More Than Paradise (28 page)

“Not right away. What’s up? Is everything okay?” There had to be a very good reason why Charlotte was calling someone she obviously didn’t want to talk to, at two in the morning.

“The storm is really bad up here,” Charlotte answered tearfully.

“We had to leave the new campsite.”

“What new campsite?”

“Miles found a big pool upstream for washing and he wanted us to move closer to it.”

How did some people ever get a PhD? You didn’t park your tent in the fork of a stream on a slope in monsoon country. What did Miles think would happen when it rained? Disbelieving and horriÞ ed, Ash said, “So where are you now?”

“I have no idea. We just ran away as fast as we could.”

She sounded stunned and frightened. Ash stopped with the twenty questions and asked, “Are you hurt?” Bile rose in her throat.

“Charlotte?”

A snufß ing sound came down the phone. “Yes, I’m hurt! Why didn’t you leave a note for me?”

That was rich. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“I left a note in your pack!”

• 189 •

JENNIFER FULTON

The hot indignation would have made Ash smile any other time. Now it jarred her conscience, cutting through the self-torturing assumptions she’d made. She pictured herself getting ready to leave that morning, throwing her gear heedlessly into her pack. She’d spent so much time hunting for Charlotte she had to rush. If there was a note, it had either fallen out or been stuffed to the bottom of her belongings.

“I didn’t see it,” she said, groping for her ß ashlight.

“Oh.” A winded sigh.

“Hang on a second.” Ash’s hand connected with rough, bristly hair and mud-caked skin. The pig sleeping a few feet from her didn’t stir. Oriented now that she could feel its proximity, she located her boots and pulled the ß ashlight out from inside one of them. The other contained her Sig. She was off duty, with Klaus guarding the Huey, and here in Kwerba, away from the expedition, the risk factors were low.

So, for a change, she hadn’t slept fully dressed and ready to roll.

Directing the beam carefully so she didn’t stir the two elderly people whose hut she was sharing, she pulled her pack over and shoved her hand deep inside. Her Þ ngers trawled through the familiar contents until she felt the Nagle insignia on a shirt toward the bottom, one of the Þ rst things she’d shoved in during her hasty departure. Underneath lay a folded piece of paper.

“Damn,” she muttered beneath her breath.

“Did you Þ nd it?”

Ash responded to the hopeful inquiry with a subdued “Yes” and held the note to the light.

Ash, I need to clear my head so I’m going for a long
walk. I wish you weren’t leaving today. I hope we can talk
this afternoon before you go. Please don’t worry. Everything
is Þ ne. I’m not angry about last night. I just feel a bit
overwhelmed and I need some space. Everything seems to be
moving so fast between us. See you soon. Charlotte.

It certainly didn’t sound like a kiss-off.

Ash croaked dryly, “I wish I’d seen this before I left.”

“Me, too.” Charlotte’s voice broke. “I wish we could have talked.

I stayed too long in the cloud forest.”

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“You went back there?” Ash’s mind jumped to the two of them standing naked and awestruck in the chill purity of the waterfall, like they’d just beamed down into paradise.

“I had to,” Charlotte said. “It’s hard to explain. But I feel like I know who I am, there.”

“Yes.” Ash understood exactly. From the moment she’d set foot in that enchanted place, she’d been able to see her deepest self with astonishing clarity. Long-buried dreams came alive. Hope chipped away at her doubts. It was a scary, exhilarating state of mind.

“There were some things I needed to Þ gure out,” Charlotte said.

“And did you?” Ash was almost afraid to hear the answer. It was all wrong that they were having this conversation at opposite ends of a cell phone in the middle of a tropical storm. She wanted to see Charlotte’s face. She wanted to hold her and let nothing harm her.

“Ash.” Charlotte’s voice dropped lower. It was charged with emotion. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

She had to hear this heart-stopping declaration sitting in a thatched wood hut with a pig snoring next to her. Could her life be any less storybook? Elbows resting on her knees, Ash cradled her head in her hands, the phone cupped close. Charlotte’s words ß oated like oxygen. She gulped them down into lungs deprived. She could hear Charlotte breathing raggedly from the risk she’d just taken. It was time to respond.

