He and the two Sherwoods were the three most in danger, Rick Sherwood less so than his sister. When they got to the site, assuming it existed, Kates would act. If they didn’t find anything, then there wouldn’t be any danger.
It was a crapshoot no matter how he looked at it.
But what the hell; he liked crapshoots. He hadn’t chosen this life because of the safe nine-to-five routine. He didn’t have anything else to do except keep Thèresa’s sheets warmed. Instead, he’d work on warming Jillian Sherwood. Now that looked like a challenge.
4
Jillian went back to her hotel room early that night, leaving both Rick and Kates still drinking in the hotel lounge. Tension was wearing on her nerves; she didn’t trust Kates or that man they had hired to guide them, but Kates was financing the trip, so she had to go along with him. The temptation to call it off was getting stronger by the minute, but deep down she really wanted to continue, since she had come this far. If they could just get started, then it would be too late to call the trip off and she could forget about that and focus on the job at hand—finding the Stone City.
Just being by herself was a relief; as she unlocked the door to her room she could feel her face relax now that she didn’t have to keep every reaction to herself, guarding every word and expression. Maybe she was in over her head, but she had to remember that she had no other course of action.
She switched on the light and turned to bolt and chain the door.
“Don’t bother with that,” a deep voice said. “Unless you want me to stay the night.”
She jumped and whirled, automatically drawing back to belt the intruder with her purse even as recognition flared. Ben Lewis! Odd that she knew his voice after meeting him only that once, but she did, instantaneously. He was rising from the chair across the room and coming toward her, his darkly tanned face creasing in a smile.
“Whoa, sweetcakes. You could do some serious damage with that thing.”
That deep voice was warm and teasing. Jillian looked up into his lazy blue eyes, and fury roared through her, clean and hot; without thought or hesitation she swung the purse like a major leaguer at the plate, hitting him square on the side of the head with it. He staggered sideways into the wall, his face registering complete surprise.
“That’s for scaring me,” she snapped and drew back for another go at him. “What are you doing in here anyway?” Whap! “You broke into my room!” Whap!
He threw one arm up to protect his head, and the second blow hit him in the ribs. He yelped as he caught his balance and turned toward her, but not in time to prevent taking the third blow full in the chest, making him grunt. Quick as a snake he darted his hand out, seized the strap, and jerked the purse out of her grip, pulling her forward at the same time. He caught her full against his body, the purse in his right hand, his left arm wrapped around her waist like a steel band. “Good God,” he said incredulously. “You’ve got a black belt in purse attack, that’s for damn sure. And here I’ve been worried about taking care of you, when it looks like I’m the one who needs protecting.”
Jillian didn’t find his remarks amusing. She put both hands against his chest and shoved, hard. He didn’t budge. The wall of muscles beneath her hands was rock hard. “Let go of me,” she growled.
Instead of doing as she said, he actually chuckled, his warm breath stirring the hair at her temple. “Now, now,” he chided.
“Don’t ’now, now’ me!”
“What do you want me to do to you?”
Jillian took a deep breath and grimly regained control of her temper. She seldom lost it, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one. She said very clearly, “If you don’t turn me loose right now, I’m going to bite you, hard.”
The arm around her waist loosened and he grinned down at her, totally unabashed. “Mind you, if we were both naked I probably wouldn’t mind if you bit me, but under these circumstances I’ll pass.”
She stepped back and straightened her clothing, then ran a hand over her hair, searching for unruly strands. To her surprise, everything felt as neat as when she had walked in the door.
“You look just fine,” he said, still grinning. “All prim and buttoned up. You sure had me fooled!” He began laughing.
She turned and wrenched the door open. “Get out.”
He reached past her and flattened his hand on the door, closing it with a thud. “Not yet, sweetcakes. We need to talk.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
His eyes sparkled at her acid tone, and he leaned closer to her. His breath was warm and smelled, not unpleasantly, of fresh whiskey. “Come away from the door,” he murmured. “Kates or your brother might come up, and I don’t want either of them to hear what we’re saying. Are their rooms next door to yours?”
Jillian silently studied him, noting for the first time the shrewdness in those blue eyes. Despite the whiskey on his breath, he was sober and in perfect control of himself. Not only that, his comment had made it plain that he didn’t trust the other two men, which was very perceptive of him. Instantly she saw that she had underestimated him, but that didn’t mean she trusted him now.
Still, she answered his question. “No. Rick is two doors down; Steven is across the hall.”
“Good. But just to be on the safe side, let’s turn on the television and get away from the door.”
He suited actions to words, moving to the television and turning it on. Rapid Portuguese filled the room. Then he settled comfortably into the room’s one chair, lifting his booted feet to the bed and crossing them.
She shoved them off. “Keep your feet off my bed.”
She had the impression that he wanted to laugh again, but instead he said, “Yes, ma’am,” in a suspiciously meek tone.
She sat down on the bed. “All right, what did you want to talk about?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, and she read the lazy interest in his eyes as he looked at her and at the bed. He made no effort to hide it, as if he didn’t care that she knew what he was thinking. Jillian took her own satisfaction by refusing to give him any sort of reaction.
