Ben was too smart to try to sell the diamond in Brazil. His contacts wouldn’t be legal, but she would bet the Empress would surface in Antwerp. It would attract worldwide attention, but its origins would forever remain murky, adding to its mystery and value. And what if it ended up being cut, divided, and placed in settings to enhance someone’s sense of importance? The thought of the Empress being cut was horrifying; it was the heart of a culture, and it should remain intact.
“Stop sulking,” he advised. “I meant what I said. I’ll take you back. What you wanted was proof of the Anzar and that’s what you’ll get.”
She moved away and sat in the bow, watching the river. Again the distance between them prevented conversation, but now it irritated him. He wanted to shake her, force her to see his side of it. He was using common sense, but she was spouting idealistic bullshit. Damn it, why hadn’t he been more careful? He hadn’t expected her to start nosing around in the pack after she got out the extra clip.
He was savagely frustrated. If he asked her to marry him now, she would think he had asked just to keep her quiet about the diamond. The way things stood, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing her that he really wanted to marry her. If this didn’t just beat all; the first time in his life he had ever thought about getting married, and Jillian not only wouldn’t believe him, she’d probably slap him if he even brought it up now.
What a son-of-a-bitching day. He’d been shot at, his boat had been sunk, he had realized he wanted to get married, and now Jillian was mad at him.
His patience was getting worn thin.
On top of all that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have made certain Dutra was dead. But he’d wanted to get Jillian away from there, and he supposed he would do the same thing if he had it to do over again. Protecting her came first.
There hadn’t been any sign of Kates. Ben didn’t figure there was much chance Kates was still alive. He’d made a big mistake in hiring Dutra, who would have turned on his own mother if there was money involved. Kates had needed Dutra, but Dutra hadn’t needed Kates. It was that simple.
But even if Dutra hadn’t been killed, he was wounded and had no way of coming after them, assuming he’d made it to the bank in his condition, and assuming his wounds didn’t turn septic. Infection was almost a certainty here in the tropics, unless Dutra knew enough about the medicinal qualities of plants to doctor himself, which seemed unlikely. So why was he still worried?
Because it paid to worry about things like that.
Dutra clung to the wreckage, letting himself slip below the surface of the water when he heard the raft swing around. He was terrified, thinking of his blood leaking into the river and attracting predators, expecting at any moment to feel thousands of sharp teeth sinking into him. When the noise of the motorized raft faded away, he rose gasping to the surface, but the boats were sinking fast and he had to get away from them. He had no choice. He tore a strip off his shirt and bound it tightly over the wound in his right arm, then hurled himself into the water.
He could barely use his arm, but his brute strength got him to shore and he crawled, exhausted, onto dry land. He lay there using every curse he had ever heard on Ben Lewis. The fool, why had he stopped in the middle of the day, evidently for a long time? He had never done such a thing before, but this day he had. Probably he had been using the woman, the little slut. Why couldn’t she have kept her legs together until night?
Because of that, Dutra hadn’t been prepared. The attack hadn’t gone the way he had planned. He had intended to slip up on them during the night, when they were asleep. How easy it would have been. Instead he was the one who had been surprised, and Lewis had nearly killed him.
But Dutra wasn’t dead. And he had the advantage now, because they thought he was. He would still follow them. Even if they got back to Manaus before he caught up with them, the outcome would be the same.
When he had regained some of his strength, Dutra struggled to his feet and, after a moment’s thought, turned upriver. He had passed a shack not so far back. There would be food, almost certainly a boat of some sort, and perhaps a weapon.
* * *
Ben would rather have spent the night at a settlement, but with the time they had lost he knew they wouldn’t make it that day. He eased the raft out of the current and into a protected shoal. “Looks like we’ll sleep one more night in the tent,” he said.
These were the first words he had spoken since she moved up to the bow of the raft, for she had remained there for the rest of the day. She didn’t reply now, but moved back so that the overhanging limbs wouldn’t hit her when he nudged the raft against the bank.
He hid the raft as well as he could, for smugglers would consider two people, especially when one of them was a woman, a far easier and more desirable target than a party of twelve. They had to force their way inland, away from the thick undergrowth that lined the riverbank, to find a place where he could set up the little tent. Immediately Jillian unpacked a few supplies and began preparing a simple meal.
He finished with the tent and gave her a deeply exasperated look. He hunkered down beside her, determined to put an end to this silent treatment. “Look, you might as well stop pouting. You don’t have to like it, but did you ever hear about cutting your losses? You aren’t going to get the diamond, but you’re still going to have everything else you wanted: proof of the Anzar and your father’s name cleared.”
“No, I won’t,” she said.
Initially he was so relieved that she had actually spoken to him that it took him a moment to think about what she’d said. “What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged. “I mean I refuse to have anything to do with an expedition financed by the sale of that diamond. I can’t stop you from doing what you want, but I don’t have to be involved. I’ll get on a plane and out of your hair as soon as we get back to Manaus.”
He’d had enough. His temper was ragged and he was holding on to it by only the thinnest thread. He gripped her arm, forcing her around to face him. “The hell you will,” he said, a deliberate space between each word.
