Heart of Fire Read online

  Ben was too smart to try to sell the diamond in Brazil. His contacts wouldn’t be legal, but she would bet the Empress would surface in Antwerp. It would attract worldwide attention, but its origins would forever remain murky, adding to its mystery and value. And what if it ended up being cut, divided, and placed in settings to enhance someone’s sense of importance? The thought of the Empress being cut was horrifying; it was the heart of a culture, and it should remain intact.

  “Stop sulking,” he advised. “I meant what I said. I’ll take you back. What you wanted was proof of the Anzar and that’s what you’ll get.”

  She moved away and sat in the bow, watching the river. Again the distance between them prevented conversation, but now it irritated him. He wanted to shake her, force her to see his side of it. He was using common sense, but she was spouting idealistic bullshit. Damn it, why hadn’t he been more careful? He hadn’t expected her to start nosing around in the pack after she got out the extra clip.

  He was savagely frustrated. If he asked her to marry him now, she would think he had asked just to keep her quiet about the diamond. The way things stood, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing her that he really wanted to marry her. If this didn’t just beat all; the first time in his life he had ever thought about getting married, and Jillian not only wouldn’t believe him, she’d probably slap him if he even brought it up now.

  What a son-of-a-bitching day. He’d been shot at, his boat had been sunk, he had realized he wanted to get married, and now Jillian was mad at him.

  His patience was getting worn thin.

  On top of all that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have made certain Dutra was dead. But he’d wanted to get Jillian away from there, and he supposed he would do the same thing if he had it to do over again. Protecting her came first.

  There hadn’t been any sign of Kates. Ben didn’t figure there was much chance Kates was still alive. He’d made a big mistake in hiring Dutra, who would have turned on his own mother if there was money involved. Kates had needed Dutra, but Dutra hadn’t needed Kates. It was that simple.

  But even if Dutra hadn’t been killed, he was wounded and had no way of coming after them, assuming he’d made it to the bank in his condition, and assuming his wounds didn’t turn septic. Infection was almost a certainty here in the tropics, unless Dutra knew enough about the medicinal qualities of plants to doctor himself, which seemed unlikely. So why was he still worried?

  Because it paid to worry about things like that.

  Dutra clung to the wreckage, letting himself slip below the surface of the water when he heard the raft swing around. He was terrified, thinking of his blood leaking into the river and attracting predators, expecting at any moment to feel thousands of sharp teeth sinking into him. When the noise of the motorized raft faded away, he rose gasping to the surface, but the boats were sinking fast and he had to get away from them. He had no choice. He tore a strip off his shirt and bound it tightly over the wound in his right arm, then hurled himself into the water.

  He could barely use his arm, but his brute strength got him to shore and he crawled, exhausted, onto dry land. He lay there using every curse he had ever heard on Ben Lewis. The fool, why had he stopped in the middle of the day, evidently for a long time? He had never done such a thing before, but this day he had. Probably he had been using the woman, the little slut. Why couldn’t she have kept her legs together until night?

  Because of that, Dutra hadn’t been prepared. The attack hadn’t gone the way he had planned. He had intended to slip up on them during the night, when they were asleep. How easy it would have been. Instead he was the one who had been surprised, and Lewis had nearly killed him.

  But Dutra wasn’t dead. And he had the advantage now, because they thought he was. He would still follow them. Even if they got back to Manaus before he caught up with them, the outcome would be the same.

  When he had regained some of his strength, Dutra struggled to his feet and, after a moment’s thought, turned upriver. He had passed a shack not so far back. There would be food, almost certainly a boat of some sort, and perhaps a weapon.

  * * *

  Ben would rather have spent the night at a settlement, but with the time they had lost he knew they wouldn’t make it that day. He eased the raft out of the current and into a protected shoal. “Looks like we’ll sleep one more night in the tent,” he said.

  These were the first words he had spoken since she moved up to the bow of the raft, for she had remained there for the rest of the day. She didn’t reply now, but moved back so that the overhanging limbs wouldn’t hit her when he nudged the raft against the bank.

  He hid the raft as well as he could, for smugglers would consider two people, especially when one of them was a woman, a far easier and more desirable target than a party of twelve. They had to force their way inland, away from the thick undergrowth that lined the riverbank, to find a place where he could set up the little tent. Immediately Jillian unpacked a few supplies and began preparing a simple meal.

  He finished with the tent and gave her a deeply exasperated look. He hunkered down beside her, determined to put an end to this silent treatment. “Look, you might as well stop pouting. You don’t have to like it, but did you ever hear about cutting your losses? You aren’t going to get the diamond, but you’re still going to have everything else you wanted: proof of the Anzar and your father’s name cleared.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said.

  Initially he was so relieved that she had actually spoken to him that it took him a moment to think about what she’d said. “What do you mean by that?”

  She shrugged. “I mean I refuse to have anything to do with an expedition financed by the sale of that diamond. I can’t stop you from doing what you want, but I don’t have to be involved. I’ll get on a plane and out of your hair as soon as we get back to Manaus.”

  He’d had enough. His temper was ragged and he was holding on to it by only the thinnest thread. He gripped her arm, forcing her around to face him. “The hell you will,” he said, a deliberate space between each word.

  “Oh? How do you propose to stop me? Kidnapping?” Her voice was both angry and taunting.

  “If I have to.”

  “I guess you would, at that.” She jerked her arm away. “But you’d do better to take your own advice and cut your losses. So why don’t you just forget about salving your conscience with another expedition, and save your energy, because there’s no way you could force me to have anything to do with it.”

  “I’m not salving my conscience,” he snapped. “I said I’d get that proof for you, and I’ll do it, even if I have to drag you all the way back there.”

  “Oh, I suppose you’re going to make me famous in spite of myself, and that’s supposed to make it all better? Theft is theft. Nothing will change that.”

  “Just who in hell am I stealing from? The Brazilian people? Name one who would profit from the diamond being locked up in a museum, not even allowed to be seen because of security? Ninety percent of them wouldn’t even hear about it, and wouldn’t give a shit if they did. What if I had been mining and found the diamond? It’s the same diamond, but would it be all right then for me to take it? Finders keepers, right?” He was yelling. He had never been more furious in his life.

  “You would be stealing from history.”

  “Bullshit! You could put a goddamn piece of glass in its place, and the history of the Anzar would be exactly the same!”

  “But it wasn’t a piece of glass, it was the Empress. I was taught my entire life to respect the past, to treasure every little bit of history we can find because it’s part of ourselves, who we are and how we got to where we are today. I’ve forced myself to stay awake more nights than you can imagine, with a gun in my hand, standing guard at a site to protect it from scavengers. Do you think I’m going to turn into one of those scavengers now?”

  He wasn’t getting anywhere. He felt as if he were batte