Shadow Play (8 page)

Feeling the blood drain from her face, she backed away as the American came out from behind the counter, sweeping up the anaconda skin and wrapping it around his hand until all that was left was the broad flat edge where the head had once been. He waved it beneath her nose as he said, "Once you're crushed to a pulp, he spits a lot of slime and saliva over your head before swallowing. Hopefully by that point you're already dead. If not, the last thing you're gonna see is several rows of teeth..."

She gasped.

"And that's a lot nicer than what King would do to you. He'd have you on your knees praying for death by the time he'd finished—he and his two dozen
matteiros
and
seringueros,
who are more accustomed to screwing monkeys and one another than they are women."

She slapped him, yet he hardly flinched. His eyes were hot and piercing and slightly wild. He grabbed her, fingers digging into her arms as he lifted her to her toes. From the corner of her eye she saw Kan step forward, then hesitate, and not for the first time she cursed the power the American wielded over all the Indians of British Guiana. She cursed, too,

the effect he had on her own senses. She felt weakened by his presence. His hands felt oddly caressing, even as he gripped her in anger.

"You little fool," he said softly. "You're gonna get yourself killed."

"That is a chance I'll have to take, Mr. Kane. Please understand. Without your help I'll lose everything: my home, what little money my father left me... my fiancé?”

She stopped, blushing painfully, and bit her lip, ashamed she had stooped so low as to plead, frustrated even more by the confusing desire to throw herself into his arms. She suddenly ached so badly for compassion she felt as if she would collapse.

She turned her head in an attempt to hide the tears spilling from her eyes. Gradually he released her and cupped one hand against her cheek, gently turning her face back to his. His mouth, no longer surly or angry, carried a hint of a smile. The effect was staggering—like an unexpected punch that left her breathless. She felt herself falling unwillingly under his spell, forgetting her father, even her fiance, whose presence had never, ever affected her in this way. The cacophony of noises around them dimmed as she waited for his next move. God help her, but even if he kissed her here, before a bazaar full of people, she wouldn't care.

"Chere."
He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "Are you telling me that this fiance'—mis Norman—would love you less if you were poor?"

"Yes," she replied, her voice breaking the tiniest bit.

Kane's dark brows drew together. "What the hell kind of love is that, Princess?"

She didn't respond and finally he released her.

As Sarah waited in anticipation for the American's reply, she was shoved from behind by an overzealous marketer of squirrel monkeys. The bamboo cage balanced on the man's stooped back came perilously close to spilling as the animals inside scattered in alarm. The old man rattled unintelligibly at Sarah, and when he shoved his way around her, Kan hurried to usher him away, berating the old Indian for his lack of manners. Only after the two had merged with the crowd did she turn back to Kane, intent on demanding his answer. She'd had enough of his indecision. She was sorry she had come here, and as the raucous cries of the shoppers rose to an earsplitting pitch, her aggravation intensified.

Due to the swarms of people around them, Sarah was momentarily separated from the American, and it was all she could do to elbow her way toward him again. That was when her eye caught on the features of a man in the distance. Standing several yards behind Morgan, he appeared and disappeared in the flood of people between them. Only when he turned his head to speak to his shorter companion, revealing the jagged scar on his cheek, did she realize who he was.

The American grabbed her arm and attempted to move her out of the stream of traffic. "Look," he said, "I'm sorry about your fiance." He raised his voice and spoke louder.

"But the Amazon is no place for a man, let alone a woman. Now, why don't you run along home and write your fiance" a nice long letter explaining—"

"Mr. Kane."

The men began moving through the crowd, their eyes fixed on the American. There was something sinister about the taller man's sharp features, and the thin smile showing beneath his shaggy mustache sent a chill up Sarah's spine.

"Mr. Kane," she repeated more urgently.

Taking her hand, he slapped her ring into her palm and closed her fingers around it. His smile was unexpectedly tender as he said,
"Chere,
asking me to take you to Japura is a little like—"

"Mr. Kane! Please! There are two men approaching you, and if you will only shut up long enough to hear me out, I will tell you that I saw them outside your house the night I came to visit you."

