River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  Setting his coffee aside, Corisco tore open the envelope and retrieved the paper from inside. He snapped it open, read it, and his mood instantly soured.

  He’d heard the plane return from its nighttime sortie on the river. Two flights a day came in to the muddy hellhole of the camp, bringing in supplies, contraband, and a growing horde of deserters from the Brazilian army who came to Reino Novo for wages paid in gold—and messages, like the one from Losas lying at his feet, and the one inside the envelope from his man in Manaus saying Annie Parrish had disappeared.

  He crumpled the piece of paper. He would put out a bounty on her, a huge bounty. Every garimpeiro, caboclo, rubber tapper, and Indian in the northwest frontier would be out looking for her—and they would bring her to him for gold.

  “Fernando, do you still have the photographs you took in Yavareté?”

  The man hesitated, an unusual occurrence worthy of a withering glance.

  “Well? Do you?” he snapped.

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Make up a wanted poster for the woman. Offer ten thousand reais. I want every settlement south to Manaus covered by nightfall.”

  “Yes, Major.” The man turned to go.

  “And Fernando?”

  The giant stopped and glanced back. “Major?”

  “Make sure it’s her face you use on the poster.”

  The faintest hint of color washed into the man’s face—anger, not embarrassment, Corisco knew—before Fernando nodded and left.

  His morning thoroughly ruined, Corisco went back to drinking his coffee. She’d come back to Brazil almost exactly at the time of his sacrifice, and by all the devils he could bring to bear, that’s exactly what she was going to be.

  Within the last year, the mining operation had boomed, with the pits around Reino Novo producing two kilos a day. The camp boasted three cantinas, two whorehouses, and at least one dead body a week for which he took no responsibility. Gold miners were a volatile group and quite capable of killing each other without any help from him. The deaths he did claim at least had a purpose, as the gold he took from the mines had a purpose.

  The garimpeiro groaned. Corisco used his foot to push the man over onto his back, and his interest was instantly piqued. He never forgot a face, and he knew this one.

  “Juanio,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  The man opened his eyes, and the color drained from his face.

  “M-Major V-Vargas,” he stuttered, then crossed himself, his lips moving frantically in a silent prayer.

  “Juanio, Juanio,” he implored, shaking his head. “Tell me you are not praying to God. God has no place here in the mines... ah, but you’re not a miner anymore, are you? No, the last I heard, you and Luiz were working as jagunços for Senhor Eduardo in Manaus. He is a friend of mine, did you know?”

  A dead friend, if the fat man’s cache of gemstones did not arrive as promised. Fat Eddie Mano was an abomination, a gross distortion of a human being who truly offended Corisco’s refined sensibilities, but he did have his uses—or rather he had. Soon there would be only one power on the river, and all the petty bosses like Fat Eddie would find themselves cut out of the trade routes in illegal goods.

  Juanio shook his head, his ill-cut mop of coal-black hair flying.

  “As a matter of fact, he’s on his way here to check on a shipment he’s sent, a shipment on the boat that dropped you off at Losas.”

  If possible, the man paled even further.

  “I find it very interesting, Juanio, that you were on this boat with my diamonds and emeralds. Senhor Eduardo is also very interested, and very interested in what happened to his plane.” Apoplectic, actually. Corisco only feared the fat man might explode before he himself had a chance to make an example out of him.

  “It—it was Luiz, Major Vargas.” The man struggled to his knees, still trembling, and gave a pitiful imitation of a salute. “Luiz stole the plane. He made me get on the devil boat. I begged him not to make me. It was awful, just as the stories say. The snake, she was... was...”

  “Was?” he prompted.

  “Hungry.”

  Corisco nodded. He’d heard the stories about Will Travers and his boat and the vision snake that guarded it—a drunken gringo’s conceit, if he’d ever heard one. At one time, the botanist had been an interesting potential adversary, but a year lost in the rain forest had robbed him of his senses. Corisco knew Fat Eddie derived a sort of perverse pleasure out of using the once famous derelict as a courier, but in this instance, the fat man had erred—possibly fatally, if the gems didn’t arrive at Reino Novo.

