Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (10 page)

I knew when he fell asleep, his soft even breathing inspiring some asinine motherly urge I must have caught from Hildy. Or was it just my Fantascapes training, dictating that clients must be served to the best of our ability?

Yeah, but Darcy wasn’t a client.

I found him. He was mine. My responsibility, anyway, I hastily corrected. Except . . . it felt like more than that.

Tomorrow I was dropping him off to the authorities at the hostel at Huinay Huayna. Chalk up another good deed for Fantascapes. So long, farewell, good-by-e.

But there was a night and a two-hour hike between me and freedom from my black and blue Brit burden. I felt for the .22, just outside my sleeping bag on my right. There was nothing more to be done. Nothing but wait for the dawn.

The last two nights I’d fallen asleep so fast I never noticed the cold, but tonight it stung. I snuggled farther down in the bag. Darcy’s right hand flipped out, landed on my hip. Stayed there.

I stopped breathing.

He didn’t. He actually let out a little snore. Or was he faking it?

I hadn’t been so wide awake since the brothers took me camping in the midst of the Everglades. With alligators hollering all night long, trumpeting their successes on their hunt for food, while with every roar I was certain I was next on their list.

If I picked up Darcy’s hand, was he going to grab me as he’d done earlier? I decided not to chance it. I left that long-fingered hand lying there, burning a hole through my sleeping bag while my mind whirled, losing more of its edge. After all, there’s no other excuse for letting someone get the tent zipper open before I even noticed.

Did I lose it and fire point blank at a shadow that might be some Quechua kid looking for a few
soles
? That might, just might, be friend instead of foe?

In combat, maybe. You’ve heard of death by friendly fire? But not here. Not me.

I fired a round over the intruder’s head. He ducked back fast, but I was on him, aiming a kick to his head while he was still scrabbling backward. Surprise. Predawn light revealed our attacker to be Caucasian, not Quechua. He ducked, grabbed my ankle, and I went flying. So did my gun.

Damn!

I pulled out my knife, saw his was bigger, longer.

This was not going well.

I’m so far from ambidextrous, it’s laughable. I had to drop my knife to pick up a rock. My aim, I’m happy to say, is not girl-like. That rock made a three-point landing right where I most wanted to kick him, and our bad guy curled up, moaning and cursing. In . . .

No way. That couldn’t be Russian.

I picked up my knife and was on him before he could recover—straddling his side while he writhed on the ground, the tip of my blade at his throat. He went very still and spat out Russian words I recognized as somewhat south of “fucking bitch.”

Which was very gratifying for what I have to admit was my first truly life and death struggle. (If I didn’t count street muggers and would-be rapists.)

“
Okay, who are you?” I demanded. Unfortunately, the words came out more like a breathless Stephanie Plum than a super-competent Annie Walker.

He mentioned my mother again and my doubtful ancestry. I shook my head, doing my best to look sophisticated, professional, and unoffended, while wondering where Urqu was, with his great big machete. I could use some back-up here.

I prodded the area above the intruder’s Adam’s apple, enough to draw blood. “Who. Are. Y—”

And just that fast I was on my back, my head banging against rock, my breath whooshing out into the chill morning air. The Russian was leaning over me, close enough that his blond hair dangled in my face. He smiled. “Bad girl,” he hissed. “But pretty. Maybe I kill the others and come back for you.” He raised his arm to slug me, and paused, hand in the air. Slowly, he sat up, scooted a foot or so away from me.

Wincing, I managed to turn my head. Darcy was standing six feet away, brandishing Urqu’s machete, which was a
lot
bigger than the Russian’s knife. Enough to give any sensible attacker pause. Particularly when it was now light enough to see that the Russian was almost as bruised and battered as Darcy. And not from anything I’d done to him.

A groan as the attacker got to his feet. Hands in the air, he started to back away. Farther . . . farther. It was pretty obvious he knew Darcy wasn’t capable of running after him. I was on my hands and knees, frantically looking for my gun. By the time I found it, the Russian had reached the trail and was stumbling toward Sayacmarca, picking up speed. I aimed, held the gun steady in both hands . . .