His every muscle froze. Very slowly he straightened and, staring over her shoulder, said, "How many of them are there, did you say?"

"Two."

"What do they look like?"

Doing her best to keep her eyes on his face and not allow them to drift toward the pair who were now no more than twenty feet away and closing fast, she replied, "One is tall and gaunt with a mustache and a scar."

Morgan caught her arm and, turning her up the crowded alleyway, gave her a nudge that almost toppled her. ' 'Get lost,'' he ordered,' 'and don't come back. Ever. Under- stand me? Go home to your fiance' and his pretty butterflies and—"

Someone screamed.

Morgan ducked, grabbing Sarah as a volley of gunfire ripped through the fetid air, the staccato bursts reverberating among the myriad sounds of the bazaar. Cheers erupted from oblivious shoppers who believed that someone had set off fireworks. Others who'd witnessed the attack shrieked and scattered in all directions.

Sarah hit die ground first, then Morgan, diving and rolling, grabbing her wrist and dragging her behind him even as he leapt back to his feet and began pushing his way through the crowd in search of a route of escape from King's assassins. By the time he banged against the first stack of wooden crates with his shoulder, he had removed his hunting knife from its scabbard.

"What are you doing?" Sarah cried. "Kane, what in God's name is happening?"

The stack of crates tumbled over, spilling chickens and roosters to the ground with high-pitched, frantic cackles and a flurry of white feathers. Someone began screaming obscenities over the melee as Morgan kicked several of the shattered boxes aside. Dragging Sarah with him, he began zigzagging down an alleyway despite the shoppers and vendors who were pressing in curiously.

"Stop him!" the man with the gun cried to the onlookers.

Morgan wove through the crowd using his elbows, cursing the idiots who had attempted to kill him during the peak shopping hour, when three quarters of Georgetown's residents were at the bazaar.

Ducking around a corner, he dragged Sarah up against him, shoved her back against a wall of reeking hemp and chopped cane, and slapped his hand over her mouth as she attempted to speak. He peered cautiously back the way they had come. "Shit," he said, and without bothering to say another word, spun on his heels and struck out once more, ignoring Sarah's cry of dismay as he forced her down one corridor after another.

Like a maze, each row of stalls melded into another. The faces of the vendors all looked alike, with features worn by sun and heat and hunger, no more interested in why they were running for their lives than if they were beggars pleading for handouts.

The alleyways had grown foul with human and animal refuse, the fumes rising with those of rotting fruit to draw flies, rats, and dogs that bared their teeth and raised their hackles if approached too closely.

But it was in the Oriental heart of the bazaar that the air grew the thickest. Here run-down tenements and stalls, stacked one on top of the other and reached only by bamboo ladders blocked out the sunlight completely. Added to the putrid dampness were the cloying odor of burning hashish and the sweet, acrid bite of vaporized opium. The merchandise in Little China was expensive. Men and women sold their bodies for high prices and their narcotics for a fortune.

Of course, Morgan had seen it all before, had been known to wander Little China's dimly lit streets on occasion.

Now, finding a deserted shanty, he cast a watchful glimpse over his companion's head, then shoved Sarah in- side. He knew from experience that you did not dally along Pleasure Alley, at least not if you valued your life.

Only then did he look at Sarah.

Her neat chignon had long since collapsed. Her hair, honey-gold in the gloominess, tumbled over her shoulders, several loose strands clinging to her moist cheeks and neck. Her eyes, wide with fear, were fixed on the stall directly across from them. A man stood there, totally nude, his dark eyes mere slits in his face, his waist-length black hair braided in a rope that hung over one shoulder. His hand curved around his erection as he waved, laughed^ and said, "You come here, yes?"

Morgan took Sarah's face in one hand and turned it away, pressed her head against his shoulder, and whispered, "I'm sorry."

"You!" the Chinaman called. "You want come see me?"

"No," Morgan called. "The lady is mine."

"Not lady I want. You! You come see me, yes? I give you much pleasure, mister. You wait and see."

