12

The road—if it could be called that—where the painter had dropped them off was not one of the main routes into the preserve. It wound its way, slick like a wet snake, through white stringybark trees, and then ended at a rusting service shed. Parked outside the shed was a black SUV, the vehicle responsible for the tracks Annja had spotted. The SUV glistened in the moonlight, the water beaded up on it as if it had been freshly waxed. The cloud cover had all but disappeared, so she could easily make out that no one was inside it and that the shed was padlocked. Still, she crept closer to the SUV just to be cautious, holding her hand behind her to indicate that Dari should stay back.

She felt the hood, and while it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t as cool as the air around her—suggesting that the SUV had been there a little while, but not terribly long.

She peered in through the windows, unable to see much, but noting that it didn’t look lived in. There were no empty soda cans or paper bags, no napkins or maps stuffed above the visors. Very neat, and very locked, with a security light on inside that indicated an alarm would howl if she jimmied a door open. She studied the ground. Besides hers, there were two sets of prints, both with pronounced grooves to indicate hiking boots.

“Maybe Dr. Michaels’s car,” she mused, having not paid attention to what sort of vehicles the archaeologists had driven to the site. There’d been none parked directly near where they were working. They’d parked along another service road about a quarter mile back from the dig, one that she and Oliver had taken to do the shoot. Maybe Dr. Michaels parked elsewhere from time to time. Maybe this was his.

But she doubted it.

She had sized up Wes as a bit of an eccentric and had thought any vehicle of his would be littered with maps and boxes of papers and books. “Maybe one of the other archaeologists.”

“What?” Dari had held back and couldn’t quite hear her.

“Shh.” Annja put a finger to her lips. “I was just speculating who this belonged to.”

Dari shrugged. “I’ve no idea.” He slogged closer and looked at the tailpipe. “It’s pretty new. And pretty expensive. A rental, I’d reckon. See the sticker?”

She joined him and squinted. The words were lost in the darkness, but she recognized the shape of the logo. Annja doubted one of the crew would have rented an expensive SUV to drive out here.

“Not good,” she whispered.

“A bad feeling, eh?” Dari was looking into the trees. “Which way from here to this dig? Like I said, it’s been some months since I was out here—and it was daylight then.”

Annja wasn’t certain. Though she’d been out here on three separate days for the shoot, they’d taken a different service road. She studied the boot prints again, and then started following them.

The breeze was strong and rattled the tops of the trees, sending drops down from the recent rain. Hardy beetles fell on them, too, and Annja carefully brushed them off. The most common trees were the white stringybarks. But there were also ironwoods, smooth-barked apples, white mahogany and a giant that Dari whispered was called a gray box. There were shrubs everywhere, but in the shadows of the trees their details were largely lost and Annja couldn’t identify them.

The tracks led down a narrow path, likely a game trail made by deer and wild pigs, Annja guessed. Where the path became thin and almost nonexistent, the men did not walk single file as she thought most would. One walked to the right of the path, smashing ground cover as he went.

Definitely not one of the archaeologists, she decided. All the people she’d interviewed at the dig site professed a love of this preserve and would not have been so careless.

“That’s love grass that one’s traipsing through,” Dari said. He kept his voice low to avoid her scolding him. “Plume grass over there. It’s a little different.”

Annja wondered if he was trying to impress her or was just babbling because his nerves had kicked in. She wished she’d talked him out of coming along, even though she appreciated the company. If the tracks she was following led to some of the men who’d shot at her, she would need to call her sword. And Dari didn’t need to see that.

“Should have done a lot of things differently,” she said too softly for him to hear.

“Hard to see it. Not much light,” he continued. “But that’s kangaroo grass to your left. And there’s some love creeper. Looks like it’s dying back a bit. It likes the heat. Love grass, love creeper, lots of love in this place.”

Annja didn’t hear the things that she wanted to—sounds of insects that could take the fall chill, owls and small animals scuttling along the forest floor. It could be that she and Dari had unnerved them—or that the men they were tracking had spooked them into silence.

They hadn’t traveled more than another dozen yards when she lost the tracks. The game trail disappeared, and thick ground cover spread out in all directions. She pressed on, angling toward where her inner direction sense suggested the dig was. Their footfalls were almost silent with only the occasional shush of thick, wet leaves moving as they passed through. The moss was soft and springy; she could tell that even through the soles of her tennis shoes. And it was slippery. She had to move a little slower than she’d like just to keep her balance.

Through gaps in the ironwoods to her right, she could see a stream, the moonlight glinting off its surface and making it shimmer like molten silver. Something splashed in the water, and she stopped and listened. A fish or a frog, she decided, finally continuing on.

