River of Eden (38 page)

The snake was the only thing moving. Annie was utterly motionless, nearly nose to nose with the monstrous reptile, transfixed by its unwavering gaze. From the back she looked like an angel, her arms outstretched and hanging from the ropes, her fingers curled in a supplicating pose, and the diaphanous swath of golden silk wafting about her.

Cold dread washed through him. He didn't know what to do, what move to make. He stood perfectly still, his heart racing, his hand clutching the knife, watching the snake and the woman hang in timeless limbo together.

Incomprehensibly, the snake wasn't attacking her, only staring, its body swaying in front of her, its black gaze taking her measure.

The shot, when it came, caught him unaware. He didn't hear it until after it had hit him, and when he fell, he fell forward…
into the endless green coils of the giant anaconda.

Annie jerked her head around, the spell broken, and saw Will collapse on top of the snake. Beneath him, the anaconda continued to bunch and move its powerful body. Corisco was oblivious to the danger, holding the smoking pistol with a look of triumph flashing across his face, but his victory was brief.

A second shot came quickly after the first, from out of the forest with all the force of a high-powered rifle. The bullet caught Corisco in the chest, and the man sank lifelessly against the stairs.

Its loops slowly uncoiling, the snake glided down the stairs to investigate, moving past Will to hover over Corisco's body. Long moments passed in which Annie
feared any number of horrors might unfold, but the beastly serpent did nothing, only slid quietly off the tower and into the dark forest.

“C
RAZIEST BLOODY THING
I ever saw,” Mad Jack said, ripping open another sterile bandage to press over Annie's cut and bleeding wrists, doing a quick job of bandaging the raw wounds left by the ropes that had bound her. “A snake big enough to eat my horse and you hanging there like friggin' Fay Ray out of
King Kong.
God, Annie, I ought to tie you up myself and send you home on a slow boat. What's his name? The one who was going up the stairs with just a knife, for Christ's sake, to save you.”

“Will. William Sanchez Travers,” she said, though she truly wasn't paying any attention to him. Her throat throbbed from screaming so much. Mad Jack had brought three men and a woman with him, all heavily armed, and the four of them were up in the golden mouth, working quickly and efficiently to put Will in a body sling and lower him over the side of the tower to the plaza.

“The scientist guy who disappeared? I've heard of him. Don't worry, honey. I've got a floatplane on the river. We'll have him in Manaus in a couple of hours. We just have to get the hell out of here, before the soldiers decide to come back. There's another group working around these mines, but they're too busy stealing gold to bother with us.”

Fat Eddie, she thought, but what really got her attention was Mad Jack calling her “honey.”

He never called her “honey.” For years he'd called her
“Pip Parrish,” as in “pipsqueak,” and during his teenage years, he'd called her “Pain Parrish,” as in pain-in-the-butt-Parrish-quit-following-me-around. She'd been twenty before he'd started calling her “Annie” on a regular basis, and for the last four years he'd taken great pride in calling her “Doc,” as in Dr. Parrish.

But he never called her “honey.”

She must look worse than she thought, and she knew she felt worse than she looked—all wobbly inside, really wobbly, from her brain to her toes.

“I'm in shock.”

“You've got that right, Doc,” he said, flashing her a quick glance. He looked worried. Worried as hell. He finished a cursory check of her body, then took off his shirt and put it around her shoulders. “You stay put.” He pumped another round into his rifle and laid it across her lap, before rising to his feet. “I've got to help your friend, Will.”

“Sure,” she said, and her voice sounded weak, even to her.

Frowning in concern, Mad Jack kneeled back down. A swath of midnight-black hair fell forward across his brow, and he brushed it back with a quick, restless gesture. “Annie. I'm going to get you out of here. You can count on that, and you know it, don't you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. Mad Jack never let a person down.

“And you know I love you.”

She nodded again. He'd always loved her, always been there, from as far back as she could remember, and after her mother had hightailed it out of Wyoming, Mad Jack had still been there, all of eight years old and ready
to fill in the void her father had been too angry and too proud to notice.

“Good,” he said. “So I know you won't take this wrong.”

She watched as his gaze strayed past her to a sight she knew she couldn't handle—Corisco, where he lay dead on the tower stairs. His mouth tightened into a grim line.

After a brief, intense moment, his gaze came back to her, his eyes a blue so dark they bordered on a no-man's-land between black and slate-gray. Like a glacier-fed lake in high summer, a smitten, fifth-grade girl had once written to him in a heavily decorated poem. Boy, they'd sure gotten a hoot out of the perfumed note—but that little fifth-grade girl had gotten it dead-on.

“Annie, I know holding on to people is not your specialty,” he said, “but whoever this guy is, you might want to consider holding on to him. I love you, but there's no way in hell I would have gone after a thirty-six-foot anaconda with just a knife to save you.”

She gave him another little nod.

