TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

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 Petén, 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.

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