Heart of Fire (3 page)

His zest for his work had led him to try to track down several legends, and he had accorded each one a chapter in his notebooks. Jillian remembered the many evenings she had spent as a child, sitting enthralled at his feet or in his lap while he spun his wondrous tales for her entertainment. She hadn't grown up on fairy tales, though in a way perhaps she had, but her fairy tales had been of ancient civilizations and treasures, mysteriously vanished… Had they ever really existed, or were they exactly that, tales grounded only in man's imagination? For her father, even the faintest glimmer of possibility that they could be true had been irresistible; he had had to track down the smallest of threads, if only to satisfy his own curiosity.

She skimmed the notebooks, her eyes dreamy as she remembered the tales he had told her associated with each legend, but she noted that he had discounted most of the legends as myth, with no factual basis. Some few legends he had decided were at least possible, though further research was needed and the truth would probably never be known. She became furious all over again; how could anyone dismiss him as a crackpot, when the evidence was right here that he had weighed the facts very carefully and wasn't influenced by the glamour or mythic proportions of his targets. But all anyone had ever talked about was his Anzar theory, his spectacular failure, and how his pursuit of it had cost him his life.

The Anzar. She hadn't thought about the legend for a long time, because it had caused his death. He had been so excited about it. The last time she had seen him, that morning before he left to travel to the Amazon in pursuit of the Anzar legend, he had been so exuberant, so enthusiastic. She had been a thin, awkward thirteen-year-old girl, almost fourteen, sulky at being left behind, pouting because he would be gone during her birthday, but he had hugged and kissed her anyway,

"Don't pout, sweetheart," he had said, stroking her hair. "I'll be back in a few months, half a year at the most."

"You don't have to go," she had replied, unrelenting.

"But I have this chance to find the Empress, to prove that the Anzar existed. You know what that would mean, don't you?"

At thirteen she had already had an alarmingly realistic outlook on life. "Tenure," she had said, and he had laughed.

"Well, that too. But think of what it would be like to prove the legend true, to hold the Heart of the Empress in my hand, to give its beauty to the world."

She had scowled. "You'd better be careful," she had scolded, shaking her finger at him. "The Amazon isn't a cakewalk, you know."

"I know. I'll watch every step, I promise."

But he hadn't. That morning was the last time she had seen him. They got the news about three months later, and it took another two months before his body was retrieved and returned for burial. Great-Aunt Ruby had come to stay with Jillian while the professor was gone, so Jillian's schooling wouldn't be interrupted, but after his death the house was abruptly sold and she found herself permanently installed in Great-Aunt Ruby's tiny bungalow. Rick, though he was her closest relative, hadn't wanted to burden himself with an adolescent girl. Besides, Rick had never forgiven his father for remarrying after the death of Rick's own mother, and he had moved out as soon as he finished high school. Rick and Jillian had never been close; he had barely tolerated her. The situation had never improved.

Her father's pursuit of the Anzar legend had ended his life and totally changed hers, not just in losing her father but in uprooting her from everything she had known, and even in the present his last quest overshadowed her own career. She flipped through the notebook, wanting to see his most personal thoughts about the legend that had cost her so much, but there wasn't a chapter devoted to the Anzar. She laid the notebook aside and picked up another, but it didn't contain anything about that ancient tribe either.

She went through two more notebooks before she found it, lying under the third notebook, which she had just picked up. It was plainly labeled on the front of the notebook in a heavy black script:
The South American Anzar Civilization
. It alone, of all the legends he had investigated, rated a notebook by itself. A thrill of excitement went through her as she lifted it out of the box and carefully opened it, wondering if she would be able to see what had so captured his interest that he had risked his reputation and his life to pursue it, and lost both.

He had collected several fables and legends from various sources, she saw, all of which contained some reference to the Empress or the Queen's Heart. The origins of these fables were impossible to pin down, though Cyrus Sherwood had meticulously researched them. They were neither Incan nor Mayan, yet seemed to originate from some advanced civilization. The fables had also referred to "the city of stone under the sea of green, the land of the Anzar." In several versions of the fable, with minor variations, a great warrior queen fell in love with a fierce warrior from another tribe, but he was killed while defending the city of stone, and his warrior queen, from a tribe of bloodless winged demons. The warrior queen, or empress, was devastated by his death and swore on his body that her heart would never belong to another, in this life or the next, through all eternity. She lived to a great old age, and when she died, her heart turned into a red jewel, which was taken from her body and placed on the tomb of her beloved warrior so it would belong to him through all eternity, just as she had pledged. Supposedly the red jewel had magical powers; it cast a spell of protection over the Anzar that kept them forever hidden in their city of stone under the green sea. It was the sort of tale that had sprung up in endless variations all over the world, with nothing to set it apart that would explain Professor Sherwood's intense interest in it.

