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  INTO THE DARKNESS

  Daring Escapes Series Book One

  Margaret Daley

  Into the Darkness

  Copyright © 2019 by Margaret Daley

  Smashwords Edition

  Originally published in 2006 under the title The Heart of the Amazon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  All texts contained within this document are a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons (living or dead), is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Hot, humid—no, make that wet—air clung to her like a second skin. Kate Collier dabbed a tissue along her brow, over her cheeks, then her upper lip. The second she stuffed the tissue back into her black purse, perspiration popped out on her face again, putting a new layer of dampness on top of the old.

  Where is the Blue Dolphin?

  She scanned the street—if she could call the pothole-riddled single lane of packed dirt a street. She was beginning to think she needed a guide to find the guide the hotel had given her directions to over a half an hour ago. It wasn’t as though this place was a major city. Probably no more than two thousand lived here, if that. But she had wandered the streets of Mandras, Brazil, and was going to have to admit she was lost. Like her brother. That thought spurred her on. She needed help.

  Turning the corner, going farther away from the more civilized parts of Mandras—and that was a generous usage of the word civilized—she saw the sign at an angle, barely held up by a rusted chain at one end. Blue Dolphin Bar. Bar? The hotel hadn’t said anything about her going into a bar.

  Oh, my! This would never do!

  She stood outside the seedy-looking building that had patches of what had once been yellow paint still clinging to parts of the wooden structure. It housed a bar on its lower floor, and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what was in the top story. She gnawed on her bottom lip while she tried to decide what to do. She had never been in a bar in her whole thirty-eight years. Never. Not once. If she went inside, she could imagine the horror on the faces of the people back home at the church where she was the secretary if they knew. She could imagine the horror on her own face!

  She fortified herself with a deep breath and nearly choked on the scent of rotting fish and decaying plants with just a hint of stale…beer? Releasing the breath, she hiked the strap of her purse up on her shoulder and hugged it close to her. From inside, the sounds of loud voices and laughter drifted out to her. The man called Slader, according to not just the manager at the hotel, but anyone else she had contacted, was the only one who would take her to where she needed to go. She had no choice.

  Lord, please protect and guide me. Tell me what I should do. I have to find my brother. I know he isn’t dead. Please help me to get through the next few minutes—alive.

  Still undecided, Kate scanned the area and realized for the first time that there were not many people out and about, which made her situation even more precarious. Being in the middle of the afternoon, there was little traffic on the street and certainly not anything that looked even remotely like a taxi to take her back to her hotel. And worse, not far from this street she could see the river and jungle, a wall of various shades of green with a ribbon of brown running through it.

  A group of men, all scruffy looking, as though they had just been let out of prison, suddenly exited a tin-roofed building across the street and headed toward her en masse. Her heart began to pound so fast that the images before her tilted and spun. Clutching the post next to her, she squeezed her eyes closed for a few seconds, hoping she was seeing things that weren’t there.

  Someone jostled her, sending her into the main stream of men. Their rancid odor, a mixture of sweat, unwashed bodies and something unidentifiable, engulfed her. Her eyes snapped open. Someone else bumped into her from behind. Before she realized what was happening, the eight men swept her along with them into the bar, their cackles and snickering remarks causing her ears to burn. Thankfully she had no idea what they were saying, since she didn’t speak Portuguese, or more than her ears would be burning. Which brought her to another problem. What if no one spoke English? How would she find Mr. Slader, especially if he wasn’t here?

  “Excuse me,” she squeaked out to the nearest man.

  He twisted around and glared at her.

  Her mind went blank while her full attention glued itself to the long, ugly red scar that slashed down his face from hairline to chin.

  “What’s a lady like you doing here?” one of the other men said in broken English, followed by some more Portuguese, then a round of laughter, the deep belly kind, as though she was the punch line of a joke.

  Heat that had nothing to do with the soaring tropical temperature scored her cheeks, even though now that she was away from the scorching sun it was cooler in the bar by a few degrees. She started to speak to the man who had spoken a semblance of English, but visions of her foolhardiness for even being in this place flashed before her. Nothing would come out of her mouth.

  The men parted and ambled toward the scarred bar to order their drinks or to join others at the tables scattered around the room. Several threw her one last look and dismissed her as unimportant—probably downright unattractive, therefore not worth their time.

  Left alone in the middle of the bar, she bristled at how they had walked away. Didn’t they see she needed help? That thought brought her up short. She hadn’t wanted their attention, so why was she upset at not getting it?

  Kate, you are losing it. You’re definitely out of your element. She should have been ecstatic that she was plain and unappealing to men. But still, what was she going to do about finding Mr. Slader without assistance?

  Ignoring her lapse in logic, she went about doing what she had set out to do with or without anyone’s help—find Mr. Slader and hire him as her guide. In the dim light she surveyed the patrons of the bar, trying to decide which one was the man in question, that was if he was even at the bar. But the hotel manager had claimed that Mr. Slader would be here if he was in town. She’d thought the manager had meant this was Mr. Slader’s office and the Blue Dolphin was the name of the building or even the name of another hotel. What a mistake!

