Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Twenty-Three

By the time she and Adam stopped for lunch, Ellie was willing all manner of blessings on Cruzita. Hiking through a rainforest was hard work, with a great deal of scrambling over obstacles and pushing through thick growth. The stash of tamales would’ve been a godsend even if they hadn’t been possibly one of the most delicious things Ellie had ever eaten.

“Have another,” Adam encouraged her with his mouth half full of masa. “They won’t keep.”

By mid-afternoon, the land had grown more rocky, signaling that they were heading higher into the mountains. The notion sent an electric thrill across her skin.

The forest around Ellie buzzed thickly, while the heat continued to rise—until suddenly a cooler breeze brushed over Ellie’s skin, rich with moisture. The change in the air was accompanied by a soft rushing that rose through the constant rustling of the leaves as she and Adam pressed their way forward.

“What’s that sound?” she asked.

Adam grinned back at her.

“Come find out,” he said and ducked under a branch, forcing Ellie to hurry after him.

They followed the line of a vine-draped cliff of pale limestone that rose overhead and curved raggedly to the left. A few minutes later, the forest parted to reveal the course of a quick-rushing stream. Water leapt over the rocks, churning up white foam.

A wonderfully refreshing mist filled the air. Ellie relished in the cool feeling of it against her skin.

“Looks like we’re back on the map,” Adam commented. “And would you look at that?”

Ellie’s relief was replaced by an awed surprise as she saw what loomed over the place where they stood.

The cliff jutted out across the river in the shape of a massive bridge thickly covered with moss, orchids, and ferns. Life clung to every crevice, thriving thanks to the constant damp of the cataracts.

“The Arch Hollowed by the Hand of God!” Ellie burst out wonderingly.

They had found the next landmark.

Ellie grinned up at Adam. He grinned back—his eyes crinkling warmly at the corners—and she was suffused with the knowledge of how completely, utterly happy she was.

“What happens now?” she asked, pitching her voice louder to be heard over the rapids.

For just a moment before Adam responded, it felt as though the answer drifted to her through the warm air and the droplets of water that danced on her skin.

Now you kiss him.

The impulse rang through her like a bell. Ellie caught her breath against it.

She shouldn’t. They were colleagues. Colleagues didn’t kiss each other.

Her heart didn’t seem to care about that logic. It continued to bounce around inside her chest like a child whacking at a drum set.

Adam glanced out over the rapids.

“Let’s find someplace a bit dryer to take a better look at that—” he began.

He stopped. His eyes widened as the brush at Ellie’s back audibly rustled.

Ellie froze as something hard poked into the space between her shoulder blades.

“I have a better idea,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind her. “How about instead you both put your hands up in the air where I can see them?”

Adam’s hand flew to the Winchester slung over his shoulder—but stopped there as the stranger behind Ellie spoke again, punctuating his words with a further prod at Ellie’s back.

She felt uncomfortably certain that the object jabbing at her was the barrel of another rifle.

“Uh-uh,” the stranger warned. “You really don’t want to do that. Kohn ya, Flowers!” he called out.

The branches behind Adam shifted, and someone else stepped onto the bank of the cataract. The new arrival topped Adam by at least two inches in height and probably three stone in weight. His cheeks, hued a rich mahogany, were round and friendly under a wide-brimmed straw hat.

He leveled the Enfield rifle in his hands and greeted them in cheerful Kriol.

“Weh di gaan an?”

“Tek ih shatgan, Flowers!” snapped the voice behind Ellie.

Ellie still hadn’t dared to turn around and see what the fellow looked like. He spoke his English and Kriol with a sharp, Spanish-inflected accent.

“Cho, Mendez,” Flowers replied. “I’m getting around to that. You mind?”

He addressed the last bit to Adam.

Adam’s gaze moved from Flowers’ rifle to the man’s face, and then shifted over to where the other fellow—Mendez—stood behind Ellie’s shoulder. With a smooth, resigned movement, Adam swung the Winchester off his back and handed it over.

