Only then did Mac notice he’d left his machete beside her backpack. She picked it up and called after him, but if he heard he wasn’t coming back. She thrust the blade into the soft earth at her feet. Maybe he thought she’d need it to protect herself from roving explorers.
Like Liam O’Shea.
To hell with it. No more procrastination. She tossed the pouch of coins into her backpack and hitched the pack over her shoulders. The flashlight was solid and real in her hand. Once she was home she’d learn to deal with reality again. No more mysteries. No more curses. No more crazy and debilitating emotions.
The tunnel was very dark, just as it had been before. She knew she should be afraid. She was blundering into another great unknown; anyone in her right mind would be scared stiff. But she’d left her right mind, as well as her heart, somewhere back in San Francisco. That was a definite advantage; she was numb now, numb and almost indifferent as she made her way to the end of the stone-lined hall.
The wall, too, was as it had been before, carved with a hundred inscrutable designs. Mac held up the flashlight to study it one final time, knowing it had nothing else to reveal. Nothing she wouldn’t learn by taking the next and final step.
So this is it. Dr Pepper, here I come. She sucked in a lungful of air and closed her eyes. “Good-bye, Liam. You gave me the adventure of my life, and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Be well, and be happy.” She laughed through an unanticipated onslaught of tears. “Just try not to alter history too much and undo all my work, okay?”
She propped the flashlight against the wall. The stone chips were still cool as she looped them from her neck. They had to work, cold or not; there was no going back.
She clutched one in each hand, squared her shoulders, and walked right into a firm, warm, masculine shape. Powerful hands caught her arms.
“You’ve led me on a merry chase, MacKenzie Rose Sinclair,” Liam growled, “but I can safely make that promise.”
* * *
He wasn’t too late. By the saints, he wasn’t too late.
He saw her now, in the dim lantern-light, just as he’d seen her that first time: wide-eyed, boyishly slim, her body taut with readiness to fight or run.
She trembled in his embrace like a wild thing expecting imminent death. Which might not be too far off the mark.
“So you thought it would be so easy to escape me, Mac?” he asked, giving her a little shake. “Make Liam O’Shea look like a fool and be on your merry way. Only it didn’t quite work, did it?”
“How did you get here?” she stammered.
“The usual way. I chartered one of my own ships to bring me down. Strangely enough, I couldn’t find Fernando in Champerico. Heard he’d gone off with a gringa. But when I got here, who did I find leaving the ruins?” He grinned. “Remarkable coincidence, eh, Mac?”
She pulled away with a jerk. “Perry,” she said. “Perry told you.”
“Yes, he told me.”
“Then—”
“I’m not holding this conversation in a bloody tunnel. Come on.” He grabbed her arm again and this time she went without resistance, stumbling and awkward, into the sunshine of the jungle afternoon. She blinked, disoriented, fists clenched at her sides.
“If I let you go, swear you won’t run,” he said.
Her head jerked up. “I’m not running from you, Liam O’Shea.”
He dropped her arm and planted his hands on his hips, gazing his fill of her. She was beautiful in her trousers and shirt and ragged hair. Beautiful the way the jungle was beautiful, the way no tame, ordinary woman could ever be.
“You already ran,” he said with a lazy drawl. “Pretty damned far. And with no intention of coming back, according to Perry. Ha.” He scowled. “I told Perry to keep watch over you while I was in Napa with Chen. And he let you go.”
“You told him—”
“Oh, he claimed to have misunderstood me, damn his English hide.”