Jungle of Deceit

by Maureen A. Miller

  “You’ll never get anywhere with her.” Wes folded a tarp across the slab, blotting out the unsettling graphic.

  “I wasn’t looking to.” That, too, was sincere.

  Discovering that the esteemed Dr. Langley was in this case a woman, was an interesting twist, but it didn’t change the fact that he had a mission to complete before he could get out of this godforsaken quandary. “I do admit to being a little shocked, however. I thought the doctor’s name was Franklin Langley.”

  Wes shook his head and stooped to hammer the lid onto the crate. “It’s a common mistake. Frank Langley is Alex’s father, and he doesn’t have half the raw instinct or talent that his daughter does.”

  The last statement was uttered with enough husky conviction to make Mitch give Wes another assessment. Maybe on second glance, the bronzed Adonis didn’t look so much the Hollywood type, but more a hard worker who’d spent too many years in the jungle and harbored deep feelings for the woman that employed him.

  “I’m not interested in staking a claim on your property…” Mitch moved in to assist with the next crate, “−if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Above the flat wooden surface their eyes met in a silent face-off.

  “Alex is no one’s property,” Wes declared quietly.

  “The way you talk—”

  “No.” The finality in the word suspended anything Mitch was about to add. For that fact, so did the sudden emergence of the object of their debate. Alex stood at the center of a group of men, and though she was not short, she was dwarfed in that ring. Still, she dominated their attention with commanding hand gestures and verbal authority. She was a militant leader with the finest figure Mitch had ever seen.

  No one interrupted her. No one disputed her.

  “How does she do it?” Intrigued, Mitch dragged his glance away from Alex.

  “Control them, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” Of its own will, his head swung back towards the lithe blond in her baggy khakis and white T-shirt.

  Wes gave up the battle with the crate and parked down on the corner of it. “It hasn’t been easy on her.”

  Tempted to sit as well, Mitch glanced at the wooden box, which eerily resembled a casket. Shrugging off the association, he bent his knees and dropped onto the splintered surface.

  “I’d like to say I can imagine.” His arms crossed in the same fashion as Wes’s, so that he thought they resembled a couple of old men, gossiping on a front porch. “But I don’t think I can.”

  “What more is there to say?” Wes began. “She’s a beautiful woman, working with nearly a dozen young men. She’s their boss. If she was to yield even an inch, they’d be on her like syrup.”

  Now why did he have to go and use that analogy, Mitch wondered. Images of Alex Langley and syrup suddenly made the oblong crate even more uncomfortable.

  To his utter dismay, Alex picked that moment to look across the camp and focus on him. Mitch shifted as if her intelligent eyes spotted his discomfort and keenly surmised the source.

  “And. Mr. Hasslet−” She broke away from the group to move towards him. “I’ll need you as well.”

  Spellbound by the focus of those eyes, Mitch sprang off the crate. Before making a total idiot of himself, he shrugged his shoulders, stared at his knuckles, rubbed them against his jeans, and finally muttered, “Yeah, well my camera is halfway across the jungle now, isn’t it?”

  Alex shook her head as if he was a source of great amusement to her.

  “Mr. Hasslet,” she said in a soft voice, “I don’t need your camera.”

  The fact that he wanted her to add, I need your body, disturbed him.

  “I need your body.”

  It took a moment for the statement to settle in. Mitch almost sustained whiplash when his head snapped. “Excuse me?”

  “Work, Mr. Hasslet.” Alex crossed her arms and watched him with a cool look. “I need you to help everyone pack.” She nodded at Wes. “We leave at dawn.”

  “Leave?” Panic crept into Mitch’s voice, elevating it an octave. He cleared his throat and resumed. “Where are we going?”

  Already having dismissed him, Alex seemed annoyed by the inquiry. “We’re moving the campsite.” She took two steps away, but Mitch’s pitch arrested her.

  “How far?”

  “Mr. Hasslet−” She rounded on him. “We’ve been here for two months. We have charted every inch of land…every tributary within a fifty mile radius. You are certainly the last person I have to account to for this relocation.”

