Night Of The Condor

She flushed again. ‘Of course, you would say that. I’m sorry Evan’s best was never good enough for your exacting standards, Doctor Martinez.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ He sounded amused again. ‘I wasn’t aware we’d ever seen his best, but it was difficult to look beyond the outsize chip he had on his shoulder.’

She glared at him. Other phrases of Evan’s were coming back to her: ‘Intolerant swine’ and ‘a real slave-driver’. She could believe all of them. ‘Have you made any attempt to find him? Sent out a search-party?’

‘He’s not a child, Miss Frazier.’ What curious eyes he had, she thought irrelevantly. Deeply set beneath strongly arched black brows, they were a strange colour between brown and gold almost like topaz. Eyes like a jungle cat’s, she thought with a little inward shiver.

Rourke Martinez went on, ‘He knows what the dangers are, or he should do by now. He’s been warned often enough—about all kinds of things.’

She looked at him incredulously. ‘And on the strength of that, you’re prepared just to—write him off?’

‘Your fiancé seems to have a strong sense of self-preservation,’ he said rather drily. ‘I suspect he’ll need it. In the mean time the best thing you can do is get back to the U.K. and wait for the eventual happy reunion there.’

The coffee tasted bitter, and she slammed her cup back into its saucer.

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said grittily. ‘Evan is missing, and I’ve no intention of going tamely back to Britain while such a situation continues. Even if you’re not sufficiently concerned about your staff to worry about his safety, I am, and I’m coming up to Atayahuanco right away to instigate some kind of search. Please be good enough to make the necessary arrangements.’

He actually had the gall to laugh.

‘Thus speaks the autocrat,’ he said mockingly. ‘I expect you’re a riot on your home ground, Miss Frazier, keeping everyone on the run. But not here. Here, you have no authority.’ He paused. ‘Short of marching you to the airport, and actually putting you on the plane, I can’t force you out, of course.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate that!’

‘But I’m wondering what you appreciate.’ The topaz eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘I have to warn you, Miss Frazier, for your family’s sake, if not your own, that Lima is not a safe city for a girl on her own, especially when the girl’s a spectacular-looking gringa like yourself.’ His gaze rested on the small gold hoops in her ears, the heavy links of her necklace, her watch on its slender bracelet. ‘And one so evidently blessed with this world’s goods too.’

‘I don’t need your warnings,’ Leigh flashed. ‘And if your peculiar remarks were intended as some kind of compliment, I can do without that too!’

‘No compliment, merely an observation.’ Shrugging, he pushed back his chair, and got to his feet. ‘Well, stay here in Lima, if you’re really so determined, but remain in the vicinity of the hotel, if you have any sense. No doubt Daddy will send some minion to bail you out, if you really get into trouble. You’re not my responsibility, thank God.’

‘You utter bastard,’ Leigh said unevenly.

‘And harsh words don’t impress me either,’ he said coolly. ‘Did no one ever wash your mouth out with soap when you were a child, Miss Frazier, because if not they missed a golden opportunity. And a sound hiding applied to your pampered backside wouldn’t come amiss either. What a pity Gilchrist isn’t man enough to administer it!’

‘How dare you,’ Leigh was almost choking, ‘speak to me—speak about Evan like that …’

He laughed. ‘Why, are you going to tell me I’m not fit to lick his shoes, or some other cliché like that? Well, keep your illusions, Miss Frazier. If your wandering boy should wander back in our direction, I promise I’ll scoop him up and deliver him to you here. You’re entirely welcome to each other.’

She was trembling, her hands balled into impotents fists at her sides.

‘Get out of here! Get out of here now!’

‘Gladly,’ he said. ‘Now that I’ve made the situation clear to you once and for all.’

‘Oh, you have,’ she said icily. ‘And now I’ll make something clear to you—Doctor Martinez. When I get back to England, I’m going to tell my father every detail of your behaviour—raisesome questions about whether you’re a fit person to be in charge of the Atayahuanco project at all, in fact. You seem to be totally lacking in consideration and—and compassion!’

Rourke Martinez shrugged. ‘Try it,’ he advised shortly, ‘and see how far it gets you. Your father’s no fool, and in spite of your brave, independent words, it’s my guess that you’re out here against his wishes also. So don’t blame me if he doesn’t share your sense of outrage. Here, Miss Frazier, you are not the centre of the universe, and your father might even be grateful that someone’s pointed this out to you at last.’