Eventually, she came to a bend in the stream. It was wider and the current fast. More like a small river, she thought, the banks swollen slightly from the night’s downpour. A log stretched across it, and from scrapes in the bark, it looked as if something, or someone, had used it as a bridge. Maybe the men from the SUV. A search of the bank confirmed that; she spotted two sets of boot prints.

“Still want to come along?” she asked, noting Dari’s uneasy expression as he stared at the water.

“No worries. I’ll go first.” He removed his leather boots and held one in each hand, as if using them to balance him. “A mite cold, this is.” He put one foot in front of the other. “Slippery, too. Wish my bike hadn’t gone cactus. We’d have found a friendlier way to go.”

In the moonlight she could see his toes curl around the wood, as if he’d had some gymnastics training in his youth. Dari certainly is an interesting soul, she mused. Yet for all his smoothness, the log swayed beneath him. He took a half-dozen steps and stopped, steadying himself and waiting for the log to stop quivering before he took another half dozen.

She waited until he was nearly across before she took her turn, keeping her shoes on. Indeed it was slippery, and for a heartbeat she expected to fall into the churning water. But she slowed her breathing, as she’d learned in her martial-arts training, and she closed her eyes and relied on her feet alone to carry her across. Annja felt the log wobble, too, and at the same time sag; it was rotting from all the moisture.

Once on the other side, she waited for Dari to put on his boots. Then she was quick to find the tracks again and follow them. The ground was uneven, and roots from the stringybarks poked up here and there as if they were trying to purposely trip her. There were gullies hidden by the ground cover, one of which sent Annja to the ground. She picked herself up before Dari could help, and she tested her ankles—the right one was sore. Sprained maybe—she’d be able to tell after she’d walked on it some more.

In some places the ground cover was so thick and high that Annja had to push her way through it. The men had come this way, too—she found prints in the rare bare spots of ground.

“They’re going to Dr. Michaels’s camp,” she said.

“Should’ve brought guns along,” Dari said. “Nate told me I should buy one for the op shops, for when I take the money to deposit. I think I’ll buy one when I get back,” he said quietly.

Ahead the trees thinned and mist rose from the clearing like a cloud come to ground, the earth warmer than the air. Tendrils swirled with the breeze, and Annja imagined ghosts dancing. She paused only a moment to appreciate the serenity of it, and then she walked faster, feeling a slight burn in her leg muscles from the exertion, and a stronger burn at her right ankle. She checked for tracks on this side of the fog, and then looked for them again after she had passed through.

“Nothing.” She’d lost them.

There were pieces of moss-covered shale, and in the moonlight she’d expected to see where patches had been smeared from someone walking over them. Clearly the men she’d been following had done nothing to hide their tracks; someone with no training at all could have followed them—up until this point.

Dari studied her as she followed the edge of the fog bank, looking for scraped moss, broken twigs, heel imprints.

“Nothing,” she said again.

It was as if the two men had vanished, but she knew that wasn’t the case. It was simply night, and she’d reached a stretch of the forest that was so littered with rock shards that finding boot prints was difficult.

Annja considered redoubling her efforts, and asking Dari for his flashlight. But it would take a considerable amount of time, and reaching Dr. Michaels was more pressing. She got her bearings and pointed toward a tall copse of white stringybarks.

“I’m pretty sure the camp is over there. It shouldn’t be much farther.”

“Hope not,” Dari said. “Not used to all this walking. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. Hell, I’m aching all over.” He dropped his voice again when he caught her scowl. “I can’t turn back, though. I’m not tin arsed. I’d get myself lost. Besides, I might miss all the good stuff, eh?”

It niggled at the back of her mind that she’d lost the tracks. Annja didn’t like that she had enemies around and couldn’t tell where they were. She knew with certainty the men were up to no good, or else they wouldn’t be here on this sodden night.

An hour later they saw a light. The forest spread away to the north and south, as if the trees had come upon an imaginary line that they were not allowed to cross. It was a natural break in the woods, Michaels had explained to her on the first day of her visit. There’d been a few trees cut down for the site, but only a few. This extensive clearing hadn’t had anything grow in it for centuries, he’d said. “Since perhaps the Egyptians had come.”

The tents were large and elaborate. There were five of them, one more of a canopy than anything, with tables under it for sifting and arranging artifacts. A dying fire burned in front of the nearest tent, and that was the light Annja had spotted. She stared at the fire, caught up in a memory that wasn’t hers, and a shiver traveled down her back.

Dari nudged her. “I think we took a few wrong turns out there. I think we could’ve gotten here quicker and with less wear on the feet if we’d not gone through that fog patch.”

Annja didn’t reply. She glanced away from the fire and to the ridge behind the dig, which separated the tertiary site from this one. The moonlight created shadows in the rock, making it look like the cracked and leathery face of an old, old man. There were no lights on in the tents.

