Jungle of Deceit (2 page)

He moved in closer and called out to the sprawled figure.

“
Doctor?”

There was no response—maybe an inarticulate grunt intended for the bowels of the Jeep.

“
Dr. Langley?” He stepped beside those boots and stooped over, hands on knees.

A muffled bang followed by a husky curse ensured that Mitch’s first impression wasn’t the one he had intended.

The figure that wriggled from beneath the Jeep was a feminine one, and Mitch’s eyes greedily latched onto the slim hips as they twisted out into sunlight.

“
This damn well better be good.” She hoisted upright and rubbed her hands on her khaki pants.

“
I’m sorry.” Taken aback by such a vivid image of femininity in this dirty, testosterone-laced camp, Mitch stammered, “I thought you were Dr. Langley.”

With the back of her hand, the woman reached up to brush golden bangs from her eyes. “I
am
Dr. Langley.”

Stunned, Mitch sought an intelligent response. Eyes that had been deprived of sleep—deprived of lots of things lately, roved over the agitated female. She had to be in her early thirties, with shoulder length blond hair and jade irises that changed colors each time the tree limbs twitched above them. A smudge of grease covered the patch of skin below her left eye, while the rest of her face glowed from a healthy tan.

Tempted by that streak of oil, Mitch wanted to reach over with his thumb and swipe it away.

His glance dropped to her clenched fists, resting against baggy pants that hinted at the lithe figure beneath them. Her stance was belligerent, but he just found the overall effect arousing.

“
Who are you?” she asked with the charm of a cornered porcupine.

Perhaps her voice was edgy, but the woman challenged his blatant perusal and she assessed Mitch with the same measured inspection.

“
It really better be a good answer,” she added, “because I have a knot growing on top of my head with whatever your name is on it.”

It had been a long time since Mitch felt a smile that was anything more than a muscular reflex. Clearing his throat, he offered, “Mitchell Hasslet.”

The declaration incited little reaction. He held out his hand and added, “Mitch, the photographer you asked for.”

The woman glanced down at his hand. “Ohhh—no. No.” Her head shook from side to side, resulting in a pendulum effect of glossy hair. “I didn’t
ask
for you.” Tanned arms crossed over her chest. “You were forced on me by the museum.”

Mitch kept his hand out, waiting for her to return the salutation—challenging her to do so. For the waif-like image that she portrayed in her oversized clothes, this woman did not seem intimidated by him in the least. She took his hand, shook it firmly and then tossed it aside−all before Mitch realized that he had been dismissed, left to stare at her receding back.

“
Wait.” His voice came out husky. It was enough to halt her stride. “I thought Dr. Langley was a man.” He felt a certain sense of humility when he admitted that.

Slight shoulders slumped beneath a white T-shirt and the blond crown dropped back in silent appeal to the sun. After a moment’s deliberation, she turned around and pinned him with almond-shaped eyes that stunned him into submission.

“
Alex Langley.” When there was no reaction, she added, “Dr. Alexandra Langley.”

“
Alexandra.” Mitch wasn’t even aware he had spoken the word aloud until he heard her clear her throat and saw those eyes narrow.

“
That’s
Doctor
Langley to you, Mr. Hasslet.” Alex’s tone was aggressive. “If you’re looking for Franklin, you have the wrong dig.”

She turned away and fired over her shoulder. “Oh, and I suggest that you get your equipment out of the Jeep before Chuck leaves.” She was nearly out of earshot, but he heard her assert, “Where he’s going, your camera may come back—
leaking
.”

Then Alex was gone.

Okay, tactical error, Mitch thought. He had been told he would be joining the ranks of Dr. Langley’s dig. The journalist in him called for a quick scan for Dr. Langley on the internet before he left. Every hit that came back credited Franklin Langley with another monumental achievement. Not one single hit came back on Dr. Langley, Junior.

It was odd. He could have sworn Nicholson said he was here to track down Franklin Langley. Maybe the eccentric museum director had received misinformation.

Too puzzled and tired to replay that whole bizarre conversation in his head, Mitch stood in the core of an active camp with raucous students swarming around him as if he were an offering to the Queen Bee.

But, he had already met the Queen Bee.

Maybe her stinger was potent. Maybe she ruled the hive with wit and confidence. He didn’t know too much about Alexandra Langley. Not much at all. But he was certain of one thing. With that silken hair and glistening skin—
she would taste better than honey.

***

Okay, so
Chuck
had his camera.

Which one was Chuck again?

Mitch searched the bevy of tanned faces, most camouflaged by layers of grime. He recognized Hollywood. Hollywood had picked him up at a remote airstrip nearly thirty miles away from here. During that bumpy ride, the man had introduced himself as Wes—Wes Porter from San Diego.

“
Wes.”

Bleached hair was glued to Wes’s temples by perspiration. He used his forearm to wipe sweat out of his eyes and nodded at Mitch. “Lost?”

One, two, three,
Mitch counted until he harnessed his derisive reply. “Kinda hard to get lost with all this racket.”

Wes tipped his head back and took a long swig from a water bottle. He capped the device and glanced around the camp.

Mitch studied Wes and realized that the man wasn’t young like the rest of the students. He probably topped forty. That, or just too many years in the sun had triggered the deep grooves around his eyes and mouth.

“
We’ve got to start packing up.” Wes’s icy blue eyes met his. “You know how it is…” he nodded at a nearby scuffle, “−heavy items like these tend to make
noise
.”

At this rate, Mitch thought he was going to have to sleep with one eye open for fear that this mutinous pack would drag him off as a sacrifice to some Mayan God.

“
Anything I can do to help?” The offer was sincere. His real purpose for being here could not commence until sundown, when he could sneak away from this camp. For now, he might as well try and make his presence less offensive.

