Outlaw Carson (15 page)

Kit laughed and drew the older woman into a
hug. “For you, Lo-eese, I will chant.”

And what was he willing to do for her?
Kristine wondered. Love her and leave her?

The afternoon slid into dusk and then into
evening with every minute feeling like her last. She pored over her
computerized versions of his journals and his catalog of artifacts,
explaining her work and the system Kit had used to Lois and Thomas.
She had voluminous packages for both of them, and both expressed an
interest in the university’s project. Lois even offered to write an
introduction to her book on the temples and shrines of Tibet. Dean
Chambers, indeed, would be impressed, Kristine thought, and Harry
would probably never forgive himself.

It was as close to acclaim as Kristine had
ever gotten. She held the opportunity dear, knowing it might be the
only thing left after he was gone, a published work of historical
significance and the shadowed glory of being the conduit of
knowledge of Chatren-Ma. It wasn’t enough.

Damn him. Who did he think he was, to waltz
into her life and waltz back out? Dear Lord, had she really made
love with him? She lifted her gaze over Lois’s shoulder and watched
him go over the boxes with Thomas, double-checking the inventory
lists.

Had she really held him in her arms and felt
the very life of him surround, invade, and fill her with the
sweetest love she’d ever known? Had she really kissed him with
desperate need, wanting nothing more than to know the heat of him
forever? Had she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him
down to her again and again, turning ravenous for every touch of
his mouth.

Yes, her memories answered as her gaze
drifted up his long, jean-clad legs and over his broad back and
shoulders to the profiled angle of his jaw. His bracelets, those
broad bands of gold incised with the fauna of the high
plateaus—snow leopard and ram, a coiled panther striking down a
stag, the gentler symbolism of birds nesting in trees—jangled when
he knelt on the floor and lifted the bottom of one box for Thomas
to notate a number in his book. She followed the path of his plait
down between his shoulder blades, then at last returned her gaze to
the folio Lois was studying.

Yes, she’d made love with him, and she knew
she’d never be free of the whispers he’d put in her mind, of the
imprint of his body, the touch he gave that went beyond both.

The older woman sifted through the papers
and shuffled around through a couple more notebooks, her brow
furrowing.

“Is something wrong?” Kristine asked,
forcing her attention back to the job at hand.

“I’ve known him a long time, Kristine,” Lois
said absently, continuing her search, “since before Lishan. He’s
not like most men, but then neither was his father.”

The personal turn of the conversation
surprised her, but she couldn’t help but follow Lois’s lead. “Which
father do you mean?”

Curious, brown eyes peered at her over the
rim of Lois’s glasses, and Kristine thought she detected a note of
surprise in the older woman’s expression. “He told you about Sang
Phala?”

Kristine eased down into one of the kitchen
table chairs, her own curiosity at full flame. “Only that Sang
Phala was the one who took him into the monastery.”

“Kicking and screaming by all accounts,”
Lois said after pausing to remove her glasses. In those short
moments Kristine knew she’d been scrutinized inside out, upside
down, and backward by an expert. “He was nine when Sang Phala found
him with the Khampas. By then Kit was wilder than a cub wolf,
rebellious, resentful, confused, and still too young to understand
why he’d been abandoned by his parents.”

“Abandoned?” Kristine was hanging on every
word, every bit of information about the unique man who’d slipped
inside her defenses, but she hadn’t expected that particular
word.

“They died, but to a child it’s the same,”
Lois explained. “He’d been left alone. I looked for him myself.
Melanie and Dwayne were both good friends of mine.”

Melanie, Kristine thought, testing the name
in her mind. His mother’s name had been Melanie.

“But you couldn’t find him?” she prompted,
not wanting the discussion to end. No other explanation made sense,
but Lois quickly dissuaded her.

“Oh, I found him all right.” Lois shifted
one of the folders on top of another. “And I had the legal right to
bring him back to the United States. He was, and is, an American
citizen.”

Kristine heard the regret in the older
woman’s voice and wondered what could have compelled her to leave
her friend’s son in such a wild land.

