More Than Paradise Part 22

Directing the beam carefully so she didn't stir the two elderly people whose hut she was sharing, she pulled her pack over and shoved her hand deep inside. Her ngers trawled through the familiar contents until she felt the Nagle insignia on a s.h.i.+rt toward the bottom, one of the rst things she'd shoved in during her hasty departure. Underneath lay a folded piece of paper.

"d.a.m.n," she muttered beneath her breath.

"Did you nd it?"

Ash responded to the hopeful inquiry with a subdued "Yes" and held the note to the light.

Ash, I need to clear my head so I'm going for a long walk. I wish you weren't leaving today. I hope we can talk this afternoon before you go. Please don't worry. Everything is ne. I'm not angry about last night. I just feel a bit overwhelmed and I need some s.p.a.ce. Everything seems to be moving so fast between us. See you soon. Charlotte.

It certainly didn't sound like a kiss-off.

Ash croaked dryly, "I wish I'd seen this before I left."

"Me, too." Charlotte's voice broke. "I wish we could have talked.

I stayed too long in the cloud forest."

* 190 *

"You went back there?" Ash's mind jumped to the two of them standing naked and awestruck in the chill purity of the waterfall, like they'd just beamed down into paradise.

"I had to," Charlotte said. "It's hard to explain. But I feel like I know who I am, there."

"Yes." Ash understood exactly. From the moment she'd set foot in that enchanted place, she'd been able to see her deepest self with astonis.h.i.+ng clarity. Long-buried dreams came alive. Hope chipped away at her doubts. It was a scary, exhilarating state of mind.

"There were some things I needed to gure out," Charlotte said.

"And did you?" Ash was almost afraid to hear the answer. It was all wrong that they were having this conversation at opposite ends of a cell phone in the middle of a tropical storm. She wanted to see Charlotte's face. She wanted to hold her and let nothing harm her.

"Ash." Charlotte's voice dropped lower. It was charged with emotion. "I think I'm falling in love with you."

She had to hear this heart-stopping declaration sitting in a thatched wood hut with a pig snoring next to her. Could her life be any less storybook? Elbows resting on her knees, Ash cradled her head in her hands, the phone cupped close. Charlotte's words oated like oxygen. She gulped them down into lungs deprived. She could hear Charlotte breathing raggedly from the risk she'd just taken. It was time to respond.

She put it out there in all its corniness, unable to come up with a better way to explain the slingshot to her soul that day in the bar. "I fell in love with you at rst sight."

"Oh."

Ash could see her mouth parting in kissable awe. She wanted to touch it, to carve the full pout of that bottom lip into her ngertips so she could feel it forever. "I don't even believe in love at rst sight," she said huskily.

"I don't either," Charlotte murmured. "I think it was love at second sight for me."

They laughed softly.

Ash said, "What was I thinking leaving you in that hotel room?"

"I seriously considered chasing you down the hall," Charlotte informed her. "But I was too drunk to get to the door."

"I'm glad we waited." Ash meant it. s.e.x in a hotel room with a * 191 *

woman under the in uence usually only ended one way. They both deserved better, and maybe on some level they'd known it, even then.

"I tried to nd you," Charlotte said. "Before I left for the Kokoda Trail. You're not listed."

"No. Mostly I don't want to be found." Ash was amazed. The uptight woman so horri ed to see her at the Sarmi airstrip had actually sought her out after their night on the town? Clearly, they had more catching up to do, sometime when they didn't have to worry about killing a cell phone battery. Gently, she said, "Baby, I want to continue this conversation, but right now I'm guessing Renee is worried her cell phone is going to die at any moment."

"I don't care."

Ash laughed. "That's my girl." Adopting a sterner tone, she said, "Come on. Say good night and put her on."

"What do I get in return?"

"What do you want?"

Charlotte's shaky breath teased Ash's ear. "Take a wild guess. And since I'm not alone that's all I'm going to say."

"I think they've heard enough." Ash knew her colleagues must have been straining their ears this whole time.

They'd both been intrigued by her instructions to Renee to keep Charlotte under constant surveillance. Being professionals accustomed to following orders, they hadn't questioned the decision, but Nitro had given her a sharp look. He'd examined Billy Bob Woodc.o.c.k the night they'd searched for Charlotte and had a few theories of his own.

He wasn't the only one. Ash still had some questions for Charlotte to answer. Every time she thought through those events, she felt like she was missing something. She'd raised the alarm as soon as everyone rolled in for the evening meal with Charlotte not among them. Notably, Billy Bob had been absent, too, a fact that had made her sick to her stomach at the time. However, the burly Texan hadn't been hard to nd.

She and Nitro had barely arrived in the area where Charlotte was last seen when he lurched out of the undergrowth talking gibberish.

At rst his dazed condition seemed to be explained by a lump near his temple where he'd suffered a blow. He said he must have tripped and hit his head on a tree. That was all he could remember. He'd woken up in a pile of leaves.