She put it out there in all its corniness, unable to come up with a better way to explain the slingshot to her soul that day in the bar. “I fell in love with you at Þ rst sight.”

“Oh.”

Ash could see her mouth parting in kissable awe. She wanted to touch it, to carve the full pout of that bottom lip into her Þ ngertips so she could feel it forever. “I don’t even believe in love at Þ rst sight,” she said huskily.

“I don’t either,” Charlotte murmured. “I think it was love at second sight for me.”

They laughed softly.

Ash said, “What was I thinking leaving you in that hotel room?”

“I seriously considered chasing you down the hall,” Charlotte informed her. “But I was too drunk to get to the door.”

“I’m glad we waited.” Ash meant it. Sex in a hotel room with a

• 191 •

JENNIFER FULTON

woman under the inß uence usually only ended one way. They both deserved better, and maybe on some level they’d known it, even then.

“I tried to Þ nd you,” Charlotte said. “Before I left for the Kokoda Trail. You’re not listed.”

“No. Mostly I don’t want to be found.” Ash was amazed. The uptight woman so horriÞ ed to see her at the Sarmi airstrip had actually sought her out after their night on the town? Clearly, they had more catching up to do, sometime when they didn’t have to worry about killing a cell phone battery. Gently, she said, “Baby, I want to continue this conversation, but right now I’m guessing Renee is worried her cell phone is going to die at any moment.”

“I don’t care.”

Ash laughed. “That’s my girl.” Adopting a sterner tone, she said,

“Come on. Say good night and put her on.”

“What do I get in return?”

“What do you want?”

Charlotte’s shaky breath teased Ash’s ear. “Take a wild guess. And since I’m not alone that’s all I’m going to say.”

“I think they’ve heard enough.” Ash knew her colleagues must have been straining their ears this whole time.

They’d both been intrigued by her instructions to Renee to keep Charlotte under constant surveillance. Being professionals accustomed to following orders, they hadn’t questioned the decision, but Nitro had given her a sharp look. He’d examined Billy Bob Woodcock the night they’d searched for Charlotte and had a few theories of his own.

He wasn’t the only one. Ash still had some questions for Charlotte to answer. Every time she thought through those events, she felt like she was missing something. She’d raised the alarm as soon as everyone rolled in for the evening meal with Charlotte not among them. Notably, Billy Bob had been absent, too, a fact that had made her sick to her stomach at the time. However, the burly Texan hadn’t been hard to Þ nd.

She and Nitro had barely arrived in the area where Charlotte was last seen when he lurched out of the undergrowth talking gibberish.

At Þ rst his dazed condition seemed to be explained by a lump near his temple where he’d suffered a blow. He said he must have tripped and hit his head on a tree. That was all he could remember. He’d woken up in a pile of leaves.

None of which explained the puncture mark Nitro subsequently found in his neck. “Tranquilizer dart,” he said.

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Ash took his word for it. The guy knew more than she ever would about how to immobilize human beings, temporarily or for keeps.

“Do you think it’s a kidnapping?” Ash’s blood ran straight to her feet.

“Could be. But they left him and took her, so there must be a reason. He’s got to be carrying a ransom note, only I’m not seeing it.”

They searched Woodcock’s clothing carefully and combed his body in case the kidnappers had decided to write their demand in felt tip on his chest or something. Billy Bob then decided to have hysterics because he thought headhunters might have been coveting his meaty skull.

Leaving him to his lurid imaginings, they kept up the search until the intense darkness made it futile. Ash had been pacing around outside the tents when Charlotte Þ nally showed up, unscathed and telling some bullshit story about falling asleep in the very area they’d been patrolling for hours.

No wonder Nitro was suspicious. Ash wasn’t comfortable either.

She hoped her evasive lover planned to come clean and tell her what had really happened that night. Ash wondered what on earth she could be hiding. Had she discovered the ultimate fern and wanted to keep it to herself? One thing Ash had noticed about the scientists—they were incredibly competitive with each other in their own nerdy way.

