An Angel in Stone by Peggy Nicholson

Author:Peggy Nicholson [Nicholson, Peggy]
Format: mobi
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2005-02-15T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Doing people favors just didn’t pay. If he’d known he was headed for Putussibau—known the flight schedule—Szabo would have wrung Lia’s mama’s neck.

But he’d got the information he’d come for, and he’d figured he’d be long gone from Pontianak before the cops could comb the town, and she had a pert little ass; he’d let her live.

Big mistake. Turned out there were only two commercial flights a week to Putussibau, the closest you could fly to the headwaters of the Kapuas. The next one wouldn’t leave for three lo-ong days.

So he’d hustled out to the airfield on the edge of town, the strip the Bible thumpers flew out of. Asked politely if he could buy a ride out on a Mission flight. But they’d looked him up and down, then wanted to know if he was carrying any weapons?

Holier-than-thou types always rubbed him wrong. He’d made a crack, saying, “Heck. My whole body is a lethal weapon.” Which with Ranger training, it was, though he’d only been kidding.

They’d stiffened up like a couple of goosed nuns and told him their planes were full-up with God’s cargo this week; maybe he should try them the next?

Szabo knew a brush-off when he heard it. If it had only been the pilot, he’d have showed him the Indian handgun he’d bought in the marketplace, soon as he got to Pontianak. Stuck it in his sanctimonious ear and hijacked the damn plane.

But there were two of them plus a mechanic, lounging around the hangar. So he’d said, “Up yours, Jacqueline,” and walked out.

The upshot was: here he was, leaning on the rail of a riverboat as it pulled away from the dock, out into the mile-wide Kapuas. Five days to Putussibau by water, sleeping on deck with the headhunters and their pigs and chickens and squalling babies. Then one more day by canoe up to Long Badu, the town where the tooth and his granddad’s watch had come from.

Really should have wrung her neck. He sighed and scratched his arm, where Lia’s bite was still itching him—then straightened with a yelp. Was that—? Holy shit, it was! The dang woman had more lives than a cat!

Here came Raine Ashaway, sitting in one of those tricycle pedicabs, with the driver pumping away on his pedals behind her. In the shade of her parasol, her smile sparkled as she looked all around. She flashed it at Malays and beggars and dirty mutts and the cats that prowled every roof. You’d think she was pedaling through paradise, not a dirty river town.

Just then, as the boat completed its turn out into the current and blasted its horn, her eyes lit on him! She laughed and waved, calling something he couldn’t hear over the rumble of the big diesels as they kicked into gear.

He bared his teeth in a wide grin and waved back madly. “Don’t know when to quit, do you, babe?”

If she followed him into the jungle, she’d learn soon enough.

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