None of which explained the puncture mark Nitro subsequently found in his neck. "Tranquilizer dart," he said.

* 192 *

Ash took his word for it. The guy knew more than she ever would about how to immobilize human beings, temporarily or for keeps.

"Do you think it's a kidnapping?" Ash's blood ran straight to her feet.

"Could be. But they left him and took her, so there must be a reason. He's got to be carrying a ransom note, only I'm not seeing it."

They searched Woodc.o.c.k's clothing carefully and combed his body in case the kidnappers had decided to write their demand in felt tip on his chest or something. Billy Bob then decided to have hysterics because he thought headhunters might have been coveting his meaty skull.

Leaving him to his lurid imaginings, they kept up the search until the intense darkness made it futile. Ash had been pacing around outside the tents when Charlotte nally showed up, unscathed and telling some bulls.h.i.+t story about falling asleep in the very area they'd been patrolling for hours.

No wonder Nitro was suspicious. Ash wasn't comfortable either.

She hoped her evasive lover planned to come clean and tell her what had really happened that night. Ash wondered what on earth she could be hiding. Had she discovered the ultimate fern and wanted to keep it to herself? One thing Ash had noticed about the scientists-they were incredibly compet.i.tive with each other in their own nerdy way.

She switched the phone to her other ear as the signal faded out a little. Renee was on the other end, relaying their circ.u.mstances. By the time she'd nished telling her tale, it was clear that she'd probably saved Charlotte's life.

Ash said, "You did good. Thank you."

"It could be worse," the intrepid hero remarked with irony. "I was sick of playing deck quoits, anyway. And their calypso band sucked."

Ash grinned at this rare display of humor. Renee Gunderson, according to the Nagle rumor mill, had iced her husband over an affair with the babysitter. She'd been acquitted on a technicality but was dishonorably discharged from the army. Now she was working cream-puff a.s.signments that called for a female contractor.

"Phone me tomorrow with a report on the damage. Okay?"

"You bet." Renee was all business again. "My guess, it's going to be ugly."

v * 193 *

The day after the storm, Charlotte stared down at the two bodies laid out on the only clean sleeping bag liners they'd managed to salvage from the far- ung detritus of their camp. The bloodless pallor of their faces, and the gaping cuts and abrasions, would haunt her all her life.

Simon had gone back for a b.u.t.ter y. Jeb Tanner, the other Texan on the Nagle team, had gone after him. They were washed away when the stream became a lethal torrent and breached its banks. The two men were thrown hundreds of yards downhill, smas.h.i.+ng into trees and rocks. They had no chance, Nitro said.

The team had decided to bury them here, near the lake bed, where they could easily be brought out in a recovery operation if that's what their families wanted. Everyone had gathered in a ne drizzle of rain to pay their nal respects. Charlotte felt eyes on her as the bodies were lowered into their graves. She didn't know what to say. With the exception of Nitro and Renee, who seemed to have added two and two, the entire eld party now thought Simon had been her boyfriend.

All morning people had been coming up to her, giving her embarra.s.sed hugs and shoulder squeezes. It seemed to help them all cope to have someone they could offer condolences to, so she kept her mouth shut. It was ironic. She'd learned more about Simon in the few hours since his death than in the past week. Everyone who consoled her had a story to tell about him. It sounded like he was a genuinely good person. Charlotte wished she'd laughed at more of his jokes.

After the men were in their graves, the Australian mammal experts led the group in a simple rendition of "Amazing Grace," then anyone who knew the British national anthem sang it in honor of Simon. The Americans followed this with their anthem in salute to Jeb Tanner, who had tried to save a life and lost his own.

Billy Bob produced a tinny CD player and cranked up the volume to play Jeb's favorite song, "Take Me Home, Country Roads." Everyone knew at least some of the lyrics and sang along out of tune. Miles stood a short distance away, staring at nothing, wiping tears off his face. He'd been throwing up all morning.

As Nitro and several other men shoveled earth into the graves, Charlotte sensed a restless expectation in the ranks. They all wanted to give their dead colleagues as much dignity as they could, and without a priest something crucial seemed to be missing from their simple ritual.

So, to the soft thud of falling earth, she did her best to recall the words everyone expected to hear at a funeral.

* 194 *

"We hereby commit the bodies of our two dearly departed brothers Simon and Jeb into the ground. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust."

It was all she could call to mind, but a solemn sigh ensued and the tension dissipated. Life was short. Charlotte hoped each dead man had found his measure of happiness.

* 195 *

* 196 *

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Time slithered by. The eld party subsisted in a veil of rain and cloud. Grim. Oppressive. Unrelenting. Day after day.