His mouth twitched a bit in amusement as he hooked his hands behind his head. She couldn’t help noticing what a well-shaped mouth it was, wide and clearly outlined, with blatant sensuality in the curve of his upper lip. He was a raffish-looking scoundrel, with his hair tousled and his jaw already showing the need for a razor. His clothes looked as if they had never seen an iron, and maybe they hadn’t. His lightweight khaki pants were stuffed into scarred brown boots, while his sweat-stained white shirt hung loose outside his pants. An even worse-stained khaki hat lay on the small table.
But she remembered that cool assessment in his eyes, and knew how alert he was behind the image he projected. This man knew exactly what he was doing.
That didn’t mean she was going to trust him, or start this talk. He wasn’t going to sucker her into telling him everything she knew without revealing anything himself.
The silence stretched between them for a few minutes, but it didn’t seem to make him uncomfortable. If anything, the amusement deepened in his eyes.
“Not a blabbermouth, are you, sweetcakes?” he finally drawled.
“Should I be?”
“Well, it might simplify things, that’s for certain. Let’s start showing our cards.”
“You first,” she said politely.
Again the flash of that quick grin, but it quickly faded as a rather grim expression crowded the amusement out of his eyes. “Steven Kates is a crook,” he said bluntly. “I saw him a couple of times back in the States a long time ago. He doesn’t know me, but I make it a point to keep tabs on people. He’s pure slime, and he sure isn’t interested in going on any archaeological expedition to photograph burial grounds. As soon as he and your brother offered me the job, I figured they planned on doing some looting, assuming that this site is really there and we can find it.”
“It’s there.”
“So you say. What you have
to understand, sweetcakes, is that knowing it’s there and finding it are two entirely different things. Hell, even knowing exactly where you are once you’re in the interior is a pretty fancy trick. There aren’t any maps or experienced guides, and global positioning devices won’t work because of the triple canopy.”
“I can get us there.”
“Maybe. We’ll find out. I figured I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s so all-fired interesting at this archaeological site, and I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble keeping an eye on Kates and your brother. What about your brother, by the way? Do you think he’s planning to loot whatever you find?”
Jillian had long since faced the truth about Rick. “Probably.”
“Would he be willing to kill you to do it?”
Her breath caught in her throat at actually hearing the words said out loud, but the thought had been needling her for a couple of days now. “I don’t know. I hope not, but. . . but I don’t know.”
He grunted. “He may figure that you aren’t going to do anything to incriminate him, so he isn’t worried about you. Kates is a different matter. I followed him today; guess I’m just a naturally nosy son of a bitch. He met up with a hired killer, a thug named Ramón Dutra, and hired him as one of our party. The way I see it, Kates doesn’t plan on you, me, or your brother making it out alive.”
She could call it off. The thought ricocheted in her mind. It wasn’t too late to call it off. There was no expedition without her, though she had no idea what Kates would do if she backed out after he’d spent so much money.
But she might never get another chance to find the Anzar and their Stone City, or the Heart of the Empress. She might never get another chance to verify her father’s theories and clear his reputation, and her own. She knew she could find the site. She had the map and the precise instructions, written in code, and she had committed the key to memory. Even if Kates found the map he wouldn’t be able to read it.
Ben Lewis was closely watching her. She clenched her hands in her lap and forced herself to say calmly, “What else?”
He rolled his eyes a little. “The men I usually hire are honest and dependable, but they won’t go on any expedition that involves Dutra. I’ve had to hire a different bunch, not as dependable, or skillful, and sure as hell not as honest. With my own men I wasn’t much worried about anything Kates could cook up, but it’s a different situation now. Since we can’t depend on your brother, it’ll be you and me against the rest of them. We’ll have to call a truce, sweetcakes, and you’ll have to cooperate with me.”
“Why should I trust you?”
The corners of his mouth lifted in a mocking smile. “Because I’m all you have. Now I’ve spilled my guts, so it’s your turn. Just what in the hell are we looking for out there?”
“A lost city.”
He stared at her in disbelief before tilting his head back and letting deep, rich laughter pour out of that strong brown throat. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for one of those fables that float around out there like pollen. According to the tales you’ll hear, there are a thousand lost cities in the interior. You’d think no one would be able to step on the riverbank without kicking a bone, but it just isn’t so.”
“This tale is true.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“My father found the city.”
“Did he bring back evidence of it?”
“He died trying.”
“So you don’t have any proof.”
“That’s what I’m going to get.” Pure stubbornness steeled her voice. “I’ll find proof that he was right.”
“Or die trying.”
“You don’t have to go, Mr. Lewis. But I am.”
“I’m going, I’m going. This is better than a circus any day. So why don’t you tell me about this famous lost city. Just which one is it? I’ve probably heard about them all.”
“It’s possible,” she said grudgingly. “Have you ever heard of the Anzar or the Stone City?”
