River of Eden (14 page)

As she came back out on deck, Travers was paying a group of children to watch the
Sucuri.
Ragged and cheerful, they eagerly caught the coins he pitched in the air and could be counted on to hang around for the promise of more on his return.

With their band of diminutive guards on duty, and a few more in tow, they wove a path through the waterfront marketplace, heading in the general direction of a cantina sporting a sign proclaiming Carne e Cerveja.

“Why the kids, if no one ever boards the
Sucuri?”
she asked.

“Keeps them out of trouble for an hour.” He stopped and bought a dozen pieces of
cana
, sugarcane, on sticks. The children jumped and laughed around him, scrambling for their share of the sugarcane, while one of them ran the extras back to the boat.

“Um… thanks,” she said, when he handed her a piece.

“My mom used to buy these for me all the time when I was a kid.”

“Your mom?” Now that took a stretch of Annie's imagination, thinking of the six-foot gringo with snakes tattooed down his back as a little kid at his mother's side, sucking on sugarcane.

“Elena Maria Barbosa Sanchez Travers,” he said. “She's Venezuelan. I was born in Caracas. How about you? Where were you born?”

“Wyoming,” Annie said slowly, casting him a disbelieving look. “You gave Fat Eddie your mother's name?”

“She's in the States, has been for twenty-five years. I don't think there's much chance of her running into Fat Eddie Mano. What about your folks?”

“Probably not going to run into Fat Eddie, either,” she granted wryly, wary of where he might be going with this sudden rash of personal questions.

He chuckled from deep in his throat, looking at her from over the top of the sugarcane in his mouth—and Annie had to admit that he made sugar look good. She also had to admit that having the chance to get rid of her had improved his mood.

Greatly improved.

It was almost insulting.

“I meant where do they live,” he said.

“My dad is in Wyoming.” An easy enough answer to come up with.

“Great place, Wyoming. And your mom?”

“Tahoe or Vegas. Or sometimes Jackson Hole. She's hard to keep track of.” She took a taste of the sugarcane and hoped that was the end of the “mother” conversation.

“Like her daughter?”

Annie nearly sighed. He was plowing some pretty old ground.

“Look,” she said, wiping the juice off her chin with
the heel of her palm. “You can draw all the conclusions and similarities you want, and you won't get a fight from me. I'll be the first to admit I'm permanently scarred from my mother's abandonment, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that's how I ended up down here in the middle of nowhere with a washed-up botanist like you, waiting for a plane that isn't going to come, when all I really want is to get back on the river and get to Santa Maria.”

“Washed-up?” He laughed again, obviously unfazed by her opinion. But then, he was William Sanchez Travers, and she knew for a fact that he'd been called worse— much worse.

“What else would you call a Harvard man smuggling gems for the likes of Fat Eddie Mano?”

He grinned down at her, his unrepentent smile broadening. “Hungry,” he said. “Come on.”

At the cantina, he chose a table outside in the small courtyard fronting the bar, where they had a full view of the river and the docks. Vines and greenery draped over the top of the patio wall, bougainvillea and fuschias entwined with lacy fronds of
dryopteris.
A pair of scarlet macaws were for sale in a cage across the alley, their raucous cries cutting through the diminishing hum of activity on the waterfront.

“We're wasting time here. There's no plane,” she said, helping herself to the manioc flatbread the waiter had brought.

“Not yet,” he agreed.

A thin string of lights came on around the patio, sparking to multicolored life and giving the dingy little place a festive air.

“There's not going to be. Rick Solano would just as soon I died as to ever darken RBC's door again, and
that's a direct quote heard through the grapevine.” She dipped her bread in pepper sauce and sprinkled it with salt. “He was the only vote against my proposal, and he was a loud one.”

“What does Solano have against you?”

“Professional jealousy.” She took a bite and felt her eyes start to water and her tongue start to burn. It was heaven.

Travers paused with a piece of bread in hand. “He can't afford to be that irresponible, not as the director of RBC.”

“Tell him that.”

