"She doesn't deserve this."

The doctor's calm brown eyes met hers. "You know, a lot of people discard a family member like Emma. They give up. Your sister may not be able to show you how much you matter, but trust me, she always responds to you. Even unconscious, she may still do so."

"I'll never give up on her," Ash said emphatically. "I love her and I know who she was...is...inside."

Dr. Winterton rose. "We'll talk some more about her condition, but rst let's take a walk so you can see how she's doing."

v The sign on the terminal said Port Moresby. Jackson International Air ort. Out on the tarmac, Charlotte waited in the sti ing heat with the other unfortunates who'd disembarked from the b.u.mpy ight across the Coral Sea. She wasn't sure why the gantries weren't being used, or why everyone was being forced to stand out in the blazing sun, but she knew enough about her destination to understand that the mores of Western civilization did not apply in Papua New Guinea.

Thank goodness Tamsin had decided to stay in Australia for two more weeks instead of coming with her to explore a little of this remarkable land before the expedition was due to depart. To Charlotte's surprise, her best friend seemed to be thriving among the laid-back, unpretentious Australians. They'd met a lesbian couple at Ayers Rock who had invited them to visit and really meant it. So, after their travels in the outback, they'd headed for Sydney and soon found themselves enjoying poolside barbecues with some of the friendliest people Charlotte had ever met.

No one there knew who Tamsin or her father were, and Charlotte told her to just be herself. When she was asked what she did for a living, she said she was a professional shopper, which, as Charlotte pointed out, was almost the truth. She was always shopping for her father and various pals of his in television. Last year she'd even house-hunted for one couple. And every time Charlotte wanted to buy a gift for someone dif cult, she always asked Tamsin's help.

The Australians seemed to nd the whole idea hilarious, and this put Tamsin at ease. She could tell stories about stores she knew well and show-business people she'd met without having to explain how * 43 *

she really came to be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.

Charlotte had left her planning a beach party with their hosts, excited that a woman she'd met at a neighbor's potluck was going to come.

Charlotte had also met Tamsin's l.u.s.t object, a no-nonsense equine veterinarian who made beautiful blown-gla.s.s pieces as a hobby.

Rowena Knox struck her instantly as the kind of person who would never have materialistic motives for anything. And she was hot. Tamsin had been completely giddy after they met and Charlotte found it hard not to be carried away herself. The last thing she'd expected to happen on their vacation was that Tamsin might meet someone. But as they'd lain awake on Charlotte's last night in Sydney, Tamsin couldn't talk about anything else.

"You just don't know what's around the corner," she sighed. "This was meant to happen. I just know it."

Wanting to keep her best friend's feet on the ground, Charlotte said, "It's early days. You'll have a chance to get to know her better while I'm in New Guinea."

"I feel like I've known her my whole life already," Tamsin gushed.

Charlotte thought Oh, G.o.d, but she couldn't be entirely dismissive.

She'd seen how they hit it off. There was something quite uncanny about the way Rowena related to Tamsin. She seemed to sense she was dealing with someone who was emotionally fragile, and the instant connection between them was obvious.

"Just take it slowly," Charlotte cautioned.

"I will," Tamsin said. "But I'm not going to run away just because things haven't worked out for me before. I made bad choices. It doesn't mean I can't make a good one."

Charlotte had thought about that comment a few times over the hours since, and she had to admire Tamsin's persistence. She would never be the kind of person Charlotte was, able to compartmentalize her emotions and abide by self-imposed rules. She would always fall prey to her romantic dreams. Maybe the odds were nally in her favor and she would nd what she was looking for. Charlotte hoped so.

As for herself, she didn't need what Tamsin needed. She'd gotten over all that and her life was exactly the way she wanted it to be. Free of drama. Entirely within her own control. And, most importantly, professionally satisfying.

