by Julie Miller
But Luis reacted quickly. "Enough!"
A deafening blow of thunder exploded in the air behind her. Falling to her knees, Sarah pushed Lynnette across a ditch into the protective underbrush. But before she herself could scramble to her feet or crawl to safety, the hard bite of metal tapped the base of her skull. She froze.
"Get up on your feet."
"You're not a killer, Luis." Playing for time, full of blind hope, she tried to reason with him. Appeasing his desperation, she slowly stood and turned around to meet the sleek black tip of the rifle pointed at her forehead. It was mere inches from her face, the hot odor of gunpowder stinging her nose, sickening her as much as the senseless, unending threat of this man's greed did.
He shook his head, but the gun remained steady. "It was all so simple. We open the tomb and take the treasure while you sleep. In the morning, you and your students dig up the artifacts we have uncovered."
"The few you leave behind for us, you mean." If Luis wanted to talk, she'd encourage the distraction. Anything to give Lynnette time to reach the others and be safe. "How many expeditions have you used as a cover to raid Las Lagumas? The authorities in El Espanto think you're some kind of savior, rescuing the national treasures of King Meczaquatl and Queen Prini."
"They were easy to fool. Eager to be 'a part of history.' “He quoted the very brochure that had lured Sarah here in the first place. Her stomach flipped over in self-loathing for how gullible she'd been to fall into his plan so easily and so completely. "And the government believes what I tell them."
"How can you endanger children like this? How do you justify using them?"
"The children were never in any danger. No one ever got hurt until this expedition. Until your Indian friend decided to come along. He is no teacher. No student. He is like no human I have ever seen. He is unnatural." Sarah bristled at the derogatory description, feeling the slur in Luis's voice as painfully as if his words had insulted her instead of Hawk. "He's been a danger to me from the beginning. But I will put a stop to him. Now."
Luis's finger brushed the trigger. Sarah's breath lodged in her chest. She braced for the impact of the bullet, prayed for forgiveness when she reached the hoped-for peace on the other side.
"Put down the gun."
In the blinding light of midday, Hawk emerged from the trees like a shadow from the darkness. Darkness from darkness, she'd once thought with fear. But no more. Her breath seeped from her lungs with blessed relief. Hawk's reassuring presence fortified her like the cooling relief of evening settling in on a hot day.
He moved as silently as a wraith into the clearing, holding up both hands high enough for Luis to see them, high enough for him to see the thick, gleaming blade of the knife he held in his hand.
Without moving his rifle from Sarah, Luis spoke. "Drop it."
Hawk swung his midnight gaze over to Sarah. In that briefest of contacts, she saw deadly conviction and something else. Something deeper, fiery, and full of promise. A feeling of cherished protection washed over Sarah. The sensation was as welcome as it was foreign.
He would die for her, she realized. The predatory gleam in his calm expression held no mercy for Luis. Yet she knew he would willingly sacrifice himself to protect her. Something altered deep inside her, an infinitesimal shift in her spirit that changed her perception of the world, that shone new light on her perception of herself.
Hawk could not die. This gentle, soul-healing man whom she loved could not die. She pleaded with her eyes. She pleaded with her heart. "Hawk, no. Don't do anything—"
"Silence!" Luis shook the gun scant millimeters from her face. Sarah gasped and staggered back a step. "The knife, Indian."
"Do what you want with me," Hawk said in a throaty whisper. The words were barely audible, but they vibrated through the air with unmistakable clarity. "But you hurt her, and I'll track you down. There won't be any place in this world you can hide from me."
The threat earned Hawk a thin-lipped sneer from Luis. He knew he had the upper hand as long as he controlled Sarah's fate. "Brave words for a man who is about to die. The knife?"
With his fathomless, unblinking gaze locked on Luis, Hawk knelt down and laid his weapon on the ground. When he straightened, he shook out his arms and shoulders with the controlled, calculating, predatory finesse of a big jungle cat.
But the older man refused to be intimidated. "Kick it away," ordered Luis.