“I did. This morning,” he said and gestured at her soft drink. “Do you want another
guarana
?”

“Sure.” She nodded.

“??c?, mats um cervejinha e um guaraná,”
he called to their waiter, then turned back to her. He took a drink of beer before continuing. “Gabriela said you're not here to study peach palms. She thinks you're up to something else.”

She didn't so much as blink an eye. “That's interesting.”

“Yeah. Real interesting,” he agreed. “She also said if there were any wonders to be found in the forest, you would be the one to find them, not me.”

Unbidden, Annie's mouth curved into a grin, and she reached for another piece of bread. “Then she hasn't seen your tattoo, because you sure as hell found something out there. Or, from the looks of it, something found—” she stopped suddenly, her gaze snapping up and slamming into a pair of darkly amused brown eyes.

“No,” he said slowly. “Gabriela has never seen my tattoo. When did you?”

“This morning, when you pulled up in the canoe.”

And the last thing she'd wanted to do was admit it. She was appalled by what had been done to him—and because of her damned nightmare, more than a little unnerved by the tattoo itself.

She had found a wonder in the forest, an orchid unlike any other, and it was going to make her name. Whatever Travers had found had taken his and left him marked for life, and even as curious as she was about him, it had set him on a course she was damned sure she didn't want to follow. He was a fascinating man, for all he'd once been and for whatever he'd become, but his tattoo had erased any doubts she might have had that he was treading waters far deeper than she wanted to brave. She wanted her orchid. That was all. Just her orchid.

“So what did you think?”

She thought about telling him the truth, that she knew he was wearing a shaman's crystal and would place bets that he knew how to use it in ways she hadn't even heard about and probably wouldn't believe. That she knew the snakes wound so sinuously down his back represented shamanistic knowledge far beyond the temporal world, and it frightened her to think about what the damn things meant or who had put them there. But then she reminded herself all she really wanted from him was passage to Santa Maria, and the quicker she left him, and the less she knew about him when she left, the better off she'd be.

“I think you could have gotten better work in the States,” she said. “Tattooing is all the rage there now.”

His gaze shifted away from hers. “All the rage.” He let out a short laugh. “Yeah, I'm sure I could have gotten better work in the States.” He lifted his beer to his mouth and drained the last of the bottle.

With impeccable timing, the waiter returned with drinks and their food. Annie took the respite and waited until they were both mostly finished before she broached their impasse again. She could get off the
Sucuri;
the Salesians would give her a night's lodging at the mission, she was sure. But she was also sure that Travers would not give up her guns. Not when returning them to Fat Eddie would go a long way toward getting him back in the fat man's good graces.

He was going to be disappointed. She'd spent her life savings on those crates, and she wasn't at all sure she could get her orchids and get back in one piece without them. There was too much gold on the Cauaburi for the area to be secure, too big a chance of running into Vargas. A year ago, the mining had just been starting. It would be utter chaos now, and she wasn't walking into chaos without protection. There would be no repeat of Yavareté. None. On that one fact, she was undeterrable.

“There isn't going to be a plane,” she said, repeating her earlier prediction. “So we have to decide what's going to happen here.”

He looked up from his plate, and the light fell across his face, delineating the dark wings of his brows and the expressive curve of his mouth, and Annie had to admit he was dangerous in more ways than one. Despite a reputation that even at its worst was undeniable, and that damned tattoo that told her he was definitely more trouble than she needed, maybe even more than she could handle—and that was saying quite a lot for a woman with her plans—he fascinated her on levels she had no business thinking about.

“Solano wants the directorship of RBC,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “He can't afford to have you show
up dead right now. Dead scientists are an anathema to pharmaceutical companies and their research money. He'll send the plane.”

“And if he doesn't?”

“Then we've got a problem.”

“Which needs to be addressed,” she said, agreeing with him and adding the bonus of a smile that was meant to tell him they could work together on this. It was her bargaining smile, a smile to ease any uncertainties he might have about the outcome of their discussion.

Will grinned back. He couldn't help it. She was going into Girl Scout mode again.