  She must have caught some of the desperation on his face because her lips softened into what almost passed for a smile. “If it’s that you’re afraid the hike is on foot,” she nodded at her Jeep, “your chariot awaits you.”

  A hike on foot was exactly what Mitch wanted.

  It was to this very quadrant of the jungle that the missing shipment of Mayan artifacts was traced. Mitch had the god-awful misfortune of capturing that heist on film—film that later ended up in the Hudson River. But he was the only person to actually see the guerillas—the only one able to make a visual identification. He was invaluable to Phillip Nicholson.

  Yes, there was an official search under way—but in this unsavory land with political strife and hostile rebels, official wasn’t going to cut it.

  So Nicholson sent him.

  “You’ll find this hard to believe, doctor, but a tripod isn’t too stable in a bouncing Jeep.”

  Alex’s lips twitched again. She was suppressing a laugh and it irked him.

  “I’m glad you find my plight amusing…” his tone took a low dive so that the conversation excluded Wes, “−but think of it this way—the more accommodating you are to me, the quicker my job is done and I’m out of here.”

  Alex took a step closer. In order to look him in the eye, she had to tilt back her head.

  “I’m well aware of what needs to be done to expedite your departure, Mr. Hasslet,” she whispered. “But understand that I don’t have time for you right now, so please just do your job and stay out of my way.” Her head cocked to the side. “Deal?”

  She waited for Mitch to agree. He dragged his gaze from her lips back up to her eyes. They flashed a verdant challenge, altered by the sway of the palm leaves above.

  Mitch smiled—it started low in his body and took a long time to reach his mouth.

  Maybe this wasn’t the assignment from hell after all. Maybe−just maybe his miserable existence took a turn for the better. Maybe he could find a way to alter the amusement in Alex Langley’s eyes and turn it into passion.

  Or maybe he ought to just stick to the plan and get the hell out of this jungle before the Queen Bee or any other indigenous creature got their stinger in him.

  Chapter Two

  Alex slammed down the hood of the Jeep and mumbled about its correlation to Metztli, the Mayan God of worms. She tossed a wrench into a toolbox lying open on the ground and stooped to close it. As she rose, she caught sight of the photographer across the camp. It irked her that Wes allowed the photographer to handle the prized tablet, a piece she held close to her heart. It was a stone testimony that her time spent in the jungle was not a frivolous pipedream as her father often implied.

  But Wes knew what that piece represented to her. Perhaps he trusted the strength and maturity of the photographer to assist ahead of the reckless brawn of one of the students.

  Fascinated, Alex watched Mitch Hasslet lift the crate over his head, his cotton long-sleeved shirt stained with perspiration at the base of his spine. Exertion made the muscles along his shoulders ripple and his biceps strain. The body of Mitch Hasslet was that of a full-fledged man, not a succession of gangly limbs like the post-adolescents around her endeavoring to be macho.

  It had been a long time since Alex had even given the male physique a second glance.

  Physical attraction.

  Temptation.

  There simply was no time for these vices in the jungle—not for a woman who had to mai
ntain control over her merry band of undergraduates.

  Still, Alex’s glance returned to Mitch, lured to the dark hair. It was kind of long, nearly black, highlighted with traces of auburn as if he had recently spent time in the sun. His tan forearms beneath the rolled-up sleeves supported that theory. She knew very little about the man−mostly rumors heard over a few hasty phone transmissions, and some of them not necessarily flattering. But to her, Mitchell Haslett was a necessary evil if she was to remain in the jungle.

  And this was where Alex intended to stay.

  She was so close. Everything she had read, everything she had researched, even the pieces most recently exhumed—all hinted at an uncharted civilization—a civilization she was hell-bent on finding. If she had to play the political game to stay here, she would play it with great conviction. She would endure Mitch Hasslet and anyone else the museum imposed on her.

  But she would not go home empty-handed.

  With the back of her hand, Alex rubbed at an itch on her nose and sneezed at the whiff of motor oil. Around her, the students from California were busy packing everything except for their tents, which would still be occupied tonight.