“
Aren’t you supposed to be taking pictures or something?” Wes stooped over and whipped a canvas off a bulky slab of rock. “Isn’t that what you should be doing instead of ogling Alex?”

Okay then
, Mitch thought. So that’s how it was. Alex was Wes’s woman. Figures. Women always go for the blond, bronzed, Adonis type.

“
I don’t ogle,” Mitch injected as he leaned in to help hoist the slab into an open crate. “It’s not my style.”

The carving in stone depicted a warrior crowned with a helmet of feathers, kneeling above his rope-bound captive. It was a disturbing image because it hinted at the violence that was sure to follow, in a time when violence prevailed.

“
You’ll never get anywhere with her.” Wes folded a tarp across the slab, blotting out the unsettling graphic.

“
I wasn’t looking to.” That, too, was sincere.

Discovering that the esteemed Dr. Langley was in this case a woman, was an interesting twist, but it didn’t change the fact that he had a mission to complete before he could get out of this godforsaken quandary. “I do admit to being a little shocked, however. I thought the doctor’s name was Franklin Langley.”

Wes shook his head and stooped to hammer the lid onto the crate. “It’s a common mistake. Frank Langley is Alex’s father, and he doesn’t have half the raw instinct or talent that his daughter does.”

The last statement was uttered with enough husky conviction to make Mitch give Wes another assessment. Maybe on second glance, the bronzed Adonis didn’t look so much the Hollywood type, but more a hard worker who’d spent too many years in the jungle and harbored deep feelings for the woman that employed him.

“
I’m not interested in staking a claim on your property…” Mitch moved in to assist with the next crate, “−if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

Above the flat wooden surface their eyes met in a silent face-off.

“
Alex is no one’s property,” Wes declared quietly.

“
The way you talk—”

“
No.” The finality in the word suspended anything Mitch was about to add. For that fact, so did the sudden emergence of the object of their debate. Alex stood at the center of a group of men, and though she was not short, she was dwarfed in that ring. Still, she dominated their attention with commanding hand gestures and verbal authority. She was a militant leader with the finest figure Mitch had ever seen.

No one interrupted her. No one disputed her.

“
How does she do it?” Intrigued, Mitch dragged his glance away from Alex.

“
Control them, you mean?”

“
Yeah.” Of its own will, his head swung back towards the lithe blond in her baggy khakis and white T-shirt.

Wes gave up the battle with the crate and parked down on the corner of it. “It hasn’t been easy on her.”

Tempted to sit as well, Mitch glanced at the wooden box, which eerily resembled a casket. Shrugging off the association, he bent his knees and dropped onto the splintered surface.

“
I’d like to say I can imagine.” His arms crossed in the same fashion as Wes’s, so that he thought they resembled a couple of old men, gossiping on a front porch. “But I don’t think I can.”

“
What more is there to say?” Wes began. “She’s a beautiful woman, working with nearly a dozen young men. She’s their boss. If she was to yield even an inch, they’d be on her like syrup.”

Now why did he have to go and use that analogy, Mitch wondered. Images of Alex Langley and syrup suddenly made the oblong crate even more uncomfortable.

To his utter dismay, Alex picked that moment to look across the camp and focus on him. Mitch shifted as if her intelligent eyes spotted his discomfort and keenly surmised the source.

“
And. Mr. Hasslet−” She broke away from the group to move towards him. “I’ll need you as well.”

Spellbound by the focus of those eyes, Mitch sprang off the crate. Before making a total idiot of himself, he shrugged his shoulders, stared at his knuckles, rubbed them against his jeans, and finally muttered, “Yeah, well my camera is halfway across the jungle now, isn’t it?”

Alex shook her head as if he was a source of great amusement to her.

“
Mr. Hasslet,” she said in a soft voice, “I don’t need your camera.”

The fact that he wanted her to add,
I need your body
, disturbed him.

“
I need your body.”

It took a moment for the statement to settle in. Mitch almost sustained whiplash when his head snapped. “Excuse me?”

“
Work, Mr. Hasslet.” Alex crossed her arms and watched him with a cool look. “I need you to help everyone pack.” She nodded at Wes. “We leave at dawn.”

“
Leave?” Panic crept into Mitch’s voice, elevating it an octave. He cleared his throat and resumed. “Where are we going?”

Already having dismissed him, Alex seemed annoyed by the inquiry. “We’re moving the campsite.” She took two steps away, but Mitch’s pitch arrested her.

“
How far?”

“
Mr. Hasslet−” She rounded on him. “We’ve been here for two months. We have charted every inch of land…every tributary within a fifty mile radius. You are certainly the last person I have to account to for this relocation.”

She must have caught some of the desperation on his face because her lips softened into what almost passed for a smile. “If it’s that you’re afraid the hike is on foot,” she nodded at her Jeep, “your chariot awaits you.”

A hike on foot was exactly what Mitch wanted.

It was to this very quadrant of the jungle that the missing shipment of Mayan artifacts was traced. Mitch had the god-awful misfortune of capturing that heist on film—film that later ended up in the Hudson River. But he was the only person to actually
see
the guerillas—the only one able to make a visual identification. He was invaluable to Phillip Nicholson.

Yes, there was an official search under way—but in this unsavory land with political strife and hostile rebels,
official
wasn’t going to cut it.

So Nicholson sent
him
.

“
You’ll find this hard to believe, doctor, but a tripod isn’t too stable in a bouncing Jeep.”

Alex’s lips twitched again. She was suppressing a laugh and it irked him.

“
I’m glad you find my plight amusing…” his tone took a low dive so that the conversation excluded Wes, “−but think of it this way—the more accommodating you are to me, the quicker my job is done and I’m out of here.”