Hawk obeyed. With the weapon now twenty feet away in the underbrush, Luis's expression broadened into a self-satisfied smile. "I cannot allow you to stop me. You might outsmart my men, but you will not get the best of me. I know this jungle as well as the man who tamed it. I know all its secrets, all its treasures. Meczaquatl built an empire out of rock and gold and ambition. He eliminated those who defied him, carved them up as offerings to the gods. I have studied the master. I have learned his lessons by heart. I will follow his example. The scavengers will not even be able to smell what is left of you."
Hawk dropped his hands to his sides. "You don't know him at all. You have no respect for what he accomplished. No idea of the power he still commands."
Laughter bubbled from deep in Luis's chest. It moved up his throat and spilled out in a devilish roar. "You are a madman! Meczaquatl has been dead for centuries. I told you he was crazy. Loco, this one. I am about to do you a favor, senorita." Luis's gaze darted from Hawk to Sarah. "Face down in the dirt."
Sarah looked at Hawk, not fully understanding Luis's intentions, but certain the results would be fatal. The granite mask of Hawk's expression never changed, but he gave her the slightest of nods.
"No—" She leaned forward, but a reminding tap on the shoulder from Luis's gun stopped her protest.
"Sarah, please. Do as he says." In that softest of voices, like a lover's call, he begged her to do what he asked.
Left with little choice but to comply, Sarah went down on her knees, sharing one last look with both men. She didn't know which frightened her more, the murderous intent in Luis's expression, or the stalwart look of acceptance on Hawk's. Briefly, she hoped the girls were hidden well enough so that they couldn't witness this execution. But her last thoughts centered around her heart and the painful rendering of knowledge that she had learned to love and trust a man, but that she had learned too late. She spread flat on her stomach and turned her cheek into the mud.
The next few seconds played out like eons. "On your knees, Indian," she heard Luis command.
Hawk made no sound, but she could tell by the shifting of Salazar's feet that he had his unresisting target in the sights of his gun.
"The treasure of Meczaquatl is mine."
A grinding roar crashed through the trees, startling into flight a raucous chorus of birds and sending a skittering, slithering army of tiny animals deeper into the safety of the jungle. Sarah lifted her head and saw a grimy white truck clunking over ruts and barreling toward her. The rapid report of gunshots reverberated loudly above the wild cacophony.
She screamed and rolled into the ditch, narrowly dodging the crushing wheels. Ignoring the slimy water that filled her boots and soaked her clothes, she clawed her way to her feet and watched the truck fly past. She glimpsed a flash of red behind the wheel, noticed a second person hanging out the passenger window, and realized that was where the shots had come from. Lyndsay? Raul? They'd stolen Luis's truck!
New hope surged through her. She dug her fingers into the earth as the truck sped past and climbed out of the ditch, desperate to see if Hawk had survived. The two men tumbled back and forth in a twisting heap on the ground. She saw Hawk raise up, watched his fist go down.
Luis jerked beneath him. But then the older man's legs kicked, and suddenly Hawk was in the mud and Luis dove at him. Hawk coiled at the last instant, and Luis crashed to the ground.
Sarah looked around for some way to help Hawk. His knife lay on the opposite side of the brawl from her. But Luis's rifle was closer at hand, in the middle of the road. With the instinct to survive guid
ing her steps, she ran and picked it up. A resounding thud diverted her attention. Luis flew back toward her, hitting her legs and toppling her to the ground.
"Sarah!"
Hawk's bellow reached her the instant Luis realized his advantage. Suddenly she was clinging to the gun and struggling to hold on to it. But Luis ripped it from her grip.
She scrambled backward, crablike, as he rolled onto his haunches at her feet. In the space of a heartbeat, he had the gun leveled at her and his finger pressed to the trigger.
"Sarah!"
Hawk leaped at them the same time the gun went off. Luis's rifle sailed through the air, and Hawk's dark form crumpled in a lurch, crushing her beneath the rangy shield of his body.
"Hawk! No!"