Or her own. Jillian sat back on her heels, staring at the notebook. Her heart was pounding, and she didn't know why, unless it was because her father had thought this legend important enough to devote a separate notebook to it. She felt tense, caught up in the almost painful anticipation that still colored his words fifteen years later. She began reading again.

Almost an hour later she found the code. She stared at it, the childhood memory clicking into place. She grabbed her purse, scrabbled around for a pencil, and began transcribing the code. Only a few words into it, she folded the paper and crammed it into her purse, not wanting to go any further until she could do it in private.

No wonder he had been so excited.

She was sweating, her pulse racing. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage, and it was all she could do to keep from lifting her head in a primal scream to release the tension that had built within her.

He had done it. She knew it as she had never known anything else in her life, with a bone-deep conviction. Her father had found the Anzar.

And so, by God, would she.

Ben Lewis was kicked back at his favorite bar in Manaus, Brazil, a bottle of his favorite whiskey on the table and his favorite waitress on his knee. Life had a way of going in cycles from pure shit to really great, and this was one of the great times. As far as he was concerned, there wasn't anything like good whiskey and a willing woman to make a man feel mellow. Okay, so there was one part of him that wasn't feeling mellow, but hell, his dick hadn't felt mellow since puberty kicked in. And that was where sweet Theresa came in. Since she was blond and spoke bad Portuguese with an American accent he figured she was really just plain Teresa, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that she would get off work soon and lead him to her room, where she would spend the next hour or so under his pumping butt. Yep, he was definitely feeling mellow.

Christus, the bartender, yelled for Theresa to get her ass back to work. She pouted, then laughed and gave Ben a hard, deep kiss. "Forty-five minutes, lover. Can you hold off that long?"

His dark eyebrows lifted. "I reckon. I'm usually worth the wait."

She laughed, the sound full of warm female anticipation. "Don't I know it. All right!" she said irritably to Christus as he scowled at her and opened his mouth to yell again.

As she left his lap, Ben patted her butt and then settled back contentedly to do justice to the smoky whiskey. Like any cautious man, he sat with his back to the wall. The dim, dingy, smoke-filled bar was a favorite with expatriates. Somehow people always managed to find other people like themselves, in any country, in any city, like floatsam washing ashore at one particular place. Brazil was a long way from Alabama, where he'd grown up, but he felt right at home here. The bar was lined with men who had seen it all and done it all, but for various reasons no longer felt the need to watch their backs. He liked the mix in Christus's bar: guides, rivermen, mercenaries both retired and active. It could reasonably be expected to be a rowdy joint, had been at times, and would be again in the future, but for the most part it was just a dim, comfortable place to take refuge from the heat and be with your own kind.

He supposed he'd be safe enough if he sat on one of the barstools; there wasn't anyone in here likely to kill him, and Christus would watch his back. But Ben didn't sit with his back to the wall because he was expecting a knife or a bullet, though they had been possibilities a few times in his life. He sat where he did so he could see everything that went on and everyone who came in. A man could never know too much. He was naturally observant and a lot of times it had saved his life. He wasn't about to break a lifelong habit now.

So when the two men entered the bar and stood for a minute letting their eyes adjust to the darkness before they chose a seat, he noticed them immediately and didn't like what he saw. One was a stranger, but he knew the other man's face and name, had heard a lot about him, none of it good. Steven Kates was a crook, unburdened by any principles or morals, uncaring of anything and everyone except himself. Their trails had never crossed, but Ben's habit of gathering information and keeping tabs on everything going on around him had brought him a lot of talk about Steven Kates. The thing was, Kates operated in the States; what was he doing in Brazil?

The two men moved to the bar. Kates leaned across it and addressed a low comment to Christus. The burly bartender shrugged, not saying anything. Good old Christus could be as closemouthed as a clam if he didn't like the looks of someone, another reason why his bar was so popular.

Kates said something else, and this time Christus growled an answer. The two men held a brief discussion between themselves, nodded to Christus, then went to a table and sat down.

Theresa 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 Theresa; 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. Theresa 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 Theresa 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 Theresa'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 wasn'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.