Smearing beads of moisture back into her hairline, she scanned * 44 *

her surroundings. A couple of security guards loitered nearby. They carried bows and arrows instead of guns. A team of sweat-soaked men shoved push-mowers back and forth along the wide belts of lawn that separated the runways, ghting a losing battle to keep the gra.s.s down.

In this hot wet climate, vegetation grew like it was on crack.

About a hundred yards away, a burned-out DC10 was parked in front of a hanger. Its body was stripped of parts and under each sh.e.l.led-out wing locals had set up makeshift stalls selling drinks and souvenirs.

Their children swarmed toward the droopy pa.s.sengers, hawking coconut water and fruits Charlotte recognized only because she was a botanist.

She purchased a small bag of guavas for ve dollars, which, according to the weathered man standing next to her, was "daylight b.l.o.o.d.y robbery." In a broad Australian tw.a.n.g, he added, "Welcome to the s.h.i.thole of planet Earth. Whatever they're paying you to come here, it's not enough."

Charlotte said with level dignity, "I'm with an international research expedition to the Foja Mountains."

Dubiously, the Aussie looked her up and down. "You don't say."

Charlotte swatted at an insect trying to land on her mouth. She had a feeling anything she shared about the signi cance of the expedition and what it meant to her would be lost on this dog-eared traveler, so she asked, "What about you-what brings you here?"

"It was this or ten years in an Aussie jail." At her faint start, he added, "I'm not one of the bad guys. I just made a dumb mistake."

Charlotte didn't ask.

"The Fojas," he mused. "Yeah. I heard about that. The lost world, right?"

"Yes. A completely undisturbed ecosystem. No human impact at all. We're being dropped in by helicopter."

"Good luck. How long are you planning on staying up there?"

"Two months."

He gave a low, expressive whistle. "You know that TV show Survivor?"

Charlotte usually refrained from a.s.saulting her intellect with the dross that pa.s.sed for television entertainment, but she didn't want to sound condescending, so she said, "Yes, of course."

"They were out here scouting a location a couple of years back, but they gured no one would survive long enough to nish the show."

* 45 *

Charlotte guessed he was trying to be funny and offered a smile.

"I gather it's very dif cult terrain."

"Yeah. And that's not counting the cannibals or the Indonesian army."

"The Fojas are not inhabited." Charlotte tried to sound con dent about that. "And we'll be going in with local guides and a security team, so I think we'll be ne."

He looked unimpressed. "A friendly word of advice...the genocide. Just ignore it. You don't want to end up in an Indonesian jail for the next twenty years because you acted like a bleeding-heart do-gooder."

Charlotte felt herself blanch. "Genocide-what genocide?"

"Exactly. Keep that up and no worries. One more thing-don't use the ladies' loo inside the terminal unless you want to catch cholera." He tipped his yellowing Panama hat and strolled off into the crowd.

Charlotte considered scuttling after him to ask some more questions, but before she could a.s.semble her wits, a small boy seized her shirt sleeve and tried to sell her a mango. He was painfully thin and appeared to be almost blind, so she bargained half-heartedly and nally purchased the fruit for a crazy amount. As she peeled the mottled skin away with her pocket knife, she craned to see the Australian. He was standing twenty yards away, handing money to a guard. He then strolled off toward the terminal.

Obviously a bribe had just changed hands. Charlotte wondered what the going rate was. Right now, she'd pay most of her salary to escape the merciless sun. As soon as she had consumed the mango she was going to pay up so she wouldn't have to die of heat exhaustion before her trip had even begun. She supposed she could have own into Jakarta and stayed in a decent hotel like most of the team. Instead, she'd decided to arrive early on the Papua New Guinea side of the border, to do some sight-seeing and walk the Kokoda Trail. In hindsight, she could see this was a mistake.

She nished eating and cleaned the sticky juice from her hands with a Wet Wipe. It seemed the arrivals had now been eeced of suf cient cash-the vendors were busy counting a cut of the proceeds into the hands of the security guards. A moment later she and the other pa.s.sengers were herded into the open-sided hangar that pa.s.sed for the airport terminal and she was a.s.sailed with a cacophony of sights and smells unlike any she'd ever experienced in a foreign country. Which * 46 *

wasn't surprising, since she'd only traveled in Europe and Great Britain.