He thought about it, pursing his lips and tapping them with his fingertips. Her gaze followed his fingers, lingered on his mouth, before she realized what she was doing and looked away. Had he done that deliberately, to draw her attention to his mouth? She wouldn’t put it past him, but she didn’t look at him to see if that wicked amusement was back in his eyes.
“Can’t say that I have,” he said. “Want to tell me about it?”
She quickly told him the legend of the Anzar and the warrior queen, and of her heart, which now guarded her lover’s tomb. He began to look bored.
“That isn’t all,” she said. “My father was an archaeologist too, and he had a passion for investigating old legends like that, to satisfy his own curiosity. All of the others he dismissed as just that, legends. But not the Anzar.”
“So what was it about that particular fairy tale that made such a believer of him?”
Anger glinted in her eyes for a second, but she tamped it down. If her father’s own colleagues hadn’t believed him. why should someone who had never known him?
“Do you know how the Amazon got its name?” she asked.
He shrugged. “From the jungle, I guess.”
“No, the jungle was named for the river.”
“What about it?”
“In 1542, a group of Spaniards set out to explore the river. It didn’t have a name then. There was a Dominican friar with them, Gaspar de Carvajal. The friar kept a journal of what they saw. A lot of it is typical of the tales the Spaniards carried back to Europe: gold and treasure for the taking.”
“It pretty much was,” Ben said. “When they found it. Look what they did to the Incas.”
“The friar told about gleaming white cities and royal highways paved with stone, which would describe the Incan empire pretty well even though it was a lot farther west. It’s possible the friar was just repeating tales that he had heard. But then the friar mentioned something that was out of place, different from the rest of the stories being told. Carvajal said that they met a tribe of ’fair female warriors who fought as ten Indian men.’”
“Don’t tell me,” Ben said, closing his eyes. “Let me guess. They found the Amazons, and that’s how the river got its name.”
“Exactly.”
“Bullshit.”
“Most of it. Carvajal’s journal is entertaining, but discounted by historians. It was the other tales, from different sources, that tied in and made my father curious.”
“Such as?”
“He found five different sources for the Anzar fable. He couldn’t find any connection between them, but the fragments of information fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. One tale was about the ’bloodless winged demons,’ but that one also called them ’the devils from the great water.’ It doesn’t take much imagination to see the pale Spaniards coming ashore from their ships, with the white sails puffing in the wind like wings.”
“All right, I’ll give you that.” He looked bored. “That isn’t much of a stretch.”
“The city of stone under the sea of green is obviously a city in the jungle, hidden by the canopy—so well hidden that the Spaniards couldn’t find it.”
“All of this is an interesting mind game, sweetcakes, but don’t you have any hard evidence? I suppose you’re trying to build a case that the friar’s Amazons were really this Anzar tribe.”
“Dad ran across a reference to the ’Stone City map.’ He tracked that reference down and found another thread. It took him three years to actually find the map. He had it authenticated, and it dates back to the seventeenth century. It doesn’t give the name of the country or even the continent, but it’s quite detailed, with landmarks and distance notations.”
He snorted in disbelief. “There aren’t any landmarks in the jungle, none that last. The vegetation swallows every thing up. ’Dust to dust’ takes on real meaning here; you can almost watch it happening.”
She ignored him. “The map refers to the Queen’s Heart and pinpoints its location.” r />
“So you think this Queen’s Heart is some huge gem that’s been sitting in the jungle all this time, and the map will take you right to it.”
“It will,” she said confidently. “Dad plotted out the course and encoded it.”
“Say you actually find this place; I don’t much think it exists, but let’s say it does. What do you do then?”
“Photograph everything, document it, bring the proof back. My father was called a crackpot; his reputation was ruined by this theory, and so was mine. I’m going to prove that he was right. I don’t care if there actually is a huge gem of some sort guarding a tomb; I want to find this city and prove that the Anzar existed. I love what I do, Mr. Lewis, but unless I can clear my father’s reputation I’ll never be anything but Crackpot Sherwood’s equally loony daughter.”
“Call me Ben,” he said automatically, rubbing his chin while he considered the situation. “Even if there is some sort of lost city out there, what if it didn’t belong to this Anzar tribe? What if the Anzar weren’t really Amazons—and I gotta tell you, sweetcakes, the Amazons are way down on my list of possibilities—but just your ordinary, isolated Indian tribe that died out several centuries ago?”
“It doesn’t matter. A lost city is a lost city.” She had to make an effort to keep her voice brisk. His lazy speech cadences were contagious. “All I have to do is bring back proof of it.”
“You know you’re likely chasing a rainbow.”
She shook her head. “My father did meticulous research. He wasn’t a treasure hunter; he was a truth hunter. He didn’t care if the myths he investigated were real or not; he just wanted to prove it one way or the other.”
“But Kates is betting on finding a fortune in gold or gems. How did he get involved, anyway?”
She hesitated, then sighed. “Rick. He had all of Dad’s old papers. I was at his place going through them when I came across the Anzar information. I admit, I was so excited I couldn’t hide it—”