“The bag and the knife, too,” Mendez ordered.

Adam handed over his pack and—with an obviously pained look of regret—parted with his blade.

“This is a nice machete,” Flowers commented appreciatively as he accepted it. He pronounced the word the Kriol way, leaving off the final ‘e.’

“Thanks,” Adam replied grimly.

“We were just passing through…” Ellie began lamely.

“Well, now you are passing through to the boss,” Mendez cut in.

He prodded her again with his gun.

Ellie’s temper blazed with an abrupt, volatile heat. She whirled in place and found herself glaring at a fortyish man of roughly her own height. He had sun-weathered olive skin and a thick black mustache.

“If you touch me with that rifle again, I will rip it from your hands and knock you soundly with it,” she seethed.

Mendez’s eyes widened a bit with surprise. Flowers chuckled.

“This one got a little pepa,” he noted.

“Princess…” Adam warned from behind her.

Ellie gritted her teeth as she fought back the ferocious urge to throw something at the man in front of her, knowing it would be utterly foolish.

He was lucky she didn’t have a towel rack.

“Walk,” Mendez ordered.

Ellie flashed him a glare, but stalked the way he indicated.

“Mind your step!” Flowers extended an arm to catch her elbow as she started down the trail. “The rocks are slippery.”

Startled, Ellie glanced up at the big man—but he had already moved on with a smile.

The path led down a steep slope. Ellie’s view of the way forward was blocked by both Flowers’ broad back and the slick green leaves that slapped at her arms and face.

Adam’s grim silence gave her a clear, unpleasant sense of just how serious their situation must be.

The path opened onto a broad, flat bank beside the river where it calmed below the cataracts. The area would be flooded during the rainy season, but for now, it was a relatively dry plateau of packed earth and scraggly grass… all seething with activity.

Ellie counted three steam barges floating on the calm brown water. Each of them was easily four times as big as the Mary Lee.

The shore itself was a hive of tents, hammocks, and piles of crates. Roughly two dozen mules brayed from within a rigged-up corral under the ceiba trees. Men shouted to each other across the camp.

Ellie counted at least thirty of them.

“I thought you said nobody mounted expeditions this close to the rains,” she muttered to Adam as Flowers moved a few steps ahead of her.

“They don’t,” Adam countered.

“Then who are they?” she demanded.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Adam returned grimly.

“Move!” Mendez barked from behind them.

Adam was uncharacteristically quiet as they were marched across the sprawling camp. Ellie saw his hand flex irritably at the empty sheath for his machete. He was obviously feeling the blade’s absence.

Ellie felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was clearly very attached to that knife.

Most of the men that she saw were busy working—except for the ones with the guns, like Flowers and Mendez. Those fellows lingered at various points around the camp, quietly smoking or more loudly socializing.

Ellie’s mind whirled over the puzzle of what their presence meant. An unlicensed logging operation might employ some hired toughs to keep an eye on their perimeter. Perhaps she and Adam had stumbled onto a band of timber poachers.

Surely, they could talk their way past a few loggers. Adam would figure it out. Ellie would just follow his cues—and pick up as much information as she could on her own in the meantime.

She made a study of the workers as they passed. The men had a mix of Creole and Mestizo backgrounds. There was also a group of young South Asian fellows sitting around one of the campfires, chatting comfortably among themselves. Their Bhojpuri melded with the Kriol, English, and Spanish that clamored through the air.

The poaching operation—or whatever it was—carried far more equipment with it than Ellie and Adam had… though that bar was admittedly low. Most of the men appeared to be sleeping in hammocks with mosquito nets. A few tents were also scattered about. As they passed one, Ellie peeked inside to spot both a cot and a desk.

Burlap bags of dried maize and coffee were stacked in piles beside crates of tinned beef and lamp oil.

