Heart of Fire Read online

  Thèresa drifted back over to Ben’s table several minutes later. “Those two guys are trying to find you,” she murmured as she bent over and wiped the table, which didn’t need it.

  Ben admired the view, looking forward to the moment when she would take her blouse off completely and he’d have unlimited access to those lush breasts.

  “Something about a guide job upriver,” she continued with a smile on her face, knowing exactly what he was looking at and thinking. She shrugged her shoulders, letting the blouse slide a little farther down and reveal even more of her cleavage.

  “I don’t need a job,” he said.

  “What do you need, lover?” she purred.

  There was a lazy, slow-burning fire in his eyes. “A couple of hours of screwing would take the edge off,” he allowed.

  She shivered, and her little cat’s tongue licked out. That was what he liked about Thèresa; she wasn’t any great shakes in the brain department, but she was good-natured and completely sensual, always ready for a good time in bed. She was already getting turned on. He knew the signs as well as he knew them in his own body, though it was kind of difficult for an iron-hard dick to go unnoticed or be mistaken for anything else. Thèresa had to have a steady supply of sex, just as he did. When he wasn’t around, someone else would do. Hell, just about anyone else would do. Sweet Thèresa wasn’t particular, she liked all men, as long as their equipment was in working order.

  She was beaming as she went back to work, her face lit with anticipation.

  Ben studied Kates and the man with him. It was the truth; he didn’t need a job now. He had plenty of money in the bank, and his life-style wasn’t extravagant. Fancy sleaze could cost a lot of bucks, but plain sleaze was dirt cheap. As long as he had food, a bed, good whiskey, and plenty of sex, that was all he asked out of life. Ben Lewis was a contented man.

  Like hell.

  The nose for adventure, which had led him into one hellhole after another for most of his life, was working at full strength now. If a slime ball like Steven Kates would put himself out by tramping through the Amazon basin, there had to be a mighty important reason behind it. The Amazon wasn’t an ordinary river and any expedition wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. From what Ben knew of him, Kates was the type who hung back and let others do the work; then he stepped in and relieved them of their hard-earned loot.

  It had to be something big to entice Kates to active participation.

  Ben got to his feet and ambled over to their table, snagging the bottle of whiskey from his own table as an afterthought. He tipped the bottle up and let a small amount run into his mouth where he held it on his tongue, savoring the taste for a delicious moment before swallowing it. Damn good whiskey.

  Kates was staring at him with cold disdain. Ben cocked one eyebrow at the two men. “I’m Lewis. Y’all looking for me?”

  He almost laughed aloud at the look on Kates’s face, and he knew what the other man was seeing: someone who hadn’t shaved, whose clothing was stained and wrinkled, and who was cradling a bottle as if he never let it out of his arms. Well, he hadn’t shaved, his clothes were dirty and wrinkled, and he didn’t intend to let that bottle go just yet. He’d come straight here from a bitch of a trip upriver, and the shaving and bathing would wait until he got to Thèresa’s place, because she liked to take a bath with him. And this was, in fact, fine whiskey; he hadn’t had even a taste of booze in a couple of months, and if he’d left it on the table some son of a bitch would have swiped it. He’d paid for the bottle, so where he went, it went.

  The other man, though, was looking at him eagerly. “Ben Lewis?”

  “Yep.” This guy looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe older but with boyish features that disguised his age despite a certain look of dissipation. Ben sized him up immediately: a do-nothing, the type who whined about being dealt a bad hand in life rather than getting up off his lazy ass and doing something about it. Even if he did do something, it would be along the lines of robbing a convenience store to improve his finances; actually working hard at a job wouldn’t occur to him. Ben wasn’t much on the nine-to-five routine himself, but at least he was solvent through his own efforts, not someone else’s.

  “We heard you’re the best guide available for an expedition we’re planning,” the other man said. “We’d like to hire you.”

  “Well, now.” Ben hooked an extra chair around and sat down in it backwards, his arms propped on the back of it. “I’m the best, but I don’t know if I’m available. I just got back from a trip, and I’d planned on a little R and R before I went back up.”