The ash- ood waters had run off into small tributaries all over the affected area of the mountain. These ngered a sea of mud in which most of the supplies and equipment were buried. Each day, in s.h.i.+fts, the team dug with any implement they could nd, trying to unearth food and phones. Most people had lost theirs and the camp's small generator had been destroyed, so there was no way to recharge the batteries of the few that still functioned.

Charlotte felt miserably guilty that she had consumed most of Renee's charge while she was confessing her love to Ash. But Renee never complained. All she said was that they could only phone Ash once a day to check in, and they had to save power for their most important call, when the clouds nally parted and a helicopter could land.

Each morning over breakfast, the entire camp gathered at the edge of the lake bed to stare up at the sky like the faithful awaiting the rapture.

They had a carefully mapped-out plan for the day the weather looked like changing. There were ares set aside. Nitro thought at least some of them would work. An array of brightly colored items was piled up ready to be laid out in the middle of the boggy landing area. Nitro said Ash would need some markers if she had to come down in thin mist.

And they'd drawn straws to see who would leave on the rst shuttle.

Planning their departure and discussing what they were all going to do when they got back to civilization kept their spirits up. Several of the team had also evolved a scheme for walking out of the Fojas if they had to. Kwerba was a twenty-day hike, they'd calculated, perhaps * 197 *

thirty, and Jared Diamond had done it all those years ago. Maybe they could, too. Whenever they got carried away with that conversation, Miles reminded them that Diamond had guides with him, whereas theirs had own back to Kwerba once they'd established the camp and mapped out their research area.

The post- ood camp had been rebuilt on the original site Ash had chosen. One of the large tents had been recovered and the men had rigged up bivouacs for everyone who could not be accommodated.

Charlotte and Renee slept side by side in the tent. They didn't talk much. Everyone was in mourning, Charlotte thought. For the men lost and for the expedition itself. They had plans to regroup and start again, but this journey of discovery was over. When people died, it was time to go home.

Charlotte got despondent every time she thought about returning empty-handed to Sealy-Weiss. Of course, she had some basic data and there was a good deal she could bring together from memory. She could con rm the existence of the Ficus they were seeking and she intended to collect a new set of specimens today. But there was so much more she wanted to do. She couldn't help but imagine how she would be received if she took back the prize she really wanted. The orchid of life.

The more she thought about it, the more desperate she became to make contact with Bruce again and get back to that cave. The rain had nally stopped and a heady optimism had seized the breakfast crowd.

The sky seemed brighter, the clouds thinner. Maybe they would have liftoff tomorrow.

Charlotte was both thrilled and alarmed by the prospect. She would see Ash. At last. But she would be leaving the Fojas before she could gather the evidence she needed to announce the discovery of a lifetime. What if Bruce was murdered by one of the various parties he claimed to be hiding from? The Indonesian military. The big mining companies. The timber barons. His ex-wife.

She paced the perimeter of the camp, conscious of Renee's watchful regard. She usually kept a discreet distance but she was always there. Today's digging parties were setting off, all in high spirits for a change. The few people remaining were on latrine and maintenance duty. Among them was Miles, whose heart seemed to have gone out of him since the catastrophe. His face had thinned and he had let his goatee run amok. His wispy brown hair was weighed down with mud.

* 198 *

Charlotte watched him drag his feet as he transported buckets of fresh leaf mulch and twigs around the camp to spread over the pathways, their attempt to prevent their thoroughfares becoming slippery mud trails. An idea took root as he worked, and with a nonchalant smile at Renee, she strolled toward him.

"Miles, hey. How are you doing?"

He straightened up and regarded her uncertainly. Charlotte could understand his apprehension. He blamed himself for Simon's death, and she was the supposed girlfriend.

"I have a favor to ask," she said.

He seemed cheered by this, perhaps seeing an olive branch.

"Anything to help."

Charlotte decided her plan was a win/win. Miles would get to feel good about helping her and she would get the chance to see Bruce, if he was still around. She had a feeling he was.

"As you know, I lost all my data and specimens in the ood. And my camera. And microscope." She kept her tone soft, not wanting to sound accusatory. "But I believe I can still gather some extremely useful specimens of one key species I'm here to research. It would probably be in both our interests to provide Belton Pharmaceuticals with a reason to fund another expedition."

"Do you see that happening?" He sounded dubious.

"Absolutely. But we don't have much time if the weather is going to clear, so I thought if I had some help..." Charlotte cast a pointed look toward Renee and lowered her voice. "The problem is, she slows me down in the eld and right now, time is of the essence. I was hoping you might be able to work with me."

Miles, as Charlotte had expected, relished the chance to score a few points against the Nagle crew. "I'm your man," he said. "Let's lose the guard dog."

Charlotte gave him a big smile. "Okay, here's the plan. You're going to tell her you're walking me up to the dig. We'll say we're really bored down here and we want to see if they've found our laptops. Then I'm going to suggest she takes the morning off since I'll be up there with Nitro and everyone else."