The arrival hall was a clamor of women carrying their babies in string sacks, Polynesian islanders with hibiscus owers in their hair, loud Australian men in shorts and knee socks, tall blueish black locals from the city, and short st.u.r.dy tribesmen with gra.s.s and leaves covering their b.u.t.ts. These indigenous people carried umbrellas-a smart idea, Charlotte thought. Their country routinely saw brilliant sun and drenching rain within the same half hour, according to all the travel guides.

There was no air-conditioning inside the grubby, foul-smelling terminal and the crowd waiting to clear pa.s.sport control was a haphazard melee. A single of cial sat at a desk, casually issuing entry visas. A couple of his buddies were accepting bribes to allow people to the front of the line. American dollars were the currency du jour and after a few moments of determined disdain for corruption, and ea bites from an aggressive species that infested the lthy carpet, Charlotte overcame her reservations and waved a twenty. This secured a berth behind a group of businessmen who gallantly offered her a spare place in their rental cars so she wouldn't have to take one of the notorious "public motor vehicles" or PMVs, as they were known. They told her cheerfully that these were involved in fatal accidents most days of the week.

A short while later, they escaped the airport and a sign on the highway to Port Moresby bade them "Welcome to Paradise." When the howls of laughter subsided, her fellow travelers instructed her never to go out at night, never to travel alone in the highlands, and to beware of "rascals." Eventually they pulled up outside the Crowne Plaza, hauled her luggage into the lobby, and wished her luck. As a whoosh of air-conditioning greeted her, Charlotte almost got down on her hands and knees in thanks. All she could think about was washing. She was only twenty-eight hours away from Boston, but she might as well have landed on another planet.

* 47 *

* 48 *

CHAPTER FIVE.

Where was the perfect pick-up line when you needed one?

Ash contemplated the woman nursing a drink at the bar.

Alone. Gorgeous. The one beddable female in this sweltering, roach-infested dive in Port Moresby.

Are you out of your mind? or What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?

were the only conversation starters that sprang to mind. Ash thought this was probably a consequence of her distraction level. All she'd been able to think about since returning to PNG was Emma, alone in her big white hospital bed, surrounded by machines. After the meeting with Dr.

Winterton, Ash had extended her stay and spent every waking hour with her sister, desperate for the smallest sign of improvement. There was nothing, and knowing she could be stuck in the same limbo inde nitely, she had decided to return to PNG and wind up her affairs, completing only the a.s.signments she could not wriggle out of.

Ash hadn't been in town for a day when Tubby Nagle, her biggest customer, chased her down for a lousy gig rescuing a copper mining executive who'd been taken hostage by a small band of so-called resistance ghters. This label was applied to West Papuan landowners who got upset when their homes were destroyed, their wives and daughters raped by goon squads, and their animals killed in a process known as "resettlement"-at least by the Indonesians, who'd invaded the country back in the sixties.

Once the villagers were forced off their land and intimidated into signing timber and mining concessions, the big overseas companies moved in-BP. Rio Tinto. Freeport-McMoRan-along with them, a eet of Western executives who made attractive targets for the few * 49 *

tribal activists who weren't already rotting in Indonesian prisons. This all made for a pro table service niche for the private security rms in the region-providing guards, extracting hostages, and capturing kidnappers they could sell dead or alive to the Indonesians, who thought it was important to set an example by torturing them to death.

Ash had handled some of Nagle's most successful extraction operations, her subtle approach proving more effective than the Rambo tactics favored by most of her colleagues. It helped that she spoke some of the more widely used languages in New Guinea. There were about eight hundred, more in one small land ma.s.s than anywhere else on earth. Of course, this was rapidly changing with the transmigration from Indonesia and the quiet extermination of the indigenous tribes.