She felt the warm, sticky ooze seeping between her fingertips. In a catch of breath somewhere between a gasp for air and a cry for help, she twisted beneath him to free herself and check his injury. With his right arm he propped himself above her, his chiseled bronze features looking ashen around his mouth when he looked down at her.
Sarah sat up. She touched his face, ran her hand down along his arm and flanks, and found the wound in his left side. She lifted her gaze to the powerful midnight promise in his eyes, then looked over his head and beyond.
Luis staggered to his feet, his weapon in hand. His bloodied mouth hung open, gasping in lungfuls of air. Then he closed it with a laughing smile and trained the gun on them both.
"Adios, senorita."
From out of nowhere, a swirling chimera of distorted light rushed at Luis. As startled as she, Luis watched the vortex whip around his head. Then it seemed to spread out around him. The temperature dropped. The strange phenomenon glowed. It grew and ebbed around Luis, spinning more quickly, gathering light. Gathering strength.
The light was alive. The light...
Luis screamed. The hovering entity closed in on him, attacking him with a force that knocked the gun from his hands. He clawed at his chest, gurgling for air as the thing sucked itself down his throat.
"Don't look." Hawk wrapped his right arm around her, pulled her down and tucked her beneath him. Sarah buried her face in his shoulder, clutching him tightly and shielding her eyes from the blinding prism of colors that careened around their would-be killer.
She shivered with the cold, and Hawk wound his body more securely around her. He bent his head to her neck and chanted something into her ear. Foreign words. Indian words. Powerful medicine. A prayer to keep that thing at bay.
Seconds later, minutes later, maybe a lifetime later, the shrieks stopped. She became aware of the warmth of Hawk's body surrounding her, and sensed the jungle air adjusting itself to its normal, sunny hues.
The thing was gone.
As suddenly as it had appeared, it had vanished.
Breathing heavily, Hawk loosened his hold on her and they helped each other to a sitting position. She looked past him and saw Luis Salazar's twisted, pale body lying on the road. The fixed terror in his sightless eyes told her he was dead.
Stunned, she lifted her gaze to Hawk. His sad, pitying stare focused on the corpse of their attacker.
"What was that?" she asked.
Several silent moments passed before he answered.
"Retribution."
Retribution?
Sarah gripped the steering wheel harder and tried to switch her concentration back to the road. But the deep, meditative silence of the man beside her filled her thoughts.
Hawk never explained his answer, and he hadn't spoken another word to her since Luis's death two hours before. But he knew what had happened; she was sure of that. He understood the horrid, unspeakable thing that had killed Luis. It probably had killed Antonio, too. Maybe even Hernandez.
But she had no answers to the puzzle. A freakish phenomenon of nature had choked the life out of a man right before her eyes, an impossibility to her learned mind. She had a million questions.
Only one man had the answer.
And he wasn't talking.
And the potential consequences of that secretive knowledge frightened her.
"Are you in pain?" she asked. Maybe if she could get him to open up about something else first, she could ease into asking about what had happened. "You lost a lot of blood. You're not going to pass out on me, are you?"
At that moment she hit a rut, and the wheel jerked in her hands. She tugged hard in the opposite direction, fighting to keep her seat and keep the truck on the road at the same time. Once she had the vehicle heading straight again, she turned and offered Hawk a sheepish smile. "Sorry. I guess that's how Lyndsay ended up putting their truck in the ditch."
Still nothing. He continued to look out his window and scan the reflection in the side mirror, as though he expected that someone else—maybe something else—was following them. His right hand cradled the barrel of the rifle standing up between his knees, and his left hand rested on the hilt of his long-bladed knife, lying between them on the bench seat.
Sarah wanted nothing more than to reach across the gulf between them and touch that hand. What had once terrified her now fascinated her—the warmth of his skin, the hard lines of sinewed strength over his knuckles and down his long fingers. His touch meant reassurance. It meant strength and understanding, an anchor to latch onto to right herself through turbulent times.
She needed that anchor now
But something about his edgy silence kept her hands locked on the wheel.
"Is the bandage holding?"
