She had an urgent desire to grab the flashlight from his belt and brain him with it instead, but she obeyed. After two more energetic blows—considerably more powerful than those used by her guide earlier in the day, making an impressive display of the muscles in his back—his motions became less choppy and more rhythmic, almost graceful. Mac kept watch for the original path. There was still not the slightest sign that it had ever been there.
The jungle closed in around them like a hungry predator. Almost at once the light faded, turned to false dusk by trees and bushes and every conceivable type of tropical vegetation. Mac reminded herself that any threat from the jungle’s scaled and furred inhabitants was likely to be in her own mind. There was no way in hell she’d let her gallant escort, with his strange attitudes about women, know she was even a little bit nervous.
“Tell me, Miss MacKenzie—”
Mac congratulated herself for hiding the way she nearly jumped out of her skin. He’d stopped to rest—not that he was breathing particularly hard, or sweating any more than she was. He was marvelously alive and strong and very… virile. Disturbingly so.
“—now that we’ve established that you didn’t come to the jungle alone,” he went on, “how did you get to the Petén? You must have come by ship—was it Champerico or Belize? What expedition of fools did you dupe into bringing you here?”
That line again. It was beginning to get a bit old. “Oh,” she said, counting on her fingers, “let’s see. There was Allen Quartermain and Indiana Jones and Professor Challenger. Lord Greystoke couldn’t make it at the last minute.”
The quiet lasted long enough to make her wonder if she’d finally gone too far. She glanced at his face, heavily shadowed in the faint illumination. He certainly seemed angry enough.
“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?”