Ramsey's Gold (Drake Ramsey Book 1) (31 page)

Using the trajectory from the final outpost’s paver stones, their goal for the day was a barely visible stream eleven miles east. While they were in uncharted territory now regarding what to expect, their hope was that the same general pattern would hold and that they were no more than twenty-five miles from Paititi – or two days’ hard push from their current location.

Allie pushed along without slowing them down, determined to not be a hindrance. Her limp lessened through the morning, and by the time they reached the stream where they would camp for the night, she seemed greatly improved.

They spent most of their daylight hours the following day slogging through the rain, following game trails through the jungle as they pressed on. In the early afternoon they heard the crashing of a nearby waterfall – a promising sound, because the journal had theorized that Paititi would be located in an area surrounded by waterfalls and a river.

At the base of the waterfall, they took a break while Spencer studied the GPS. “We’re two miles short. You want to keep going, or have you had enough for today?” he asked.

Drake eyed Allie. “It’s up to her. I could go on. But if there’s no pressing reason to, this is a pretty nice spot.”

Allie pursed her lips. “Oh, sure, make it all about me. I’m fine.”

“This is a good place to camp. And the rain’s letting up, so it’ll get hot soon. I vote for stopping here today,” Spencer said.

The river below the small waterfall proved to be full of fish, and they feasted on several different types that they roasted over a fire. The rain had stopped an hour after they set up the tents, and Spencer had used his petroleum jelly to ignite a small pile of damp branches in order to dry out an armful of others.

They spent the next two days exploring their surroundings, using their new camp as base, but their efforts yielded nothing but exhaustion. As their second evening by the waterfall drew to a close, Spencer’s skepticism about their chances of success grew more pronounced. Drake tried to ignore him, but the doubts had an insidious effect. He could tell Allie was also wavering, but they had no option B.

On the third afternoon, Drake was chopping his way through some particularly dense jungle, his machete heavy in his tired hand, when he heard the roar of falling water ahead – another waterfall, but bigger than the one they’d camped by. Allie called out softly from behind him.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

“I do. Follow me. It can’t be much farther,” Drake answered.

“Lead the way,” Spencer said, his tone morose.

Drake hacked at the foliage with renewed vigor, and in a few minutes he emerged onto a ledge overlooking a breathtaking sight – easily five stories of water tumbling over a cliff edge into rushing rapids below.

“I’d say that qualifies as a waterfall,” Drake said, inching along the rock outcropping to get a better look at the pool below.

When his feet went out from under him, slipping on moss he hadn’t seen, it felt like gravity was suspended for a brief moment, and then the wind was knocked out of him as he landed on his back, though his backpack absorbed the worst of it. He shook his head groggily and tried to stand as Allie edged closer to help him, but felt himself sliding inexorably toward the precipice, the slick growth covering the rock accelerating his fall.

Allie and Spencer watched in horror as Drake’s expression went from confusion to fear in a kind of slow motion. Desperate, he clawed at the rock, trying to find a hold. Blood stained the surface of the stone as he tried to latch on to it to break his slide, and then he was gone, sucked into the roaring vortex.

“No!” Allie yelled, pushing forward. Spencer restrained her, knowing that if she made it much farther onto the ledge, the same fate awaited her.

“Stop screaming. Unless you want to draw every hostile for ten miles,” Spencer warned, his tone sharp.

“Oh, God. We have to help him…”

“Not by joining him. Come on. Let’s find a way to the bottom.”

Spencer backed away from the edge, pulling Allie with him. Farther in the brush they found a faint track that led down the side of the slope. After some rough terrain, they emerged at the base of the waterfall, where the cascading water exploded into a deep pool before frothing along a narrower channel that transformed into whitewater rapids. Spencer shrugged off his backpack and removed his shoes, and then dove into the pool as Allie watched.

