The Adventurer (v2.1)

  “Yes, that’s exactly what must have happened.” Sarah sat back on her heels, frowning. “We’ll never be able to uncover it with our bare hands. We’ll need tools.”

  “An excellent observation.” The distant sound of an engine shattered the stillness of the forest. Gideon was on his feet instantly, tugging Sarah up beside him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, taking the picnic basket as he thrust it into her hands.

  “Nothing. But it sounds like we may have company coming. The cardinal rule of treasure-hunting expeditions is you don’t reveal the location of the treasure to strangers.”

  Sarah hugged the basket to her and hurried to follow him out of the woods, past the old Fleetwood homestead and on to the cabin they were renting. The sound of the engine in the distance grew louder. “Do you really think we might have found the white rock that marks one of the points on Emelina Fleetwood’s triangle?”

  He threw her an amused glance over his shoulder. “What does your famous intuition tell you?”

  She frowned, trying to sort out the jumbled impressions in her head. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “I think that white rock is the one we’ve been looking for, but…”

  “But what?” The engine roar was closer now.

  “But I just don’t feel much urgency about the whole thing.” She grinned. “Not that finding a fortune in gems is totally uninteresting, of course. I’m not that laid back about it all.”

  “I’d wonder at your sanity if you were.”

  “Well, it certainly would be great fun to turn them up. But like I said, they’re not as important as they once were.” Sarah abandoned the effort to explain. “Never mind. Here comes our visitor and you’re right about one thing—I don’t want some stranger to get his hands on them. Those earrings are Fleetwood earrings.”

  A black Jeep roared around the bend in the road. Instead of going on past the isolated cabin, it turned into the long, winding drive as if whoever was behind the wheel knew exactly where he was going.

  “You tell anyone else you were coming up here?” Gideon asked, his gaze on the Jeep as it drew closer to the cabin.

  “Sure, a couple of people, including my friend Margaret Lark. But she doesn’t own a Jeep and neither does anyone else I know. Maybe it’s our landlord.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Gideon reached the front step of the cabin and drew her to a halt beside him as the Jeep entered the yard. His gaze never left the vehicle.

  The Jeep came to a halt in a cloud of dust. Sunlight glinted on the windshield, obscuring the view of the driver. Sarah experienced a sudden shaft of deep uneasiness.

  “Gideon?”

  He didn’t respond. His whole attention was on the Jeep. She sensed the tension in him.

  The door of the Jeep cracked open with a flourish. A black boot, so brilliantly polished that it caught the sun, hit the ground. Something silver glinted at the heel.

  “Hell,” Gideon said.

  The man who got slowly out of the Jeep was as spectacular as his boots. He moved with laconic grace, well aware he was making an entrance and obviously enjoying it. His hair was as black and gleaming as his footwear. His eyes were blue, a bright, devilish sapphire blue.

  There was no doubt the stranger had been ruggedly good-looking at one time. He still was, to be perfectly honest. The chin and nose and cheekbones were all well chiseled. But Sarah could see that there had always been an underlying weakness and the years were starting to reveal it.

  He wore khaki pants tucked into the tops of the high, dashing boots and a shirt that had a large number of pockets, epaulets and flaps on it. The clothes fit him so precisely they might have been hand-tailored.

  “He looks like something out of a men’s fashion magazine,” Sarah whispered.

  “Plenty of flash, all right. But, then, he always had that.”

  She frowned up at Gideon but he was still watching the newcomer. The stranger smiled, an easy, knowing, charming grin that revealed sparkling white teeth. Sarah’s sense of unease grew a hundredfold. She knew she was not going to like this man, whoever he was.

  “Hello, Gideon. I hear the last name is Trace now, is that right? Nice touch. That’s all you left behind when you changed your identity, wasn’t it? Just a trace. It’s taken me a while to find you but it looks like I finally did it with the help of Ms. Fleetwood here. Long time, no see, Gid. How’s it going, buddy?”

  “Sarah,” Gideon said, “meet Jake Savage.”