Lois glanced up at Kit. “I chose to leave
him in the monastery.” Then, as if seeking confirmation of her
decision, she said, “Look at him, Kristine. Can you imagine him
different than he is? In a Brooks Brothers suit?”

No. Try as she might, Kristine couldn’t fit
those shoulders into pinstripes. She couldn’t fit his smile behind
a facade of civilization. He was elemental, of the earth and sky,
and no outward trappings could enhance the man he’d become.

“He was still hurting so badly when I found
him,” Lois continued, sounding lost in her own thoughts. “A little
boy shoved from an extreme of freedom into an extreme of
discipline. I couldn’t turn his world upside-down again. I wasn’t
sure I could offer him the peace Sang Phala promised me would be
his.” A fleeting smile graced the curator’s mouth. “I could have
wrung the old man’s neck when I found out Kit had run away. Those
were the bad years, not knowing where he was, not knowing if he was
dead or alive, wondering how he’d survive on his own. Then the kid
shows up at Lishan, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

She sighed, her gaze returning to the pile
of folders. “For a moment, when I found him in the monastery, when
I stood in the cold hallway watching his small head bowed in
prayers, that tinge of red hair like a beacon among so much
darkness, I thought he could be mine, that I could bring him home
and raise him as my son.” Lois lifted her head and gave Kristine a
long, thoughtful look, and her voice softened. “But he never
belonged to me, Kristine. He’s never belonged to any woman, mother,
sister, or lover.”

The woman’s intuitive deduction and subtle
warning sent a blush burning across Kristine’s cheeks. She’d been a
fool to succumb to her longings and his desire. He’d had other
lovers. She’d known that simple truth from his first kiss. He’d
left them all, and less than an hour ago he had professed a need to
leave her too. Lois hadn’t brought the boy home, and she’d just
told Kristine she doubted if the younger woman could hold the
man.

“Was there something wrong with the data?”
Kristine asked, drawing the personal vein of the conversation to an
abrupt close.

“The map.” Lois opened the top folder and
flipped through the pages until she found what she wanted. “It’s
missing an important piece of information.”

Kristine had studied every iota of his
research and had found nothing missing. In truth, it was the most
complete report she’d ever seen. “What’s missing?” She looked and
still didn’t know.

“The location of Chatren-Ma.”

Kristine gave Lois a quizzical glance. Maybe
the woman wasn’t as sharp as she’d believed. No, she quickly
amended. Lois Shepard was plenty smart. Maybe the trip had tired
her out.

“He’s put the maps together in a series of
enlargements,” she explained in a brisk tone, keeping her doubt to
herself so as not to embarrass the woman. “The first map, here,
where he’s lifted out a section, refers to the second map where the
section is enlarged. The series continues through all five maps
until he gets down to the illustrations and photographs of the
monastery.” Kristine didn’t know how anyone could have done a more
thorough job.

Lois did, though. “He lost some latitude and
longitude on the way, and he doesn’t pick it back up.”

“Well, yes,” Kristine agreed. It was true.
He hadn’t marked degrees on every single map, but with a little
figuring and backtracking, a person could pinpoint a fly on one of
the stone walls.

Or could they? She flipped forward a few
pages, holding the bearings in her head until she reached the map
where they stopped. Okay, she thought, returning to the previous
page, now all a person had to do was . . . wonder what Kit was up
to.

She checked again, comparing the two maps.
The consecutive enlargement was out of kilter, off just enough to
make it useless.

Lois tapped a lot of numbers into her
calculator and said dryly, “I don’t think he wants anyone within a
hundred and fifty-mile radius of the place, or . . . Just a second.
Make that a hundred and fifty-two-point three-mile radius.” She
looked up, her eyes wide. “That’s a helluva lot of country up there
to go wandering around in.”

“It’s an oversight,” Kristine said,
staunchly defending him.

Lois didn’t buy it. “Kit Carson has never
made an unintentional oversight in his life. The boy is holding out
on me.”

And me
, Kristine silently added,
shifting her gaze to his broad back. What in the hell was he up to?
With time she would have discovered the deception herself, after
he’d gone, when her anger wouldn’t have had such a handy target.
He’d promised her his knowledge of Chatren-Ma, and he’d delivered
everything except the damn location. What kind of bimbo did he
think she was?