Her captors stopped outside of a larger tent on the far edge of the camp. Mendez tossed back the flap and strode inside. Ellie heard the sharp bark of his voice from within.

“We found a couple bakras up on the ridge,” he announced.

He had spoken English rather than Spanish or Kriol. That told her something about whoever the ‘boss’ must be.

Any reply was drowned out by a crash from behind them as the men felled one of the trees.

Mendez emerged.

“Inside,” he ordered with a jerk of his head.

Ellie glanced over at Adam for guidance. His eyes were on the tent. He stepped forward to enter it, leaving Ellie to follow.

“This the woman you were looking for, then?” Mendez demanded as he came in behind them.

The interior of the tent was dim compared to the bright afternoon of the sunlit riverbank. Ellie’s eyes took a moment to adjust—and so she heard what waited for her inside before she saw it.

“It is indeed,” Jacobs replied.

Ellie’s stomach dropped. Her vision finally settled, revealing Jacobs’ lean, dangerous figure standing at the far end of the canvas enclosure. His gaze shifted from her to Adam.

“And you have brought a friend,” he commented. “How surprising.”

Jacobs did not sound the least bit surprised.

“How are you here?” The words spilled from Ellie’s lips as her mind spun with a rising fear.

“In a rare example of foresight, the professor made several useful annotations about the map in his notebook before you took it,” Jacobs replied. “Enough, at least, to get us here once we corroborated them against the latest documentation from the colony survey office.” He gave Ellie a considering look. “I wondered whether you would recognize that the tributary might serve as a shortcut. I half expected we would run into you on our way here, especially if you had managed to convince him to come along with you.”

He waved a hand casually at where Adam stood beside her.

“So this is an ambush,” Ellie fumed.

“An expedience,” Jacobs calmly corrected her. “It made far more sense to simply continue with an expedition once we had caught you, rather than returning to the city to collect the requisite men and equipment.”

The tent flap was thrown back again, and Dawson entered.

“What’s she doing here?” the professor spluttered, pointing a nervous finger at Ellie.

“Miss Mallory was just about to return our map,” Jacobs smoothly replied.

Ellie felt the ground begin to slide from beneath her feet.

“Mallory?” Adam echoed carefully.

Jacobs went quiet. His gaze shifted to Ellie, and he lifted a single, terribly expressive eyebrow.

Shame drained the blood from her cheeks as fear twisted her gut.

Jacobs made no further answer. He seemed entirely content to wait. The terrible silence stretched until it felt as though it must break her.

“That’s my name,” Ellie finally said. “Eleanora Mallory.”

Adam didn’t reply. His expression shuttered, locking away whatever he was really thinking.

Fear thickened in Ellie’s throat.

“But who is he?” Dawson demanded as he waved an ineffectual hand at Adam’s imposing figure.

“This is Mr. Adam Bates of the surveyor general’s office.” Jacobs shifted his cool, impenetrable gaze to Adam. “We neglected to make proper introductions during our previous encounter.”

“Guess we did,” Adam returned thinly. “Curious how you figured that out.”

“I was informed that you had disappeared from the hotel at the same time as the girl. The conclusion was logical enough,” Jacobs returned.

“But what are we going to do with them?” Dawson protested.

The professor was sweating. Ellie wondered how much of it was the heat, and how much was his discomfort with the idea of once again being potentially party to murder.

Not that she expected his discomfort would make him do anything to stop it.

“I suppose that depends on Mr. Bates,” Jacobs said.

“Oh?” Adam replied with deceptive ease. His hand flexed near the empty sheath of his machete. “And how’s that?”

“You are the assistant surveyor general,” Jacobs elaborated. “As I understand it, you are responsible for the maps we consulted to get here. You are by far the most adept navigator we have in this camp.”

“What?” Dawson spluttered indignantly. He fumbled the pen he had been holding, dropping it to the floor.

Jacobs ignored him. His eyes were on Adam.

