River of Eden

by Glenna Mcreynolds

  Or maybe he'd floated down from the sky. Nothing could have surprised her more than his sudden, soundless appearance, no matter how he'd arrived. He was dressed in a scrap of a loincloth and had rows of red shoroshoro beads wrapped tightly around the leanly muscled biceps of both his arms. His sternly silent face was deeply lined with age, but his eyes were bright, black as night, and shining with an inner fire.

  He didn't look particularly threatening, but when he spoke—a sharp, guttural command—she heard movement behind her. She whirled around, lunging to her feet, but was captured before she could grab her gun, one Indian hauling her up against his chest, while another snaked a rope around her legs.

  SHE LIKED HIM.

  Even as Santa Maria came into sight, Will was still seething. For the first time in years, his focus had been jerked out from under him, and Annie Parrish had been the one to do it. Gabriela had been wrong. He wasn't nearing the end of anything, because when he was finished with Vargas, he was heading north to Laramie, Wyoming, and a little blond-haired, wild woman who liked him—liked him so much she'd nearly sucked his tongue down her throat, liked him so much she'd had her hand halfway down his pants. Another inch, and he would have been on top of her.

  He was still suffering, his loins still aching, and all he could do was let out a soft groan and try not to laugh. It was ridiculous, the way she got to him. Good God, he'd probably be dead inside of a week, and all he could think about was her.

  He hoped to hell she didn't like Jackson Reid the way she liked him.

  Merda. He didn't want to think about it.

  Keeping close to shore, he took a good look around the dock. The one boat tied up was Father Aldo's ancient batalone, a huge dugout with built-up sides for carrying cargo. The canoe Annie was expecting was nowhere in sight, but it wouldn't have been unusual for the priest to have loaned it out until she arrived. On the Amazon, everything got used.

  He'd stopped at Santa Maria hundreds of times in the last two years, and as far as he could tell, no more than usual was going on, which meant absolutely nothing was going on. The pilot would be at Father Aldo's, and after tying up the canoe, Will headed in that direction.

  The mission was little more than a runway bordered by half a dozen buildings. One was Father Aldo's, the others the mission school, which doubled as the church, a storehouse, and the rest homes, one of them maintained by RBC for their researchers. A stack of crates and boxes next to the last house in the row looked as if they could be Annie's supplies. More supplies were stacked up next to Father Aldo's house, the cargo probably delivered by the plane at the end of the runway. The place was quiet, with a few lanterns on inside the houses, the forest all around humming with the sound of cicadas. If Fat Eddie had figured out Annie was on her way to Santa Maria, he hadn't gotten here yet.

  “Guillermo!” a voice called out, followed by the sound of several guns being cocked in the dark.

  Will froze where he stood, mentally retracting his last thought and calling himself the world's biggest fool.

  “Where's the woman, Guillermo? The little cat? And my guns?”

  It was Fat Eddie all right, and how in the hell had he been stupid enough to walk into the fat man's trap? There were no other boats tied up at the dock, but he should have realized that Fat Eddie could have half a dozen moored just out of sight.

  And he obviously did.

  The plane wasn't Eddie Mano's, though, and it wasn't Vargas's. Will could see the markings of a service that flew out of São Gabriel. It would have been perfect for getting Annie into Colombia. São Gabriel was only two hours from the border by plane.

  “I still have her, senhor,” he called out, trying to locate everyone in the dark. Fat Eddie had to be behind the cargo crates next to Father Aldo's. Nothing else was big enough to hide him. On the other side of the street, the end of a rifle barrel could just be seen poking out from behind the mission school. “I'm keeping her for myself.”

  “ 'Ta louco, Guillermo. You are very, very crazy, yes. This woman has brought you nothing but trouble, and will only bring you more.”

  An understatement, if Will had ever heard one, but Fat Eddie would never hear it from him.

  “You were right about the guns, senhor. She did have them on my boat. You can have them back. All I want is the woman.” Will heard a boat engine starting a little ways down the river, to the east; then he heard another and another, and another, until there was no distinguishing one motor from the rest.

  Merda.

  Laughter rang out from behind the crates, good old belly laughter, but Will didn't like the sound of it.