“Everyone’s sleeping.” Dari stated the obvious.

“Not for long,” Annja said.

Moments later she and Dari were inside the Michaels’s tent, Annja rapidly telling them about the assault at the hotel.

“So you think we saw something?” Wes Michaels sat cross-legged on his cot, unmindful that he was dressed only in pajama bottoms. His wife had thrown on a robe before allowing company in. “Or uncovered something so valuable someone would kill for it?” He rubbed his hands together as he thought.

The tent was large enough to contain two cots, a small table and four folding camp chairs. There was a trunk that likely held clothes and such, a refrigerator—the size that might fit in a college dorm room—and a small generator that powered the fridge and the light that hung above the table. Close and homey, Annja thought, just like the tents on the television show M*A*S*H that she’d watched as a child.

Dari had a hard time folding himself into one of the camp chairs. He’d selected the one facing Wes, so his back would be to Jennifer.

It was dry inside, save for right around the tent flap where the breeze still gusted and sent a little water onto the rug. Annja took off her jacket and hung it on the back of one of the chairs. She crouched at the foot of the cot, her ankle throbbing and letting her know it was indeed sprained.

“That jade ankh,” Jennifer said. “It’s the most valuable piece we found. I wouldn’t want to guess at what it’s worth. But it’s not here. It was crated up yesterday and sent to the city. If thieves come looking for it, they’ll be disappointed.”

“But maybe the men who shot at you don’t know it’s not here,” Dari said.

Annja closed her eyes and pictured Sute again. She remembered being on the ridge with Oliver, looking through his camera and seeing Sute and the others.

“No. The more I think about it,” Annja said, “the more it seems that it’s not what I saw—what Oliver and I saw—but who we saw. I can’t shake that notion.”

Dr. Michaels uncurled his legs and set his feet into moccasins conveniently placed by his cot. “And you think maybe Jenn and me, and the others, saw this person, too?” He shook his head. “We’ve not had many visitors lately, Miss Creed. You and your crew. Our funder checks in from time to time. Sometimes we have a man bring supplies in, but more often Jenn goes into the city to get what we need.”

“Gives me a break from Wes,” she said. Jennifer yawned and rubbed at her eyes. “Can’t imagine us seeing anyone who didn’t want to be seen. Least of all anyone who’d want to kill us for seeing him.” She waggled her fingers as if trying to dismiss Annja’s notion.

“No one came out here tonight?” Annja persisted.

“Just you, Miss Creed, and…” Wes looked to the dripping biker.

“Darioush,” he said. “I own three op shops in Sydney.” He paused then added, “And I’m thinking about building another one.”

Wes raised both eyebrows.

“I gave her a lift out here,” Dari explained. “Well, part of the way. Painter hauled us most of the rest.”

Jennifer slapped her hand against her knee and yawned again. “That sounds like a story.” She stretched to a camp stool that served as a nightstand and looked at the clock. “It’s almost midnight. How about we bunk the two of you in with—”

“I can’t even think about sleeping.” Annja rose and reached for her jacket, seeing that it was snagged and the embroidery ripped—no doubt from the tree limbs and bushes of the preserve. Strings of seed beads had come loose, and there were paint speckles on the back of the right arm. She put it on. “I’m going to check the other camp.”

“The uni’s?” Jennifer’s voice rose in disbelief. “Girl, it’s almost midnight, and that’s a good trek up that rise and over even in broad daylight. Not that it’s all that far. The rocks just aren’t all that friendly.”

Annja offered them a slight smile. “You have a satellite phone here, right?”

Wes nodded.

“Keep it close, in case you need to call someone if there’s trouble. And you’ve two security men, right? That your funder’s supplied?”

“In the small tent by the sifting trays,” Wes said.

“I’d wake them up,” Annja continued. “Put them on alert. They’ve got guns, right?”

Wes nodded slowly.

“Good. The men who were after me weren’t terribly good shots, but they had plenty of guns between them.”

Jennifer paled, truly frightened now. “Wes, maybe we better call someone, get some police out here.”

Wes shook his head. “Sat phone’s been out of juice for most of two days now. I was going to pick up another charger. Should’ve. I’m always putting off trips into the city. But this all might be nothing, right, Miss Creed?”

Annja bit her lower lip. “I don’t know. I’ll be back after I check on the university site.”

Dari made a move to rise, but Annja shook her head. “Stay here,” she ordered.

“I don’t need protection,” Dari protested.

“But maybe they do.” She nodded to Wes and Jennifer and parted the tent flap.

“Here.” Dari reached in his pocket and tossed her his flashlight. “Not much, but it might help.”

She left the tent, hurrying toward the ridge.

Annja did not look back. Otherwise she might have seen two dark-clad men in hiking boots skirt the camp and head toward the far southern tent.