What the hell had happened to his quiet, fragile, sensible Abby? When had she developed this wicked stubborn streak? When had she developed these nerves of steel? Her transformation thoroughly bemused him.
And, he was forced to admit, enticed him.
And, at the moment, terrified and infuriated him.
“If I ever get my hands on her, I’m going to strangle her,” he vowed.
That if, unfortunately, was a very big one. There was no predicting the direction in which she’d headed, even with those maps in hand. She was a novice at all of this, unless she’d been up to things back in Arizona that he knew nothing about.
“Davis!” he bellowed as he exited her tent.
Jared Davis, an expert in Mayan culture and in the terrain in this part of Chiapas, appeared at once. The tough, thirty-year-old archeologist was disgustingly alert given the early hour and the number of Corona beers they’d consumed the night before, after Abby had stormed off to her tent in a huff.
“You look like hell,” Jared noted bluntly. “What’s up?”
“Abby’s gone.”
The amused glint in his old friend’s eyes died. “Gone? You mean back to the States?”
“I wish.”
Jared’s stunned, disbelieving expression summed up Riley’s feelings fairly accurately.
“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying,” Jared said slowly.
“Oh, yes, I am. The little fool has gone off to find the Mayan tablets on her own.”
“On her own,” Jared repeated blankly, as if the concept were too outrageous to be grasped.
Riley rubbed his aching head. “It’s my fault. I practically forced her to do it.”
“How?”
“By threatening to send her home. I should have realized how desperately she wanted to stay.”
“She told you straight out she wanted to stay,” Jared pointed out with brutal honesty. “I heard her. Hell, the entire population of San Cristobal, sixty miles from here, probably heard her. How did you miss it?”
“I didn’t miss it,” he snapped. “I just didn’t understand how important it was to her. I certainly had no idea she would do something like this.”
“She can’t have gotten far.”
“Probably not,” Riley agreed.
“Then let’s get going.”
Riley appreciated Jared’s brisk, no-nonsense willingness. “There’s just one hitch. There are three of us, if you count Manuel,” he said, referring to the practically ancient guide Jared had hired to lead them. “How the hell are we supposed to figure out which way she went and catch up with her? I don’t even know what time she left.”
“It had to have been well after midnight. We were drinking until then.”
“Okay, that’s good,” he said sarcastically. “We’ve narrowed it down to five, maybe six damned hours.”
Jared clearly wasn’t daunted by Riley’s foul temper. “Shall I get Manuel and start packing up?” he asked quietly.
Riley rubbed his head again. It was splitting, the throbbing dull and insistent. Not even that could block out the vision he’d been having of Abby lost and alone, trudging through the damned jungle, getting closer and closer to calamity with every foolhardy step.
“Get Manuel,” he said. “I’ll start looking around to see if I can see any indication of which direction she headed in.”
He’d spent less than ten minutes examining the fringes of the campsite, looking for paths carved through the thick undergrowth, when Jared came back, his expression grim.
“Bad news,” he announced.
“What?”
“Manuel’s gone, too. My guess is she talked him into going with her. She’s been winding him around her little finger from the first day we got down here.”
Riley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. His admiration for Abby’s ingenuity leapt. Obviously, his sweet, innocent Abigail had the makings of an adventurer, after all. If she survived, if he ever found her, he would never doubt her grit and determination again.
Maybe he’d even dare to let her know how much he loved her.
CHAPTER TWO
“I thought you had to produce that Mayan tablet for your backers by the end of the month or lose the commission,” Jared said.
He and Riley had set out at once in search of Abigail, rather than the treasure that half a dozen other intrepid explorers and quite a few shady antiquities dealers were probably hunting for right now. Riley had a sneaking suspicion that John Higgins and his two brothers, the worst of the lot of thieves, were slithering around the state of Chiapas already. It wouldn’t be the first time they had competed.
“I’ll meet the damned deadline and I’ll do it before anyone else,” Riley responded tightly. “First I have to make sure that Abby gets out of this jungle alive.”
“I see,” Jared said with the smug confidence of someone speaking about a man he’d known well for the past decade.
Riley glared at him. “What are you smirking about?”
“Your sudden shift in priorities. After all the years I’ve known you, all those glowing news stories I’ve read about your single-minded dedication, all of the legendary tales of your exploits, I never thought I’d see the day when world-class adventurer Riley Walker would put some woman—some engaged woman, I might add—ahead of the hunt for a priceless, long-lost relic.”
“This is not just some woman,” Riley protested, probably a little too vehemently, given the truth in Jared’s words. “We’re talking about Abby.”
“I see,” the archeologist said again.
“Jared, will you shut up and concentrate on finding their trail before another thunderstorm washes away any last trace of them! As wet as it is in here, the blasted plants grow back practically as fast as they’re chopped down.”
They trudged on for another twenty minutes in silence. The humidity sapped enough of their energy. Neither of them had any left to waste on arguing.
Eventually Jared asked, “So tell me, are you planning to marry her yourself?”
“I’m planning to throttle her,” Riley snapped back without hesitation.
“I see.”
Riley glared at his old friend. He’d instinctively turned to him to help locate the new Mayan find, allegedly located near the southern border of Mexico near Guatemala. Rumors about the discovery
