriela has never seen my tattoo. When did you?”
“This morning, when you pulled up in the canoe.” And the last thing she’d wanted to do was admit it. She was appalled by what had been done to him—and because of her damned nightmare, more than a little unnerved by the tattoo itself.
She had found a wonder in the forest, an orchid unlike any other, and it was going to make her name. Whatever Travers had found had taken his and left him marked for life, and even as curious as she was about him, it had set him on a course she was damned sure she didn’t want to follow. He was a fascinating man, for all he’d once been and for whatever he’d become, but his tattoo had erased any doubts she might have had that he was treading waters far deeper than she wanted to brave. She wanted her orchid. That was all. Just her orchid.
“So what did you think?”
She thought about telling him the truth, that she knew he was wearing a shaman’s crystal and would place bets that he knew how to use it in ways she hadn’t even heard about and probably wouldn’t believe. That she knew the snakes wound so sinuously down his back represented shamanistic knowledge far beyond the temporal world, and it frightened her to think about what the damn things meant or who had put them there. But then she reminded herself all she really wanted from him was passage to Santa Maria, and the quicker she left him, and the less she knew about him when she left, the better off she’d be.