  Chuck had gone ahead to check the trail one last time. It was almost a relief to have him out of her hair. Between him and Wes, their disapproval of her intended destination was stifling. It wasn’t as if she was crossing that barrier—that unseen line where people had gone missing over the past few years. No, they would be a good forty miles from the sector labeled No Man’s Land on Chuck’s map.

  Alex would never jeopardize the safety of her crew, particularly considering most were college students, too young to know any better on their own. Maybe she was barely ten years older than most of them, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Youth was something that fascinated her, but she felt a strange disassociation with it.

  Again Alex’s gaze returned to the photographer. He swiped a hand through hair made darker by perspiration. The hair was nice to look at, but her focus was on that hand. Big and scarred with nicks. A man’s hand.

  That rogue thought spurred Alex to slam down the trunk of the Jeep. The sound drew the photographer’s attention her way and she met his eyes.

  Midnight blue.

  They reminded her of the ponds that provided sanctuary from the rigors of this dig. Cloistered by palm fronds, those small bodies of stagnant water discharged curls of steam on sultry mornings. Each pond was a temple to her. Each a retreat.

  And Mitch Hasslet’s eyes looked exactly like the dark shadows at their depths.

  Alex jerked her glance away. Maybe the move of their camp would improve her sudden treacherous thoughts. Yes, of course it would. A new challenge in an uncharted jungle. Land that no archeologist had covered.

  Well, she couldn’t say that was true.

  If an archeologist had—they never returned to tell about it.

  ***

  For a moment Alex had actually looked at him−long and hard. Mitch had stood still, as if any motion on his part would scare her away. Only Alex was not like a frightened deer. She had kicked the Jeep for good measure and stalked off in the direction of her tent, leaving Mitch to watch the vinyl door slap shut.

  So be it. The sexy little doctor was not going to be a distraction.

  Up above, the humid Guatemalan sky looked like a zebra’s hide, with warm stripes of azure and orange melting into deep violet shadows at the underside of the belly. Dusk was approaching.

  Perhaps the physical day had started out in Newark over twenty hours ago, but for Mitch, his day was just about to commence.

  “You better turn in.”

  He flinched at the voice close behind. “Excuse me?”

  “We’ll be out of here by five,” Wes said. “You better get some rest.”

  “Five in the morning?” He watched the orange bands across the sky darken to a dusky rose.

  Wes grinned. “Yes sir.”

  Well hell, Mitch thought. There wasn’t going to be much sleep tonight. But the sky was still too bright. Maybe just an hour’s nap was enough time to let everyone settle in and conk out, and then…then he could start his mission.

  “You know Wes, that’s about the finest suggestion I’ve heard in the past twenty hours.”

  He clapped the man on the shoulder and looked at the row of small tents lined up along the edge of the trees, hugging their lofty shadows to keep cool. “Which one is mine?”

  “That one.” Wes tipped his head to the tent closest to them. “You’re sharing it with me and Chuckles.”

  Chuckles? Ah, yes, Chuck. There didn’t seem to be anything jovial enough about the man to warrant the nickname. Mitch looked at the scrap of canvas and wondered how in the world it was supposed to accommodate three full-sized men. Awfully close quarters.

  “Trust me−” Wes uttered, “−you’ll be too tired to be modest.”

  “Christ.” Mitch stepped back. “I wasn’t worried about being modest, I was thinking about where I’m going to stow my equipment.”

  The archeologist’s snort aggravated him. Hell, he wasn’t here for their amusement. He was here to do a job.

  “Go ahead and get some rest.” Wes nodded towards the tent. “By the time I get in there, or Chuck gets back, you’ll be well near comatose.”

  Not bloody likely, Mitch thought.

  Now, in addition to waiting for the cloak of night, he had to inject extra time for these two bumbling idiots to retire and fall asleep before he could commence his task.

  How in God’s name do I get myself into these situations?

