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“Oh, believe me, I’m hanging.”
Paying out rope, he walked down the cliff face, till he was looking up at the Jeep and the Dangling Beauty.
An ice cube slid down his spine. Only a couple of big limbs remained; the weight of the car had settled upon them. If they let go—when they let go, he amended, seeing the jagged crack in the crotch of the closer one—then down would come the Jeep like a Detroit-made guillotine, on his head. Two tons of dusty steel would ride him and the woman down to the ground.
“I’m gonna toss you the rope again,” he said as he coiled up its dangling tail. “And this time, believe me, you want to catch it. Now let your arms hang.” She’d never do it, he realized as he spoke. Though the belt ought to hold her weight, instinct would weld her hands to the steering wheel.
She drew an audible breath, then said in a rueful moan, “Oh, man.” She let go the steering wheel to hang, arms extended, swaying faintly in the breeze.
“Good girl. Here it comes.” The loop slapped her wrists and she clawed for it frantically, finally capturing it.
“Now get the loop around your waist,” McCord instructed.
Somehow she wriggled into it. “Beautiful!” Quickly he explained what she had to do. She had to release her seat belt, but hang on tightly to the steering wheel, and get herself aimed head-up, feet-down. “I’m wedged in right over here, and I’ll take in your slack. When you’re ready, all you do is let go, then I’ll do the rest. I won’t let you fall.”
She’d swing into the cliff below him and bang herself good, but she ought to hit feet-first, not head-on. It might work. Except that nobody in his right mind would release that seat belt, no matter how much he wanted to live.
But she fooled him again. Her hand fumbled at the buckle.
“Oh, honey, we’re gonna do this,” he almost sang. She was one in a million.
Somewhere in the tree, something snapped.
“Um, I hate to say this, Tex, but the buckle seems to be jammed.”
Another branch crackled—and the Jeep settled one foot closer to Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.
Chapter 4
N ot a minute to lose, McCord told himself when the Jeep stopped moving. He scrambled back up to road level, then realized what he had to do. Bending low, he called down through the gap between the car and the cliff. “Uh, honey? Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way. You’ve gotta untie that loop and let it drop.”
“Are you outta your tiny mind?”
“Trust me on this. Drop the rope.” That loop around her waist must have felt like her last link to life, but if the Jeep fell when he added his weight to it, the line would saw her in half. A half-mile drop would be kinder.
She muttered something surly. The rope shivered, then slackened, and McCord was amazed all over again as he coiled it and slung it over one shoulder. “Okay, you’re going to hear a thump, but don’t worry. That’s just me.”
He leaped—and landed dead center on the Jeep’s chassis, flapping his arms for balance as the Jeep wobbled and wood crackled. His ankle touched hot metal and he swallowed a yelp. “Piece of cake.”
“Yeah,” she agreed bitterly. “Angel food.”
She was hyperventilating, it sounded like, as he picked his way along the hot greasy metal till he could reach an upper branch of the pine. It was the only unbroken one in a position to help, and it might hold the two of them.
“What are you doing up there?” she snarled.
“Just making us a sky hook,” he said soothingly as he tied the rope around the branch, then knotted in foot loops. Once he’d done that, he shinnied down the rope, to swing there level with her, toeing frantically for the last loop. He found it and settled his weight into it, then drawled cheerily, “Well, hey!”
Her upside-down face turned back and forth, then homed in when he whistled softly. “This is not the brightest idea you ever had in your life.”
“You always this bitchy when you’re scared?” He snagged the doorframe to pull himself closer. “Okay, here’s the drill.” He’d cut her loose, while she hung on to the steering wheel. Then she’d rotate, till they were no longer in sixty-nine position. “And then—”
“I get the picture. Just do it!”
“Right.” Drawing his Buck Knife from its sheath, he sawed at the seat belt. “Okay, here it comes. It’s all yours!”
Panting with terror and effort, she worked her legs out, her knees knocking him in the chest as she rotated upright. Then she dangled, treading air, her head stuck somewhere up in the Jeep’s foot well. “N-now what?”
He grabbed the wheel, pulled himself closer. “Get your legs around my waist.”
Easier said than done, but they managed. She had miles of leg, and he’d swear she wrapped them twice around, squeezing him like an anaconda.
