Spartan Resistance (12 page)

But running out of fuel wasn’t what halted them. Barely thirty minutes later, there was a loud crack that sounded almost like a rifle shot. The left side of the hood sank and the car began to hobble.

Mariana pulled it over to the side, as close to the jungle growth as she could get, which still left the car half-straddling the lane. “Damn,” she muttered.

“Tire?” Laszlo asked as they both climbed out of the car.

The smell of hot metal was strong in the night air. The tire was flat on the road, the metal rim scraped raw and shiny where it had revolved over the tarmac. She sighed and leaned against the hood.

“Didn’t these old things have spare tires?” Laszlo asked.

“The cars that were maintained did. I’m not even going to bother looking. There won’t be one.”

Laszlo stepped back and studied the car. “Where would a spare be, if it had one?”

“In the rear compartment, under the floor.”

He went back to the rear and after a minute of fumbling, figured out how to open it. She heard him scrabbling in the back, as he lifted the flooring. Then he dropped the lid back down and walked back to where she was leaning against the car. He settled his rear on the hood next to her.

“Probably better to check, anyway,” Mariana told him.

He looked down the road. “We could walk, I suppose.”

Mariana shook her head. “Let’s just wait.”

“You really think someone is going to come along at one in the morning and give us a ride?”

“Someone will give us a ride, although we might have to wait a bit.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“I do, actually.”

He studied her, his profile in the dark once more which hid his reactions. “Okay, let’s wait then,” he said finally, in a way that told her the subject had only been put on hold, not dropped. “I don’t suppose you have any food in that carrysak you’ve got in the car?”

“When I left Rome, I thought I was going out for dinner.”

Laszlo snorted. “So did I.”

After an hour of listening to the jungle noises, Mariana found herself yawning hugely. Laszlo insisted she get back in the car and sleep. She refused for another thirty minutes, but she could feel her brain and body trying to shut down on her anyway. Reluctantly, she climbed onto the front seat and rested, using her carrysak as a pillow.

She was woken by Laszlo’s hand on her shoulder. He was reaching through the window. “There’s something coming,” he said.

It was daylight. A bright, early morning. She had slept for hours. “You should have woken me,” she chided him. “You must be exhausted.”

“I don’t like sleeping all that much,” he confessed, “and staying awake gives me more time to worry.”

She looked at him, startled, then her attention was drawn by the sound of an approaching vehicle. It sounded loud and big and lumbering. The vehicle that appeared around the curve matched the noise it was making. The bus looked nearly as ancient as the car they were leaning against. In the morning light filtering through the trees, Mariana could see that the bus was crowded, with luggage strapped to the roof and dogs hanging their heads out the windows.

The bus stopped next to them with a squeal of brakes and the door flipped open. The bus driver waved at them, a big smile on his face. He spoke in Portuguese.

“There’s our ride,” Mariana told Laszlo.

He was staring at the bus, his brows lifted. Then he looked at her darkly. “We need to talk a few things through,” he muttered and stepped up into the bus.

The driver spoke rapidly. At least, it sounded rapid to Mariana, but it wasn’t French or Patois. She stepped up behind Laszlo, who was watching the driver speak.

“Try French,” she suggested.

Laszlo said something. The driver shook his head, but a woman sitting on the front seat directly behind him leaned forward. “He wants you to buy a ticket. You need one to travel to Macapá.” Her Standard was slightly accented.

“How much?” Laszlo asked, reaching into his trouser pocket.

She spoke to the driver in Portuguese as Laszlo dug into the other pocket, a frown bringing his brows together.

“Son of a bitch!” Laszlo cried. He looked up at the roof of the bus and swore again.

“What’s wrong?” Mariana asked, although she already suspected what the matter was.

“Those kids at the village, on the truck. They stole my blasted cards.
Everything
. This is just perfect. Why did I think landing on that stupid beach was as bad as it could get?”

Mariana tried to hide her smile. Then she settled for not laughing. But it was too funny, too richly ironic. She clutched the bar in front of the windscreen to hold herself up and let the laugh loose. It came out loud and long and it felt good.

Every time she looked at Laszlo’s indignant face, the laughter rose up again.

