High Tide (33 page)

It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. “Morning?” Her voice was rising in hysteria. “Morning? You want us to spend the
night
here?”

When Ace put his hand on her ankle, she did give a
squeal of fear. But his hand moved up her calf, and she looked down at him. While she had been looking about the place in terror, he had unfurled a sort of sleeping-bag tent, a place that one could crawl into and zip the front and be safe from the darkness that was outside.

But, more important, the look in Ace's eyes was unmistakable. She looked into those eyes and she forgot about lions and murders and police trying to find them. Her knees gave way under her, and she sank down slowly to his open arms.

Deftly, easily, Ace pulled her into the little tent and zipped the door shut behind her; then he turned the flashlight off. For one small breath, Fiona seemed to be alone; then, suddenly, Ace was on her, pulling her to him, holding her, caressing her.

She hadn't realized how much pent-up emotion and longing was inside her until she touched him. In an instant, they were tearing at clothes, pulling them over their head; shorts went down over knees and ankles.

And everywhere hands and lips and skin touched. When Ace's mouth found her breast, Fiona moved her head backward, giving him access to the most sensitive spots on her throat.

His hands moved downward, over her hips, over the roundness of her buttocks.

And she explored his body. She touched the shoulders and back that had made her mouth dry with lust many times. She didn't know how long she had wanted him, but at that moment it seemed to be forever.

When he entered her, she cried out in surprise and delight, and Ace's mouth covered hers.

She didn't know what she had expected him to be as a lover, but the fire in him was not what she'd expected. But
she had known he was a passionate man, passionate about his birds, passionate about his swamp, so when the fire that was within him came to the surface, she was the willing recipient.

They moved about within the little tent, their long arms and legs pressed against the sides of it, and they pushed and pulled and tried to reach more of each other, tried to get closer than they were.

Fiona wrapped her legs about Ace's strong waist and held on as he drove into her with force. And her body arched to meet each thrust as it hit her inner being, completing her, filling her, unleashing some deep secret within her.

And when he at last came, she was with him; feeling the explosions that rocked her body made every part of her quicken.

“I love you,” he said as he collapsed against her sweaty, nude body.

She kept her legs wrapped about him, holding him tightly to her as she caressed his hair. She wanted to know every part of him, know his body as well as her own.

And she wanted to know what was inside of him. She wanted to share herself with him in a way that she had never shared with anyone else.

Maybe it was good that they had come to know each other under such adverse circumstances, because she knew that in the future she'd never have to pretend with him. She and her women friends had joked that there was a “dating” personality that a woman kept with a man. “Until she lands him,” Ashley said. “Then she can be herself.”

Fiona had never been past that “dating personality” with
a man, not even Jeremy. Not until she'd been accused of murder, that is.

But because of the way she'd met Ace, she had been her worst with him. He'd seen her tired and grumpy. He knew her sarcastic side and her spiteful side. He knew that she could be smart and she could be dumb. He even knew that she could sometimes be calculating and mercenary.

But he still loved her.

“A penny,” Ace whispered into her ear as he moved to lie beside her, her head on his shoulder.

She smiled into the darkness. “I …”

“Out with it,” he said gently. “Whatever it is, I've heard worse.”

“When my father visited me, I tried to be the best little girl in the world,” she said quietly, then said no more.

Ace took a moment to consider what she'd said. “In the hopes that he'd like you so much that he'd take you away with him instead of leaving you in boarding school.”

“Right,” she said, and there was a lump in her throat. “Those newspapers that talked about my lonely childhood weren't too far wrong.” Turning, she put her mouth near on his neck. “But you …”

Again Ace hesitated. “But I love you even though I know that you are one bad-tempered lady.”

“I am not!” Fiona protested. “At least not unless I'm being hunted for murder.”

“And you find yourself with a man you dislike thoroughly.”

“Well, you weren't very nice to me,” she said in protest. “And, Ace Montgomery, if you tell me again that I broke that damned alligator of yours, I'll … I'll …”

“What?” he said, laughter bubbling in his throat, and his hand was beginning to move over her hip. “You'll set fire to my ticket booth?”

“I thought I just did set fire to your ticket booth,” she said throatily, then nibbled on his ear.

“Oh? I don't remember. Why don't you show me again?”

“Okay,” Fiona said as she moved her leg over his. “I think I will.”

Twenty-two
 

“So where are they?” Fiona said at the first sign of daylight the next morning. She had already struggled into her clothes and was on her knees inside the tent.

Still lying down, Ace yawned as he looked up at her. “Don't you want something to eat first? Or drink? Or—”

One look at his eyes and she knew what else he had in his mind besides food. Already his bare foot was running up her calf.

But she moved away from him. “What I want is a bath first and a life second. And I can't have either until we solve this mystery and get out of this swamp.”

Still yawning and rubbing his head, Ace sat up in the tent; then when his head hit the ceiling, he lay back down. Fiona was backing out of the nylon.

“Even if you do see the lions, how's that going to tell you who killed Roy and Eric and Rose?” he asked.

“I don't know, but all of it helps. Do you think I have lice in my hair?”

“More likely leeches under your clothes. Why don't you remove them so I can check your skin?”

“Good try, but no. Get dressed and get out here,” she ordered, but there was a soft smile on her lips. Almost over, she kept thinking. Their ordeal was almost over; she could feel it.