  Steven Kates seemed to have recovered from his distaste, maybe figuring that anyone who had just returned from a guide trip was entitled to look dirty and unshaven. “It’ll be worth your while, Mr. Lewis.”

  Mr. Lewis? It had been so long since Ben had been called “mister” that he almost looked around to see if someone was standing behind him. “Just ’Lewis,’” he said. “My while is worth a lot right now. I’m tired and looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for a couple of weeks.” A real bed with a woman in it.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Kates said.

  “For how long?” Ben asked.

  Kates shrugged. “We don’t know. It’s an archaeological expedition.”

  That was doubtful. Ben couldn’t imagine Kates being involved in anything as high-minded as an archaeological expedition. He might use it as a cover, but that was it. This was getting more interesting by the minute. “What’s the general area? I’ll be able to judge the length of the trip then.”

  The other man pulled out a map of Brazil and laid it on the table. It wasn’t a large or detailed map; in fact, it looked as if it had been torn from an encyclopedia. He tapped his finger on an area far inland and north of the Amazon. “In here somewhere. We don’t know exactly where.”

  Ben stared at the map with half-closed eyes and took another sip of whiskey. Damn, that was good stuff. It burned all the way down. Appreciation of it kept him from laughing out loud at the preposterousness of the situation. These goofballs had come down here with a grade-school map and no idea what they were getting into. “It’s uncharted up there,” he finally said. “I’ve never gone into that territory, and I don’t know anyone who has.”

  “You can’t do it?” the second man asked, looking disappointed.

  Ben snorted. “Hell, yes, I can do it. Just who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Rick Sherwood. This is Steven Kates.”

  So Kates wasn’t going by an assumed name. He apparently thought no one would know of him down here. That meant he felt safe.

  “Well, Rick Sherwood and Steven Kates, I can take you up there. I’ve never been, but I know how to get along in the jungle, and I don’t suppose it makes any difference that I don’t know exactly where I am if you don’t know exactly where you’re going. The problem is, ten thousand is peanuts. You won’t be able to hire anyone who knows his stuff for that amount. You’re talking about two, maybe three months in hell. My price is two thousand a week, and you pay for all the supplies and extra help. I’ll cost you roughly twenty, twenty-five thousand, and the rest of it will come to about another ten. So, are you still so all-fired set on this ’archaeological expedition’?”

  The two exchanged looks. They hadn’t caught his faint emphasis on the last two words. “No problem,” Kates said smoothly.

  Ben was now past curious, he was flat-out intrigued. Kates hadn’t even blinked an eye, which meant that whatever was up there was worth so much money that thirty-five thousand dollars was a drop in the bucket in comparison, and Kates sure as hell wasn’t involved out of a burning desire to be written up in any archaeological papers. Scavenge the site was more like it, assuming there really was an archaeological site up there, which Ben thought was doubtful. The jungle destroyed evidence of man almost as fast as man could leave it. Still, until he had a better idea of what was going on, he was going to assume there was a site up there, because there sure as hell w
asn’t anything else in that area. But what could be so valuable that it would lure someone like Kates into going for it? The jungle abounded with tales of lost treasure and fantastic myths, but as far as Ben knew, none of them were true. People were always looking for lost treasure; except for the odd shipwreck, none of those treasures were ever found. It was a fact that people believed whatever they wanted, regardless of the evidence. Ben certainly wasn’t going to risk his profits on finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  “Payable in advance,” Ben said.

  “What the hell? Forget it,” Sherwood blustered.

  Significantly, Kates didn’t say anything, though he was frowning. Ben tilted the bottle up for another sip. “I don’t skip out on my clients,” he said. “If I did, I wouldn’t get any more. The same isn’t true the other way around. I learned that the hard way. I get my money up front or it’s no deal.”

  “There are other guides, Lewis.”

  “Sure there are. But none as good as I am. It’s your choice if you want to get back alive or die in there. Like I said, I just returned from a trip. It won’t hurt my feelings to have a little vacation before I take another job.”