“Now all you have to do is let go of the wheel, and wrap your arms around my neck. Just let go, honey, and reach for me.”
“I—I can’t.”
He opened his mouth to argue—and the Jeep shifted. With a screech, she let go and boarded him, hugging him in a stranglehold. The car slid farther and McCord kicked off its moving side. As they pendulumed outward, tons of steel sighed and slipped past and was gone.
“Yowsa!” he said reverently as their lips met. No telling who kissed whom, but still they brushed, and brushed again, then locked on tight.
Half a mile below, the Jeep pancaked on rock. The sparks singed him from here, or maybe that was the hot woman, almost welded to his belly. No sane man would feel a twinge of arousal, dangling over his own death on not much more than a healthy twig, but with the way she shuddered against him and the wild, wet taste of her…
Wham…wham…wham…wham…The echoes bounced off the far wall of the canyon and back again. McCord rubbed his lips across her cheek and up through her hair. She smelled like a surfer girl, whiff of coconut oil and sun-kissed sweat. He must be purely out of his mind. He glanced up at the bending branch. “There’s just one thing more we have to do.”
The first ten feet was the hardest part, but she had the slender arms of a rock climber and McCord gave her a boost. She swarmed up his body, then the rope.
By the time they heaved themselves over the cliff edge to collapse face-down and gasping on the road, it was just about pitch-dark. McCord rolled over and lay beaming gratefully up at the sky.
“God!” She groaned and flopped over beside him. Her shoulder was pressed against his and it started to shake. He swung his head to look at her. So here came the girlish tears at last, and who could blame her? But no, this was laughter, bubbling and building from a silent chortle to wholehearted hoots of relief as he joined in. They struggled to a sitting position and clung to each other, yelping like a couple of moonstruck coyotes.
At last they wound down, till they sat, shaking with their last spasms, his arm around her shoulders, their foreheads resting comfortably against each other’s. She pulled away to lean back on her hands in the dirt. “Th-thanks.”
“Heck, I only climbed down there to get the name of your insurance company. Next thing I know, I’m hanging by my fingernails, wearing—” You. And she’d fit him better than his favorite wet suit. McCord turned to study her. Her pale, tousled hair and long, lithe form, backlit by the first stars were about all he could make out, but there was something about her growly, soft voice that curled his toes. Down, boy, he told himself absently, then stood. “Stay right there, honey.”
“Name’s Raine,” she called as he walked to the Rover to find his flashlight.
And she didn’t care to be patronized, he noted with a grin; not with her feet on solid ground. “Watch your eyes.” He aimed the light down at the gravel and switched it on, wondering if the rest of her matched that come-to-bed voice. “Well,” he said, and found himself grinning wider. He must look like George the coyote when McCord pulled a chunk of rabbit off the fire and prepared to toss him his share.
She must be used to that reaction. Her smile quirked wry and resigned as she met his eyes. Or tried to. Instead she focused somewhere left of his ear.
“Still seeing double?” he asked her.
Actually, I figured you for the Twirling Triplets from Texas. “Guess I banged my head on the steering wheel.”
“That’s not good.” He touched her forehead, making her jump. “Easy. Sorry. I just want to check you out.” His gentle, work-roughened fingertips explored her temples with feathery strokes that set off ripples in her stomach. “Yeah, you’ve got a split here, right at your hairline. You’ll need a few stitches and a good shampoo.” His voice went brisk with decision. “I think the doc better have a look at you.”
It took him nearly fifteen minutes of inching forward and back to turn his car from its slewed position till it pointed downhill. Finally he helped her into the passenger seat, then fastened her seat belt. “Not that you’re going to need this. I’m the world’s best driver, so just lean back and relax.” He adjusted the seat till she was tipped almost horizontal.
The fear had left her drained and it would have felt good to lie back, if it hadn’t made her feel less in control, being carried off into the dizzy dark. She fumbled for the lever as he walked around to his side, but she couldn’t find it. “Really, I don’t need a doctor,” she tried again as he climbed in beside her and drove away.
“Probably not, but I can’t leave you sitting in the road, and I don’t think you’d care to be dropped off at Magdalena’s Cantina. Might get more help than you need.”
