Heart of Fire (26 page)

Ben lifted the pistol and fired, but Dutra dodged to the side. Ben shot once more, swiftly adjusting his aim. It would be pure luck if he hit anything, with both the target and his shooting platform bouncing across the water like broncos, but he could keep Dutra down.

Jillian struggled to her knees. Two bullets pierced the wooden side of the boat, and she hurled herself flat on the deck.

Ben returned fire, the shots cracking on the water. The stench of gunpowder drifted to her nostrils.

They swung into the river channel only twenty yards ahead of Dutra. Ben went down on one knee and turned to face the stern, which was open except for the toilet facility taking up roughly the same amount of space as a phone booth. Dutra was directly behind them, the other boat so close that it was inside their propeller wash, and gaining on them in the smoother water. Ben fired and hit the wheel, but Dutra had ducked again.

Ben looked forward just in time to swerve around a big log; Dutra, following in the propeller wash, had an easier time of it as the wash pushed the log away from him. He pulled even closer.

Ben swore violently. He couldn't steer the boat at top speed and at the same time trade gunfire with Dutra behind them. He had to get the son of a bitch before a lucky shot hit him in the middle of the back, and Jillian was left to face Dutra alone.

"Jillian, you'll have to steer the boat! Can you do it?"

She didn't hesitate, but crawled forward. "Be careful!" she yelled over the roar of the motor.

"
You
be careful! Stay down as much as possible, and to the side so you aren't in his direct sights."

She did as he said, crouching to the side with one hand on the wheel, her head lifted just enough to peer over the bow. Ben swiftly crawled to the stern of the boat, staying behind the cover of the toilet housing.

A shot made him go flat on his belly, and he felt the boat shudder beneath him. He rose to his knees and fired three quick shots. Dutra screamed and fell to the side, but instinct told Ben it hadn't been a solid hit. He'd just grazed him. He waited, nerves stretching, and was ready a few seconds later when Dutra popped back up, his arm outstretched and steady, pistol muzzle flashing. Ben fired simultaneously. Dutra screamed again, holding his shoulder, and slumped to the side.

The boat shuddered wildly, and the motor's rhythm caught. The son of a bitch had been shooting at their motor instead of at them! The other boat kept coming, throttle locked forward, wheel secured so it didn't veer.

"Hold on!" Ben roared, lunging toward the bow. "He's going to ram us!"

Jillian cast a frantic look over her shoulder, feeling the wheel trying to tear out of her grip as the motor coughed and locked with metal grinding against metal. Desperately she pulled on the wheel with all her might, trying to turn out of Dutra's path. Sluggishly the boat swung to the side, without power, and almost immediately the other boat slammed into them. She was sent sprawling across the deck, her head crashing hard into the side. She saw Ben grab a roof pole at the last second, and that was all that saved him from going overboard.

She had turned the boat enough that it wasn't a head-on collision. The other boat plowed into them from the right rear, violently swinging them around. The stern of Dutra's craft swung forward, the motor still churning, still driving. Wood splintered; the bow of the other boat and the stern of their boat ground together, collapsing the structures, combining the two watercraft like two clumps of clay jammed together. The force shattered the wheel and throttle of the second boat, and the engine died.

The sudden silence was so complete, so nerve-racking, that it was only then she realized how loud the crash had been. Dazed, she tried to stand up, but everything was swimming around her and she sagged to her knees.

All of the supplies had been scattered over the deck. Ben had dropped the pistol on impact, but luckily it hadn't gone overboard. He snatched it up, whirling toward the stern of the boat, every muscle tense. "Are you okay?" he asked tersely.

"Yes," she said, though she wasn't sure. She would manage.

He struggled toward the rear of the boat, where the other boat had overridden their craft and smashed it to splinters. Black water was beginning to lap up over the deck toward the bow. Both boats were taking on water.

"Get the raft and inflate it," he called over his shoulder.

She fought off her dizziness and scrambled across the sloping deck toward the raft. The degree of list increased almost by the second, it seemed. They would have only a few minutes, at most, to get off the boat.