“You need to remember that, Doc.” He was frightfully serious, his voice low. “There are lines you can't cross without getting hurt, and I thought I taught you where those lines are.”

He had.

“And I thought I told you that if you wanted me to come back and take care of Corisco Vargas to let me know, and that I would see to it.”

He had.

“And I thought I told you to stay the hell out of Brazil.”

He most definitely had.

He swore, one succinct word, and then his gaze softened the slightest degree.

“And I taught you to stand on your own two feet. Cover me, Annie. I'll be back.” He stood up and strode toward the tower, where two of the men were holding a belaying rope, while the other man and the woman were putting Will over the side in the body sling.

Annie started to tremble. She was in shock, and she was in love, and more than anything else, she wanted to hold Will.

They'd survived. Against all the odds, they'd saved the Indians and
caboclos
, destroyed Corisco Vargas, and survived Reino Novo.

She'd lost her orchid, though, her beautiful, luminous orchid. Vargas had left both of the specimens in his office, and his whole house had gone up in flames when Mad Jack's team had blown the fuel depot.

She lifted her gaze to where Will was being belayed off the broken snake tower, and in her heart, she let the orchids go. They didn't matter now. Nothing mattered— except Will.

EPILOGUE

six months later—
location unknown

M
MMM, GATO, ANNIE PURRED AS
will slowly pulled her into his arms.

He met her gaze in the deepening twilight, his eyes dark and slumberous, before he lowered his mouth to take hers in another wet, deep kiss. She tasted herself on his tongue. She smelled herself on his skin.

She'd marked him. Every time they made love, she marked him as hers, letting him absorb her until she was a part of him. And he was doing the same to her, in the most intensely physical way possible.

Still kissing her, he smoothed his hand over the curve of her stomach, letting his hand rest on the place above her womb.

A son, Tutanji had said, the only other person in the world who knew where they were. The old shaman had brought them in over the mountains, the promise he'd made to Will fulfilled. Some days, looking out over the ancient, rounded hills and the dark green canopy of the rain forest flowing to the horizon, even Annie forgot
where they were. She forgot the place they called home was connected to the rest of the world. Some days she wondered if it really was, or if they had somehow disconnected and were floating free.

Not even Gabriela knew where they were. Their supply drop-off was miles and miles from where Tutanji had led them after Will had healed. There was only one way in to their lost world, and it was not a trail for the faint of heart.

He broke off their kiss, and she sighed in contentment, running her hands up along his scalp, holding him close. He'd loved her well. He was the jaguar, more so now than ever, and she was the cat's favorite snack, all of her.

Will knew when she drifted into sleep, and he pulled her close to hold her next to his body. Looking over her shoulder, he checked the sky. She wouldn't get much of a nap, but he would let her have what she could. She would never forgive him if he let her sleep into the dark hours of the night.

That time was for them, for the work they did, and it tied them together in a way as profound as their love-making. When the sun fell only a few minutes later, he kissed her ear and gave her a gentle shake.

“Annie.”

“Mmmm,” she murmured, lazily opening her eyes and stretching.

A smile curved his mouth. She was going to get loved again, if she wasn't careful. It had happened more than once, and they'd lost a night's work.

“It's time,
querida.”

In minutes, they'd thrown on some clothes and moved
to the highest platform in their five-tiered tree house. Tonight was for panorama pictures, not for collecting. When the cameras were set up and ready, they sat down together on the edge of the deck. Walkways and ladders connected the tiers of the tree house together. Each platform was strung with ropes and, where necessary, safety nets. Each held its cadre of supply cabinets and lab equipment, food caches and cisterns.

Below them, on the forest floor, a silver ribbon of water wound its way to the horizon, illuminated by starlight. At the edge where earth gave way to sky, the river made a subtle transition between this world and the other, seeming to lift into the dark forest of space and flow into the starry wonder of the Milk River.

With Corisco dead and Fat Eddie busy counting his gold in Manaus, their lives had drifted into the quieter rhythms of peaceful days.

Slowly, as the night deepened, the forest of trees began more and more to resemble the Milky Way, thousands of small lights appearing where before they'd been outshone by the sun.
Epidendrum luminosa
, Annie's orchid, the Messenger in Tutanji's language. All plants talked, Tutanji had told them, but truly, he'd said, not all of them have a lot to say. The Messenger was different; its language more complex; its knowledge going back to the beginning, when it first opened its petals in the first misty morn of an Amazonian Eden, a gift from above.

Listen to the light, he'd said, and a lifetime's work had been born. A hundred flowers had been catalogued, the photons of light emitted by their DNA measured and graphed in anticipation of the day when the Messenger's message would be heard.

Until then, he and Annie would stay in the place time and the world had forgotten.

She reached over and slipped her hand into his, and he bent down to press his lips to her cheek. It was a sweet kiss in the dark, while below them, the wonders of the ages blossomed in the night.