  “My pleasure, Ms. Fleetwood. But I believe we already know each other.”

  She stared at him. “We do?” But her intuition was already giving her the answer. Something about this man was awfully familiar even though she knew she had never met him. That voice…

  “Jim Slaughter, owner and operator of Slaughter Enterprises, at your service. We had the pleasure of exchanging a few letters and a couple of calls regarding an expedition to find a downed plane full of gold, remember? You declined to invest. I’m still hoping to change your mind on that subject, by the way. I think we could do a lot for each other, Ms. Fleetwood.”

  “You’re Slaughter?” She was horrified. It was beginning to dawn on her that she was the one who had led him to this place. She’d mentioned the Fleetwood Flowers to him. “Why did you change your name? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I had to change my name about the same time as Gideon here changed his, ma’am. But that’s all in the past now.”

  “I thought you were dead, Mr. Savage,” she said.

  Savage chuckled. “So did a lot of people, including my old partner, here, right, Gid?”

  Partner. Sarah looked at Gideon. “You were his partner? The partner you said disappeared in the jungle along with Mr. Savage?”

  Gideon didn’t bother to reply. His eyes were still on the swashbuckling figure of his former associate. “What brings you back to life after all this time, Jake?”

  “Got some big plans, Gid, old pal. Thought you might be interested in going back into partnership. Like I said, I’ve been looking for you for a while. I had a hunch you weren’t any more dead than I was. You’re a hard man to kill. Who’d have guessed I’d have found you through the charming Ms. Fleetwood? Piece of luck, huh?”

  Gideon’s brows rose sardonically. He slid a speculative glance toward Sarah. “How did you find me through the charming Ms. Fleetwood?”

  “Simple enough,” Jake said easily. He grinned his engaging grin at Sarah. “The little lady contacted me five months ago wanting to know if I’d be interested in helping her do some research. I did a little research myself and decided Sarah and I could be very useful to each other. So I offered her a chance to participate in a real-life search for lost gold.”

  “At a price,” Sarah muttered.

  “Well, naturally,” Jake said, still smiling. “A fine investment opportunity. And just picture the publicity we could get: romance writer and one of her heroes go hunting for a fortune in the South Pacific. We could have drawn money and media like crazy. We’d have had people lined up for blocks wanting in on the deal.”

  “I take it you declined the offer, Sarah?” Gideon glanced at her.

  “Yes.” She clutched the picnic basket more tightly to her chest.

  “I was pretty sure I could talk her into it, given a little time,” Jake said with irrepressible self-confidence. “I mean, it’s easy money, right? Hey, we take the investment cash but we don’t actually have to find anything. How many treasure-hunting expeditions get lucky? Almost none. None of the investors squawk too loudly because they all know the odds going in.”

  “Easy money,” Gideon agreed dryly.

  “But in the meantime, she’s led me to you, Gid. And that changes everything. I’ve got a deal for both of you.”

  “Forget it. I changed my name for a reason, Jake. I’m out of the business.”

  “I don’t believe it for a minute. If you’re out of the business, what are you doing here looking for the Fleetwood Flowers?”


  “This is personal,” Gideon said softly.

  Sarah risked a quick glance at Gideon. He was grim-faced, his eyes very cold.

  “Hey,” said Jake, “so it’s personal.” He winked at Sarah. “I can understand that. But that doesn’t mean the three of us can’t do a little business. I’ve been thinking this through and I’ve got it all planned out.”

  “I’ll bet,” Gideon said.

  “Now just listen, pal. Here’s how it shapes up. Slaughter Enterprises gets a nice splash of publicity by turning up the Fleetwood Flowers for a pretty little romance writer, see? Lots of press on that. Then, when we’re riding the wave of that announcement, we let it be known that Sarah is going to join us on an expedition to the South Pacific to find a plane full of gold. Like I said, money and media will pour in. It’s dynamite, Gid. Dynamite. Better than the old days, huh? No risking our necks in some godforsaken South American jungle this time. First class, all the way. And get this—with you along, we’ll probably find the damned gold.”