“Use those skills to direct us to the city, and perhaps we can avoid more… unpleasant consequences,” Jacobs said.

Ellie’s fear sharpened, growing colder. Jacobs would kill Adam without a second thought. Did Adam realize that? Would it matter if he did? He was hardly the most diplomatic personality at the best of times. Ellie could tell that he was barely refraining from attacking the man now, even with Mendez still pointing his rifle at the pair of them.

Her stomach twisted.

“I am entirely capable of reading a map!” Dawson retorted, obviously offended.

“Not as capable as he is,” Jacobs countered neatly.

“Need I remind you that this is my expedition?” the professor exclaimed.

Jacobs turned to look at him.

“Is it?” he asked mildly.

Dawson shut up.

“And what happens if I tell you to go straight to hell?” Adam asked.

Jacobs didn’t smile or gloat. He looked a little tired.

“Then I start cutting the woman, Mr. Bates,” he replied.

Ellie forced herself to breathe. Her head spun as the tent seemed to grow smaller around her.

“You enjoy that sort of thing? Mutilating women?” Adam’s voice seethed with threat.

Jacobs’ response was level.

“I am here, Mr. Bates, because I do whatever needs to be done.”

Silence lingered. Mendez scratched uncomfortably at his ear as he avoided looking at Ellie. Dawson pouted over by the desk. The threat to Ellie was obviously of far less concern to him than the fact that Jacobs had impugned his scholarly capabilities.

Adam was a tense, untouchable presence beside her. Ellie couldn’t tell what he was thinking. For all she knew, he might have been a thousand miles away.

“Is your concern for the woman sufficient motivation to secure your cooperation?” Jacobs demanded.

“What happens if it’s not?” Adam replied.

Listening to these men casually discuss her fate over her head would normally have filled Ellie with a righteous rage. Instead, she felt as though the room was tipping away from her.

Adam hadn’t looked at her since Jacobs’ revelation. Ellie might as well have turned invisible beside him.

She had lied to him about her name. She had lied to him about a fair bit more than that, even if he didn’t know it yet… but perhaps he’d already begun to suspect.

How much worse would it be when she told him the rest?

Because she would have to tell him, just as she should have done a long time ago… if she got the chance.

“Then Miss Mallory becomes a liability,” Jacobs replied. “I do not need to tell you how we must deal with liabilities.”

“No. I don’t suppose you do,” Adam returned, his voice tight and cold.

“Then answer the question,” Jacobs ordered as he locked his gaze on Adam’s face.

Ellie looked as well. She couldn’t stop herself, even though she knew it was almost certainly a mistake—that what she saw in Adam’s expression would only twist the knot in her chest even tighter.

“It’s sufficient,” Adam said flatly.

His eyes were as cold as his tone.

Another of the armed guards stepped into the tent. He was a slender Creole man who stood a couple of inches shorter than Adam. His hair was combed into place with an indulgent smear of pomade.

He held Adam’s map canister in his hand.

“Here you go, boss,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Staines.” Jacobs accepted the canister, popped open the lid, and glanced idly inside before extending the tube to Dawson.

The professor snatched it and clutched it to his chest possessively.

“Mr. Bates will stay here and plot the remainder of our route on the map,” Jacobs announced. “The professor will review your work. If there is any indication that you are doing less than your utmost, I will reinforce my instructions on Miss Mallory’s skin. Mr. Staines will remain here to monitor the situation. Mr. Mendez?”

“Yes, boss?” Mendez replied.

“Secure Miss Mallory in the foreman’s tent for the evening. She will need to be kept under watch.”

“Claro.”

Mendez hooked his hand under Ellie’s elbow and yanked her toward the exit.

“Hold,” Jacobs cut in.

Mendez stopped. Jacobs stepped near enough to Ellie that she instinctively pulled back from him. Only Mendez’s grip on her arm kept her in place.

“The artifact?” Jacobs prompted. He extended his hand, waiting.