  “Of course you can have her, my friend. Most of her. I only want the one part.” More laughter filled the air as Eddie's men joined in on the macabre joke, and Will had to fight to keep his panic at bay. Panic wasn't going to save her—or him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a single boat chugging down from the west.

  “Drop your gun on the ground, my friend, and we can talk.”

  It wasn't a request, and Will obeyed, slipping his pistol out of his waistband and slowly lowering it to the ground. The instant metal met dirt, Fat Eddie and his men walked out from where they'd been hiding.

  “Guillermo, Guillermo,” Fat Eddie sighed, walking forward with the rolling, side-to-side gait of the dangerously obese. He was still wearing his orange and brown striped shirt and a billowy pair of black pants. After two steps, he began to pant, the effort of ambulating three hundred and twenty pounds proving to be a huge strain. “This is all so very bad for you.”

  It didn't look too good for Fat Eddie, either. Will watched him come closer and closer, and wondered what the chances were of the man having fatal cardiac arrest in the next ten feet.

  Eddie stopped and snapped his fingers, and Will's hopes faded. The man knew his limits. Two of his jagunços brought out a big wooden chair on poles for lifting, and the fat man descended with a wheezing groan.

  “Where is she, my friend? Still on your boat, I think?”

  Will shrugged.

  Fat Eddie made a quick gesture with his hand, and two of his men came forward to frisk Will down.

  So much for the gems, he thought, when they got to his front pockets. One of the men pulled out the bag, and with a ragged-toothed grin, took it over to Fat Eddie.

  “Ah, this is good.” The fat man smiled, looking inside and then hefting the bag in his hand. “You are not so far from the Rio Cauaburi, Guillermo, and because I like you, I will think you were still taking these to Corisco Vargas. You will still die, but at least not as a thief.”

  The distinction, which seemed to make a difference to Fat Eddie, was lost on Will.

  “But the guns and the woman, these I still want. These I still need. Where is the Sucuri, my friend?”

  Will only had one answer to that question, and he knew it wasn't the one Fat Eddie wanted to hear.

  “I want the woman. All of her.” And the importance of that distinction was not lost on him at all.

  “Is she worth your life?”

  “Yes.” As a commodity, his life had been sold any number of times over the last few years. Once more for Annie seemed like the bargain of the century, especially given the way these things had been going for him, because in the end, he was Tutanji's. No matter what Fat Eddie Mano, or Corisco Vargas, or anybody else came up with to do to him, the bargain he'd made with Tutanji was the one that bound him.

  And it beckoned, that bargain did. He'd been struggling for so long to fulfill his part, he sometimes lost sight of what awaited him, if he ran his quarry to ground and vanquished the shaman's demon. A glimpse of the beginning of life, Tutanji had promised, a journey to an Amazonian Eden, to the garden where the Dakú had first been born into a lost world, a place untouched by time.

  Knowing Tutanji, the least Will expected to find was a living fossil, a plant previously known only from the fossil record of plants that had died millions of years ago, and if that's all he found, it would stil
l be the discovery of the century. Or would have been. Annie's orchid could very well eclipse any discovery of his.

  A wry smile curved his mouth, and he saw Fat Eddie's brows knit together. The fat man had no idea what was out there in the rain forest, and whatever Vargas was hoping to gain with his Night of the Devil, it wasn't the true treasure. Annie had found a true treasure. Tutanji had promised another to him. Or maybe they were both one and the same. The thought had crossed his mind more than once since seeing her orchid. Either way, he wasn't going to be denied, not after three long years of sacrificing everything he'd ever thought he believed in.

  No, he thought. Fat Eddie Mano wasn't going to be the end of him, not when he was this close.

  “Yes, senhor,” he repeated. “She is worth my life, but what good is she to me, if I am dead?”

  Back on familiar ground, the fat man relaxed his furrowed brow, and his grin returned. “Dead men don't need women. This is true, my friend.”

  Behind him, Will heard the boats arriving and tying up. Men began jumping onto the dock. He glanced over his shoulder to get an idea of how many reinforcements Eddie had called in, and swore under his breath. His odds, already bad, had just become impossible. There were dozens of boats on the river, all shapes and sizes, all of them with at least seven men on them.

  “Marcos. Olá,” Fat Eddie called out. “Que é que você sabe? ” What do you know?