Unluckily for her, Ash spoke the kidnappers' language, which, as far as Tubby Nagle was concerned, made her indispensable for the latest a.s.signment.

It wasn't as if she could explain why she needed out. No one knew she had any family other than her father, and Ash preferred to keep it that way. After ascertaining that there was no change in Emma's condition, she'd accepted the job because it would be easy money and she'd be out in a couple of days. She went into the kidnap area on foot with one local guide, carrying an array of gifts and a pitiful ransom.

The ghters wanted their land back and their lives to return to normal. It was never going to happen. They had grown up in a place barely touched by foreigners until recent times. Ash carried a set of photographs the tribesmen would understand, images that showed them how much worse things could be. In their own language, she explained the new world order and how they would only be able to survive the changes if they laid down their spears and found much better weapons, such as legal representation.

She usually advised kidnappers to demand more than the paltry ransom on offer so they'd have money for a lawyer. In this instance, they saw the sense in that suggestion and asked her to talk to the boss man. So she made the call to Tubby, letting him know the good news and the bad news. She'd located the prisoner but, as was lately the case, the men holding him had a regrettable knowledge of Western ideas. They wanted real money and, worst of all, they had a certain Australian go-between advising them. This was not quite true, but invoking the name of Bruce the Roo by inference meant she would get instant results.

An Aussie lawyer turned environmental activist and local hero, the * 50 *

Roo was linked to countless highly sophisticated sabotage operations against mining and timber interests. He had a big reputation among the private security forces who worked the PNG region and struck fear into the hearts of mining management. Ash wasn't sure if Tubby saw him as a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, his involvement in a situation meant a fat check. On the other, the guy was a faceless loose cannon with no af liation who seemed to enjoy sticking it to the man.

Predictably, Tubby foamed at the mouth this time round, ranting about how Bruce the Roo was on his list and no one got away with p.i.s.sing him off this many times. But he made the deal and Ash knew the client would have to produce extra hazard money for her services because the handover supposedly involved their nemesis. She could sleep okay on that count. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a mining company was a public service.

Amazingly, by the time she was ready to make the switch, Bruce the Roo had caught wind of the affair and actually showed up to play the role a.s.signed to him. Ash was cool with that; they'd done business before. He thanked her for the gig, and she handed over the ransom, photographing the proceedings with a few strange camera angles so it would seem like a hidden device was used. The Roo was cooperative about that and ashed an AK-47 for effect. It was in both their interests to have the mining company and Tubby Nagle think the peril factor was high.

The Australian troublemaker then told the tribesmen to remove the blindfold from their captive and hand him over. The poor, soft Seattlean immediately went into hysterics at the sight of seminaked, paint-smeared tribesmen with bones through their noses and a white man wearing a fake kangaroo head. While Ash examined him for injury and slapped his face a few times to calm him down, the kidnappers vanished into the jungle richer by a few hundred large.

Her back still ached from having to half carry the guy out with her scrawny guide claiming lumbago so he didn't have to help. The victim wasn't hurt. She'd had to sedate him in the end so he'd stop blubbering. Being an American, he'd insisted on personally tipping her two large for the rescue once they got back to the city. When Ash told him that would buy helpful goodwill and she'd do her best to make sure he wasn't targeted again, he increased it to ve. She didn't say no. She put such bonuses to work, buying eyes and information all over PNG.

Right now, two of the men on her payroll were in the seedy bar * 51 *

in downtown Port Moresby, watching her back. Later in the day, there would be women here, hookers and pickpockets. But for now the occupants were male, a mix of betel-chewing locals minding their own business, hard-drinking expats who knew the drill and had armed body guards, plus the usual array of predators-rascal gang members who raped, robbed, and murdered at will.

Everyone was watching the one woman in the room. Some with dismay, some with delight, and some with sorrowful hunger. Ash recognized the condition. It had its roots in what was lost when you lived in a place like this-the n.o.bler self. Somehow this unsullied visitor to their realm had called up long-forgotten feelings and ideals, tapping a tenderness no one here could afford if they wanted to survive.