  Then she saw the man who had to be Mr. Slader, from the manager’s description, at the end of the long bar that ran the length of the room. He toyed with a glass full of a golden-brown liquid, never picking it up. Lifting his gaze, he stabbed her with penetratingly dark eyes that bored into her and nearly pinned her to the swinging doors several feet behind her, such was the power behind his regard.

  With all the courage she could muster—which she decided was puny at best—she started forward, caught in his snare. He straightened when she headed toward him, a deep frown carving lines into his tanned features. That movement pulled her attention to the breadth of his wide shoulders and the muscular arms that rested on the counter. The manager had said he was a large man, but that description really didn’t depict him adequately.

  When her focus returned to that face hardened by the sun’s rays, she gasped at the arch of his brow and the amusement lighting the dark brown depths of his eyes. He cocked his head and turned slightly. That was when she lit upon the scar that ran from his left ear across part of his cheek. It conveyed a toughness that she wasn’t used to.

  He was the second man with a scar whom she had seen in the past five minutes. In the heat she shivered and, by the lift of his eyebrow, knew he had seen her reaction. The amusement in his expression grew.

  Please let
me be wrong. Don’t let him be Mr. Slader.

  The bar’s constant noise decreased in volume to a few murmurs. Most of the patrons paused and waited to see what transpired at the end of the bar, between her and the man with black hair longer than hers pulled back and tied with a leather strap. She caught a sympathetic look in one man’s eyes that sent panic bolting through her.

  Run now before it’s too late, her sensible side screamed. Then she remembered her brother and knew she couldn’t, no matter that every alarm bell in her mind pealed a deafening toll.

  Why did Mr. Slader have to be the only guide available?

  She should have asked the hotel manager why he insisted Mr. Slader was the only one available, but in her eagerness to begin her search for her brother, she’d flown out of the shabby lobby and in the direction the man had indicated, only remembering fifteen minutes later that she was lousy at following directions. She could get lost in Red Creek, her hometown of ten thousand people.

  She stopped a few feet from the large, muscular man, swallowed several times and opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. Her mind emptied while he again pierced her with his arrow-like stare, his mouth pressed into a look clearly meant to intimidate.

  A minute ticked into two.

  Finally, one corner of his mouth lifted. “Yes?”

  Words slowly filtered back into her mind. “Are you Mr. Slader?”

  “Just Slader.”

  “Can we go somewhere to talk?” She glanced around, trying her best not to let her distaste show in her expression and voice. She was afraid she hadn’t succeeded, especially if the curl of his lips was any indication.

  “Pull up a chair.”

  “Do you have an office where it’s—” again she looked around “—where it’s quieter?”

  He chuckled. “There’s no point in wasting good money on a place I’d rarely frequent. Whatever you have to say can be said here.”

  His grammatically correct English should have reassured her. It didn’t. An education didn’t guarantee he was a gentleman. “Then, can we talk over there?” she asked, aware that the man on the other side of her openly listened to every word they exchanged. She waved her hand toward a vacant table at the back of the bar that offered a bit of privacy. She could tell by the tightening about Mr. Slader’s hard mouth that he was going to refuse to move. She hurriedly added, “Please.”

  With a frown, he shrugged and slid from the stool, allowing her to go first.

  Kate wove her way through the bar to the empty table, feeling as though she were walking farther into the den of iniquity where darkness prevailed, which in actuality was correct. The back part of the bar wasn’t well lit. Only two single bulbs, no more than forty watts each, dangled from the ceiling. One fan barely stirred the hot, damp air laced with that rancid smell of sweat and unclean bodies pressed closely together.

  Mr. Slader slipped into one of the chairs, his face hidden in the ever-present shadows. Again, a shiver rippled down her spine as she dusted off the wooden seat and eased down onto it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him watch her every move, his mouth hiking up in a lopsided grin. She perched on the edge, the hammering of her heart like the beating of a jungle drum, its tempo quickening the longer she stayed. A bead of perspiration rolled down her face. She brushed at it.

  “Lady, you have about two minutes to explain why you need to have a private word with me before I return to my spot.”

  Again, she chewed on her bottom lip, not sure if she should pursue hiring this man even though he had come with recommendations. And yet, what choice did she have? It wasn’t as though scores of guides were lined up to take the job, especially ones who spoke English. Mr. Slader was it.

  She inhaled a deep, composing breath and nearly choked on the smoke-saturated air. “I need to hire you to take me—”

  “No.”

  “No! You haven’t given me a chance to explain. I need you—”

  “Let’s leave it at that. I’m not for hire.” He scooted his chair back, the sound scraping across the wooden floor and up Kate’s spine.

  “Why not?” She gripped her purse in her lap, her back ramrod straight.