“God, no. That’s where all my troubles started!” She told him about the lumberjacks. “I guess their truck was too wide for this track. That must be why they stopped chasing. But what I’m wondering is why they hassled me in the first place. Maybe Magdalena sicced them on me?”
He swore as the car bounced through a pothole, then landed with a sickening slither on the gravel. “Why would she do that?”
“I was trying to connect with a guy, a Professor McCord, who picks up his mail at the cantina. She seems to think she owns him.”
“Huh.” He drove in silence for a while, then muttered, “I suppose Magdalena figures she’s got a lease on every man who walks through her door.”
“She’s welcome to ’em. I’ve no intention of jumping her claim. My interest is strictly professional.”
“Hmmm. You’re a…travel writer?”
“Nope.” She winced as she realized she’d just blown her cover.
“Ah, a mountain climber. You’re lookin’ to hire a camp manager.”
“Not me. But McCord does that?” She shifted to look at him, then winced as it hit her again; there were three overlapping images where there ought to be one.
“When he’s trying to scrape some cash together, he’s been known to do that. And worse things,” he added under his breath as the car slid again and he shifted to low. “You with the ATF? The DEA?”
“McCord runs guns? Or dope?”
“Not if he wants to live. That’s strictly a local franchise, no gringos welcome. But the damn feds—and the federales—are always shopping for snitches down here. No, McCord keeps his nose clean and he keeps to himself.”
“Sounds like you know him pretty well.”
“Too well.”
“So maybe I could get an introduction?”
“’Fraid we’re way past that. I’m McCord, and who the heck are you? Tell me please I didn’t kiss an agent of the IRS, hell-bent on an audit. I’d have to shoot myself. You’re Lorraine who?”
“Not Lorraine—Raine. As in Raine Ashaway. You wrote me about the temple at Teotihuacan, and yes, the Feathered Serpent looks like a dinosaur.”
Just then the car slid again, and this time what remained of his left headlight clipped the mountainside.
“So you thought so, too—that it looks like a dinosaur?” he asked after he regained control of the car.
“Given a bit of artistic license on the part of the carver, yes. Something like a Styracosaurus, with that spiked neck-frill.”
“Bless you! But what about my other question—the biggie. Do you know of any place in the world—preferably around here—where such a beast might’ve been found?”
“It’s not a known species, so I haven’t a clue. Though, actually—” She remembered her mug, which by now must be bits of ceramic sand at the bottom of the canyon.
“What?”
At his tone, she turned toward him—and blinked. At the center of her vision, all his shuffling images had steadied to one silhouetted profile, led by a nose like the bow of a distant icebreaker.
“What?” He stopped the car in the middle of the road to poke her in the shoulder. “Come on, Ashaway, give! You thought of a clue? Where to look?”
“What’s…” Enchanted by the miracle of sight—functional sight—Raine found it hard to heed mere words. He had wonderfully carved lips when she moved her focus, though she should know that already. The man was a natural-born kisser, if she’d ever met one. “What’s your angle on this?”
“Aw, jeez, you’re going to hold out on me, after I risked my neck to rescue you?”
“No. I never said that.” But the reflex had been ingrained from childhood: Guard your information. Bone hunting was the Ashaways’ livelihood; you shared your finds with the family and the firm, but never with strangers.
“So say it! ‘McCord, I owe you my sorry life. If I know where to find a dino, it’s yours with a bow on it.’ Or would you rather I turn around and hang you back in the tree where I found you?”
She smiled in spite of herself at this show of temper; he didn’t mean it. “I owe you my life and I swear I don’t know where to find this dino—if it even exists. I was thinking about a ceramic mug I lost. It was in my luggage.”
“Oh.” He drove in silence for a minute, then growled, “I’ll see about salvaging what’s left of your gear in the morning. But as for a tacky tourist mug, it’ll be busted to smithereens.”
And, but for you, I would have been down there with it. She touched his arm and confessed, “The mug had a design on it. Exactly like the photo you sent me.”
Chapter 5
R aine drifted up from sleep to the fragrance of honeysuckle, the murmur of bees outside the open window beside her bed. She lay blinking at a rough plaster ceiling, tinged gold by the rich slant of light. Must be morning, she realized, stretching full-length. A soft tap on the door brought her up to one elbow. “Come in!” she called, assuming it would be McCord.
