Into the Darkness

by Margaret Daley

  Mr. Slader toyed with his plastic glass of bottled water as though he didn’t know what to do with it. Kate took a sip of the lukewarm drink and wished for some ice cubes. With visions of taking the cube and running it along her brow, then down her cheeks and finally her neck, she finished off her water, deciding she would never take ice for granted again, either. The waiter left the bottle by her glass. After refilling her drink, she looked up and caught Mr. Slader studying her.

  She was determined not to flinch or look away. “Do you think we have enough porters? I can afford more if you think they are needed.”

  “We’ll have to be satisfied with the two I hired.”

  “Why? If we need another one or two—”

  “Because,” he cut in, “no one else wanted to go. The two I hired are the only ones I could get and even they were reluctant.”

  “Oh.” She ran her finger around the rim of the glass and noticed a small nick in the plastic where it had been dropped and some of it had chipped off. “Why not? I’m paying good money.”

  “And that’s why we were able to get those two. Money isn’t everything to some people.”

  “I know that.”

  Mr. Slader shifted in his chair, bending forward and resting his elbows on the table. “People are afraid of that part of the Amazon. Many in this area are very superstitious. Centuries of beliefs can’t be changed because civilization wants to move in.”

  “I know there are rumors, but—”

  He moved closer. “Lady, they are more than rumors. It’s a fact up until twenty-five years ago, a couple of the tribes of this region were headhunters. Do you want me to explain the process to you?”

  She shook her head, lifting her refilled glass to her lips, her hand trembling. In the marketplace at the pier, she had seen a shrunken head hanging in a booth. The image that came to mind left her cold to the bone, underscoring how different everything in the Amazon was from her way of life in Red Creek.

  “So, we’ll have to manage with the two porters and hope there aren’t too many waterfalls that have to be portaged around.” He let his gaze travel over her before coming back to rest on her face. “It doesn’t look like you’ve spent much time at a gym back home.”

  “I walk every other day for several miles, and when I was waiting for my visa to come through, I increased it an extra mile every day.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  His flat tone and sardonic look certainly belied his words. She ground her teeth. “I know that isn’t enough. But I won’t hold you back.”

  His brows shot up, doubt clearly in his expression now.

  “I’m tougher than I look,” Kate said in answer to his silent question. She would make it, and she wouldn’t hold the expedition back because she had to find her brother. Sheer determination had to count for something. That, and faith in the Lord would make up for her lack of physical strength.

  After the waiter put their plates in front of them, Slader said as he picked up his fork, “We’ll discuss how fit you are after you’ve trekked through the jungle for a day.”

  “We’ll do just that.”

  Kate clasped her own fork and cut into the overdone piece of chicken. The vegetables on her plate didn’t look familiar, but there was no way she would ask Mr. Slader what she was eating. She’d check them out in the book she’d brought concerning the plants and animals of the region. It was still readable, even if some of the pages were torn.

  As she took her first bite, from beneath lowered eyelids, she watched Mr. Slader eat. She wasn’t sure how he managed to cut his fish and still observe his surroundings. But she didn’t think anyone in the room and the lobby beyond had escaped his notice. That fact reassured her more than General Halston’s and the locals’ recommendations. She might not like Mr. Slader, but she’d picked the right man for the job, especially after the trouble the evening before.

  After forcing half of her chicken and most of the vegetables down her throat, she sat back, wiping her mouth with her paper napkin. She preferred eating five small meals a day rather than several large ones. She couldn’t stuff another bite into her.

  “You’d better finish your dinner. Chicken won’t be on the menu for a while unless we’re lucky enough to find a turtle to eat. It’s similar in taste to chicken.”

  “A turtle! I couldn’t eat a turtle. I had one as a pet once.”

  “Listen, lady, when you’re out in the jungle, you can’t be choosy about where your next meal comes from.”

  “Please call me Kate.” Lady made her sound so—old. And suddenly, she didn’t want to feel all thirty-eight years. She already didn’t move as fast as she once had, and her eyesight was changing. Some things from a distance were fuzzier than before. She used to be able to bend over and touch her toes and the floor. Now she was lucky if she could reach her ankles. But there was no way she would share that with Mr. Slader. They didn’t have time to wait until she was in shape to go into the jungle in search of her brother. That might never happen, knowing her track record for dieting and exercising.

  Mr. Slader sighed. “Kate, you can’t pass up an opportunity for a full meal. In the rainforest, it probably won’t happen often.”

  “But we’re taking food with us.” She thought about the large backpack she would have to carry loaded with supplies, mostly food items, a few toiletries, a change of clothes and a hammock, and wished she had lifted weights in addition to walking.

  “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. There are four of us and the food supply is only meant to supplement what I hope to find in the jungle. But if you want to make good time, we won’t have a lot of it to forage for food.”

  She bristled at his voice, overly patient as though he was explaining something simple to a dense child. She pushed the plate toward him. “Then by all means, finish it off if you want. I can’t eat another bite.” She pronounced each word very slowly, hoping to be equally condescending.