  “What were you supposed to do on the devil boat?” he asked. “Not steal my gems, I hope.”

  There was nothing deceptive about Juanio’s blank gaze. The man was completely overwhelmed by the complexity of the answer required to save himself. The truth, which Corisco already knew, was easier to come by, but spelled certain doom, whereas a lie took more imagination than he could muster.

  Corisco let him struggle for a solid minute, before he relented.

  “And where is Luiz, my old piloto, do you think?” he asked.

  “Barcelos,” Juanio was quick to answer.

  A game answer, but woefully incorrect.

  Corisco snapped his fingers and heard a cart start rolling into the courtyard behind him. From the look on Juanio’s face, he knew exactly when the little man recognized his compatriot. Luiz had been bound and gagged and caged and now awaited what was surely going to be a regrettable fate.

  “It was the woman,” Juanio said, thinking faster than Corisco would have thought possible. “I went on the boat to be with Travers’s woman. Luiz, he wanted the esmeraldas, the diamantes, but me, I only wanted to be with the woman, the little blond garota. She was skinny, Senhor Major, so skinny and mean, but I thought I would try her.”

  “Woman?” The pilot who had picked up Juanio in Losas hadn’t heard anyone mention a woman. “What woman?”

  “The one with all the questions and the big gun she kept poking in my face, the little, skinny, mean one with her hair all short and wild on her head. She shoved me off the boat above Losas, and I had to swim for the dock. It is a miracle I am alive today, Senhor Major, a miracle.”

  Corisco couldn’t have agreed more or cared less, but Juanio had given him pause.

  “Do you know the name of this woman you would have tried?”

  “She didn’t have a name,” Juanio said with conviction. “She was just a puta from Barcelos.”

  Ah, yes, Corisco wanted to say. Barcelos is full of blond-haired, gun-toting whores with the bolas to push a man overboard. Juanio was an idiot and would not be missed. As for the woman, he wouldn’t describe Annie Parrish as either skinny or mean, but he had an aesthete’s appreciation for slender curves and what intelligence did for a woman’s mien. Little blond garota with a big gun and lots of questions was dead-on, though, and Annie Parrish didn’t lack for courage—which left him with the intriguing thought that possibly, through some odd coincidence of timing and perhaps an old professional association, she might be on Will Travers’s boat with Fat Eddie’s cache of emeralds and diamonds, instead of on the RBC launch he’d been told she was taking to Santa Maria.

  How his man in Manaus had missed that piece of information made him wonder about the reliability of his own network of spies and informants, and once more brought home the truth that good help was damn hard to find in the middle of nowhere.

  He sat back in his chair and snapped his fingers for more coffee. The Sucuri, as Travers’s boat was known, had been impossible to find in the dark, though Corisco’s pilot had made half a dozen passes on the river above Losas. His suggestion to Fat Eddie, when he’d tracked him down by radio in Santo Antonio, was that he get back on the river himself and find the gems, before someone else tried to steal them. The fat man had responded with all the fawning enthusiasm of a bought whore, but he would do it. He didn’t dare not.

  It was interesting that Fat Eddie hadn
’t mentioned a woman being on the boat, Corisco thought. Either he hadn’t known, which wasn’t good. Or he’d known and deliberately withheld the information, which was far worse—which made Corisco wonder, not for the first time, what Fat Eddie had been doing in Santo Antonio. The fat man himself had been vaguely jovial about his little river romp. Too jovial and too vague for someone who seldom left his lair in the Praça de Matriz.

  Santa Maria, Corisco decided. She would stop at the mission, regardless of where else she was going, and if Fat Eddie was quick, he might be able to catch her and the gems there tonight.

  A rare smile curved a corner of his mouth. Annie Parrish and the gems in one fell swoop. The fates, indeed, were on his side.

  Sadly, the same could not be said for Juanio.

  “Fernando,” Corisco called out, and the huge man appeared. “Take them both to El Mestre and put them in the cages with the others. How many cordeiros will that give us?”

  “Ninety-one.” Fernando was always succinct. “A fair mix of Indians and caboclos.”