Water lapped over Ben's boots. He pushed a section of wrecked bow aside. Where was Dutra? If he had been in the bow, he should be dead, because that entire section was in splinters. He'd been tagged, twice. There was a piece of wood with blood on it.

But there was no Dutra, dead or alive. No sign of movement, no sound other than the creaking of wood as the boats rose and fell on the waves.

The impact could have thrown him overboard. If he had been unconscious, he was now dead. Could he have made it to shore, unnoticed, in that short length of time? Ben looked closely at the bank, searching for a fern frond waving with slightly more force than it should, signaling that something had brushed by it. But everything looked normal; the butterflies were flitting undisturbed.

He turned back to the wreckage, but the boats were so splintered, so ground together, that it would be impossible to search it in the few minutes they had left before the whole thing went under. He knew there was a possibility that Dutra was clinging to the wreckage on the other side, but he simply didn't have time to find out. They had to get the raft inflated, load supplies, and get off the boat.

The water was at mid-calf now. He sloshed through it up the steeply slanting deck to where Jillian had dragged the raft out onto the bow where she could have room to inflate it. There was a pressurized air tank attached to the side of the boat for just that purpose; she had undamped the tank and dragged it forward, also, and attached the nozzle to the raft.

Ben helped her to brace the raft and she opened the valve. Air spewed into the raft with a violent hiss, swelling it to plump proportions in less than thirty seconds. It was big enough to hold six people, and it was all they could do to hold on to it. Quickly she shut off the valve and Ben closed the plug. Swiftly he looped the attached rope around the roof pole and shoved the raft overboard.

"Get in," he said, and Jillian scrambled over the rail and into the raft.

Ben gave her the pistol. "Keep a sharp eye," he said. "I couldn't find Dutra. He may have drowned, but we don't know for sure."

She nodded, holding the raft close to the boat with her left hand on the railing, while the pistol was in her right.

Ben grabbed his backpack and tossed it into the raft. He sure as hell wasn't going to leave the diamond behind, and they'd need the tent again. He handed the small outboard motor over the railing to her. It weighed a good fifty pounds, but she managed it even without letting go of the pistol. Damn, what a woman! He got the gas tanks, loaded them, then began grabbing boxes of supplies and tossing them over the railing, while Jillian set the motor into the brackets made to hold it.

The boat lurched, and tipped sharply upward. "That's enough," she said. "Come on."

"Oars," he said, and tossed them aboard.

She gave him a furious look. "The oars and the motor should have been first. Come on,
now
."

Figuring he had better obey, he unlooped the rope from the pole, then swung his legs over the rail and slipped into the raft.

Swiftly he moved to the stern and attached the gas tanks to the motor, squeezing the bulb to pump the gas. Over his shoulder he said, "Get a fresh clip from my pack. My gun's almost empty."

Jillian moved cautiously to the pack so she wouldn't rock the raft.

"In the front pocket, the one fastened with Velcro," he instructed. Praying, he pulled the cord and the motor coughed. He pulled again, three times in rapid succession, and the little motor fired, caught, then settled into rhythm.

Jillian found the fresh clips and took one out, but her searching fingers had felt something curious in the middle section.

Gurgling, the two smashed boats settled deeper into the water. Ben shoved them away, and used the tiller to guide the raft to a safe distance. As they pulled away, he sharply surveyed the wreckage, but there was still no sign of Dutra. He swung the craft in a complete circle around the boats, to no avail. Probably Dutra was on the bottom of the river, already being added to the food chain.

He settled next to the tiller, his thoughts already turning to the chore of getting them down this big river all the way to Manaus in a raft.

Jillian was searching through his backpack. He bit off a curse as, with a puzzled expression, she lifted out something wrapped in a handkerchief. The cloth fell away, and the sun was caught and splintered into a thousand bloodred rays.

She lifted dazed eyes to him. "It's the Empress," she blurted. "You found it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she babbled. "It makes sense that you would hide it from everyone else, but why didn't you tell
me
?"