A woman's catcall joined the voice of the Chinaman, then another and another, until the entire alleyway was alive with men and women crying out their wares.

"This—this is disgusting!" Sarah finally managed, her voice quavering between horror and fury.

"You can thank your own countrymen for it," Morgan told her. "Seems the Orientals were brought over by a lot of rich Brits who weren't finding their wives entertaining enough and thought the Indians too ignorant in the ways of pleasure."

Her head came up and she glared at him with blazing eyes. "My father would never have allowed such heinous behavior!"

'
'Chere,
your father was probably one of their best patrons."

She might have clawed his face had he not caught her hands and shoved her back against the wall of the illlit shanty. The structure trembled with their impact. "You filthy animal!" she cried. "How dare you slur my father with your nasty, false innuendos!"

He smiled at her coldly. "What's so nasty about it? Hmm? Ever think that it might be those small-minded sentiments that are driving your men, and occasionally women, to wander these alleys in search of companionship?"

"It's degenerate!"

"How do you know unless you've tried it?"

"Never! Now I demand that you get me out of this wretched place before your friends murder us both."

"Saucy little thing, aren't you, love?"

She shook her head in disbelief.' 'There are men out there trying to kill us and you don't seem to give a damn. I think you're crazy. You are! You're—"

He slammed his hand over her mouth again as voices rose in the distance.

"Kane! We know you're here! Come out and we'll let the woman go. She has nothing to do with us... Kane, we'll search every shanty until we find you. If you don't come with us

peaceably, we'll be forced to deal with the young lady more... shall we say ... thoroughly when we find you."

"Gilberto de Queiros," Morgan said under his breath. "I should have killed him when I had the chance."

He glanced up and down the shadowed alleyway. The hawkers and prostitutes had vanished like smoke in the wind, wanting no part of the coming trouble. Then he looked back at Sarah. If he made a run for it now, leaving her behind, he just might make it. But if they found her... she'd never leave Little China alive. King's assassins weren't about to allow any witnesses to testify that he'd been hunted down like a rabid dog and slaughtered.

Still, if he led them far enough away...

She must have sensed his train of thought, for as he measured the distance of the alley with his eyes, she grabbed him and shoved the hand from her mouth. "Don't you dare, Kane. You are not leaving me in this... this festering bordello."

"The alternative might be worse," he warned her.

"You've confronted and escaped worse danger than this. Think of your journey over Japuri, of the cannibals, the animals—"

"I didn't have a woman hanging on my shirttails."

"I
won't get you killed, if that's what you're implying."

"Promise?" He drawled it, smiling sarcastically down at her mouth, which was partially open and panting short, warm breaths against his chest. When she didn't respond with more than a lift of her white chin and an arch of one eyebrow, he grunted in amusement. Taking a deep breath, he nodded and said, "You asked for it."

He struck out running, dragging Sarah behind him, knowing for certain she would hold him back, trip, stumble, or do something that would get him killed. Within four strides, however, she was keeping up respectably well, lithely dodging in and out of the shadows and around the stalls. For a moment, just a moment, he considered that they might make one hell of a team in Japura after all. They might even get out of Little China if their luck held. Then their shoes hit a puddle of something slimy, and their feet flew out from under them; they hit the ground hard, scattering what at first looked like kittens from the rotting carcass of a dog. Only they weren't kittens. They were rats.

Sarah screamed.

"Ah, Christ," he groaned.

The sound of running feet and shouting voices echoed in the alleyway as Morgan yanked Sarah up and ran again, knocking vendors' carts askew and toppling merchants' tables.

A sudden hail of bullets split the air as King's men rounded a corner behind them. One of the voices cried out, "Diego, mat way! Pronto!"

The gunfire came again, and this time a bullet missed Morgan's head by inches, splintering the garish green lantern an old merchant had hung over his table littered with jade ornaments and tiny animal bones. Finally there was daylight ahead. They burst out of the darkness, gulping air that was still rank with rot but somewhat fresher. The harsh sunlight was an assault on their eyes, and they stumbled along blindly, bumping a child's pram and spilling a beg- gar's tin can of coins at his feet.