  Ninety-one sacrificial lambs to be offered up to the devil himself, more than enough to get the Brazilian media’s attention. He only needed nine more to make an even hundred. Annie Parrish would definitely be one.

  Skinny little garota. Juanio couldn’t have been more wrong. She was like a bird-of-paradise with her white-blond hair and her green-gold eyes, her soft, pink skin and her surprisingly lush mouth.

  He hadn’t kissed her. He’d wanted her begging for mercy, before he kissed her and the woman had not begged, for mercy or anything else. This time, he would bend the rules.

  If she did come with Will Travers on his boat, Corisco would take the drunken ex-scientist as one of his cordeiros. Having two norte-americanos die in his jungle glade might garner him international attention. Others had killed thousands in the Amazon, the rubber barons being the worst, but no one had ever killed a hundred in a single night, and no one had offered their blood to the devil, a quasi-religious touch guaranteed to strike an extra chord of terror in those Corisco would bring to heel. He already had half of the northwestern frontier dreading his noite do diabo, his Night of the Devil, and he had his devil—his gaze flicked up to the house, to where the glass cage lay within the confines of his office.

  Everything was falling into place, and so would Annie Parrish. The altar he’d built for the sacrifice, El Mestre, was nearly complete, needing only Fat Eddie’s emeralds and diamonds to finish the eyes—Los Olhos de Satanás, the Eyes of Satan. When those eyes gazed upon the good doutora, he would be triumphant.

  CHAPTER ~ 16

  She knew, even before she came fully awake, Annie knew her fanny pack was missing. The hand that automatically went to her waist only confirmed the truth: Will Travers had taken her orchid.

  But he hadn’t taken it very far. Halfway out of the hammock, she spied her pack hanging from a hook above the stove. She reached up and slipped it off. A quick check inside proved he’d taken nothing, except her exclusive knowledge that the flower even existed.

  Or nearly exclusive knowledge, she amended, turning the specimen jar over in her hand. She’d showed it to Mad Jack in Belize, and Corisco Vargas knew about the Epidendrum luminosa. The bastard had stolen one from her in Yavareté.

  With a soft curse, she set the orchid aside and made quick work out of her morning ablutions. Her green pack was lying next to the galley’s small sink, with everything she needed inside except a comb. She did the best she could with her fingers and poured herself a cup of coffee, before picking up the orchid jar again. She couldn’t help but wonder what Will had thought when he’d first seen her prize. Mad Jack had been impressed, damned impressed. He’d also told her it wasn’t worth dying for, and if he got so much as an inkling as to where she’d gone after leaving his place, he would have her butt in a sling so fast it would make her head swim.

  She turned the jar to better catch the light. When she’d been released from Yavareté, Gabriela had helped her gather up all her botanical specimens, but the orchids hadn’t been among them. More than her physical condition, the loss had come close to sinking her into despair. Then, just before she’d boarded the plane, Vargas had pressed a wrapped package into her hand. Why he’d given it to her, she still didn’t know, but she’d known exactly what it was, and hadn’t let it out of her sight since.

  If she could find more blooming orchids, she would let the one he’d taken go. She’d promised herself as much in Wyoming, that she wasn’t coming back to Brazil with a vendetta in mind.

  But if she couldn’t find another one—and the odds were against her—she might have to reconsider her plan to avoid Vargas at any cost.

  The muscles in her back twitched, an involuntary and unnecessary reminder of Yavareté, and her mouth tightened. In Wyoming, everything had seemed so clear. In Wyoming, all she’d wanted was more orchids: whole flowers, cuttings, dried specimens, roots, stems, leaves, seeds, everything. On the Rio Negro, nothing was clear, least of all what she wanted.

  She thought back to the previous night, her hand going to the large chunk of rock crystal hanging around her neck. The jaguar fangs on either side curved against her fingers.

  He’d kissed her. Twice. And everything Corisco Vargas had beaten out of her was coming back. She’d sworn off men, so help her God, but Will Travers kissed like an angel, his mouth so hot, and sweet, and tender. He made her feel like a woman, and that was the one thing she couldn’t afford. Because, quite simply, it wasn’t safe to be a woman in the Amazon. She’d known it long before Vargas had spent three days proving it to her.