  “No thanks,” Gideon said.

  “Think it through,” Jake urged. “Give it a chance to sink in, that’s all I ask. We made a hell of a team in the old days. You know it and I know it.”

  “What makes you think we’re going to find the Fleetwood Flowers?” Gideon asked.

  Jake Savage looked at him in astonishment and then to Sarah’s surprise, he burst out laughing. “Hey, Gid, this is me, your old buddy, Jake, remember? I know you, pal. You never go after anything but a sure thing. If you’ve agreed to help Ms. Fleetwood here, it’s because you’ve cut yourself in for a slice of the action and you’re damned sure there’s going to be some action. Neither of us ever worked for free, even when it was personal.”

  7

  “I DESERVE A FEW ANSWERS, Gideon.” Sarah took the tops off several stalks of fresh broccoli with a few ferocious strokes of her knife. She dropped the broccoli into a colander and picked up a carrot and a peeler.

  There had been a taut silence in the small cabin after Jake Savage had driven off to find a motel in the nearby town. He’d seemed unoffended by Gideon’s failure to offer him a bed for the night. Sarah had the feeling that it took a lot to offend Jake. He was so accustomed to wowing people that it would never occur to him that he was being insulted.

  “What do you want to know first?” Gideon was sitting at the kitchen table, a cold beer in front of him. He looked remote and austere, the way he had the day she’d arrived on his doorstep.

  “Well, we could start with your real name, I suppose,” Sarah said tartly as she whacked strips off the carrot.

  “My real name is Gideon.”

  “Gideon what?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters, damn it. What’s your legal name?”

  “My legal name is Trace. I’ve got a bunch of credit cards, a social security number and a driver’s license under that name. How much more legal does it get?”

  “What was it before it was Trace?” she asked through set teeth. “Back when you were the partner of the famous Jake Savage?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Carson.”

  “Carson.” She tasted that for a minute. “Not bad. But I like Trace better. Maybe it’s because I met you under that name.” Maybe because you made love to me under that name. “All right, let’s go on to the next question. What really happened back in that jungle where the two of you were supposed to have disappeared? What jungle was it, anyway?”

  Gideon was quiet for a moment. “It doesn’t really matter now. I told you Savage & Company occasionally did odd jobs all over South America.”

  “And?”

  “And this was one of the odder ones. The kind where you don’t ask a lot of unnecessary questions and you take your pay in cash. On delivery. Savage and Company never got involved in anything illegal on general principle, but there were times when it walked a fine line.”

  “You would never do anything illegal,” Sarah declared.

  Gideon’s mouth twisted faintly. “The problem is that the definition of legal varies a lot once you get south of Tijuana.”

  “I can imagine. Okay, go on.”

  “As I said, it was a job. For which Savage and Company was supposed to be paid a great deal of money. We were to take a shipment of supplies to a group of archaeologists excavating an old Indian ruin deep in the jungle. But it turned out the folks waiting for the supplies weren’t legitimate researchers. They were in the business of smuggling antiquities. We saw more than we should have seen and they didn’t want any witnesses.”

  “Dear heaven,” Sarah breathed. “What happened?”

  “We were ambushed on the way back out of the jungle”

  “By the so-called archaeologists?”

  Gideon nodded. “It had to be them, although I didn’t stick around to take a close look.”

  Sarah stared at him in shock. “How did you escape?”

  “With a little luck and the usual advance research on the terrain that I had done before we went in. That was my speciality, Sarah. My contribution to Savage and Company. I did all the research on a job, made all the preparations, checked out all the people involved. I went over every detail ahead of time, envisioned all the worst case scenarios and planned for them. Getting stiffed by the client is one of the worst case possibilities. I always allowed for it.”

  “What did Jake Savage contribute to the company?” Sarah asked dryly.

