More Than Paradise (7 page)

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tribal activists who weren’t already rotting in Indonesian prisons. This all made for a proÞ table service niche for the private security Þ rms in the region—providing guards, extracting hostages, and capturing kidnappers they could sell dead or alive to the Indonesians, who thought it was important to set an example by torturing them to death.

Ash had handled some of Nagle’s most successful extraction operations, her subtle approach proving more effective than the Rambo tactics favored by most of her colleagues. It helped that she spoke some of the more widely used languages in New Guinea. There were about eight hundred, more in one small land mass than anywhere else on earth. Of course, this was rapidly changing with the transmigration from Indonesia and the quiet extermination of the indigenous tribes.

Unluckily for her, Ash spoke the kidnappers’ language, which, as far as Tubby Nagle was concerned, made her indispensable for the latest assignment.

It wasn’t as if she could explain why she needed out. No one knew she had any family other than her father, and Ash preferred to keep it that way. After ascertaining that there was no change in Emma’s condition, she’d accepted the job because it would be easy money and she’d be out in a couple of days. She went into the kidnap area on foot with one local guide, carrying an array of gifts and a pitiful ransom.

The Þ ghters wanted their land back and their lives to return to normal. It was never going to happen. They had grown up in a place barely touched by foreigners until recent times. Ash carried a set of photographs the tribesmen would understand, images that showed them how much worse things could be. In their own language, she explained the new world order and how they would only be able to survive the changes if they laid down their spears and found much better weapons, such as legal representation.

She usually advised kidnappers to demand more than the paltry ransom on offer so they’d have money for a lawyer. In this instance, they saw the sense in that suggestion and asked her to talk to the boss man. So she made the call to Tubby, letting him know the good news and the bad news. She’d located the prisoner but, as was lately the case, the men holding him had a regrettable knowledge of Western ideas. They wanted real money and, worst of all, they had a certain Australian go-between advising them. This was not quite true, but invoking the name of Bruce the Roo by inference meant she would get instant results.

An Aussie lawyer turned environmental activist and local hero, the

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Roo was linked to countless highly sophisticated sabotage operations against mining and timber interests. He had a big reputation among the private security forces who worked the PNG region and struck fear into the hearts of mining management. Ash wasn’t sure if Tubby saw him as a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, his involvement in a situation meant a fat check. On the other, the guy was a faceless loose cannon with no afÞ liation who seemed to enjoy sticking it to the man.

Predictably, Tubby foamed at the mouth this time round, ranting about how Bruce the Roo was on his list and no one got away with pissing him off this many times. But he made the deal and Ash knew the client would have to produce extra hazard money for her services because the handover supposedly involved their nemesis. She could sleep okay on that count. Screwing a mining company was a public service.

Amazingly, by the time she was ready to make the switch, Bruce the Roo had caught wind of the affair and actually showed up to play the role assigned to him. Ash was cool with that; they’d done business before. He thanked her for the gig, and she handed over the ransom, photographing the proceedings with a few strange camera angles so it would seem like a hidden device was used. The Roo was cooperative about that and ß ashed an AK-47 for effect. It was in both their interests to have the mining company and Tubby Nagle think the peril factor was high.

The Australian troublemaker then told the tribesmen to remove the blindfold from their captive and hand him over. The poor, soft Seattlean immediately went into hysterics at the sight of seminaked, paint-smeared tribesmen with bones through their noses and a white man wearing a fake kangaroo head. While Ash examined him for injury and slapped his face a few times to calm him down, the kidnappers vanished into the jungle richer by a few hundred large.

Her back still ached from having to half carry the guy out with her scrawny guide claiming lumbago so he didn’t have to help. The victim wasn’t hurt. She’d had to sedate him in the end so he’d stop blubbering. Being an American, he’d insisted on personally tipping her two large for the rescue once they got back to the city. When Ash told him that would buy helpful goodwill and she’d do her best to make sure he wasn’t targeted again, he increased it to Þ ve. She didn’t say no. She put such bonuses to work, buying eyes and information all over PNG.

