"Krinard, Susan - Twice A Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Krinard Susan)

"I don't know them," he said.
He didn't know them? Somehow she didn't think it would help to tell him it was a joke. A little distraction was probably a better idea. "Uh—where did you come from? Originally, I mean?"
"San Francisco," he said, distracted. "I would have known if another expedition had arrived."
San Francisco, yet? Curiouser and curiouser. Downright scary, in fact. Mac cursed her inability to cut her own way through this green perdition. It had taken nearly an hour to reach the mystery ruins from Tikal; the return journey wasn't likely to be any faster.
At least Liam's double was too preoccupied to question her farther. He pulled a compass from a pouch at his belt, consulted it, and started off again, as single-minded and tireless as an automaton. Mac concentrated on her footing in the mud and swatting mosquitoes while she balanced the canvas sack over her shoulder.
When she checked her watch again she was startled by the time that had passed. They'd definitely been walking an hour; at this very moment they should be standing in the central plaza of Tikal. Unless he'd taken her the wrong way…
"Hey," she said, slowing. "I think we—"
Only some last-minute instinct kept her from walking into Liam Junior. He stood loose-limbed, the machete at his side, head lifted. Mac followed his gaze around a patch of jungle that appeared no different from all the rest.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked.
He looked at her as if she'd said something stupid. "We're there."
Mac went on her guard. It was apparent they weren't in Tikal—a wide, groomed clearing would have marked the main ruins, and there was nothing much like a clearing ahead. Nothing but endless forest on every side.
She gathered her patience. "We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. This isn't Tikal. Maybe it's a little farther on—"
"I've been to Tikal before, Miss MacKenzie. Maudslay took his photographs after my first expedition—"
"Maudslay?" Was he joking now? "You were here a pretty long time ago in that case. He took those photos in the 1880s. I think the place has changed a bit since then."
His stillness was as heavy as the humidity. When he spoke again, his voice was eerily gentle.
"Are you mad, Miss MacKenzie, or merely perverse?"
Perverse? He was calling her perverse? "Look," she said. "I just want to get back to my hotel—"
"Hotel?" He laughed—a deep, hearty baritone rumble. "Do you ordinarily regard native huts as hotels? Your taste is none too fine. Or perhaps you refer to the… accommodations in Flores? You'll have another twenty miles of walking to reach it."
Mac opened her mouth and closed it again. Something very strange was going on here. They were talking at cross-purposes, and nothing he said made sense. "I mean the hotel in Tikal," she said carefully. "Near the park entrance. It so happens I know the ruins pretty well myself, and this is not Tikal."
"I see." Abruptly he turned and strode to a nearly solid mass of vines and trees and bushes a few yards away. "You claim to know the ruins, Miss MacKenzie. You are in the midst of them." He grabbed a handful of vines in his left hand and yanked. Beneath the covering was stone—cracked, massive stone.
They were standing directly next to a Maya temple. It towered above them, almost entirely obscured by leaves and vines, two or three times the height of anything in the ruins they'd left. Bigger than anything outside of Tikal within a fifty-mile radius.
He must have led her north, into the deeper jungle, and not south to the more populated areas near Tikal. But what was his purpose? If he'd meant to hurt her, he could have done it several dozen times since they'd met.
"Where did you bring me?" Mac said, pretending a calm she didn't feel. "What is this place?"
He ignored her question as he might ignore the babbling of a week-old baby. "It seems your party has abandoned you."
"No one abandoned me. It's just that—"
He rounded on her with so much unexpected anger that she backed up a step. "Did you hear me? Your party is no longer here. I see no sign that anyone has been in these ruins. Maybe they found having a woman along more trouble than whatever you paid them was worth."
Mac's resolution to remain calm crumbled like ancient stone. "I didn't pay anyone but the guide. I arrived with a regular tourist group from Flores, to see the ruins like everyone else. So if you'll just give me back my flashlight—"
"And just where do you intend to go?"
That was a good question, but she couldn't let him know how lost she was. "I think I'll do a little exploring on my own, if you don't mind."
"I don't think so," he said with grim amusement. "Whatever your reasons for being alone, you can't go blundering about in the jungle. I'm not such a blackguard to let even a"—he paused significantly—"woman such as you run loose. I've gone to this much trouble already."
"Thank you so much. And why should I trust you?"
There. It was out at last. But he only arched his brow and rested his hand on the butt of his pistol. "You don't have much choice." He noticed the direction of her glance and grunted. "The gun, is it? We and your former companions aren't the only people in the jungle, Miss MacKenzie. There are guerrillas and rebels and petty tyrants in every part of this country. Some are far less scrupulous than I am."
Guerrillas? She'd read about the rebel Maya bands that occasionally ventured out of the Guatemalan highlands and into the Petйn, but they weren't any danger to tourists. Her would-be protector saw more potential perils in this jungle than she did.
"I don't think—"
"Obviously not. But have no fear, Miss MacKenzie. Your… virtue is completely safe with me. I'm not remotely tempted to test it."
For the second or third time that afternoon Mac was left speechless. How could you argue with a man who kept coming up with such bizarre comments?
How could you even take him seriously? Yes—that was the key. He was out of his gourd and there was absolutely no point in wasting her energy on anger. In any case, she had to admit that he was right about blundering around in the jungle. There must be some alternative.
Liam Junior's wandering gaze and pose of bored indifference gave her the chance to study him surreptitiously. The jungle's deep shadows only made his features seem more sharply cut, more imposingly masculine. Lines radiated out from his eyes and slashed between his brows. His was an outdoorsman's face that had been exposed to the elements: sun and wind and rain. It was a face that hid far more than it revealed.
What would you think of him, Homer? You'd probably have found him interesting, weirdness and all. You'd probably have learned everything important about him by now, too, and have him eating out of your hand.
But she wasn't Homer. Somehow her attempt to exorcise the Sinclair family demon had gotten far out of hand. Liam Junior was right: she didn't have a whole hell of a lot of choice at the moment. She could either follow her insane impulse to murder him, or take what help he could give and put up with the rest.
"All right," she said. "So what do you plan to do?"
"See you safely back with your people, whoever they are."
"We agree on that, anyway. Since we disagree about where we are, the best thing to do is get to a high place and take a good look around."
He grinned, a flash of white teeth brilliant and startling beside his tanned skin. "You do show occasional sense, Miss MacKenzie."
Sense enough to know that the highest scalable point in this part of the jungle was probably the vine-covered ruin right next to them. Mac grimaced. Her clothes were sticky, her feet were blistered, and the last thing she wanted to do was scramble up the crumbling steps of an unrestored temple.
"You don't happen to know the best way up this thing, do you?" she asked.
"Not here. I know a better place."
And he was off again, pausing just long enough to let her glimpse the direction he'd gone. Mac tried out a string of antiquated and colorful imprecations and followed. The sooner she found out where she was, the sooner she could get back to the real world.
She had to give it to him, though—he knew what he was doing. In a matter of minutes he'd cut his way through dense vegetation to another pyramid temple, this one even taller than the first. Familiar, almost. And from the base up the sloping length of the narrow temple steps, someone had worn out a faint path through the growth that coated almost every stone surface.
It was still a very long way up.