Burial Ground (9 page)

He heard footsteps on the pier, but paid
them no mind. As far as he was concerned, his job was done. He'd
unloaded every last bag and box from his cargo hold. They could sit
on the end of the dock until the Second Coming for all he cared. It
wasn't his responsibility to play bellboy, or pack mule for that
matter. They could drag their weary asses down here and carry that
stuff for themselves.

"Mr. Merritt," a voice said from behind
him.

Merritt shook his head and enjoyed the
gentle roll of the waves a heartbeat longer. He really wasn't in
the mood for this.

"Look," he said, lifting his feet out of the
lake. He rose, walked down the length of the pontoon, and hauled
himself up onto the weathered planks to face the silver-haired man
who had been sitting behind him on the flight, the one whose eyes
had never left his reflection in the mirror. "I unload the stuff as
a courtesy. Beyond that, you're on your own."

The man offered an amused smile and extended
his right hand. Merritt simply looked at it for a second before
matching the man's stare and shaking his hand.

"My name is Leonard Gearhardt." The
handshake lasted a beat too long, and Merritt had to slide his hand
out of the older man's strong grip. "I wanted to thank you for what
you did for my son."

Merritt should have suspected it. He was
going to have to be much more careful. The lackadaisical life had
dulled his instincts. Now that he knew, he could see the familial
resemblance in the brows and eyes, the set of the broad jaw.

"I didn't do anything for your son, Mr.
Gearhardt. There was nothing I
could
do."

"You made sure that his remains reached the
proper authorities, and flew across the country to hand-deliver his
belongings to the American Consulate." Gearhardt paused. "You could
easily have made what was inside that bag disappear and no one
would have been the wiser."

"And what kind of person would that make
me?"

"A very wealthy one, Mr. Merritt. I can only
assume you looked inside the rucksack. How easy would it have been
to just slip out one little thing for yourself?"

Merritt felt his face flush with anger and
his fingers automatically curled into fists. If there was one thing
he'd learned in life, it was that either a man had honor or he
didn't. It was a choice one had to make. There was no such thing as
situational integrity. One bad choice invariably led to another,
and the next thing one knew, he was sighting an innocent down the
barrel of an assault rifle. Damn the consequences. He was never
going down that road again.

"Are you suggesting that I stole something
from a dead man? I'm not the criminal here. I wasn't the one
looting the ruins, the very heritage of these people. I may be a
lot of things, but I am
not
a thief."

Gearhardt flashed a disarming smile that
might have had the desired effect under other circumstances, but
Merritt already had his quills up. Maybe his character and loyalty
were often suspect, but never his integrity. Never.

"That isn't what I meant to imply at all,
Mr. Merritt. I was simply pointing out that had any other man on
the planet found that bag, he would have taken the headdress, if
not all of the contents, for himself. You're an uncommon man. And I
just wanted to personally thank you for it."

Merritt softened subtly, but he could sense
the other shoe hovering overhead, and he had run out of patience
waiting for it to drop.

"Let's get this over with. What do you
really want?"

"I want you to show me where you found my
son's body. I need to see it." There was a barely noticeable shift
in the man's posture, a sagging of his shoulders. "Please."

Merritt saw just a glimpse of the man's true
pain before the stoic, businesslike demeanor returned. His anger
softened in the face of such anguish. He knew the soul-deep sorrow
of losing friends and family, but he could only imagine the sheer
torment of having to bury a child.

"My son was my world, Mr. Merritt. I'll pay
you whatever you want. Money is of no consequence right now. I just
need to find out what happened to my boy."

"Of course," Merritt said. "I'll help in any
way that I can."

"Name your price, Mr. Merritt."

Merritt smiled. "I wouldn't mind another cup
of guava juice."

Gearhardt looked quizzically at him for a
moment, and then laughed. He clapped Merritt on the shoulder and
gently turned him toward the shore.

"I suppose you should put on your shoes
while I track down some
guava juice
. From what I understand,
we have a bit of a hike ahead of us."

