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The boat crept toward the mouth of the cave. Adam kept a careful eye on the stack of the boiler as they approached it, keenly estimating their clearance.
It was definitely going to be close.
TheMary Leemoved against a change in the flow of the current, shifting to the side. Adam neatly adjusted their course—and the tendrils of overhanging foliage brushed against the smoke-stained iron of the boiler as they passed inside.
Gloom settled in around them, turning the bright gold of morning to a dim twilight. The orange glow of the lantern illuminated the place where Ellie was suspended over the water with the sapling in her hand.
The dark, damply glistening walls of the passage were worn smooth almost to the ceiling. The space must fill completely with water at the height of the flood. The only rock formations Adam could see dangling down from above were either minuscule or truncated by the debris that must come flying through when the river was high.
Here and there, the glow of the lantern flickered across quick, shifting forms—the dart of a lizard, the skitter of a fist-sized cave spider.
Adam gave a little shudder at the sight of those. He’d been jibing Ellie about the spiders, but the truth was that the damned things had always spooked him a bit. Something about all those scritchy legs made his skin crawl.
He focused his gaze and worked to penetrate as much of the gloom before them as he could. Occasionally, breaks overhead allowed little spills of light to penetrate down to the water. Those areas were thick with growth. The river below them shifted from black to a startling turquoise.
Adam glanced up to see a log at least fourteen inches in diameter jammed into a crevice of the ceiling. He was uncomfortably reminded of just how hazardous this waterway would become once the rains kicked in and the river rose.
As the slick walls of the cave slid past, Adam considered the wisdom of what they were doing. It was pretty damned close to the start of the rainy season. If he and Ellie didn’t make it back through the tunnel before the rains began, they could very well be trapped on the other side. They’d be forced to abandon the boat and try to make their way overland across fifty miles of tropical forest and swamp.
That was not an enticing notion.
But what was the alternative? If they went back to town now—assuming he could convince the woman that was the right move—the guy from the veranda could still be waiting around for her.
Or they might run into him on their way.
If that was the case, it was entirely possible that Adam would have to kill him.
He’d never actually killed anybody before. He was perfectly comfortable with handing out a good, old-fashioned pummeling or two—but outright bloody murder would be a new line for him, and he wasn’t all that sure he wanted to cross it.
Of course, he could just demand Ellie get over it and show him the rest of her map. This whole expedition could get a lot simpler if Adam was able to recognize even one of the landmarks on there. Surely by now, she should’ve realized he wasn’tthatuntrustworthy. He was kind of an open book. Not too complicated.
Adam thought of their conversation the night before—of the tight, sharp look of hurt that had come over her when he stupidly let slip that he’d dropped out of Cambridge in what more or less amounted to a temper tantrum.
Ellie would’ve been going up against the worst sort of idiots from the moment she tried to do something other than sit at home with her embroidery. Adam had seen enough of the world to know how that worked. Heck, he’d even been on the receiving end of it at Cambridge when some of the high-and-mighty types there briefly took it in mind to try to get one over on the new-money Yank. It had beenbrieflybecause Adam had picked up the worst offender and tossed him ass-over-teakettle into the River Cam.
The Viscount of Whatever-the-Hell had come up with a nice glop of pond weed on his overly pomaded hair, and his crowd had mostly steered clear of Adam after that.
His traveling companion had probably spent most of her life being told what to do by blokes who were half as smart as she was, and she wouldn’t have had the luxury of knocking her persecutors into the drink.
Adam found that he didn’t really want to be added to the list of men who assumed they knew better than she did. He’d let her keep her map until she was good and ready to share it. What did it matter if it cost them a few extra days? This whole thing was a lark anyway, weird trinkets and shady characters aside. That map was almost certainly just some long-dead pirate’s idea of a joke.
It probably had a big oldXat the end of it.
“Stop!” Ellie cried from the plank. “Stop the boat now!”
With a quick jolt of fear, Adam threw the throttle into reverse. The engine protested at the quick change. The screw pulled against theMary Lee’smomentum but managed to bring them to a relative halt.
Ellie scooted back along her board, tossing the sapling into the boat and plucking the lantern from where it hung. With an air of intense, focused distraction—and a distinct lack of self-preservation—she leaned out over the water with the lamp raised before her.
“Are you trying to end up in the drink?” Adam demanded, slightly alarmed.
“Go back.” Ellie waved at him without taking her eyes from the darkness before her. “About twelve feet.”
Frowning, Adam eased the boat in reverse. He hoped distantly that he wasn’t about to ram the rudder into some underwater obstruction they were lucky enough to miss on the way in.
“Here—right here!” she ordered. “Move in closer to the wall.”
“Sure,” Adam agreed with just a hint of irritation. “Why not?”