The topaz eyes travelled over her in one last searing look, then he walked to the door and went out.

She wanted to scream, Leigh realised incredulously. She wanted to lie down and drum her heels on the carpet, and yell until she was hoarse.

She couldn’t believe what had happened. This man—a stranger—had treated her as if she were of no account.

And it was infuriating that he had homed in on her battle of wills with her father. She found herself wondering if Justin had contacted Peruvian Quest, the umbrella organisation under which the Atayahuanco project was sheltered, and requested they make things as difficult as possible for her. He was quite capable of it, she thought furiously.

She walked into the bedroom and threw herself across the bed, staring into space.

She had handled that confrontation badly, she knew, but learning of Evan’s disappearance like that had thrown her completely.

Her heart ached for Evan. She realised she hadn’t fully comprehended the problems and difficulties he had encountered at Atayahuanco, or the depth of his wretchedness, but meeting Rourke Martinez had made a great deal clear to her.

He had obviously realised that Evan was less than wholehearted about the project, and resented having him foisted on to it. But that wasn’t Evan’s fault, she thought angrily. If anyone was to blame, it was her father, who should have known he was asking the impossible.

And now Evan was heaven knows where with a mule and a few supplies. He could be lost. He could be injured, she thought, biting her lip savagely, as a pang of fear tore through her. He must have been really desperate to have taken such a risk, because none of his letters had expressed the slightest interest in exploring the hostile terrain around him.

That was, of course, if Evan had really gone off at all. She sat up abruptly. After all, she only had that abominable swine’s word for it, and who was to say he wasn’t simply following her father’s instructions to deter her.

Well, if her father thought she was going tamely back to Britain with her tail between her legs, he was mistaken. Come hell or high water, she was going to get to Atayahuanco somehow. She was going to check primarily whether Evan had really disappeared, and if so, to insist on a full-scale effort to find him.

Her lips curved in a brief cat-like smile. After all, Rourke Martinez was not the only arbiter on the project. There was Fergus Willard too. The Frazier name was bound to count for something with him. And if she managed to get his permission to make the trip to Atayahuanco, there would be nothing the Martinez man could do about it.

Or she could simply arrive there, she thought. It wouldn’t be an easy trip, but she couldn’t imagine she would be turned away once she had managed the journey.

She gave a determined nod. Tomorrow she would go to the Peruvian Quest offices and make radio contact with Fergus Willard. Once she had won him over, it would just be a question of hiring the best guide, and the best transport her money could obtain.

She squared her shoulders. But if she had to fight every battle alone, then she would do so. And Rourke Martinez—or anyone else for that matter—would not defeat her.

She swallowed suddenly, remembering with painful clarity those last contemptuous words he had flung at her.

I’ll make him sorry, she vowed silently. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born!

CHAPTER TWO (#u352737c3-41fd-51c3-ba58-c70fe53b1974)

THE Peruvian Quest offices lay in a quiet side street.

Leigh stood for a moment, watching the cab which had brought her there drive off. She was sure she had been overcharged for such a comparatively modest journey, but there had been no meter in the cab for her to check with. No meter, and very little else that worked either, she thought with a kind of desperate hilarity, but most of the cabs she had seen cruising around had been in the same ramshackle state.

She wished she had taken up the hotel’s offer to hire a car for her. It would surely have been in better condition, and maybe the driver wouldn’t have looked like a brigand either, she thought with a slight shiver.

More than once, she had caught him staring insolently at her in his mirror, and he had tossed a couple of remarks at her which she hadn’t been able to understand, but which instinct warned her were of a frankly sexual nature.

Last night, in the hotel dining-room, she had been openly stared at as she tried to eat her meal, and one man from a party of four near the door had tried to accost her as she left. She had shaken him off with a blazing look, and gone straight to her room, abandoning any notion of seeing what facilities the hotel had to offer during the evenings.

Under the circumstances, she had slept quite well, but today she was aware of a slight persistent headache, no doubt a legacy from her long plane trip.

The garua still held the city in its clammy grip too, which was disappointing, and although it was very humid, she was beginning to wish she had brought some warmer clothes.

Leigh walked across the uneven paving-stones and tried the heavy outer door of the building. It opened at once, and she found herself in a narrow passage facing an old-fashioned lift. On her right was a rudimentary reception counter surmounted by a grille with an ornate bellpush. She rang and waited, but no one came, and after a brief hesitation, she decided to trust herself to the lift.