  Swearing softly to herself, she slipped her hand to the back of her neck and turned her head to stretch out a kink. She ached from all the tension she was holding in her body. Nothing was going the way she’d planned, not a single damn thing.

  “It’s incredible,” Will said behind her.

  Once again, she hadn’t heard him approach. She lowered her hand before turning to find him standing in the cabin’s doorway, the afternoon light streaming in behind him. She’d slept most of the day away.

  “I know.” She didn’t feel guilty for having lied to him. She was beyond guilt—but not suspicion, not after he’d seen her orchid. Wearing low-slung black shorts, a half-buttoned white shirt, and a pair of old flip-flops, he was obviously dressed to go somewhere, and they were in the middle of nowhere.

  “Did you dream?”

  “No,” she said, surprised to realize she hadn’t. She would have expected at least Johnny Chang’s severed head to have haunted her sleep. “Thanks. I guess your crystal works.” It was a small concession to make after everything they’d been through—two close calls, two escapes, and those two kisses, one sweetly hot, the other surprisingly tender.

  She hadn’t had much tenderness in her life, and she would not have suspected that Will Travers would turn out to be a source. It was disconcerting, to have breached that small barrier with him.

  “Actually, I think the jaguar teeth are what holds nightmares at bay.” His face was in shadow, unreadable, but the tone of his voice was oddly flat.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because the night I cut them out of the big cat’s skull was the night I quit having mine,” he said, moving out of the doorway, toward the stove and the pot of coffee.

  “You killed a jaguar?” Her eyebrows went up. “This jaguar?” Her hand went to the necklace, her fingers curling around the huge teeth. It was hard to believe an educated scientist would come down to the Amazon and kill an endangered species to cut it up for talismans. They would be drummed out of every respectable—She stopped right there. The words “Will Travers” and “respectable” hadn’t been mentioned in the same breath for three years.

  He turned to face her, a steaming cup of coffee in hand.

  “Ran him down, cut out his heart, and drank his blood.” He took a sip of coffee—and Annie could only stare.

  He was serious. He’d done it. He’d drunk jaguar blood, hot and fresh, ri
ght out of the cat’s body.

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “Yes.” He was unequivocal.

  “Why?”

  “We’re about half an hour from Santa Maria, partway up the Marauiá. A plane came in low over the river just before you woke up. Looked like it was going to land at the mission. It might be somebody who can get you out of here.”

  “And you think if you can prove to me that you’re practically crazy, I’ll be happy to turn tail and run?” No wonder he was all dressed up.

  “Yes.” He took another sip of coffee, his gaze unflinching.

  She returned the favor, looking him over and trying like hell to find some resemblance to the man on the book jackets.

  There was damn little. The photograph had been meant to convey his authority and his scholarship, and he’d pretty much lost both of those. His most noticeable aspects now were physical—the lean dynamics of his body, the clarity of his dark-eyed gaze, which was too often set off by the sardonic arch of one of his eyebrows. He’d lost his expensive, razor-cut hairstyle years ago. Long and silkily disheveled, his hair was purely pagan now, the top layer bleached even more by the sun, the layer beneath richly dark and feathered down the length of his neck.

  And he had those tattoos on his back. They sure as hell hadn’t been there in his Harvard days.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d be the crazy one, if she went on.

  God help her. To have come all this way for nothing. She rubbed the back of her neck again, turning her attention out the window.

  “You saw the orchid. You know what I’m after—or have you decided to try for it yourself?”

  “Sure, I want it,” he admitted, “but I’m not going to take it away from you, Annie. I just figure you’ve got a better chance of finding it if you’re alive.”

  “It could be one of Vargas’s planes,” she said, believing him for now.

  “Could be,” he conceded. “He’s got a network of spies running the length of the Rio Negro. I thought I’d go in, check it out. If the plane is Vargas’s, it’s better if you’re safely out of sight. If it’s missionaries or a cargo run, I’ll get you a seat on it.”