  Ben was aware that he wasn’t telling the exact truth, but bluffing was part of the game. If these fools didn’t know how to play it, that was their problem. There were Indians in the region who knew more about living in the jungle than he ever would, but those Indians just might be the biggest danger to anyone trespassing in their territory. There were still bands of natives deep in the interior who had never seen a white man, still huge areas that were uncharted. No one knew what was in there. At least, no one who had come back out to describe it. Hell, for all he knew, the region was infested with headhunters.

  “Ask around,” he said carelessly, getting to his feet. “Like I said, I don’t need a job, but you need a guide pretty damn bad.”

  It was real funny the way most people valued something more if they thought it was hard to obtain. Just as he’d thought, his indifference to the job convinced them that he was the best available.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Kates said. “You’re hired.”

  “Fine,” Ben said just as carelessly as before. “When do you want to leave?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  He sighed. Damn. He’d hoped for a few days to relax, but twenty-five thousand was twenty-five thousand. “Okay.” He glanced at his watch. Three-thirty. “Meet me back here at seven and we’ll go over the logistics.” That would give him at least two hours with Thèersa, and time for cleaning up as well.

  “We can do that now,” Sherwood said.

  “You can. I can’t. Seven o’clock.” Ben walked away and approached Thèresa. “Give me your key,” he said, and nuzzled her neck. “I’ll clean up and be waiting in bed for you.”

  She laughed as she fished the key out of her pocket. “Well, all right, but I was planning to climb into the tub with you.”

  “Got things to do, sugar. If I’m already cleaned up, we’ll have more time in the sack.”

  “In that case, get a move on.” She winked and kissed him, and Ben sauntered out of the bar, aware of three sets of eyes watching him, but he was interested in only one. Women. Damn their sweet little hides, if they ever figured out just how wild men were for them, the power structure of the entire world would turn upside down. Maybe that was why men had been made bigger and stronger, just to give them a fighting chance.

  Rick had given Jillian instructions to have their belongings stored while they were away; then he and Kates had left the hotel to find the guide they had heard about. She was glad of the time alone, because she had some things to take care of that she didn’t want either of them to know about. First she arranged for storage, searching out the hotel manager, who didn’t seem overly pleased with the idea of holding their stuff. But as they wouldn’t be leaving a great deal behind and since she paid him for two months’ storage in advance, he was willing. After a few moments of conversation in a mixture of Portuguese and English, she understood that he disapproved of her going on the expedition at all.

  “Many men do not come back, senhora,” he said seriously. He was very Latin in looks, short and stocky, with straight black hair and large dark eyes. “The jungle eats them up, and they are never seen again.”

  Jillian didn’t correct his assumption that she was a married woman, for it would only have embarrassed him and didn’t matter to her. It wasn’t an unusual assumption, that she was Rick’s wife rather than his sister. They didn’t resemble each other at all, except that they both had brown hair. The manager seemed like a nice man, and she wanted to pat his hand to comfort him. “I understand your concerns,” she said. “I share them. Believe me, I don’t take the jungle lightly. But I’m an archaeologist, and I’m used to rough conditions. I’ve probably slept more nights in a tent than in a bed, and I’m very cautious.”

  “I hope so, senhora,” he replied, his fine eyes worried. “Myself, I would not go.”

  “But I must, and I promise you I’ll take every care.”

  She hadn’t lied. Though she had done most of her work in dry, dusty climates, she knew the obstacles that faced them. Both flora and fauna could prove deadly. Her vaccinations were up to date, she had a good supply of antibiotics and insect repellent, a more than adequate first-aid kit, and was competent at stitching up minor wounds. She had also taken the precaution of getting a prescription for birth control pills and had brought along a three-month supply, smuggled into the country in her first-aid kit, disguised as antihistamines.