“Oh? How do you propose to stop me? Kidnapping?” Her voice was both angry and taunting.
“If I have to.”
“I guess you would, at that.” She jerked her arm away. “But you’d do better to take your own advice and cut your losses. So why don’t you just forget about salving your conscience with another expedition, and save your energy, because there’s no way you could force me to have anything to do with it.”
“I’m not salving my conscience,” he snapped. “I said I’d get that proof for you, and I’ll do it, even if I have to drag you all the way back there.”
“Oh, I suppose you’re going to make me famous in spite of myself, and that’s supposed to make it all better? Theft is theft. Nothing will change that.”
“Just who in hell am I stealing from? The Brazilian people? Name one who would profit from the diamond being locked up in a museum, not even allowed to be seen because of security? Ninety percent of them wouldn’t even hear about it, and wouldn’t give a shit if they did. What if I had been mining and found the diamond? It’s the same diamond, but would it be all right then for me to take it? Finders keepers, right?” He was yelling. He had never been more furious in his life.
“You would be stealing from history.”
“Bullshit! You could put a goddamn piece of glass in its place, and the history of the Anzar would be exactly the same!”
“But it wasn’t a piece of glass, it was the Empress. I was taught my entire life to respect the past, to treasure every little bit of history we can find because it’s part of ourselves, who we are and how we got to where we are today. I’ve forced myself to stay awake more nights than you can imagine, with a gun in my hand, standing guard at a site to protect it from scavengers. Do you think I’m going to turn into one of those scavengers now?”
He wasn’t getting anywhere. He felt as if he were batte
ring his head against a brick wall. If God had ever made a more stubborn woman, he never wanted to meet her. This one was driving him crazy.
He gave up for the night. He’d said all he had to say. Let her think about it, and eventually her common sense would take over. She wanted to vindicate her father, and he had offered her a way to do so. She would accept that something was better than nothing.
Complete silence reigned between them for the rest of the night. When they had finished eating and cleared things away, he indicated the tent with a brusque motion of his hand and she crawled into it without a word. It was difficult in such a small tent, but she managed not to touch him. Of all the things that had happened that day, that infuriated him most of all.
The next day began in the same fashion. It was as if she had wiped him from her thoughts, as if he no longer existed, or at least was no longer noticeable unless he spoke to her and gained her brief attention—very brief attention. It lasted only as long as it took her to reply, in as few words as possible. Her manner made it plain that she bothered to reply only because it was polite to do so.
He found himself holding the raft to a slower speed, to stretch out the time she was forced to spend with him. It would give her common sense more time to take over. He only hoped he could hold out that long, because he hadn’t realized how hard it would be for him to restrain himself. Her deliberate aloofness outraged him. She was his; he would never let her go. He would do whatever was necessary to keep her with him, including the kidnapping she had so sarcastically suggested. If she thought he would stop short of that, then she didn’t know her man at all.
That was the bottom line. She was his and he was hers. How dare she ignore that? How dare she deliberately try to destroy the bonds between them? He’d be damned if he’d let that happen.
There was still plenty of daylight left when they reached the first settlement. It was a ramshackle affair, though it had electricity, courtesy of a generator. Kids came running when he nosed the raft up against the dilapidated docks. There were about fifteen shacks and one larger building, big enough to qualify as a house, though it wasn’t in much better shape than the shacks. There wasn’t a glassed window in the settlement; all of the roofs, even that of the “big house,” were thatched.
“Why are we stopping?” Jillian asked, for the first time breaking her rule about not speaking unless he spoke first.
“If they have a place for us to sleep, we’ll be safer here. Too many smugglers in this part of the river for us to take any risks we don’t have to.” His own voice was curt. He was as angry at her as she was at him.
Some of the kids were chattering, some standing back a little shyly. The older inhabitants were also curious, but less friendly, watching from the doorways and open windows of their mean little dwellings. A tall, gaunt old woman came out of the big house and strode down to the docks. She was dressed in trousers and a sleeveless shirt that hung free of the waistband. A ragged straw hat protected her head from the heat, and a thin cigar resided in the corner of her mouth.
“Who are you?” she demanded in a gruff voice as deep as a man’s.
“Ben Lewis. This is Jillian Sherwood. Our boat sank yesterday and we had to take the raft.”
The old woman shrugged. “You were fortunate to have a boat and a raft. What do you want here?”
“A place to sleep, nothing else. This settlement is safer than the riverbank. We have our own food; we wouldn’t be taking from you.”
The old woman looked him over from head to toe. He was shirtless, because that was how he had been when the boat sank. Evidently his powerful torso found favor with her, for she smiled. It was disconcerting, like watching an act against nature. “I am Maria Sayad. This is my trading post. There is no extra room, but there are extra hammocks. You are welcome to sleep on my veranda.”
“Thank you, Senhora Sayad.”
Evidently she hadn’t finished being gracious. “You will eat with me. No one has passed by this week, and I like to see different faces.”
“Thank you, senhora,” he said again.