Right now, two of the men on her payroll were in the seedy bar

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in downtown Port Moresby, watching her back. Later in the day, there would be women here, hookers and pickpockets. But for now the occupants were male, a mix of betel-chewing locals minding their own business, hard-drinking expats who knew the drill and had armed body guards, plus the usual array of predators—rascal gang members who raped, robbed, and murdered at will.

Everyone was watching the one woman in the room. Some with dismay, some with delight, and some with sorrowful hunger. Ash recognized the condition. It had its roots in what was lost when you lived in a place like this—the nobler self. Somehow this unsullied visitor to their realm had called up long-forgotten feelings and ideals, tapping a tenderness no one here could afford if they wanted to survive.

In this netherworld neglected by God, such a woman was a miracle.

Only the dull of soul could fail to feel more human, more complete, just looking at her.

At least that was how Ash saw it after three double Jacks, a quantity of whiskey that usually took the edge off reason. She indulged herself in a long look at the one beautiful thing in this disgusting ß eapit. Her face was that of a serious child, pensive and hopelessly innocent. Her black hair was parted at one side and had a narrow wave that spilled in ripples across her smooth forehead. Ash guessed she tried for a more mature look by drawing the chin-length mop into a little bunch at her nape.

The curve of her neck, the red bow of her mouth, and the Þ ne-boned fragility of her hands complicated her beauty with such vulnerability Ash wanted instantly to shield her.

She imagined standing close enough to do just that and wondered what she smelled like. Guerlain, she decided, one of the haunting classics like Jicky. She looked too clean to have walked here, and so completely unaware of the attention she was getting that Ash felt like shaking her. But something else lay behind that urge. In the worst way, she wanted to touch the ravishing stranger.

Dry-mouthed, she watched the woman trail a hand absently back and forth along her thigh as if in sensual invitation. Ash wasn’t usually wrong about women’s body language. Or men’s. But on this occasion she thought she was kidding herself. Feeling crass for having a sexual response to someone who looked like religious art, Ash inspected her more closely, seeking out the person behind the persona.

She was conservatively dressed and wore no jewelry. Someone had told her to keep her passport and cash in a money belt. Beneath

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her shirt its outline rested lumpily above a slender waist. She was a good six inches shorter than Ash, so probably around Þ ve-four. Her face was a study in concentration as she read a book lying open on the bar counter in front of her. It probably wasn’t a guide to self-defense, which was what would have made sense. Flipping a page, she tilted her head and stared dreamy-eyed at nothing, a tiny smile hovering. In that second Ash glimpsed the woman within. Warm. Human. Seductive.

The stranger cupped her chin in her hand and Ash found the mundane movement so profoundly erotic, she was awestruck. This was what countless years without true love did to anyone who still had a soul, she concluded. Even the regular vacations she took from her PNG

diet of celibacy and porn didn’t change a thing in that regard. She tried to look away but couldn’t and in that split second, the woman shifted her inward gaze to her surroundings and her eyes met Ash’s.

For what seemed liked an eternity, they stared at one another, and in those few heartbeats of connection, Ash felt like she’d been knocked unconscious and transported to a magical dimension she would never remember except in her dreams. Her heart pounded and her skin tingled.

She felt dazed and helpless to do anything but stare across the room, wanting to be seen, yearning for a smile that would bestow permission to approach. She was sweating even more than the climate warranted.

Was this a panic attack? Was she Þ nally losing her mind? It happened with monotonous regularity in PNG. Ash had long believed that any Westerner who chose to live here was not quite sane to begin with.

The woman blushed and looked away. She was waiting for some lucky bastard, Ash decided; no other explanation made any sense. A sane white woman would never set foot in a place like this unless she was hooked up with the kind of moron who still slept with his skateboard.

At any moment, an unworthy nerd in a Greenpeace T-shirt would roll in, Lonely Planet guidebook in one hand, camera in the other, full of lame excuses for keeping her waiting. Ash would have to resist the overwhelming temptation to beat some common sense into him. How was it that the tofu-eating dweebs always had the most astonishing luck with women?