Swiftly he cut the power down to idle and locked the tiller in place. She was still sitting there, holding the diamond on her lap. Even as roughly shaped as it was, it was gorgeous. The size of it still stunned him, and evidently Jillian was just as stunned because all she could do was stare at it.

Moving quickly, he retrieved his pistol and the extra clip, shoving the weapon into his waistband and the clip in his pocket. Then he took the diamond from her unresisting hands and rewrapped it in the handkerchief before placing it once more in the backpack. Still without speaking, he carried the pack with him when he returned to the tiller and resumed his seat.

Jillian was no dummy. Far from it. She looked at the pack and at him, and her eyes narrowed. "What's going on?" she asked.

"You know what's going on. I found the diamond," he said flatly.

"Kates saw you with it that morning, didn't he? That's why he started shooting."

"Yes."

He increased the throttle and they picked up speed. The noise made conversation impossible. Jillian sat in the bow, the wind whipping her hair around, and silently watched the river for a while. Ben began to hope she was going to leave well enough alone, but then she stirred herself and moved to sit close enough so that he could hear her.

"I had to leave the film and all my notes behind," she said. "I have no proof of the Stone City or the Anzar. The diamond is a way of convincing people that the Anzar really existed. It'll get their attention, force them to listen to me. They'll send in another expedition, at least, and Dad will be vindicated. And maybe I'll be able to retrieve Rick's body."

"I'll take you back," he said impatiently. "You don't need the diamond to prove anything."

She just looked at him, those green eyes unwavering. "And I suppose you're going to finance the trip."

"Yes." He jerked his head toward the pack. "I'll have plenty of money from that thing."

"No, thanks," she said. "I won't use that kind of money."

Fury boiled in him. "What do you mean, 'that kind of money'? It isn't blood money. The diamond itself isn't proof of anything, except that Brazil has some damn big diamonds. I can use it to finance an expedition back to the Stone City and still make myself a big profit. You want to use it to convince a bunch of stuffed shirts to mount an expedition, and to benefit yourself at the same time by clearing your old man's name. I may be stupid, but I don't see a whole hell of a lot of difference there, except my idea is a lot smarter!"

"The diamond belongs to the Brazilian people," she said, "just as the pyramids belong to the Egyptians. Or do you think it was all right for grave robbers to loot the burial chambers in the pyramids? For history to be destroyed?"

"There's a slight difference here, sweetheart. The diamond is the least important part of the Stone City. The temple, those damn eerie statues, the city itself, even that damn bowl it's in—that's what's important, what people like you will be studying for the next hundred years. The diamond is meaningless."

"It's a priceless artifact."

"Artifact!" He gave her an incredulous look. "It's a shiny rock that people like to wear in jewelry. Put a garnet in the niche above the tomb and it would have the same meaning. What do you say that's what we do? Even a garnet the size of an ostrich egg wouldn't put a dent in what the diamond will sell for."

Her face was stony, unyielding. "Taking it is stealing."

"Ah, shit," he said in disgust. "Damn it, Jillian, do you think I went to all the trouble to get the damn thing just to turn it over to someone who didn't lift a finger to retrieve it? We risked our lives to find that place."

"You were paid to do exactly what you did," she pointed out. "And you couldn't have found it without me. In fact, I would have found it instead of you, if you hadn't talked me into playing decoy while you sneaked off."

"I didn't expect to find anything."

"Why not? Everything else was where I'd said it would be."

"I'm not handing over the diamond," he said coldly. "Give it up."

"Are you going to throw me overboard?" she demanded. "All I have to do is contact the authorities when we get to Manaus."

"How are you going to prove I have it?" His blue eyes were icy.

Jillian subsided in impotent rage. She knew exactly what would happen if she went to the authorities. They would check into it, and turn up the information that her father had been full of wild schemes, and that she was a chip off the old crackpot. They wouldn't take her seriously. They would assume she had made the story up in order to attract publicity for a wild-goose chase that would, like all of her father's adventures, turn up exactly nothing.

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 battering 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.