In this netherworld neglected by G.o.d, such a woman was a miracle.

Only the dull of soul could fail to feel more human, more complete, just looking at her.

At least that was how Ash saw it after three double Jacks, a quant.i.ty of whiskey that usually took the edge off reason. She indulged herself in a long look at the one beautiful thing in this disgusting eapit. Her face was that of a serious child, pensive and hopelessly innocent. Her black hair was parted at one side and had a narrow wave that spilled in ripples across her smooth forehead. Ash guessed she tried for a more mature look by drawing the chin-length mop into a little bunch at her nape.

The curve of her neck, the red bow of her mouth, and the ne-boned fragility of her hands complicated her beauty with such vulnerability Ash wanted instantly to shield her.

She imagined standing close enough to do just that and wondered what she smelled like. Guerlain, she decided, one of the haunting cla.s.sics like Jicky. She looked too clean to have walked here, and so completely unaware of the attention she was getting that Ash felt like shaking her. But something else lay behind that urge. In the worst way, she wanted to touch the ravishing stranger.

Dry-mouthed, she watched the woman trail a hand absently back and forth along her thigh as if in sensual invitation. Ash wasn't usually wrong about women's body language. Or men's. But on this occasion she thought she was kidding herself. Feeling cra.s.s for having a s.e.xual response to someone who looked like religious art, Ash inspected her more closely, seeking out the person behind the persona.

She was conservatively dressed and wore no jewelry. Someone had told her to keep her pa.s.sport and cash in a money belt. Beneath * 52 *

her shirt its outline rested lumpily above a slender waist. She was a good six inches shorter than Ash, so probably around ve-four. Her face was a study in concentration as she read a book lying open on the bar counter in front of her. It probably wasn't a guide to self-defense, which was what would have made sense. Flipping a page, she tilted her head and stared dreamy-eyed at nothing, a tiny smile hovering. In that second Ash glimpsed the woman within. Warm. Human. Seductive.

The stranger cupped her chin in her hand and Ash found the mundane movement so profoundly erotic, she was awestruck. This was what countless years without true love did to anyone who still had a soul, she concluded. Even the regular vacations she took from her PNG diet of celibacy and p.o.r.n didn't change a thing in that regard. She tried to look away but couldn't and in that split second, the woman shifted her inward gaze to her surroundings and her eyes met Ash's.

For what seemed liked an eternity, they stared at one another, and in those few heartbeats of connection, Ash felt like she'd been knocked unconscious and transported to a magical dimension she would never remember except in her dreams. Her heart pounded and her skin tingled.

She felt dazed and helpless to do anything but stare across the room, wanting to be seen, yearning for a smile that would bestow permission to approach. She was sweating even more than the climate warranted.

Was this a panic attack? Was she nally losing her mind? It happened with monotonous regularity in PNG. Ash had long believed that any Westerner who chose to live here was not quite sane to begin with.

The woman blushed and looked away. She was waiting for some lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Ash decided; no other explanation made any sense. A sane white woman would never set foot in a place like this unless she was hooked up with the kind of moron who still slept with his skateboard.

At any moment, an unworthy nerd in a Greenpeace T-shirt would roll in, Lonely Planet guidebook in one hand, camera in the other, full of lame excuses for keeping her waiting. Ash would have to resist the overwhelming temptation to beat some common sense into him. How was it that the tofu-eating dweebs always had the most astonishing luck with women?

As she chewed over this harsh reality, she kept tabs on several gures gliding ever closer to the woman, working their way past tables and along walls, surrept.i.tiously signaling one another. She measured the odds. They were armed. Knives and maybe a pistol or two. Chances were they wouldn't try anything in the bar. There were too many patrons * 53 *

paying too much attention. Instead they would nd a way to get her out the door. She would be lucky if they settled for taking her cash and credit cards.