He bobbed to the surface after almost a full minute, like an otter, and then went under again. He repeated the process several times, with no success. When he came back up for the final time, he swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out, gasping for breath. Allie studied his glum expression with shock written across her face. She tried to speak, but the only sound she produced was a dry rasp. He shook his head and looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

Drake was gone.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Pinpoints of light floated in Drake’s consciousness, his senses numb. He coughed reflexively and water exploded from his mouth and nose. He choked and sputtered, hacking more as fluid streamed down his chin as his body tried to clear his lungs. Pain seared through his head and he retched, and then instinctively he tried to reach up and touch the raw spot on his skull.

His arms wouldn’t move. As he regained full consciousness, he realized that his wrists were bound over his head and secured to something. He opened his eyes and instantly winced – one of them was almost swollen shut from the battering he’d endured in the rapids after dropping into the pool and being flushed down the river. Vision in his other eye was blurry, but as he strained to focus, he could make out figures near him.

As his eyesight cleared, he could make out faces – indigenous tribal features burned deep brown from the sun, the vaguely Asian cast to the eyes and flatter nose typical of the Amazon rainforest’s primitive inhabitants. His gaze stopped at a young woman around his age, her animal-skin tunic soaking wet, like his clothes. She held his stare unflinchingly, and then one of the young men next to her emitted a whoop, and he felt something pulling at his belt.

The man held up Drake’s knife, unmistakable malice in his gaze. After waving the weapon around, laughing along with his companions, he turned to Drake with an ugly expression and approached, his grip on the knife tightening as he prepared to put it to use. He held it over Drake’s head, and then a warning shout barked from beyond Drake’s field of vision. The man hesitated and stepped back, his black eyes locked on Drake’s, obviously not happy. Drake passed out, his last impression a lightning bolt of agony shrieking through his skull as he tried to pull free.

When he came to again, his head was less tender, and when he tried to move his arms, he was able to. He tentatively cracked his eye open. The young woman was sitting nearby, looking at him. Next to her was a wizened elder with long gray hair, his complexion the color and texture of rawhide, the skin wrinkled from a lifetime in the rainforest.

They were in some sort of structure. He could make out thatch overhead, the dried fronds supported upon a crude framework of wooden poles, saplings that had been stripped and tied together to form the roof. Rain dripped from the sides, but inside they were dry.

Drake tried to sit up. His head swam, and along with the disorientation the pain returned with a vengeance. Supporting himself on one elbow, he reached up to his head and felt some sort of muck lathered on his skull. He brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed, and gagged at the odor.

The woman stood and approached on bare feet, her bronze legs lithe, no trace of embarrassment at her nearly nude form. She shook her head and pointed to his skull, and then hers. He understood. He wasn’t to mess with whatever they’d put on his head.

The torrent of questions that flooded his awareness brought another wave of nausea and dizziness, and it was all he could do to keep from passing out. The woman made a sign with her hands like someone sleeping and pointed to him. His attempt to nod was ill advised, and he barely got his head back onto the cushioned softness of whatever they’d placed beneath it before he blacked out.

This time when he regained consciousness it was dark out. A small fire by the side of the structure provided the only illumination as its flames licked at the sky, the dim light flickering off the drying poles that supported the roof. The woman was sitting in the same place. When she saw his eyes open, she stood and moved to him with a bowl and a gourd. He pushed himself up on his elbow again and drank greedily, the water in the gourd tasting sweeter than any he could remember. Finished, he eyed the bowl distrustfully. Judging from the smell, it appeared to be some sort of a fish stew. He ate small bites of the pungent mixture, but couldn’t manage much due to the pain that sliced through his skull each time he opened his mouth.

She seemed to understand and removed the bowl from his grasp before pointing at his backpack, which was lying nearby, his knife resting on top of it, his belt rolled up neatly next to it. He grunted and cursed his inability to communicate. He wanted to ask her where he was, how he’d come to be there, why he’d been spared when the young man had seemed an instant away from eviscerating him, but he didn’t know how.

The energy seemed to drain from his limbs from the effort of supporting himself, and his frustration drifted into a dreamless sleep as the fire’s glow faded, the cooking over and the tribe already down for the night.