  Still, she didn’t try to fool herself that she could cope with everything the rain forest would throw at them. She would be careful, but accidents could always happen, as could illness. Despite every caution, snakebite could happen. She also had antivenin in the first-aid kit, but there were some poisons for which there was no antidote. Hostile Indians were also a possibility, since there were great stretches of the Amazon basin that had never been explored or mapped. They literally had no idea what they would find.

  She quickly finished her business with the manager and left the hotel with one purpose in mind: to purchase a reliable weapon. She thought it would be a relatively easy task in Manaus; after all, the city, with its wide avenues and European ambience, was a duty-free port. Practically any mass-produced product in the world could be found in Manaus.

  Living in Los Angeles probably helped her endure the heat better than if she had lived in, say, Seattle, but still she found the humidity enervating. They were here in the best season, the winter months of June, July, and August, which meant this was the driest time of the year and the heat was marginally less intense. She suspected that “dry” meant that instead of raining every day, perhaps it would rain only every other day. If they weren’t so lucky, it would rain only twice a day rather than three times. She hoped for the first, but was prepared for the latter.

  She walked around for a while, not straying far from the hotel but keeping her eyes open. She overheard at least seven different languages before she had gone two hundred yards. Manaus was a fascinating city, a deep-water port situated twelve hundred miles inland, with all the worldliness of any seaport visited by cruise ships. Indeed, the cruise ships probably accounted for the variety of languages she had encountered. So what if they were smack in the middle of a continent? The mighty Amazon was a law unto itself, so deep in some places that four hundred feet of water still lay beneath the hulls of the ships.

  Rick was still sullen over her insistence on keeping the map to herself, scarcely speaking to her at all except to give orders, but she didn’t let that sway her determination. This expedition was as much for their father as it was for her—more, in fact. She was strong and could fight her own battles, but the professor couldn’t protect either his reputation or his memory. He would be forever remembered as a crackpot unless she could prove that his theory about the Anzar had been valid, and that meant not trusting Rick with the information.

  She wished
he weren’t involved at all, but circumstances had been against her. Rick had reentered the room only moments after she’d realized what she had, probably to make certain she wasn’t up to something, and she hadn’t been able to hide her excitement. He had looked at the papers scattered around her, seen a general map of the area, and for once leaped to the correct conclusion, though he had called it a “treasure map.”

  He had badgered her for days to give him the coordinates, but she knew her brother; he was what in the old days had been called a ne’er-do-well. He would probably have sold the information to some ambitious fortune hunter without thinking or caring about the professor’s reputation. He certainly wouldn’t have been inclined to preserve the findings for careful excavation by trained archaeologists or to catalog the finds or to turn any valuables over to the Brazilian government as required by law. If she could have lined up any outside sponsorship she would have done so, and she’d have gotten the documents even if she’d had to resort to burglary, but all of her feelers had been either ignored or laughed at. She could just hear them all now: Crackpot Sherwood’s daughter had gone off the deep end too.

  In the end, it was Rick who had brought Steven Kates into the picture. For reasons of his own, Kates was willing to finance the project. Jillian had insisted on coming along to protect the find as best she could, but she couldn’t help feeling bitter that she had been forced into such a position by the blindness of some members of her chosen profession. If they had given any credence to her father, or to her, the expedition would have been staffed by trained archaeologists and reliable guides rather than the unscrupulous riffraff she was very much afraid Rick and Kates had hired. If she had had any other option she would have used it, but she had to make do with the resources available to her. She was a pragmatist, yes, but she was a prepared pragmatist. She had committed the location of the Stone City to memory, so they had to take her along, and she would also make certain she was armed.

  It was a logical precaution. She was competent with a firearm, a competence that came in handy in her profession. Snakes and other dangers were part of the job. She was concerned that this time the snakes would be two-legged, but that was a risk she would have to take. She only hoped she could contain the damage; after all, they were hardly likely to kill her or leave her behind in the jungle to die. Despite Rick’s failings as both a man and a brother, he wasn’t a murderer. At least, she hoped he would balk at any attempt to harm her. She reserved judgment on Steven Kates, but on the surface he seemed to be civilized. If he proved to be otherwise, she would be prepared.