The driver and the woman were both half-smiling, puzzled by her amusement.

Laszlo was watching her, just as puzzled, but he wasn’t smiling.

Mariana sighed and wiped her eyes of tears. “I’m so sorry,” she told him. “It’s just your face when you realized your wallet was gone. Of everything that has happened, you could have lost it over something way more serious, but some children picking your pockets is what did it.”

Laszlo rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not the kids,” he said roughly. “It’s—”

“Just the last straw,” she finished for him. She put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I have a card. Let me get the tickets.”

“They didn’t clean you out, too?”

“They took my wallet,” she said. “But I took all my ID out before the truck stopped by.” She reached into the top of her dress and retrieved one of her cards from where it rested against her breast and held it out to the driver.

The driver and the woman had been watching their conversation with deep interest. The woman smiled as Mariana reached into her dress and the driver beamed when he saw the card. He picked a portable terminal up off the dash and processed her card, happy once more.

Mariana had no idea how much it would cost them and didn’t care. At this point in time, a few square feet of floor on this bus would be a pleasant luxury she was happy to pay over the odds for.

The driver gave her back her card. Mariana thanked him and looked down the length of the bus. Finding a seat was going to be next to impossible. “Come on,” she told Laszlo.

He gusted out a great breath, venting frustration and more and followed her along the corridor. It was slow going, for people were sitting three across on seats designed for only two, whole families seemed to be squeezed into a pair of seats, along with the family pets, with everyone talking loudly. From the glances they were getting, Mariana guessed that most of the conversations were about them.

She stopped three-quarters of the way down, by the back doors, which were closed. “This is as good as it’s going to get. Perhaps someone will get off, somewhere down the road.” She strung her carrysak over her head and one arm, so the opening was against her chest. It would be impossible for someone to get their hands inside it, there.

Laszlo grabbed the vertical rail above her hand. “At least this thing goes faster than that one.” He nodded toward the ancient wreck they were now passing as the bus began to roll.

They stood for a few minutes in silence and Mariana checked the passengers closest to them. They all looked like normal South Americans.

Laszlo leaned closer. “Figure anyone near us knows Standard?”

“Probably,” she told him. “It’s Standard for a reason.”

“Can I speak quietly?”

She barely heard him. “You’ll have to get closer,” she told him.

He grinned. “Damn, I should have thought of this hours and hours ago.” He leaned closer, lowering his head so that his lips were right by her ear. His hot breath fanned her flesh, making her shiver. “Tell me how you knew this bus was coming.”

“I didn’t.” She shook her head.

“But you knew we’d be picked up.”

She shrugged. “Time anomaly.”

He shook his head a little. He didn’t understand.

Mariana reached up to speak in his ear. “Someone paid the money into Mathieu’ account. It doesn’t matter who. It just matters that the money appeared at the right moment. That told me we would get out of the village and make it to somewhere where I would be able to arrange for the funds to be paid. So when the tire blew….” She shrugged again.

“When it blew, you knew something else would come along, because we haven’t told anyone about the money yet.”

She nodded.

Laszlo studied her with his green eyes. The green was very clear, she noticed. No murky browns in there at all. Her gaze drew back to his jaw once more. She admired the squareness and firmness of it and the thickness of his neck, which said he was physically strong.

But her gaze came back to his eyes once more. He was still studying her and for a moment it seemed that there was a heat behind his gaze, damped down. He looked away, before she could analyze it.

For the rest of the long, slow journey to Macapá, he didn’t say anything that he didn’t have to shout at her and he didn’t meet her gaze again.

* * * * *

They trundled into downtown Macapá as the sun set in spectacular hues. It was possibly one of the longest days Mariana had ever endured.

After climbing stiffly off the bus, she brushed down her dress. It was standing up spectacularly well, under the circumstances. It didn’t have a wrinkle and it had resisted most stains and soiling. She could walk into a public establishment and not feel too uncomfortable.

“Food, before I rip someone’s head off,” Laszlo declared.

“Not that I want to press upon a sensitive point,” Mariana said, “but how are you going to pay for your food?”

He swore softly, under his breath. “The nearest bank, first,” he said. “
Then
, food.”