She switched the phone to her other ear as the signal faded out a little. Renee was on the other end, relaying their circumstances. By the time she’d Þ nished telling her tale, it was clear that she’d probably saved Charlotte’s life.

Ash said, “You did good. Thank you.”

“It could be worse,” the intrepid hero remarked with irony. “I was sick of playing deck quoits, anyway. And their calypso band sucked.”

Ash grinned at this rare display of humor. Renee Gunderson, according to the Nagle rumor mill, had iced her husband over an affair with the babysitter. She’d been acquitted on a technicality but was dishonorably discharged from the army. Now she was working cream-puff assignments that called for a female contractor.

“Phone me tomorrow with a report on the damage. Okay?”

“You bet.” Renee was all business again. “My guess, it’s going to be ugly.”

v

• 193 •

JENNIFER FULTON

The day after the storm, Charlotte stared down at the two bodies laid out on the only clean sleeping bag liners they’d managed to salvage from the far-ß ung detritus of their camp. The bloodless pallor of their faces, and the gaping cuts and abrasions, would haunt her all her life.

Simon had gone back for a butterß y. Jeb Tanner, the other Texan on the Nagle team, had gone after him. They were washed away when the stream became a lethal torrent and breached its banks. The two men were thrown hundreds of yards downhill, smashing into trees and rocks. They had no chance, Nitro said.

The team had decided to bury them here, near the lake bed, where they could easily be brought out in a recovery operation if that’s what their families wanted. Everyone had gathered in a Þ ne drizzle of rain to pay their Þ nal respects. Charlotte felt eyes on her as the bodies were lowered into their graves. She didn’t know what to say. With the exception of Nitro and Renee, who seemed to have added two and two, the entire Þ eld party now thought Simon had been her boyfriend.

All morning people had been coming up to her, giving her embarrassed hugs and shoulder squeezes. It seemed to help them all cope to have someone they could offer condolences to, so she kept her mouth shut. It was ironic. She’d learned more about Simon in the few hours since his death than in the past week. Everyone who consoled her had a story to tell about him. It sounded like he was a genuinely good person. Charlotte wished she’d laughed at more of his jokes.

After the men were in their graves, the Australian mammal experts led the group in a simple rendition of “Amazing Grace,” then anyone who knew the British national anthem sang it in honor of Simon. The Americans followed this with their anthem in salute to Jeb Tanner, who had tried to save a life and lost his own.

Billy Bob produced a tinny CD player and cranked up the volume to play Jeb’s favorite song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Everyone knew at least some of the lyrics and sang along out of tune. Miles stood a short distance away, staring at nothing, wiping tears off his face. He’d been throwing up all morning.

As Nitro and several other men shoveled earth into the graves, Charlotte sensed a restless expectation in the ranks. They all wanted to give their dead colleagues as much dignity as they could, and without a priest something crucial seemed to be missing from their simple ritual.

So, to the soft thud of falling earth, she did her best to recall the words everyone expected to hear at a funeral.

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“We hereby commit the bodies of our two dearly departed brothers Simon and Jeb into the ground. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”

It was all she could call to mind, but a solemn sigh ensued and the tension dissipated. Life was short. Charlotte hoped each dead man had found his measure of happiness.

• 195 •

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Time slithered by. The Þ eld party subsisted in a veil of rain and cloud. Grim. Oppressive. Unrelenting. Day after day.

The ß ash-ß ood waters had run off into small tributaries all over the affected area of the mountain. These Þ ngered a sea of mud in which most of the supplies and equipment were buried. Each day, in shifts, the team dug with any implement they could Þ nd, trying to unearth food and phones. Most people had lost theirs and the camp’s small generator had been destroyed, so there was no way to recharge the batteries of the few that still functioned.

Charlotte felt miserably guilty that she had consumed most of Renee’s charge while she was confessing her love to Ash. But Renee never complained. All she said was that they could only phone Ash once a day to check in, and they had to save power for their most important call, when the clouds Þ nally parted and a helicopter could land.

Each morning over breakfast, the entire camp gathered at the edge of the lake bed to stare up at the sky like the faithful awaiting the rapture.