Shame and frustration burned through her. Ellie put her hands to the ribbon and lifted the medallion over her head.

She set the black disk down in Jacobs’ palm.

Jacobs tossed it across the tent. Dawson fumbled his catch and was forced to pick the object up off the ground. The professor clasped the relic in his hands and studied it greedily. A moment later, he remembered himself and fumblingly tucked it into his pocket.

“That will be all.” Jacobs waved dismissively.

Ellie stumbled after Mendez as he hauled her from the tent.

Panic choked her. It had all happened too fast. Surely, there had to be a way out of this.

She glanced over her shoulder at Adam. He turned to watch her go, but his expression was as unreadable as a shuttered window.

Mendez propelled her through the camp. Flowers fell into step behind them, frowning a bit as he slung the rifle over his shoulder.

Some of the scattered workers glanced over at Ellie uncomfortably as she passed. They quickly looked away again.

A few of the ones with guns watched her progress with a distinctly more threatening glance.

Mendez shoved her through the entrance to a tent in the middle of the camp. The space was perhaps twelve feet square, and was furnished with a cot, a field desk, and a chair.

“Pacheco!” Mendez shouted. “Clear this out and tell Bones to find another place for his stuff.”

Ellie glanced down at the surface of the desk as her escort momentarily turned his back. Her eyes fell on a round, heavy magnifying lens. Instinctively, she shoved it into her pocket just as Pacheco—a slender young Mestizo man—hurried inside.

He cast her an uncomfortable look from under a fall of dark brown hair, and then scrambled to collect the papers. On his way back outside, he paused to give her a sympathetic nod.

“Se?orita,” he said.

Another bark from Mendez had him scurrying out again.

Mendez jabbed a finger at Ellie from the entrance to the tent.

“Stay here. Don’t cause trouble,” he instructed her bluntly.

He walked back outside, impatiently waving Flowers around to guard the back side of the tent.

Ellie scurried over to peer out through the slight gap in the canvas flaps.

Mendez had plopped himself down on the ground just outside. He lit a short cigar and puffed at it, obviously settling in for a boring afternoon.

Ellie’s fists clenched at her side as some of her fear gave way to a more comfortable anger.

How dare they? Did Jacobs really think he could use her like a pawn with no mind or will of her own? Ellie was the one who had escaped him back in London, and who had beaten him to British Honduras. She was the one with the skills and qualifications to properly assess and document what they had come to find.

She was a university-trained scholar, a professional archivist, and a political agitator. She was not a chip for someone to push around on their table.

Fury rose, swelling up into her skull until she thought it must crack from the sheer pressure… but there was nowhere for it to go.

There was nothing she could do.

Ellie gave the metal cot a ferocious kick. It leaped and rattled alarmingly in response.

Thankfully, her boots held up to the impact. Otherwise, all she would’ve gained herself was a stubbed toe.

Frustration bloomed up to match her rage… and then fizzled into something more unsettling.

Ellie slumped back against the post at the rear of the tent as she fought a rising sense of despair.

She had well and truly mucked this up.

“Fiddlesticks,” she breathed with soft dismay.

Ellie pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, willing back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her defenses. She would not cry. They would think she was weak if she did—and she was not weak.

She was clever, resourceful, and determined—and she was damned well going to act like it.

Her thoughts shifted to Adam as though by force of gravity. They stopped on the memory of the look on his face as Mendez had dragged her out of Dawson’s tent.

It wasn’t a look that she had seen before. Ellie was accustomed to looks that spoke of respect and camaraderie—looks that made her feel important. Appreciated.

She wondered if Adam would ever look at her like that again.

Ellie had to talk to him. She had to find a way to get him alone so that they might figure out how they were going to get out of this mess… and so that she might come clean about the rest of what she’d been hiding.

Even if it meant that those looks would get even worse.

Ellie slowly lifted her head from the post and turned her thoughts to how she might make that happen.