“That sounds like the perfect plan,” she agreed, as he lifted his hand and hailed a taxi.

At the bank, while Laszlo was going through the identification process and getting a temporary card, Mariana cleaned up in the washroom, combed out her hair and reapplied makeup from the limited supplies in her carrysak. She longed for a shower and a change of clothes. The dress, which had seemed almost presentable when the bus had pulled up beside them, now looked dirty and undesirable.

Laszlo was waiting for her when she stepped out into the foyer. He looked much happier. “I have a measure of control over what happens next,” he said. “It always makes a man happier to believe he is in control of his fate. Do you want to contact the agency and let them know why you didn’t return when expected?”

Mariana didn’t have a board or comm link on her. Even while she had still been on the beach next to the wreckage of the car, she had vowed to never again leave the agency—or wherever she defined as home—without some sort of communications device, even if it was a simple squirt signaler for someone to trace. But now she nodded. “I would like to call them, yes. Don’t you have anyone who might be worried about you? We should have been back twenty-four hours ago.”

Laszlo’s jaw rippled and some emotion flickered in his eyes and was gone too fast for Mariana to identify it. “No, there’s no one. Not here. Let’s get your agency people smoothed down, then I’m going to take you to the dinner we should have had last night.”

It was Rob who answered Mariana’s call. He was calm, listening to her explanation for her absence with careful attention. Then he startled her by saying; “Can ye give me the absolute coordinates for where ye left the car?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t have a board on me. That’s why I’m calling from a public network. It was well north of Macapá, though. Far enough north that we crossed into French Guiana just by heading directly west. That should narrow it down. Why?”

“We’re going to retrieve the wreckage and give it a good once over, is why, lassie. An agency member and a high-profile client have a car go suddenly wonky? It’s unusual enough that I want to be sure it really was a careless lout slacking off on maintenance.”

“I promised the wreckage to the village headman, as part payment,” Mariana pointed out.

“He’ll get his salvage, once we’re done with it. Go and have your dinner. We’ll stop by and pick you up after. How long do you need to swoon over your man?”

And behind Rob came a low growl. “Oh, for the sake of the gods….”

“Did Brenden hear that?” Mariana asked, her stomach doing a little roll.

“Aya,” Rob agreed. “Three hours should be long enough, surely?”

“We’re just eating,” Mariana said. “Three hours is probably too long.”

“Three hours it is, then. Enjoy, little one.” There was the distinct sound of merriment in Rob’s tone. The old renegade was stirring mischief.

Mariana sighed and told him the name of the restaurant that Laszlo had given her, then disconnected.

* * * * *

Laszlo nodded when she told him the agency would pick them up and why. “Good. I wouldn’t mind eliminating that possibility, either.”

“Sabotage? Who in their right minds would want to bother either of us?”

“There are a few bitter women who might consider removing one or two of my vital organs,” Laszlo said, “but they’d only consider it. You, on the other hand, are a different sort of target.”

“Me?” She was startled. “I’m nobody. Just Mary.”

He turned his head away from her and tapped absently on the window next to him. It was another of his thought-filled silences. They were in a taxi, heading across the Amazon, to reach the restaurant he had nominated. Mariana watched the brown water of the Amazon flow under the bridge for nearly a minute before he spoke once more.

Laszlo looked at her. “Would you…could you promise me something?”

“What?”

“Never again refer to yourself as ‘Just Mary’.”

Mariana could feel her mouth opening a little and brought her jaws together to halt her revealing reaction.

“You’re not
just
anything,” he went on. His voice was low and hard. “You’re a woman who has lived through some incredible adventures—oh, you don’t have to tell me. I can guess just from the odd things you say and the strange skills you have. You’ve seen and done things a normal human only sees in the movies. Your current career would tax the creativity of Michelangelo and you pass it off as just a job.” He gripped his knee, the knuckles of his hand whitening. “You don’t know what’s in your future. No one does. But I do know this—there’s nothing ordinary in store for you, not with your potential. So please…
please
…stop referring to yourself as
just
Mary. You’re Mariana Madison Jones and I won’t sit still for anything less.”