Morning brought with it the familiar Amazon heat. Drake awoke sweating. The woman knelt by his head, applying more salve to his wound, and he was pleased to discover that the swelling around his eye had receded somewhat during the night and that he could now see through it, albeit with the remaining puffiness causing discomfort when he opened it.

She spoke several words, which he interpreted as instruction to stay still, and he allowed her to press the goop in place, wincing as she did so. When she was done, she moved to the edge of the hut and placed the bowl next to another, and again brought him food and water. This time he was able to choke more of the gruel down, driven by hunger and his body’s efforts to repair itself. The mixture of an unfamiliar fruit and fish wasn’t as unpleasant as the prior night’s concoction, and he finished the bowl to the woman’s smiling approval.

When he was done, the old man appeared at the far end of the hut and approached him on unsteady legs. Drake guessed he was someone of importance within the tribe by his elaborate bone necklace and his ornately carved walking stick, its top sculpted into a likeness of a jaguar head, mouth open to reveal its teeth, the dark stone polished to a bright sheen. He moved slowly and deliberately to the backpack and picked up Drake’s knife, still in its sheath. He slid the blade free and held it up to the light, examining the sharp edge before turning his attention to the scarred leather and studying it for a long time. After a pause, he edged to Drake’s position and sat beside him, the knife clutched in his gnarled hand.

He regarded Drake as if memorizing every detail. After a seeming eternity, he nodded and slid the knife back into the sheath, which he placed by Drake’s side. Drake tried a smile, but only managed a sharp intake of breath from the pain the expression caused. The man’s eyes danced with merriment. He patted Drake’s shoulder reassuringly and pointed at the knife, and then at Drake. Drake nodded, ignoring the lance of discomfort the action brought.

The man pointed at Drake again, and at the knife, and then did a pantomime that left Drake baffled, circling his face with one finger and pointing at Drake, then the knife. Seeing the lack of comprehension, the elder went through the same routine again, this time gesturing to Drake’s chest, then his own, then touching his wrinkles and pointing to Drake again.

A light bulb went off in Drake’s head and his eyes widened in disbelief. “My father? You’re saying me, but older?” Drake pointed to the old man’s face and then himself.

The elder nodded and offered a puckered smile. To be sure Drake understood, he repeated the pantomime a final time and then gestured to the young woman. She approached and sat near him. He patted her head and pointed at her, then at Drake, then touched his own lined face before waving to the girl again and making a swimming motion. Seeing no recognition, he repeated the gestures and added a fair depiction of someone thrashing around. He ended with an arm grasping at air, the fingers waggling while he had a look of distress on his face, and then he pointed to Drake and touched his face with a leathery finger, and then the woman.

A vague recollection stirred in Drake’s memory. Something Jack had said. About his father saving a drowning native girl and the locals leaving them in peace as a result. Was that what the old man was trying to communicate? That this was the child he’d rescued, now grown, in her early twenties? The woman smiled again and patted her chest, then reached out and patted Drake’s, and he couldn’t help but notice that she was attractive when she smiled, her face illuminated with an inner radiance and tranquility that was beautiful.

The old man patted his necklace and then the woman. She did the same, and Drake got it. She was the man’s daughter, and he was the chief. He’d recognized not Drake but his father’s knife, and figured the rest out from their strong resemblance.

They spent the remainder of the morning exchanging primitive signs, struggling through a discussion of sorts. After more water and food, Drake was exhausted and slumbered, this time his dreams filled with visions of his father swimming in rapids to save a young child who would grow up to save his son. In the dream the child transformed into the woman, and he awoke with a start when she stepped out of the water, naked and smiling, her smooth skin golden in the warm sunlight.

The woman was by his side, blotting sweat off his forehead, and when she saw he was awake, offered him more water. He was parched and felt hot, even considering the tropical surroundings – feverish. A chill ran through him and he trembled, and the woman put a soft hand on his cheek before wiping away the perspiration that beaded on his face.