11:10 a.m.

Leo's heartbeat accelerated at the sound of
the river ahead, an almost mocking chuckle. Until this very moment,
he had felt as though he were walking through a dream, his
movements sluggish, his mind shrouded in fog, disconnected. There
had been no sensation in his legs, and yet they had somehow
propelled him down the muddy path through the jungle. Passing from
the dirt roads, through the meadows, and into the suffocating
prehistoric forest had been like journeying back through time. He
felt small and insignificant, while the mounting burden he bore
grew larger with each step. Somewhere through the oppressive jungle
of broad, vine-draped ceiba and Brazil nut trees with their
buttressed roots and impregnable canopies was where his son's
remains had been discovered, facedown in the mud, rotting even as
the piranhas feasted on his viscera.

He wanted to cry, to release the anguish
from inside if only for a time, but the tears refused to flow.
Perhaps it was the years of repressing his feelings in order to
build his empire, or maybe it was the rage burning in his chest
that prevented the display of emotion. Either way, someone had
killed his Hunter, and even now the murderer was still out there,
possibly in this very forest. And unlike his son, the killer was
still alive.

But his days were now numbered. This Leo
vowed. Even if it cost him his life, whoever had slain his son
would know true suffering.

Poison dart frogs chirruped out of sight and
invisible creatures scampered through the branches. Mosquitoes
swarmed around him, drawing blood as quickly as he could swat them,
their frenetic humming punctuated by the occasional chirp or squawk
of a bird and the clap of wings.

Merritt pushed through a screen of branches,
and abruptly, stepped out onto the lip of a sloppy trench, at the
bottom of which flowed a dirty brown river. Sunlight shined between
the interlocking branches in shifting kaleidoscopic patterns that
lent the impression of motion to the muddy ground. The pilot slid
down the slick slope, using the limp vegetation that clung to it
for leverage until he reached the edge of the water. Leo joined him
a moment later, hands and boots caked with muck, cheeks smeared
brown from smacking the mosquitoes, whose numbers were reinforced
at the river's edge.

Merritt looked back at him with an genuine
empathy, but said nothing. He merely turned and advanced upstream
toward a tangle of branches reminiscent of a beaver dam to the side
of a gentle bend.

"He was right here," Merritt said in little
more than a whisper. He gestured to the ground, where Leo could
still see a vague human outline filled with standing water. The
earth surrounding it was choppy with hundreds of footprints.

Leo crouched beside it and ran a finger
along the contours of the impression left by Hunter's head. He
raised his stare to the west, where, through the wavering gaps in
the branches, he could barely discern the jagged line of the green
Andes, their peaks hidden by clouds.

A single tear eroded through the mud on his
cheek.

He lowered his gaze and scoured the bank,
but found only what he expected. Nothing. Flashes of silver caught
his eye from the murky water, and then they were gone.

"Are you okay?" Merritt asked just quietly
enough that the others couldn't hear.

Leo nodded and rose again, smearing away the
tear. He studied the pilot's face, searching for answers. When he
found none, he looked past him to the edge of the forest where
Colton and Sam waited. Colton at least had the decency to turn his
attention elsewhere, but Sam stared directly at them, tears
shimmering on her cheeks. He had to look away before his fading
strength abandoned him entirely.

There was a splash on the opposite side of
the river as an unnoticed black caiman plunged into the river from
the swath of sun where it had been basking. Leo watched for the
crown of the skull and the bubble-eyes to break the surface, but
they never did. At least not that he could see. He took a few
cautious steps away from the water and positioned himself to make
eye contact with Merritt.

"I'm willing to offer you fifty thousand
dollars to join our expedition."

"Me?" Merritt's face reflected shock for a
beat before he again composed himself. "Why would you possibly want
me?"

"Make it a hundred grand." Leo scrutinized
the man's reaction, watching for an unconscious tell. "For roughly
one month's work."

Merritt's gaze flicked uphill, then
returned.