"It's fine." At last, a response.
"I still think a doctor should look at it. You'll probably need a few stitches." Her brief flare of hope was absorbed by dead silence. The wild beauty of the jungle and its canopy had become an endless green tunnel leading toward civilization. This whole journey had turned into a never-ending nightmare.
Her nightmare. A lonely woman's rosy-eyed dream of adventure had ended up a surreal nightmare of danger and terror and death.
Read my aura, she heard herself wishing. Look at me. See my confusion and help me understand. But her silent pleas went unnoticed.
"The girls really did their part, didn't they?" Sarah purposely steered the one-sided conversation toward a lighter topic. She needed some sound, even an inane monologue on her part, to drown out the terrifying imaginings swimming through her mind. "When Colleen said she and Denise had found this truck loaded with all the artifacts from Las Lagumas, I couldn't believe it. I've always known they were talented and smart young women, but I had no idea just how resourceful my students could be. Lyndsay and Raul saved our lives by distracting Luis. Andrea fixed the radio. Lynnette's writing it all down in her journal. She'll probably turn it into a best-seller someday."
Her forced smile faded along with her bravado. She resigned herself to passing the next two miles listening only to the warring voices speculating inside her head.
She felt as uncomfortable and bewildered as she had at the first and only dance she had attended her freshman year of high school. Her date back then had endured an equally torturous evening of awkward silence. She'd had so many ideas to talk about, so much she wanted to ask about him if she could just come up with the right words and get past the idea that any attempt at conversation on her part would be considered an intrusion or get laughed at for being inconsequential.
The man beside her now was a good deal more mature than Brian What's-his-name had been, and her feelings for Hawk ran deeper than she could possibly have imagined caring for a man back then. She, too, had changed, maybe more in the past few days than in the twenty years since that dance. She could speak her mind on the girls' behalf. She'd even risen to Hawk's defense.
But to broach the subject of her own fears, her own confusion, still terrified her. She felt raw and battered from all she had revealed to him the previous night. She needed for those wounds to heal and make her stronger before she could overcome years of shyness and self-doubt and confront a man as imposing and important to her as Hawk had become.
So
she would do what she did best. She'd be patient, tuck away her fears and concerns, and concentrate on getting something useful done. Except she wouldn't be very much good to anyone if she stranded them out here.
Looking down at the dashboard, Sarah watched the gas gauge teeter toward empty. Having no idea how much farther El Espanto lay, she gritted her teeth against the jarring ride and turned to speak to Hawk.
"How much farther do you think it is? There weren't any gas cans in the back, and I doubt if there's a gas station along the way."
Instead of answering, he shifted his gaze from the open side window to the front windshield. Like a bloodhound picking up a scent, he turned his attention to a distant point ahead of them.
"What is it?" she asked, straining to see what had caught his eye.
"Stop the truck."
Hawk pushed a clip of bullets up into the rifle and slapped it with his palm.
"Hawk?" From the corner of her eye, Sarah watched the former Marine slip into battle mode. She stomped on the clutch, ground her way through the gears and killed the engine. Before the truck jerked to a stop, Hawk stepped out onto the running board and jumped down. He circled the vehicle, surveying the area, ending up in front with Raul close behind.
Sarah hurried out after him, closing her door and holding out her arm to keep the curious throng of teenage girls from joining the men.
"Hawk, what is it?" she asked again, a crawling sense of foreboding chilling her skin. He tipped his nose to the sky, sniffing the air with his preternatural abilities. With her nerves frayed from the tension of the drive, his unexplained alarm triggered a kaleidoscope of imagined dangers—and her temper. She turned to Denise. "Stay back."
The girl nodded, taking charge of the others while Sarah strode up to Hawk.
"Are you ever going to answer me?" she demanded.
The stillness of the late afternoon echoed in ominous silence. He stared down the road, his heightened senses seeing something in the distance she could not.
"Would Luis have any accomplices in El Espanto?" she asked, considering possibilities that Hawk refused to share. "Someone who might check on him if he didn't show up at a certain time?"