  He shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then he took his utensil and forked the chicken.

  “I promise you I won’t say a word.” And she wouldn’t, even if she was starving. He had issued a challenge, and he would shortly realize what determination really meant. Didn’t he know she drew her strength from God and could do anything she set her heart to?

  When he slid her piece of meat into his mouth, Kate felt transfixed by the action. She watched him chew it, savoring it as though it was the finest cuisine.

  After finishing her chicken, Mr. Slader started to toss some money onto the table to pay for the meal. He stopped, pocketed his cash, and relaxed back in his hard-wooden chair, silently waiting for her.

  “We’d better get to bed if we’re gonna be on the river by sunrise. We’ll travel when it’s light. The jungle is difficult enough with the benefit of light.”

  “You won’t get an argument out of me.”

  He rose, flinging down his napkin. “Good. I’m sure I’ll be reminding you of those very words sometime over the next few days.”

  After paying the bill, Kate started for the entrance to the dining room, aware of Mr. Slader following closely behind. Goose bumps skittered across her skin, and she resisted the urge to squirm as she covered the length of the lobby. When she began to climb the stairs and he did, too, she stopped and turned toward him.

  “You don’t have to walk me to my room. I doubt anyone trashed it while we were at dinner.”

  “Probably not.”

  She blocked him on the stairs to the second floor. “Then I’ll meet you tomorrow morning in the lobby at five.”

  “Fine.”

  She twisted around and started up the staircase again. He did, too. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “Is this a momentary lapse in character?”

  He cocked his head in question.

  “Being the gentleman?”

  He snorted. “Hardly. My room is next to yours.”

  She nearly stumbled on the last step. Gripping the bannister, she righted herself before he had
a chance to reach out and touch her—that wouldn’t do at all. She hurried up to the second-floor landing. “It is? Since when?” Panic laced her words.

  “Last night.”

  “Why?”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his intense gaze sliding away. “Just protecting my source of income.”

  Source of income? She pointed to herself. “You mean me?”

  “Yes.”

  She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted, exasperated or flattered by his remark. “I can take care—”

  He took a step nearer. She took a step back, then another until she came up against the hallway wall.

  “I’m sure you can, lady.” Sarcasm dripped from his words.

  But that wasn’t what caught her full attention. His nearness and his musky scent held her transfixed.

  “That is, if you were in Red Creek. But you aren’t—lady. Has it occurred to you someone might not want you to go looking for your brother? What if Slick was paid to kidnap you yesterday? Or worse, to kill you? I tried to find him last night and couldn’t. He’s disappeared. What if the trashing of your room wasn’t just a simple robbery attempt? I don’t like coincidences. Why would someone not want your brother found?”

  She shook her head, words gone from her mind as though she’d lost the ability to string them together. Shocked, not so much from what he had said as from his continued nearness, all she could focus on was the brightness in his dark eyes, the white scar on his cheek, thin and in stark contrast to his tanned skin, the fullness of his mouth, firmed in a frown at the moment and directed totally at her.

  “I don’t know why,” Kate whispered.

  He stepped back, giving her some breathing space. “Since I didn’t think you would want to share a room, I did the next best thing. I got the one next to you and paid to have the person in that room moved to another one. It will be on your bill in the end.”

  For a fleeting moment, she’d been touched that he’d cared about her safety—that was until his last sentence. Long ago, she’d given up the illusion that a man could care about her. She shoved past Mr. Slader and headed toward her door. “Of course.” Fumbling with her key, she dropped it, and it clanged to the wooden floor.

  He picked it up and leaned around her to open her door, peering inside. “Just holler if you get into trouble. I’m only a room away.”

  “I’ll remember that when I’m fighting off the hordes of bad guys after me.” She started to close her door.

  He stuck his foot forward and stopped it from shutting. “You’d better take what I said seriously. There’s more going on here.”

  “I didn’t hire you to be my bodyguard but my guide. And I’m taking this very seriously. My brother’s life is at stake.”

  “Not just your brother’s, but yours, as well.”

  She notched her chin up an inch. “And yours, too.”

  He grinned, but the dark orbs of his eyes remained cold. “Yes, and mine, too.” He pulled the door shut for her, and she didn’t hear his footsteps move away until she’d locked it.

  She collapsed back against the wooden slab that was her measly protection against the outside world, not a very good one, since she had been robbed. One hand gripped the knob as though that action would keep her upright.

  What had she gotten herself into? She’d been so tired yesterday evening that beyond straightening the room and eating dinner, she’d gone right to bed and hadn’t thought of anything. She didn’t believe in coincidences, either. Mr. Slader was right, though she wished he wasn’t. Who could possibly want to stop her from looking for her brother? Had he stumbled onto something worth killing for? The direction of her thoughts caused her to tremble. She hugged her arms to herself and pushed away from the door. When she found her brother, they would work together to discover if someone wanted to stop him or laugh over Mr. Slader’s silly assumption.