As she chewed over this harsh reality, she kept tabs on several Þ gures gliding ever closer to the woman, working their way past tables and along walls, surreptitiously signaling one another. She measured the odds. They were armed. Knives and maybe a pistol or two. Chances were they wouldn’t try anything in the bar. There were too many patrons

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paying too much attention. Instead they would Þ nd a way to get her out the door. She would be lucky if they settled for taking her cash and credit cards.

Ash signaled her own watchdogs to pay attention, then cast a look toward the narrow entrance of the bar. Still no sign of the dipshit boyfriend who had placed this goddess in a viper’s nest. With a groan of resignation, she headed for the bar and positioned herself behind the woman. Yes, she smelled good. Just the faintest hint of an oriental fragrance competing with the smoke and sweat of the bar.

Placing a possessive hand on the small of her back, Ash said, “Do us both a favor and pretend you know me.”

Startled gray eyes swung up to hers. Breathless with indignation, the woman demanded, “Take your hand off my…er…”

“Ass?” Ash suggested.

She colored fetchingly. “Just do it.”

“That’s not a wise idea.” Ash bent close to her ear and resisted the urge to brush her lips past the downy cheek just a breath away.

“Here’s the thing. You’re about to be mugged by three guys. Don’t turn around.”

The woman considered this statement, looked Ash over with ß agrant doubt, then said, “Why should I believe you?”

Ash’s spine tingled. Her ears insisted she’d heard that hypnotic intonation before but her brain refused to accept the possibility. The voice couldn’t possibly be the one she’d heard from her hiding place in that Brookline bedroom a month ago. What were the odds that its owner would be here in Port Moresby, of all places? Sheer wishful thinking. And she was nothing like the woman Ash had imagined. She was not a statuesque suicide blonde in a torch singer’s gown. She was an ebony-haired sylph in neatly pressed khaki cargo pants and a crisp beige linen shirt with pockets that hid the outline of her nipples. Her eyes were not sapphire pools, they were an odd hazy shade somewhere between gray and purple. All the same, how often did you hear a voice like that?

Ash collected herself. If she was the kind of ß ake who believed in destiny, she would probably be chanting a mantra by now, convinced that this whole string of events was somehow connected. But she cringed every time she heard a cop-out statement about situations being

“meant to happen” or “God” having a plan. If there was one thing her

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life had taught her, it was that nothing made any sense and trying to Þ nd meaning in the crap that happened was a fool’s errand.

Ash never blamed God, fate, karmic debt, or other people for anything she had control over. The buck stopped with her. Period.

Right now that meant she had a decision to make. She could walk away because she didn’t owe this woman a thing, or she could do a good deed. She generally opted for the latter because she liked herself better when she did. Also, if she was wrong about God and karma, there was no harm in putting some points on the board.

“Listen, do you want to get out of here in one piece?” she asked the soon-to-be damsel in distress. “Or would you rather I just butt out because I smell of booze and look like I spent the past year in a jungle without a change of clothes?”

The reply, a softly murmured “Oh,” made Ash want to kiss her senseless, and there was something else, too. Staring down at this stranger from another dimension, the land-of-all-things-beautiful, she yearned irrationally to go back in time and make some different decisions. She wanted the woman staring at her to see a nobler, Þ ner person than the one she’d become. But that was a futile train of thought.

Her life was what she’d made of it. There was no going back.

Maybe she really
was
losing it. People did down here on the equator. If the shitty climate didn’t fry every brain cell you had, if you didn’t catch a sexually transmitted disease or get clipped in a random act of violence, you could go quietly nuts just Þ guring out how to exist in a city where a guy who jumped off a bus without paying his twenty cent fare was beaten to death by the driver and the other passengers. That had happened just after she got back from her sojourn in the land of the free, reminding her why she’d needed a vacation in the Þ rst place.