Last night he’d practically carried her into the Casa de los Picaflores, the House of the Hummingbirds, home and guesthouse of Dr. Sergio Luna. The aftereffects of adrenaline, followed by the car’s vibrations on the long, rumbling descent into the canyon, had wiped her out. She dimly remembered McCord’s arm around her waist as he helped her up the crude stone stairs of a winding path. Moonflowers and honeysuckle twining around the cedar pillars of a long porch. A flood of lamplight as a massive door opened.
Then the embrace of a big leather chair and a deeper-than-deep voice behind a moving candle flame, asking her to follow the light. A soft aside to McCord in Spanish noted that her pupils reacted to light, that he could see nothing to cause a man worry.
“At least, not that kind of worry,” McCord drawled in the same language.
The doctor gave her a warm potion, bitter with herbs, laced with wild honey. It must have contained a painkiller, because when he stitched the gash at her hairline, it didn’t hurt. After that she remembered McCord’s arms again, easing her down a long hall. But beyond that? Some time later she’d stumbled into the adjoining bathroom, once by starlight, then once again by daylight, and now…Raine blinked. Was this morning, or—
The door creaked and a tiny, elderly woman nudged it open with the tray she held. With a timid smile she shuffled across the room to set it on a bedside table.
“Buenas días,” Raine said, adding a fervent “gracias” as the smell of coffee tickled her nose. There was bread with slices of papaya on a plate; it must be morning. “Puede decirme, señora—could you tell me—” She paused as the woman’s brown, wrinkled face produced a smile of shy confusion.
The woman murmured soft apologetic sounds in a language that wasn’t Spanish, ducked her scarfed head, then retreated and shut the door.
A Tarahumara, Raine guessed, as she hitched up against the headboard to pour herself a cup of coffee flavored with cinnamon and chocolate. Her questions would have to wait, which was fine by her stomach. It awoke with a lurch and practically leaped at her fingers as she tore off chunks of pan dulce, a bread of melting sweetness, to feed the ravening beast.
Once her first pangs had been quelled, Raine yawned, then rolled out to meet the day. Wrapping her naked body in a lighter blanket from the foot of the bed—and just who had undressed her?—she drifted over to sit on the wide sill. “Whoa!” she murmured aloud. Below the house, the hillside fell away in broad terraces till it vanished in purple, plunging shadows. A mile beyond the abyss rose sheer cliffs, crowned by a forest of toothpick-size trees.
So the House of the Hummingbirds wasn’t at the bottom of the gorge, but perched on a bench carved by the river she’d yet to see. A rambling one-story adobe, it followed the contours of the hillside like a train of sugar cubes. Its walls were painted pink by the rising sun, which had just cleared the far side of the canyon.
“Wait a minute.” Raine straightened with a frown. The track where she’d come to grief had descended from the eastern rim. Had McCord driven her clear across the canyon last night, and she was looking back the way they’d come? No, she’d dozed off through much of the journey, but still, surely she’d have noticed a river crossing. Which meant she must be looking west and the sun was setting! “I slept through a whole darn day?”
To her left, someone stepped out from behind a vine-covered pillar and started down the steps of the porch. A man, but not McCord. This one was short and almost portly. Supported by a cane, he moved with an awkward limping lurch. The doctor? She’d been too befuddled last night to note more than his voice and his suturing skills.
He paused where the first run of steps opened out onto a stone ledge, and swept off the Panama hat that had hidden his face. The gesture revealed ruddy, sun-weathered skin, a bold hawk’s nose on a man of middle years. Plucking a crimson trumpet flower from the buttonhole of his white tropical suit, he called in a loud voice, “Venga, bellezza!” Come, beauty! He placed the stem of the flower between his teeth, spread his arms wide and tipped back his dark head.
He had to be the doctor, Raine told herself, with that voice deep as a canyon, but what on earth was he doing?
If she’d blinked at that moment she’d have missed it; a shimmering ruby-and-emerald colored hummingbird arrowed in to the prize. It hovered before the man’s face, sipped—and flashed away. With a laugh, the doctor drew the plundered blossom from his lips, kissed it lightly and tossed it to the molten air. Donning his hat, he limped toward the next flight of stairs.