I was still standing there a minute later as he disappeared around a bend.

“
What an unnatural female you are,” Darcy drawled. “Can’t shoot a fleeing man in the back.”

I snapped on the safety, dropped my hands to my sides. “And you could?”

He shrugged. “Possibly. But no one expected you to shoot the bloody bugger. That was my Brit humor gone amok.”

Standing straight, Darcy was an impressive sight. He topped me by at least five inches, with the bandages and bruises making him look like something out of a Hollywood horror film.

“
So the two of you fought yesterday,” I guessed. “Why didn’t he finish you off?”

“
Mystery.” Darcy shook his head. “We’d better check on your bea—porter. Looks like he took a nasty blow to the head.”

Urqu!
No wonder he hadn’t come to my aid.

When we finally headed out, a parade of the walking wounded, slogging and stumbling down the long series of steps that led to Huinay Huayna, we felt like we had targets painted on our backs. Where there had been one attacker—assassin?—there might be more. Did our Russian have a satellite phone? Had he summoned cohorts with sniper rifles? Where did danger lie? Behind the next rock? The ones to our rear? Or would they come at us from above?

I felt that bullseye on my back with every step.

Chapter Six

The only thing that came at us was a group of hikers, ten or a dozen, speaking German and breezing by like we were standing still, each head turning to take a look at Darcy and his bandaged head before tromping on down the stone staircase. When their guide paused to ask if we needed help, we sucked it up and assured him we were fine. Ha!

With the ruins of Huinay Huayna looming not far below—its agricultural terraces built on such a precipitous mountainside that they looked like stadium seats in a giant’s superbowl—I was the one who called a time-out. Like a football coach down by a couple of touchdowns in the fourth quarter, I figured it was time to tweak the game plan.

We sat on the ancient stone steps, chins in our hands, looking glum. (Not that Urqu ever looked anything else.) I turned to Darcy. “How’re you doing?”

“
I’ve got a few hours left in me. I think.”

“
Enough to get to Machu Picchu?”

He lifted his head and stared. “Why?”

“
Because I have a feeling you won’t be safe until you pass through the door of the Brit Embassy in Lima.”

The sun spotlighted his bandaged face, his slitted eyes, his swollen lips. “Bossy little Yank, aren’t you?”

“
Yeah.”

“
And you don’t trust whoever’s down there”—he nodded toward the spectacular cliffside ruins below—“to get me where I ought to go?”

“
No. But it’s your choice,” I added, as nonchalantly as I could. You call it.”

“
You call that a choice?” I widened my eyes at him, and he took a moment watching the last wisps of morning fog evaporate, leaving Huinay Huayna in perfect bird’s-eye clarity below. “You expect me to choose between the Peruvian gendarmes and a woman who did everything to save my Brit butt but shoot a man in the back?”

I toed the grass growing between the Inca paving stones. I bit my lip. I damn near cried.

“
I could be Jack the Ripper, you know,” Darcy added pleasantly. “Or an axe murderer. Or maybe it’s a terrorist you’ll be guarding all the way to Lima.”

Telling him I had a gut feeling he was a good guy was a bit too chummy for someone I was likely to be with for a couple more nights on the road. But telling him I was willing to take a chance made me sound like Miss Dumb Babe of the Week.

“
Even if you’re Al-Quaida,” I informed him a trifle cooly, “you need me to get off this mountain. Someone to pay for a shower and a roof over your head, the train to Cuzco, a plane to Lima. You’d be really, really stupid to bite the hand that feeds you.”

“
That’s a lot of money to front for someone who might not be able to pay it back.”

“
Expense account.” I gave him a thumbnail sketch of Fantascapes. I swear I could see his lips twitch, even under the bandages. Okay, so being rescued and bodyguarded by a part-time wedding planner did contain an element of humor.

“
Agreed.” Darcy said, and held out his hand. “The Brit Embassy or Bust. Isn’t that one of your quaint Yank expressions?”

“
Keep it up and I’ll make it the Russian Embassy instead.”