  With her resolve firmly in place, Kate gathered her soap, toothbrush and bottled water so she could head to the bathroom at the end of the hall, one shared by everyone on the floor. Thankfully, it was unoccupied, so she didn’t have to wait in the hall. She quickly washed up, trying very hard not to notice the rust stains in the sink or shower or the less-than-clean state of the room. But when a very large roach ran across the floor, she jumped, covering her mouth to keep her scream inside. It scurried behind the toilet, prompting Kate to rush through brushing her teeth then snatching up her grooming items.

  She started for the door when someone pounded on it. She froze, looking around as though she needed to hide.

  “Hurry up in there. You have people waiting.”

  Mr. Slader’s voice boomed, followed by another pounding. Relief drooped her shoulders, and she opened the door to find him standing on the other side with his arms crossed and a disgruntled look on his face.

  “I should have known it was you taking all this time,” he muttered, pushing past her.

  She should have let his comment go, but for some reason she couldn’t. “Fifteen minutes isn’t considered a long time where I come from.”

  “Everything is different here.”

  “So you say.” She turned to go back to her room.

  His hand on her arm halted her progress. “I hope you enjoyed this bit of civilization—” he jerked his thumb to indicate the bathroom “—because starting tomorrow, it gets a whole lot worse.”

  She yanked her arm from his grasp, gave him her best glare, and stalked away. She felt his focus on her the whole way to her room and chalked it up to him protecting his meal ticket, not to anything that meant he cared if she lived or died.

  Inside her room, she undressed and pulled back her covers to check for unwanted guests in her bed, still remembering that large roach in the bathroom. Knowing five in the morning would be there before she realized it, she slipped between the gray-tinged sheets then, because it was so muggy, tossed the covers off her.

  Lying in the bed that creaked with each movement, the room thrown into shadows from the light streaming in through the dingy curtains that didn’t completely cover the window, she watched the ceiling fan go around and around, stirring the hot air and only giving off marginal relief. It, too, creaked with each rotation, a rhythmic sound that became a lure that drowned out the other sounds of the night—loud music, boisterous laughter and an occasional shout. Slowly her brain shut down, and her eyelids grew heavy until the darkness came.

  A thump brought Kate fully awake. With a start she bolted straight up in bed. Fear clawed at her chest as she scanned her room for an intruder. A muffled sound, as though someone was saying no over and over came to her, then a crash—like a table being knocked over.

  Kate scrambled from her bed, fumbling for something to throw over the large T-shirt she was using for a nightgown. She grabbed for her yellow satin robe that had been torn in several places but was still wearable. The sounds were coming from Mr. Slader’s room. The thought that he was in trouble prodded her forward without really thinking through what she was doing.

  Chapter Four

  As Kate headed toward her door, she grabbed the machete that she had insisted she have so she could do her share of the work, then charged out into the hallway, half-expecting to find people gathered to see what had caused the loud racket. The corridor was empty. She hurried to Mr. Slader’s door and tested it to see if it had been unlocked. It didn’t budge, and yet she could hear sounds like groans coming from inside. Was he wrestling with someone or hurt?

  Unsure what to do next, she peered around her, then began banging on the door. If she couldn’t get inside to help him, maybe at least she could scare his intruder away. That thought brought her up short. Where would the intruder flee to? The hallway where she was?

  Her bravery wavering, she backed up, clutching the machete in both hands and raising it up in front of her. She braced her feet apart, every muscle in her body locked as she had seen someone in a movie do once.

  The sounds stopped. But the thundering in her ears vied
with the silence that now ruled. She hadn’t thought it was possible to tense any more, but she did.

  The door flew open.

  Her eyes grew round.

  His hands fisted, Mr. Slader stood in the doorway, shirtless, with a scowl on his face, his long black hair loose and tousled about his wide shoulders. Then he saw her, threw back his head and laughed. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?” He pointed at the machete, still held up before her.

  “I was—I was—” She cleared the thickness in her throat and brought the weapon to her side, her attention still riveted to his chest heaving with his mirth. “I was going to save you.”

  His laughter increased.

  She glanced about to see if they had gathered a crowd now that he was making such a racket with his merriment. Thankfully the hallway remained empty. The way things had been going lately, it would have been just her luck that someone would have finally decided to investigate the commotion. “I’m glad you think it’s so funny. Next time I’ll let the intruder get you.”

  He sobered some, but the amusement still shone in his dark brown eyes. “I appreciate you coming to my rescue, but as you can see, there was no intruder.”

  “I heard noises, groans coming from your room, something crashing to the floor. I thought—”

  He covered the few feet to her, his movement cutting off her flow of words. He pried the weapon from her hands. She dug her teeth into her bottom lip. He was so close she could almost touch him…But she wouldn’t think about that.

  “I must have been dreaming.” He shrugged. “That’s all. No big deal.”

  “But—”

  He turned her toward her room and gently pushed her forward. “You need your sleep. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”