  Gideon gave her a derisive look. “Flash. What else? You’ve seen him. He brought image and style to the team. A natural salesman. He was everything people wanted to see when they hired a professional adventurer of any kind. He made people think we could handle anything. And we did. We had a hell of a reputation down south. We always got the job done.”

  “And you always took a cut of the action,” Sarah concluded quietly.

  Gideon shrugged. “It was business. At least for me. Jake liked the money, too, of course. He needed a lot of it because he tended to go through it like water. But the truth was, he got most of his kicks from being a living legend. He was addicted to his own image. He could walk into any bar from Mexico City to Buenos Aires and the women would fall all over him. And the men all wanted to be able to say they’d met him and bought him a beer.”

  “But you were the one who really made Savage and Company work, weren’t you?” Sarah said, knowing she was right. “You were the strategist, the planner, the one who knew the terrain.”

  “Jake had his uses as an image. He drew business and investors like flies. But the truth is, he couldn’t find candy on Halloween night without help.”

  Sarah started to giggle before she could stop herself. When she realized Gideon was watching her curiously, she took a swallow of wine to give herself time to regain her firm demeanor. She was not going to stop grilling Gideon until she got all the answers.

  “So Savage and Company wouldn’t have lasted a week without you behind the scenes.”

  “It was a partnership. And for the most part it worked well for both of us. We made a lot of money. Did a lot of fast living. You can get addicted to adrenaline just like you can to anything else.”

  Sarah eyed him sharply. “Do you still crave the excitement?”

  Gideon smiled slightly. “Nothing more than what I can get once a year when I go on vacation and do a little treasure hunting.”

  “All right,” Sarah continued forcefully, determined not to be sidetracked, “what happened at the scene of the ambush? Why did you and Jake get separated and each think the other might be dead? What went wrong?”

  Gideon took a mouthful of beer and thought about the question. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You were there.”

  “I was there, all right. But that doesn’t mean I know what went wrong. All I know is that one minute we were alone in a Jeep on the trail. We were carrying the cash the so-called archaeologists had paid for their supplies. The next minute I just sort of knew we weren’t alone.”
br />   “You knew it?” Sarah’s attention was caught by the odd phrasing. “What does that mean?”

  Gideon moved his hand impatiently. “Just what it sounds like. There was no one in sight ahead or behind us, but I had a feeling we were in deep trouble. I told Jake I thought we’d better get out of the Jeep and get into some cover. I knew a place we could disappear to until the coast was clear. Usually he trusted my instincts. In fact he always did. This time he insisted I was crazy. But I was driving. I stopped, picked up the suitcase full of cash and headed into the jungle. Jake didn’t have any choice but to follow.”

  “But he didn’t want to go with you?”

  “No.” Gideon was quiet for a moment, reflecting on some private vision. “About two minutes after we had left the Jeep we heard gunfire back on the trail. Then a lot of noise in the undergrowth. Whoever had attacked the Jeep had realized it was empty and was looking for the principal stockholders of Savage and company. I took off in the direction of a cave I had found on one of the maps. Jake kept stalling. I couldn’t figure out why he was having such a hard time keeping up with me, why he kept arguing.”

  “He was probably disoriented and scared.”

  “Hell, I was scared, too, but at least I wasn’t disoriented. I never get disoriented.”

  “Instinct again?”

  “Whatever. At any rate, I got Jake and the money into the cave and we found the cavern tunnel that an old guide had told me about. It led through the heart of a small mountain and out the other side. The perfect escape route. I’d earmarked it for just that kind of emergency.”

  Sarah momentarily forgot about her need to stay firm. She was enthralled with Gideon’s story. “That was brilliant of you.”

  His mouth quirked. “Well, it was the best I could come up with under the circumstances. Unfortunately there was a narrow ledge over a gorge on the other side of the cave. Only room for one man at a time to cross it. I went first with the money and Jake started to follow. Then he seemed to lose his nerve. He told me he’d take his chances hiding in the cave. I yelled back that he was a fool and I tried to throw him a vine to use to steady himself. But he panicked and raced back into the cave.”