Once she was outside the tent, she looked around and instantly knew that she was standing in something that was man-made. Nature hadn't done this. Besides, the Florida swampland was very flat, but this place was … It was like a two-story stone house, but it was hidden and seemed to be almost underground. In the front of the place vines hung down and old vegetation grew, so that it was almost dark inside.

When Ace emerged from the tent, Fiona hadn't moved but was staring about her. “What is this?” she whispered, for the place had an eerie feeling.

“I think it must have once been a burial place for some ancient people. It took a long time to build.”

While she stood in one place, Ace took two steps away and picked up something from the ground, something shiny, then held it out to show Fiona. It was a silver pen, corroded and dirty.

“Yours?” she asked.

“My uncle's. I gave it to him.” Ace's hand closed over the pen, and he looked about him. “I think maybe my uncle came here often, and I think he knew very well what I had seen when I broke my leg. But he told my parents that he
knew every inch of the reserve and that there was no ‘stone cave' that I kept describing.”

“So how did he keep you from exploring and finding it again?”

Turning, he gave her a crooked smile. “He said this was government land and there were bombs planted over here. When I was older and knew that was a lie, I just assumed there was quicksand or too many 'gators or whatever. And also, when I was older, I wasn't here that often and …” Trailing off, he kept looking. “When you get older, you lose your urge to explore, and besides, whenever I started to walk this way, my leg began to hurt.”

“I don't know how you can tell one place from another,” Fiona said under her breath.

“You want to see the lions? You want to see what has cost so many lives, my uncle's included?”

Fiona opened her mouth to say yes, but there was part of her that wanted to run back outside into the hot Florida sun and never look at a cave again. But she found herself nodding; then when he reached for her hand, she took a deep breath and followed him.

He turned on the flashlight, then led her behind the tent, then down some stone steps, and she realized that most of the structure must be underground. With each step downward, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up straighter. It was as though a thousand eyes were watching them.

“I don't like this place,” she whispered.

“Lots of dead people in here, I'd think,” he said cheerfully.

“Very funny. You don't think the guys who had the lions built this, do you?”

Ace gave a snort of laughter. “I think this has been here thousands of years, and I think archaeologists would love this place. The lions are relatively new, only five hundred or so years old I'd guess, but then I don't know much about Chinese art.”

“We'll take them back with us and ask someone,” Fiona said, clinging to Ace's hand, her eyes searching the stone walls that dripped water under the vines that clung to them. Lizards scurried about, making her jump with their quick movements.

“Great idea,” Ace said. “I'll carry one and you get the other one.”

Fiona could only nod at his words as they went down two more steps. In front of them was what looked like an iron door. “In the future, I want to
read
about adventures, not have them. I really and truly do not like this place.”

“You ought to see it in total darkness with a broken leg. Then you'd really like it.”

“If that was a joke, it needs some work. Do you have a key to that lock?”

Reaching out, Ace gave a tug on the huge lock hanging on the metal door, and it came away in his hands, rusted through. When he pushed on the door, Fiona fully expected it to crash on broken hinges, but it swung inward easily.

“As I suspected,” Ace said, his voice full of disgust. “Uncle Gil must have come here often enough that he replaced the door hinges. When I was here, they'd barely move. I had to shove against them with all my might, and when they did move, I slipped and pow! One leg crunched.”

Fiona wasn't going to think about the pain he must have gone through then. “You don't suppose he installed electric lights, do you?”

Ace stepped into the blackness that was behind the door and disappeared for a few seconds. To Fiona, left behind in the darkness on her side of the door, it was an eternity.

“How about a lantern?” Ace asked, and his voice in the stillness made her jump. “Calm down, will you?” He handed her the lantern while he struck a match from the book he carried in his pocket.

“Now, get behind me and walk slowly. I don't like the look of this floor.”

“I don't like the look of the floor or the walls or the ceiling or—”

“Ssssh!”
Holding himself very still, he listened. “Did you hear that?”

“I heard everything: snakes, lizards, spiders, all—”

“There! There it is again. Don't you hear it?”

She didn't know the sounds of the swamp well enough to know when something was unusual or not. “Could we just get these things and get out of here?” she said. “A police station is beginning to seem like a pleasure dome.”

Ace listened for a moment longer; then he led the way past the door and into the inner cavern.

It was a small room, with stone walls, ceiling, and floor. But there was no vegetation hanging down these walls, no lizards darting about, and the stones were relatively dry.

And sitting in the middle of the room were two huge stylized lions, the kind that sit in front of Chinese restaurants. Only these were bigger than any she'd seen before, at least five feet tall, and they appeared to be made of solid gold. And they had big green stones for eyes.

“Oh,” Fiona said, then sat down on the floor to stare at
them. There was something regal about these huge creatures, something that made her feel that she was in the presence of majesty. “Oh.”

While Fiona sat and stared in relative silence, Ace went to the first lion and ran his hand over the creature.

“My theory is that these were on the ship that went down and these were what all the murders then and now were about.”

“How did they get here?” Fiona whispered. She still couldn't bring herself to do anything but look up at them in awe.

“Winches I'd guess, log rolling. A lot of muscle.”

“No, I mean, that ship we read about didn't go down off the coast of Florida, did it?”