“Okay. It's time to level with you,” she continued, still smiling, so candid he could see right through to her ulterior motives.

His grin broadened. “That would be refreshing.”

“Yes, well, in the interests of RBC—and I have to hold their interest even above my own, even with Fat Eddie involved—I can't tell you what project I'm working on, and I can't walk away. It's simply not an option.”

“The project you need all the guns for, not the one where Father Aldo is sitting next door watching you count peach palm fruit.”

“Yes, I guess that's one way to put it,” she finally said, after a long pause.

“I see.” She was in trouble up to her pretty little neck.

“Yeah, well, I think it's important here to point out that we're only a day's travel from Santa Maria, and I have already paid you.”

“True.”

Obviously surprised by the ease of his concessions, she relaxed her smile into a genuine expression of pleasure—

and Will's heart slid to a slow stop, his easy mood disappearing.

He hadn't seen her smile before, not like this. He hadn't thought her particularly beautiful, only haphazardly cute in a way that attracted him—but when she smiled, he saw beauty, that little cat beauty of hazel eyes and ditzy hair, of fine cheekbones and a turned-up nose, the kind any man would want, and suddenly he felt a surge of possessiveness that could only make his life difficult. He didn't need or want his emotions tied up in what he had to do to Corisco Vargas. He didn't want to be thinking about what Vargas had done to her.

Merda
, he swore to himself.

“Well, given that we agree on the basics, I don't see any reason why we can't—”

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted, shoving his plate out of the way and leaning onto the table. “I want to backtrack a bit.”

“Okay.” Her smile wavered, and an uncertain light came into her eyes.

“If you're going to try to talk me into taking you to Santa Maria, when I'll be the last person to see you alive if Fat Eddie gets a hold of you, I want a little more information.”

“I can't give you any information. Like I said, RBC's interests preclude—”

“Personal information,” he interrupted.

The look she was giving him turned wary as hell again, but she was the one who had offered to level with him, and he doubted she would back down just because the going got a little tough, not while she still had a chance to win.

“What kind of personal information?”

“Simple stuff, like what's your backup plan if things start going bad? How are you going to keep yourself from getting killed out there once you're on the river alone?”

“The same way I always have,” she said bluntly. “I've been taking care of myself for a long time.”

“True,” he admitted. “But I bet you never had anyone like Fat Eddie on your case.”

“Try Corisco Vargas.” She angled a look at him from over the tops of her glasses.

“Oh, right. I forgot,” he lied smoothly.

“Believe me, Vargas makes Fat Eddie look like a choirboy, piranha teeth and all.” She brought her soda to her mouth for a drink.

“Pretty nasty character?”

She nodded, setting the bottle on the table. “You've been on the river a long time, too. You must have heard the stories.”

“Like the one about him sacrificing virgins on a bloody altar made of beaten gold hidden somewhere in the jungle?”

Her gaze slid away, and she let out a short burst of nervous laughter. “Yeah, right, that one. Thank God I wasn't a virgin when he got a hold of me.”

Of course she hadn't been—and there Will was again, wanting to shake her, and then shake her again, because Vargas had gotten a hold of her, beaten her and God knew what else, and she'd come back. She was crazy. Certifiable. It took every ounce of strength he had not to jump over the table and grab her.

“Yeah, right,” he said, sitting back in his chair and
forcing himself to calmly take another drink of beer. “I guess you're a little better protected this time.”

She gave him another suspicious look, but nodded, and his mood darkened to a dangerous shade of black. A handgun was a viable form of self-defense for a woman. If she was the nervous type, a woman might also get herself a rifle, maybe a semiautomatic. But only a woman hell-bent on going out and taking on the devil himself would buy two high-tech Israeli Galils and a Kalishnakov with two hundred rounds (two hundred rounds!) of ammuntion and then back it up with grenades and twenty friggin' sticks of dynamite.

“So,” he started in again, unable to help himself. “How did he know?”

“Know what?” She gave him a quizzical glance.

“That you weren't a virgin.”

She was fast, but he was faster. He had a hold of her before her butt even came off the chair.