Page 156 of Her Reluctant Hero
“Unless we’re killed here.” Mallory couldn’t stop the panic that threatened to choke her. She wanted to be brave, damn it, to be strong, but everything was just so big and out of control.
“Mal.”
She sat up. “No, Adrian. We’re miles from anyone, anything. No one is coming to help us, and we can’t leave. Our friends are missing, we have no boat, we have no gear. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
“We’re fine. Just calm down.” He rubbed his hand down her arm, but she was in no mood to be comforted. She jerked away. He stood with a sigh. “We’ll get through this. We can do it. We don’t know that they’re dead. Let’s see if we can find the sat phone.”
“We could start packing up,” Mallory said. “That might make it easier to find.”
Adrian tensed at her words, clearly unwilling to admit defeat. “Maybe. It’s a lot of work.”
“We’ll be here for a couple of days.”
“Unless we find the sat phone,” he reminded her. “Let’s just keep looking. Don’t leave my sight.”
After lunch, they packed the residential tents. Working together, the task didn’t take as long as Adrian had expected but was emotionally draining, especially packing up his brother’s things. Toney had been the member of his family he worried about least of all. He’d always been able to take care of himself. Still Adrian had managed to let him down.
“Adrian!” Mallory’s shout of alarm had him turning, reaching for the gun he’d tucked at the small of his back.
She ran out of the tent she’d shared with Linda, something in her cupped palms.
“What is it?”
She stretched her arms in front of her so he could see the two mouthpieces he’d searched for before she’d left with Jonathan.
“Linda doesn’t dive.” Adrian looked from the evidence in Mallory’s hands to her face.
“Looks like she didn’t want you to, either.”
What the hell?
Adrian walked through what was left of the camp, avoiding Robert’s tent yet again. Everything else was packed up, the only thing they could do as they waited for the roads to dry. He just couldn’t bring himself to go back to Robert’s tent.
He had to, however. They needed to pack his things, ship them to the States. Adrian would keep his books, unless there was a will stating otherwise. Unlikely, since he was estranged from his family because of his career choice.
Yes, Adrian saw the irony there.
Mallory might want the professor’s books, though.
He pulled out the cigarettes, lit one with the lighter he’d found in Toney’s tent, a habit as old as shaving, as new as, well, as being with Mallory again. And probably not as bad for him as she was. He drew on the filter, savored the calm the nicotine settled over him.
“Hey.” Mallory came up behind him before the cigarette was half gone, placed a hand on his shoulder. “We have to do this.”
With one last drag, he tossed the remaining cigarette into the sand. He blew the smoke out on a breath and nodded that he was ready.
Since he’d left the sides of the tent up, the rug and the chair were soaked again. Adrian would carry them to the dock to dry in the sun. He wouldn’t think about the blood splattering either of them, the sand around them.
“Oh, no!”
Only at Mallory’s cry did Adrian realize that the books they’d left on the ground had been soaked by the storm. In his grief, Adrian had forgotten about them. The mess here might hold the answer to the professor’s death. Robert could have been going through them when he was shot. Or the shooter could have been looking for something.
Had Robert surprised a thief?
He wouldn’t express any of these fears to Mallory, who knelt beside the ruined books, searching for something to salvage.
Books, texts on everything from Maya culture to shipwrecks to tourist books on the Yucatan Peninsula, were swollen with water, their words distorted. Some of these books Adrian remembered had been old when he’d started working with Robert.
He crouched beside Mallory, who hid her face behind her hair. The hitches in her breathing told him she was crying. He slid a soothing hand over her shoulder.
