The Smoke Hunter by Jacquelyn Benson

Author:Jacquelyn Benson [Benson, Jacquelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION / Historical, Fiction / Action & Adventure
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-09-13T06:00:00+00:00

13

THE WOMAN HADN’T EVEN told him her damned name.

The thought ran in circles in Adam’s mind as he moved through the camp, stealing his focus and leaving some rather less comfortable emotions in its place. She had lied about her name, about the map, about the rivals who were on her tail—and she was certainly not a widow.

Not that he’d ever really bought that last one.

The discovery stirred up a regular maelstrom of emotions—anger, frustration, and no small degree of hurt. The anger and frustration he could deal with. They were good, straightforward feelings. The sense of betrayal was something else, dragging with it all kinds of uncomfortable associations, like why he should care so much that the woman hadn’t seen fit to trust him.

He had to put it out of his head, however difficult that was. There were more immediate concerns he had to deal with, like determining exactly what his situation was in this camp.

He turned his attention toward finding a good spot for his hammock. He still had his pack, luckily, though he hadn’t failed to notice that his machete and express rifle hadn’t been returned. They must be in the hands of the two men who had captured him in the bush, or whoever acted as their supervisor.

He spotted another pair of armed men patrolling the perimeter where the camp bordered the jungle. It wasn’t exactly typical for an excavation—nor did it seem to be an isolated case with this particular camp. Most of the men strolling around or resting by the fires were armed in one way or another.

They also didn’t look much like the usual expedition crew. When Adam collected a team for an excavation, his own bearers and assistants were just as varied as these in their race, languages, and clothing. They were also admittedly a rough lot. But this wasn’t the same sort of rough, he thought, stopping to let by a man whose ripped shirtsleeves revealed biceps that made him look strong enough to crack a coconut barehanded. Or a skull.

He watched as he walked, absorbing as much as he could of the place and its inhabitants. The camp had been set up on a wide riverbank that Adam suspected was probably underwater during the height of the rainy season but for now formed a firm, flat, clear surface for the massive array of tents, mules, crates, and men. Most of the hired bearers would be sleeping rough, as he was, in hammocks with mosquito netting strung between trees on the higher side of the bank. The animals had been penned into a temporary corral closer to the water, and men were still unloading equipment and supplies from the big steamboats anchored nearby.

The sound of the cataracts was a constant static in the background, and the stone bridge shadowed the water only a hundred or so yards away, lending an eerie, almost ritual feeling to the place.

There was no doubting it. The stretch of river was the tributary of the Belize

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