His only retort was to take off his floppy leather hat—also a loan from Raymi—and start to unwind his gauze bandages.

“
No!” I might as well have been a tiny Andean butterfly beating its wings in vain against the mountain winds. “The gauze is probably stuck to your head—”

Darcy let out a howl, glaring at me as if his agony were all my fault. “Draws too much attention,” he gasped. “Cut it off.”

I pulled out my boot knife and carefully worked my way through Hildy’s layers of gauze. When Darcy put his hat back on, his face was still ugly enough to frighten small children, but his swath of bandages no longer broadcast his status as one of the walking wounded. The floppy leather hat completely covered the patch, about two square inches, still over his gash. His steel gray eyes were more visible now, the look he turned on me shaking me to my toes. And a few more vulnerable spots I won’t mention. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t anger. It was . . . Wow! Maybe Darcy wasn’t one of those men who’s put off by a strong woman.

And I’d just volunteered to baby-sit him for at least three more days, for there was no way we were going farther than a hotel in Agua Calientes tonight.

“
Vamos?
” Urqu asked. When I said yes, he gave each of us a hand up. When I asked how he felt, he shrugged. Tonight, he added, even if he had to take the local instead of the tourist train, he would be home with his wife.

For Urqu that was a long speech. I was glad he would have someone to bathe his head and sympathize. For me, for Darcy, it was still a long way home.

“
Grand Central Station,” I muttered a bit later as we kept doggedly to the trail, bypassing both the ruins at Huinay Huayna and the hostel. We could not, unfortunately, bypass the steady stream of two-day hikers. The Peruvian government, having become aware there’s a dash of adventure in a remarkable number of souls, opened a new trail from the railroad at Kilometer 104 up to the ruins, built a hostel-style hotel and a visitor center, and made it possible for amateur trekkers to do a much less strenuous two-day hike to Machu Picchu. It seemed like cheating, and the trail tended to look like Saturday afternoon at the mall, but I had to admit I was less anxious about being snipered or bull-dozed off a cliff by a behemoth-sized Russian.

At the snail pace we were moving, Urqu was going to have to take the local instead of the tourist train. By the time we reached the Intipunku, the spectacular look-out above the famed lost city, I was more than grateful for the pause to catch my breath while we caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu, nestled beneath the famous hump of Huayna Picchu mountain.

“
That’s it, isn’t it?” Darcy said, wheezing slightly. “I don’t know if I’ve been here before, but I recognize the postcard view, even if it’s sort of telescopic from here.”

“
Close up, it’s more beautiful than any picture can show, but right now I’m thinking hot shower, good thick mattress, four solid walls—”

“
Mm-m-m.”

Yay-hooray.

The entrance to Machu Picchu from the trail is marked by a nice bit of classic Inca architecture. A tall doorway made of angled stone slabs, with the top of the opening smaller than the bottom. When you stand in the center of that massive doorway, the entire city is spread out before you, with Huayna Picchu towering over it like some giant sentinel. It was quiet, serene. At least half the day-trippers had gone back to Cuzco on the early tourist train, leaving a more manageable number of visitors behind to bask in the glory of the city the Spanish conquistadores never found. Until the stubborn search of the Yale archeologist, Hiram Bingham, four centuries later.

Darcy paused under the stone lintel, simply staring. trying to take it all in. Since I’d gone through first, I got a good look at his face. The kindest thing that could be said was that he looked like death warmed over. I figured we’d be lucky to get him down all the steep steps to Sanctuary Lodge, where the Arendsens were staying. I held out my hand, and Darcy took it, stepping into the mystique of the Lost City of the Incas.

With Urqu following, we threaded our way down, past agricultural terraces, stone walls, staircases, aqueducts, a cave, and a multitude of roofless stone buildings. Darcy was so pale I expected him to crumple any minute, but it was all downhill, and finally we were on a well-trod path angling down to the on-site hotel. The greenery on the mountainside at the foot of the ruins was too dense to allow us to see the train station fifteen hundred feet below, but it was comforting to know it was there.