  ***

  Sprawled across a sleeping bag with a gnarled tree root jabbing into his shoulder, Mitch shifted in search of comfort. Every budge of his body encountered a pointy twig, a jagged rock, or a rough dip in the earth. Finally, he just laced his fingers behind his head and hooked one ankle over the other, trying to disregard the fact that his boots protruded outside the vinyl flap. For some reason that thought unnerved him the most, as if his exposed feet were prey to venturesome night crawlers.

  Mitch yawned and closed his eyes.

  Just a few minutes rest. Just long enough to wait for tweedle-dee and tweedle-dummer to return.

  “Hey!”

  Mitch jumped up and smacked his forehead into the metal frame. Stuck in a slumberous stupor, he envisioned this as a cell and his arms flailed in an effort to escape.

  “Hey!” The voice repeated, impatient. “Yeah, that’ll dismantle the tent, but I was going for something more organized.”

  Those weren’t the words he expected the Cheshire cat to utter just before he drop-kicked his body into the Hudson, but—

  “Look, Mr. Hotshot photojournalist, we’re already running late—you can catch up on your beauty rest later.”

  Beauty rest?

  Gritty eyes opened, and then closed when Mitch felt the sting of the flashlight tear into them. “What the—”

  “Come on.” An insistent hand tugged at the heel of his boot with such persistence he felt his body start to slide.

  “If you’d get that flashlight out of my face, maybe I could see.” Mitch punched the vinyl flap aside as he tried to hoist out of the tent.

  Chuck’s grunt at Mitch’s efforts to stand sounded like laughter.

  “What the hell are you laughing at?” Mitch glared at the archeologist.

  Mitch had slept in caves much smaller than this tent—tiny outcrops of rock in the Arabian Desert. Did this yahoo honestly think he was uncomfortable? Well damn, he was, but there could be worse discomforts.

  “I’m laughing−” Chuck continued, holding the flap aside, “−because you look like the biggest heap of shit I’ve seen in a long time.”

  Mitch couldn’t make out Chuck’s features. The flashlight eclipsed the guy. All he could distinguish was close-cropped brown hair, and a heavily shadowed face. At a little over six feet, Chuck was about his height. There seemed to be the exuberance of youth in his step, yet maturity in his voice. Mitch suspected the
man hovered somewhere around thirty.

  “Flattery isn’t going to coax me out any faster.”

  That earned a laugh. “No, but if I say that the Jeeps are all packed except for this scrap of cloth hanging above you, and Doc is ready to leave…” his head bobbed up and down, “−and she will leave without you if she’s ready.”

  Chuck stepped back to let Mitch stand, and then continued, “Yeah, those factors combined, I figured would wake you from your beauty rest.” Chuck cocked his head to the side. “By the way−it didn’t work.”

  Mitch clutched the pain at the base of his skull, thinking he must have slept against a rock. “What didn’t work?” he asked, distracted.

  “Your beauty rest.” Chuck turned away.

  Mitch watched as the man melted into the shadows.

  Chuckles.

  Quite the riot.

  ***

  Alex peered up through black entwined tree limbs towards the deep violet sky that just now began to blush in the east. She was far enough away from the camp that the drone of the Jeep motors felt like an undercurrent, as if a flock of heron had erupted from the foliage.

  Before her, a black pond was obscured in the pre-dawn haze, lost in the shadows of the overhead vegetation. She could smell it, though. That heavy, humid scent laced with the fragrance of orchids and the musty tang of algae.

  Alex drew in a deep breath and heard a bird stir in the network of branches. That bird, most likely a Macaw, recognized that it was a new morning and like Alex, it brimmed with anticipation. She wanted to take flight as well—to look at the land ahead and see the jungle from his winged perspective. But that Macaw couldn’t peer through the canopy of lianas or the dense veil of flora. Only creatures on foot could learn this jungle’s secrets, and her trek today would be on foot.

  The sound of the motors grew faint. They had moved on, and Alex would catch up with them later this evening. Wes protested her decision to make the trek alone. Good ol’ Wes—as capable a replacement for a mother as there ever was, but that was probably not what a man wanted to hear. As her father’s primary apprentice, Wes had been with her since late childhood, a time when her education came in books hastily read on sandy precipices and in dank caves.