  A tall, powerfully built man brushed by Will where he stood on the edge of the dock. Marcos was better groomed than most of Eddie's henchmen, with a fairly clean, blue T-shirt tucked into a pair of recognizably khaki slacks, and a cowboy hat set at a rakish angle over his neatly trimmed black hair.

  He bent to whisper in Fat Eddie's ear, handing him a piece of paper.

  “You left her on the Rio Marauiá, Guillermo.” Fat Eddie's smile broadened. “Marcos saw your canoe coming into the Negro. I'm sure you would have told me this yourself.”

  Will wouldn't have put money on it. He'd been planning a nice, simple lie about leaving her in Barcelos. With that option gone, he was going to have to rely on Annie.

  Fat Eddie looked down at the paper Marcos had handed him, and his smile grew even wider. “Incrível,” he exclaimed and looked up at Will. “It seems you are right, Guillermo. She is worth much more in one piece. Ten thousand reais more.”

  With that, he burst into another round of rolling laughter, setting his whole body shaking like a boatload of Jell-O.

  Sweet Christ, Will thought, staring at the paper Fat Eddie was waving around. Even in the fading light, he could see the worst—Annie's face on a wanted poster with a bounty of ten thousand reais printed in big bold numbers at the bottom, and the words “Wanted Alive” printed at the top.

  Right then and there, she became the single most amazing woman he'd ever met anywhere on the planet. She was like a friggin' magnet for disaster, and how in the hell he'd ever thought he could simply give her a lift up the river without his whole life coming unglued was beyond him, totally beyond him.

  He swore, a single succinct word that didn't begin to encompass his frustration. She'd said she'd decided to stay, and he doubted she'd waited too long after he'd left to break out something a damn sight more deadly than her 9-millimeter handgun.

  He only hoped she wouldn't hesitate to use it.

  CHAPTER 18

  Full dark had fallen by the time Fat Eddie's henchmen had gotten him levered into his little black speedboat and headed west up the Rio Negro to the Marauiá. Motoring up the mouth of the tributary in Marcos's gaiola riverboat, Will spotted his landmark, a lupuna tree towering above the rest of the canopy, its crown silhouetted by a waning half-moon. The Sucuri was tied up in the igapó on the other side of the tree.

  There was no way for Fat Eddie and his half a dozen boatloads of goons not to see the Sucuri once they passed the bend. Annie was smart, though, he kept telling himself. She wouldn't take any chances. She'd seen Johnny Chang's head. She knew the price she was going to pay, if Fat Eddie got a hold of her. She just didn't know there had been another price put on her head. Will only wondered how good she was with her Galils and how long she would hesitate before she used them, and whether or not she could manage to protect herself without killing him by accident—and it would be an accident, if she shot him. She more than liked him. He knew it down to his bones.

  Standing on the deck, he watched the night-black wall of the jungle slip by. The river was quiet, the sound of rushing water a low undercurrent as their boats turned into the bend and passed beneath the lupuna tree.

  “How much farther, Guillermo?” Fat Eddie asked from where he was shoehorned into the speedboat running alongside the gaiola.

  “A few more miles, senhor,” It wouldn't be much of a lie in about another minute, but it might buy her a few extra seconds, when she would see them, but they'd all still be looking up the river for her.

  “Marcos?” Fat Eddie called out.

  “Sim, senhor?” the man answered.

  “Put Guillermo in front. The woman has guns, many guns.”

  Marcos didn't hesitate, grabbing Will by the arm and shoving him toward the bow of the boat.

  Okay, Annie, he thought, stationing himself at the prow, a gun at his back. Be careful.

  As they came fully around the bend, he was relieved to see she hadn't put out a lantern. Then he was concerned. She should have lit a lantern by now—unless she was lying in ambush.

  Honest to God, he wouldn't put it past her. She hadn't survived all these years without a sixth sense for danger.

  But as the boats continued up the river, Will realized there was more than just a lantern missing. The whole damn Sucuri was gone.

  He swore under his breath, leaning forward on the rail and scanning the western shore, looking for the pale silhouette of a boat floating on the water—and not finding it.