The kind of bimbo who fell in love and in
bed with a barbarian she barely knew, she answered herself. The
kind of sex-starved female who responded to the first man with
enough charm and enough skill to make her feel what she had thought
could never be hers.

She wasn’t going to die, and she wasn’t
going to disappear. The spell was beginning to crack a little, and
if she still knew she would spend weeks and months of days and
nights missing him after he’d gone, she wasn’t admitting to the
weakness. Not yet.

“Where is it, Kit?” She spoke loud enough to
capture both men’s attention.

“Direct and to the point,” Lois murmured
beside her. “I like that.”

“Where’s what?” Thomas asked.

Kit didn’t need further explanation. He saw
the maps spread on the table. “I think the ladies have discovered a
slight discrepancy. Lo-eese, I believe, understands. Kreestine less
so.”

“You can’t hide it forever, Kit,” Lois said,
usurping Kristine’s next broadside with a volley of her own. “Word
is already out that you made a major find, and when those blocks go
on exhibition, everyone is going to know exactly where you’ve
been.”

“Without knowing exactly where I’ve been,”
he added, emphasizing his own point.

Kristine kept her silence, letting Lois
fight the battle. The older woman was much better prepared to win,
and Kristine suddenly knew she had no place in the famous trio. Kit
had granted her entrée onto the playing field, but from the moment
he’d said he wanted to go home, she’d felt more and more like the
outsider she was. Kit’s “oversight” had only made it perfectly
clear.

She didn’t know how she could be worthy of
his love and remain unworthy of his trust, unless what they’d
shared hadn’t been love. Maybe out of her own need she’d imagined
his deeper responses. She wasn’t an expert. What did she know of
the difference between sex and love. People more worldly than she
had been confusing the two for centuries. Or was it just women who
got confused, while men got what they wanted? For sure as she sat
there, she was getting more confused by the minute.

“You may or may not be the best, Kit,” Lois
said after a tense pause, “but you’re not the only one with enough
mental and financial resources to track down Chatren-Ma. If we know
where it is, we can organize some protection, let the world know
there is something worth protecting.”

Kit laughed, but it was a cynical sound. It
unnerved Kristine more than his leaving, more than his subterfuge,
making her doubt everything she felt for him. “The world has shown
little interest in protecting that which I hold dear. You know
this, Lo-eese.”

“Somebody is going to find it, Kit. Don’t
you think it would be wise to inform the Chinese before the
Turk—”

“He will never find it,” Kit interrupted her
harshly.

“He’s got the backing.”

“Money will not buy entrance into
Chatren-Ma, nor craft or cunning. That one’s beliefs will forever
bar the door.”

For the first time, a ripple appeared in
Lois’s professional demeanor. “Don’t go mystical on me, Kit. I’m
talking facts.”

“And I speak the truth. There is a
difference.”

Lois stared at him for a long moment, like a
mother looking at a recalcitrant child she couldn’t control. Then
she began shoving folders, papers, maps, folios, and everything
else into her briefcase. “When you reconcile the two, give me a
call. I’m the one footing the bill. Thomas, let’s get this stuff
into that rented tuna boat you call a Cadillac.”

Kristine saw them out after all the boxes
were loaded, but she didn’t wait around to see who won the argument
on how to conserve archaeological sites. She was angry and trying
not to be hurt. People fell in and out of bed all over the place,
she knew. She also knew, if given the chance, she’d fall in bed
with him all over again. She had to be nuts.

She needed to think everything through, find
a bit of contemporary panache to put sex in the right perspective.
She would still have her published credit, but the university had
promised her that, not Kit. She’d still have a ton of information
on the
Kāh-gyur
itself, but that wasn’t what he’d promised
her. He’d pledged a legend, Chatren-Ma, and that was what she
wanted. She wasn’t a scientist; she was a historian. She dealt in
spans of time and spreads of men and culture. She needed the
authentication of the artifacts to confirm the ideas behind them.
She needed the location of Chatren-Ma to prove it existed.