  * * *

  Slader relaxed against the hard chair and studied the woman next to him. About all she needed to complete the picture of prim and proper schoolmarm of fifty years ago were white gloves and a hat. He noticed she had her auburn hair pulled into a tight bun and she wore sensible black shoes to match her sensible black purse and a prim gray-and-white dress, meant for church, buttoned up to her neck. A dress! Here! Hundreds of miles from anyplace remotely civilized. What in the world was she doing in Brazil, in Mandras, a hole-in-the-wall, backwater river town where only losers—or people who didn’t want to have anything to do with civilization—ended up?

  She was waiting for him to answer. She hadn’t moved a muscle other than to grip her purse tighter until her knuckles whitened. Well, she could wait until—

  “Please, I need your help.”

  Why did she have to go and say that? He was a sucker for responding to her, but he had to make her understand she didn’t belong in the Amazon. She was about as much out of place as a snowman would be. Actually, a snowman might fare better than Miss Prim and Proper. “I can’t help you. You need to get on the first boat out of here and return to wherever you came from. You don’t belong, or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  The tightness about her mouth softened slightly and the rigid set to her shoulders sagged just a hint. The death grip on her purse lessened, too. “I can’t go home until I find my brother. If you can’t help me, I’ll have to find someone who will.”

  He leaned forward, getting a whiff of perfume that smelled like the rose garden his—he shook that memory from his mind. He would never walk down that path again. Ever. “Lady, there is no one else.”

  “Then you have to help me or…” She searched for words, her perfect white teeth nibbling her bottom lip.

  She wasn’t very attractive, but a lively gleam flashed into her blue eyes, making them glitter, and her full lips set in a frown that looked more like a pout. “Or what?” he asked, surprised that he had bothered. In fact, why was he sitting here talking to her at all?

  “I’ll search on my own.” She gave a slight nod as though she was proud to have come up with that ridiculous solution.

  A chuckle escaped him. “Then there would be two people lost.”

  Her eyes closed, long dark lashes against her alabaster white skin that would be burned within an hour in the hot tropical sun. Her mouth moved but no words came out. Puzzled, he leaned closer.

  When she opened her eyes and saw he was only a foot away, she gasped and shot back in her chair. “What are you doing?”

  “Lady, I could ask you the same thing. I thought you were saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I was praying.”

  Praying! He knew he should leap to his feet and get away from her as fast as his legs could carry him. “Why?” he growled instead.

  “I need you to change your mind.”

  He tossed back his head and laughed. “And you think that’s going to do it?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Yes.”

  He sobered at the serious expression on her plain face. “Prayers won’t help you here. This can be an unforgiving place.”

  “All the more reason to pray.”

  His head began to throb. He had to put an end to the conversation before he found himself escorting this woman through a hostile jungle and regretting every step of the way. “Well, do it somewhere else. My answer is still no.” He shot to his feet, nearly tumbling his chair back in his haste to get away from the lady.

  “But I need you,” Slader heard her say and decided, instead of going to the counter at the bar where he was sure she would follow him, he would head home, if he could call the single room he lived in a home. If she thought this place was seedy, and clearly she did from her expression and actions earlier, s
he would definitely think where he spent his nights was, too. He hoped that would deter her from following him. The last thing he needed was a woman full of religion to hire him to take her into the jungle where he would be forced to listen to her for days on end and save her sorry hide—

  The sound of her sensible shoes on the wooden floor cut into his thoughts. She followed him toward the bar’s swinging doors and out into the heat of a late afternoon in the tropics, a hot, seemingly lazy day. He squinted against the glare, pulled his Yankee baseball cap from his back pocket and plopped it onto his head, all without breaking stride. Now he wished he’d taken a drink of the whiskey that always sat on the bar in front of him, untouched.

  “Mr. Slader,” the woman called out, panic in her voice. “I’m prepared to pay you well for your services.”

  He rolled his eyes skyward, realizing every disreputable person in this bustling metropolis must have heard her. She might as well be wearing a sign around her neck that said Easy Target. She wouldn’t make it one day in the jungle, if she even lived long enough to trek into the rainforest. His steps began to slow, something akin to a conscience pricking him.

  Don’t do it, Slader. He stiffened his determination to put as much distance between them as possible.

  As he started to take a shortcut to his room, the sudden silence behind him alerted him. He threw a glance over his shoulder just as he was about to disappear down an alleyway. Miss Prim and Proper was nowhere to be seen. Relief should have taken hold, but instead he experienced a tightening in his gut, the hairs on the nape of his neck tingling, a sure sign danger was close.

  She isn’t your concern. You didn’t ask her to come see you.

  He wanted to walk away. He should walk away.

  * * *

  Kate watched the distance between her and the only guide worth his salt, according to the hotel manager, lengthening. If Mr. Slader thought he could brush her off that easily, he had a rude awakening coming. Not when her twin brother’s life was on the line. She had to convince him to escort her or…She wasn’t going to think of the or else. Not yet.