  Son of a bitch. She'd stolen the Sucuri, and ten to one said she was heading straight for Vargas. It hadn't taken her long to make her decision, either. Hell, she must have practically followed him down the Marauiá to the Negro and just missed Marcos. God knows where she was now. The Cauaburi was only fifty miles west of the Marauiá, the two rivers on a parallel course as they wound down from the Venezuelan highlands to the Rio Negro. She'd be at the mouth of the Cauaburi by morning, and he knew from Fat Eddie that Vargas was patrolling the whole river. If she lasted until dark tomorrow, it would be a miracle.

  A great commotion from the other boats brought his head around.

  “Jacaré! Jacaré!” the men shouted. “Um monstro!”

  Will couldn't see the jacaré, the caiman, they were pointing at, but every man jack of them was shouldering a rifle or pulling a pistol and holding their lanterns high. Some of the men were laughing, but it was laughter with an edge of fear.

  Fat Eddie motored toward the fray as the boats began circling around in the middle of the river, a broad grin splitting his face as he pointed into the water.

  “One thousand reais to the boat that brings me the beast's hide!” he shouted.

  “Um jacaré monstruoso!” Another boatload of men caught sight of the reptile.

  “Jacaré! Jacaré!”

  More men took up the shouting, the activity on the boats growing more frenzied. A few men fired off shots.

  Others were dragging out ropes and pieces of net. Marcos's boat moved closer, with Will torn between watching for the giant beast and trying to find some sign of Annie or the Sucuri where he'd left them at the shoreline.

  Damn it all! What in the hell was she thinking to head for Reino Novo alone? It didn't make sense.

  “Ooohhh!” A wave of fearful awe rose in a crescendo, and Will whirled around—just in time to see a huge, leathery snout rising out of the water, rows of fearsome, conical teeth bared and glinting in the light of a dozen lanterns, the animal's knobby, scaly hide cutting through the inky black surface of the water in a long, unbelievably long, unbroken line.

  Sweet Jesus! His breath caught in his th
roat on an instant of pure primal fear. The thing had to be twenty feet or more, an unheard-of length for an Amazonian caiman.

  “Two thousand reais!” Fat Eddie shouted louder, maneuvering his boat nearer the action. The flotilla of boats and men drifted and motored closer to the shore, ineffectually trying to cage the caiman thrashing in the water. Nets had been thrown into the river, and shots were still being fired off. Someone had gotten a hold of the gargantuan reptile with a boat hook.

  God, what a beast, the hide easily worth double the two thousand reais Fat Eddie was offering, but it wasn't going down without a fight. Water was flying everywhere, waves splashing into the boats, the caiman's tail cracking against the surface of the river.

  With everybody overly excited, circling around each other, and shooting off their guns, Will figured it was only a matter of minutes before somebody got killed. He hoped to hell it wouldn't be him.

  Letting out a strangled bellow, the animal sank back below the water, taking the nets and boat hook with him, and in a heartbeat, all the laughing and shouting stopped. Tension filled the air as men watched over the sides of their boats, playing out rope where they still had a hold on the caiman, everybody waiting, some in anticipation, some—from the looks on their faces—in abject dread.

  Will's gaze was pulled back toward the shore. It didn't make sense for Annie to have left him, but there wasn't a person in the Amazon who could have taken that boat away from her. No one boarded the Sucuri. No one.

  Except for Tutanji.

  The thought came out of nowhere to take hold of him, and with his own sense of abject dread, he felt his heart sink into the vicinity of his stomach.

  The old shaman could have come this far south.

  He thought back to Annie's nightmares and what she'd said about the sucuri on his boat, and his sick feeling got even worse. He didn't understand Tutanji any more than he had to, but during the year he'd spent with the Dakú, he'd understood the shaman enough to survive. Annie didn't stand a chance. Will didn't care how smart she was, or how strong she was, no woman was a match for a payé witch doctor with Tutanji's skills. The old man had nearly killed him half a dozen times with his concoctions and his trials, always pushing Will to his limits, to the end of his rope, and then cutting him free to fall where he may. Will's future had been read and molded as much by his failures as his successes. They were all the same to Tutanji, whose only goal was to destroy the demon who had invaded Dakú land, his method of destruction to create his own white devil to fight the white devil who dared to bring his sorcery to the lost world at the headwaters of the Cauaburi and the Rio Marauiá.