The senhora kept what Jillian thought of as Latin hours; the evening meal didn’t begin until nine or ten and lasted for a couple of hours even though there were only three simple courses. The big house had electricity, though the light bulbs were of such low wattage that oil lamps would have done as well. A big ceiling fan circled lazily overhead.
Jillian had difficulty staying awake. She made polite conversation and smothered her yawns, but as the clock edged toward midnight it became more difficult for her to follow the conversation. Ben seemed perfectly normal, talking with the senhora as easily as if he had known her for years. Jillian doubted that he often had trouble charming a woman.
All day Jillian had been sunk in thought. The hurt that Ben would so callously destroy her dreams like that, and expect her to go along with his plan, was so great that she’d had to force it to the back of her consciousness. If she had dwelt on it, it would have destroyed her. Instead, she forced herself to face reality. She had always known that this adventure could end only one way, with her return to the States. Whether they parted on good terms or bad terms wouldn’t affect the outcome.
The only detail still undecided was what would happen to the Empress. Ben had his plans, but she didn’t have to agree with them and she didn’t have to stand by and let him go through with those plans. She had been racking her brain all day, trying to figure out how she could get the diamond, slip away from Ben, and return to Manaus with the Empress. No definite plan had presented itself. He kept the pack beside him and never left her alone with it. She would just have to stay alert and seize any opportunity that presented itself. She might fail, but not without trying.
It was after midnight when the senhora rose and bid them good night. Gratefully, Jillian went with Ben out to the open veranda, where two hammocks had been slung. She sank into one with a tired sigh, her eyes closing.
Ben arranged himself in the other, but he lay awake for a while, staring into the darkness. He wanted her. He knew better than even to suggest that they make love; there had been none of the teasing banter that he so enjoyed, no hint that she had relented so much as an inch. But even anger couldn’t dull the ache, the need to hold her in his arms and know that she belonged to him.
He finally did sleep. A storm woke him a couple of hours later, thunder rumbling and lightning flashing in the depths of the clouds. The senhora had loaned him a shirt to wear, so the cool wind was comfortable to him. Jillian moved restlessly, hugging her arms in her sleep as she became chilled. Rain washed across the settlement in great silver sheets, illuminated by the frequent lightning.
Down at the river’s edge a massive figure moved silently onto the docks. He had seen the raft and swiftly continued on down the river, slumping low in his stolen boat to make himself appear smaller. He had also stolen a broad-brimmed straw hat, and it had helped disguise him. No one had paid him any attention.
In the silent hours after midnight he had made his way back up to the settlement. The rain had started, further masking any noise he might have made. First he searched the raft, but there was nothing in it except a couple of boxes of supplies. He hadn’t expected the diamond to be there, but he had searched anyway, not wanting to overlook anything. He would take the supplies with him; after tonight, Lewis wouldn’t need them anymore.
Lewis and the woman would be up at the house. The machete in his hand glittered wetly as Dutra made his way through the rain, silently circling the house, looking for his targets.
22
Jillian shivered in the cool, damp air, and Ben swung out of the hammock. He began unbuttoning his shirt, intending to place it over her. Some faint noise, or maybe it was instinct, made him look up as the bull-like figure rushed out of the shadows of the veranda, eerily silent, machete raised high. Jillian was caught between him and Dutra. Ben screamed, a primal sound of fear and rage, and violently pulled her out of the hammock even as he threw himself back, scrabbling f
or the pistol.
He managed to grab it but he was off-balance; he fell sideways across his own hammock. Ignoring Jillian, Dutra leaped over the wildly swaying hammock and her sprawled body and grinned with evil delight as he slashed down at Ben. Ben rolled to the side and the blade ripped through the hammock, cutting it in half and dumping him to the floor. As he fell he used his legs in a whipping motion, catching Dutra at the knees and sending him reeling sideways, but not taking him down.
The fall jarred Ben’s shoulder, making him drop the gun. He grabbed it up, knowing precious seconds had been lost. Dutra recovered and rushed again, blade raised high.
Ben got up on one knee. Jillian was struggling to her feet beside him. “Run!” he yelled as he pushed her. Then he didn’t have any more time. Dutra swung the blade, and Ben launched himself, driving inside the shining arc, ramming his shoulder hard into the man’s gut and simultaneously clamping his left hand around Dutra’s blade hand, locking his arm so he couldn’t swing the machete again. Dutra grunted explosively from the impact, but he had the strength of a bull. The smell of him was sharp and foul. Ben tried to bring the pistol around, but Dutra saw it and grabbed Ben’s hand, holding it away.
They were locked together in mortal combat. The winner would be the one who could get his weapon free first.
Dutra was a seasoned alley fighter. He knew better than to roll backwards, throwing Lewis over his head, for unless he could manage to wrest the pistol from Lewis’s grip at the same time, that maneuver would give the bastard the time and space to use it.
He slammed Ben into one of the wood posts that held up the thatched roof of the veranda. The sharp, unfinished edge of the post dug into Ben’s back. Dutra’s little bullethead slammed forward, trying to smash Ben in the face. Ben jerked his head back and braced himself against the post, using the leverage as he hooked his foot around Dutra’s ankle and jerked. Dutra didn’t release him, and they both rolled out into the rain.