Part 5 (2/2)

When she gained the top of the stairs she knelt on the platform crowning the summit of the pyramid, exhausted but triumphant. Behind her was the temple proper with its gaping entrance and decorative carved comb on top. Belowa Below was the jungle. Jungle uncleared, with only a few faint paths visible between the pyramid temples that rose above the green. Temples that were far too impressive not to be well known and explored. Temples that were placed in a pattern identical to that of Tikal.

Mac sat down. She did a quick mental count of the major ruins in the area. Aside from Tikal, the most famous, there were only a few of any size within a day's walk. Uaxactum was north, but it was still a good fifteen miles away and considerably less impressive than Tikal. Its temples were simply not of the size she was seeing right now. El Mirador was even farther away.

Okay. She turned in a circle. To north, south, east, and west the carpet of green was unbroken. No ma.s.sive clearings by lumber companies eager for the jungle's untapped resources, no smaller patches of settlements or villages. No roads. No airstrip. No sign of habitation.

”It's as I told you, Miss MacKenzie.”

Liam Junior settled into an easy crouch beside her, knees spread and big hands dangling between. ”I can find no sign that your party has been here within the past week,” he continueda”without mockery, for a change. He frowned at her. ”How long did you say you were alone?”

She wanted to make some wisecrack, but it had managed to get tangled around her tongue. ”About an hour after the guide left. Before I ran into you.”

”Then where is this guide?”

”I don't know.”

”How many were in Tikal?”

”I didn't count the tourists. I didn't come with a tour group. They wouldn't bea”” No, don't tell him no one would be looking for you, Mac. Not a good idea. ”You're still telling me this is Tikal?”

He only gave her another of those condescendingly half-pitying, half-contemptuous looks. Her head had begun to ache. A large, warm drop of water hit her on the bridge of her nose and trickled into her eye. More raindrops joined the first in rapid succession.

The square temple entrance provided the only shelter from the cloudburst that followed. Mac retreated just inside. Liam Junior stayed where he was, face upturned.

Mac was grateful for the moment of privacy. A crazy idea was forming in her brain, too ridiculous to think out, let alone speak aloud.

She wiped damp hands on the thighs of her pants, wriggled out of her backpack and unzipped the inner pouch. The photo was as carefully wrapped now as it had been on the day Homer had given it to her. Her fingers were a little unsteady as she pulled it out and held it up to catch the filtered light.

It was almost a shock to see how thoroughly her Liam clone resembled the real thing, even down to his clothing. But it was the ruins behind him and Perry that she examined. The temple framed in the photograph was high and surrounded by jungle, with only a scanty path worn through the greenery that covered the steps to the top. Trees grew on the stairway and on the temple platform, just as they did on the ruin she sat in. The match was almost perfecta ”Where did you get that?”

She flinched. Liam Junior stood over her, his hand already reaching for the photograph. Mac s.n.a.t.c.hed it away before his dripping fingers could take hold.

”Hey! Be carefula”that's an antique!”

He shook his head, spraying water from his golden brown hair. ”Antique?” he echoed. ”How did you get it?” His tone sharpened, and he dropped into a crouch. ”Do you know Perry?”

For a moment she wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. ”What?”

He clamped his fingers around her wrist. ”Perry. Did he give this to you?”

Mac stared at him. ”This is too much. If Homer were alive he might have pulled something like thisa””

He shook her, just enough to get her attention. ”Perry Sinclair. This photograph was taken the last time we were in Tikal. Perry had it in his rooms.”

Mac worked her wrist free of his grasp and tucked the photo behind her. ”I don't know what you're talking about,” she said carefully. ”This photo was given to me by my grandfather. The men in it have been dead for decadesa””

”Miss MacKenzie,” he said between his teeth, ”when Perry left me in this jungle he was very much alive. And I am most a.s.suredly not dead. Did Perry think I was?”

She had heard him correctly, but her brain refused to process the information. ”Yea”no.” She breathed in and out, grateful that her physical functions seemed to be operating normally. ”Uha you never dida tell me your name.”

”Remiss of me. But if you know Perrya””

”I don't. I meana””

”a”you must know my name is Liam O'Shea.”

Mac sat very still. Of course his name was Liam O'Shea. He recognized the photograph. He knew about her great-great-grandfather. He came from San Francisco. It all made perfect sense.

Who could have set this up? She didn't have any friends or relatives capable, financially or otherwise, of such an elaborate scheme; Homer was dead, she wasn't close to her uncles, and Jason was too lost in his research to call her more than once a year. No one at the museum would have bothered. Even if they'd known the story behind the photographa No one would have bothered. No one cared enough or knew enough. But there were only two other explanations she could think of. The most likely one was that she'd managed to hit her head on the wall in that tunnel and was in the middle of some sort of delusion or dream.

Yes. There'd been that feeling of nausea and disorientation right before the wall had disappeared and she'd lost the pendant. She'd never felt anything quite like it beforea”as if the ground were vanis.h.i.+ng beneath her feet. Maybe that had been the last real thing she'd felt before she'd lost consciousness, and the rest was a concoction of all the elements that had been in her mind when the accident had happened.

She pinched herself. That didn't work; she felt it and didn't wake up. This was definitely a new level of dream. Or delirium. Maybe she was even dying. Odd how the idea didn't trouble her.

Maybe because she couldn't quite believe it. But the third possibilitya Her giggle turned into a cough. There is no such thing, Mac. Except in your own possibly delirious mind.

”Miss MacKenzie!”

She grinned at him. That drunken sense of unreality had come over her again. She braced her hands on her knees to keep from swaying. ”I'ma fine. Justa let me get this straight. You say your name is Liam O'Shea, and this is Tikal. Correct?”

He regarded her as a jaguar might a particularly succulent deer. ”Yes.”

”And, uha what year is this?”

Liam-who-claimed-to-be-the-real-thing smiled. ”I'll wager you know well enough, Miss MacKenzie. The date is the fourteenth of August, and the year is 1884.”

Chapter Four.

They say miracles are past.

a”William Shakespeare THE WOMAN WAS evidently an actress of considerable talent. Or she was quite mad.

”1884?” she repeated, her low voice hoa.r.s.e. ”Did you saya”eighteen eighty-four? But that's not possible.”

Liam regarded her stunned expression with suspicious bemus.e.m.e.nt. Simple insanity did fit hand in glove with the rest of her: thin, wiry, distinctly peculiar with her cap of short hair and bold dark eyes, sharp-tongued, dressed top to toe in men's clothing of an odd cut, and carrying a newfangled electric lantern the likes of which he had never seen in all his travels. And alone here in the jungle, first claiming she'd been with a full party of explorers and then insisting that no man had brought her.

And then there was her odd manner of speech, her absurd a.s.sertions of hotels in the jungle and omnibuses from Flores, her reaction to Tikala”as if she'd expected to see something entirely different, though she claimed to know the ruins.

Yes, one could almost be convinced that she was in a state of mental disturbancea”if not for the photograph she had so carelessly allowed him to see. The one taken here in these very ruins four years ago.

”What did you expect, Miss MacKenzie?” he asked. ”Maybe you have been in the jungle too long.”

Her dark brows drew down, and her gaze grew unfocused. ”Okay, Mac,” she muttered. ”Time to wake up. This isn't happening.”

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