"I'm a pilot, Mr. Gearhardt. My place is in
the sky. What good would I be to you in the jungle?"

"You have certain training that could prove
advantageous, Mr. Merritt. I would imagine those particular skills
will be even handier in the wilderness than in the air. And for
someone looking to stay lost, there's no better place than the
jungle."

"You've been checking up on me?" There was a
flash of fury in Merritt's eyes. He quickly regained control and
feigned nonchalance. The subtle threat had been received.

"You were the one who discovered my son's
body."

"So you assume that I had something to do
with his death?" Again, Merritt's eyes ticked toward the jungle,
then back. Leo discreetly glanced in the same direction, but saw
only Sam. "You're out of your mind. It's awful what happened to
your son, but the poor guy drowned. Like you said,
I
found
the body. Trust me, your son was in the water long before I
arrived."

"Hunter was a very strong swimmer, Mr.
Merritt."

"Which makes you wonder if it's possible he
ran into some other kind of trouble up there." Merritt furrowed his
brow. "And you suspect I might know something about it."

"I don't know what I think." Leo shook his
head. "The bottom line is we still haven't received word from the
rest of Hunter's party. For all we know, they could have met the
same fate up there in the mountains. Enough time has passed that
they should have returned to Pomacochas if they were physically
able to."

"Then why in the world do you want to go up
there?" Merritt glanced at Sam again. Not at the forest. Not at
Colton. But directly at Samantha. "If you're thinking of hiring me
as some sort of protection, then whoever you had digging into my
past didn't do his job. I'm obviously not who you think I am."

Leo let it drop. His message had been
delivered. The silence was pregnant with tension until he broke it
with a sigh.

"Mr. Merritt, something happened to my only
child and his group somewhere up there." Leo inclined his head
toward the Andes. "And I was the one who potentially sent them to
their deaths. I am ultimately responsible for their lives. I need
to learn what happened to them. For all I know, there may still be
men alive up there. Communications gear broken. Starving. Lost in
the cloud forest. If that's the case, then it's my responsibility
to bring them out."

Merritt narrowed his eyes and appraised
him.

"I understand. But if you suspect foul play,
you shouldn't have brought civilians." His gaze lingered on Sam for
emphasis.

So Merritt was interested in Sam, was he?
Leo steadied his poker face. He had him now. If Merritt had nothing
to do with Hunter's death, then he might prove a valuable asset.
And if he had? Well, hundreds of men vanished in the jungle every
year.

"These 'civilians' are here to help us find
our destination. Only they have the necessary knowledge to find
exactly what we're looking for in a range of nearly twenty-five
square miles of practically vertical primary forest."

"You didn't share your suspicions with them,
did you?"

Leo allowed the question to hang in the air
between them.

"You would willingly subject these people to
possible danger without forewarning them first?" Merritt flushed
with anger. Then, suddenly, a puzzled expression crossed his face.
"What else is up there? What aren't you telling me?"

Leo masked his surprise. The man had made
the connection so quickly. Perhaps too quickly. Had he recognized
the gold vein placers among Hunter's belongings? Was it possible
that he too knew more than he was letting on?

"So are you coming with us or not?" Leo
asked.

Merritt sighed. When he looked up toward the
dark-haired woman crouching at the base of an epiphyte-addled kapok
tree, Leo had his answer.

2:36 p.m.

"Now pan left and sweep up the hillside,"
Dahlia Warner said from behind him where she knelt on the dock.
"Make sure you get that little market and the church across the
street."

Jay Sizemore did as he was directed. The
shot of the street and the Spanish-style buildings against the
backdrop of the lush rainforest may not have been exciting, but it
was an improvement over the ten minutes of footage he had filmed of
the nearly naked fishermen just sitting in their boats out in the
middle of the lake. He felt the constant need to wash his hands for
fear of contracting some disease or other. He looked forward to
heading out into the jungle. Granted, everything would be dirty and
covered with fungus and moss, but it was supposed to be. For
whatever bizarre reason, that made all the difference in the
world.