Leigh sat up very straight in her chair. She said, ‘Doctor Martinez, I don’t think you realise …’
‘Exactly who I’m talking to?’ he finished for her. ‘Yes, I do, Miss Frazier. I’m well aware that it’s a charitable trust set up by Frazier Industries which provides most of the financing for our project. I’m also aware that you probably consider that gives you carte blanche to do as you wish here.’ He paused again. ‘Well, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong, and to give you some advice.’
She smiled icily, controlling her temper with an heroic effort. ‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’
‘That’s up to you,’ he said. ‘But for what it’s worth, I suggest you get the next available flight back to the United Kingdom. This is no place for you, and I’m surprised your family didn’t tell you so.’ He gave her another assessing look. ‘Or did they?’
‘I happen to be an adult, Doctor Martinez,’ Leigh said loudly and clearly. ‘I do as I want.’
‘Not,’ he said, ‘a particularly adult point of view. But let that pass. Is Gilchrist meeting you here?’
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me,’ she said, heavily sarcastic. ‘You seem to rule the roost at Atayahuanco. Have you graciously given Evan permission to meet me?’
‘No.’
‘No, of course not.’ She stared at him defiantly. ‘And now I’m supposed to confess my fault, and grovel, right?’
He shrugged. ‘It would make little difference if you did. Evan Gilchrist walked off the project some forty-eight hours before we got the radio message announcing your imminent arrival.’ He paused. ‘Indicating that he already knew you were coming, and had gone to meet you. But, for various reasons, I wasn’t convinced.’
Leigh’s mouth was dry. She picked up the cooling coffee, and drank some of it. At last she said, ‘He—he didn’t know I was coming. I didn’t mention it in my last letter. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision …’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Did he give no idea where he was going?’
‘We had no idea he was even leaving,’ Rourke Martinez told her. ‘He took some provisions and a mule, and vanished in the night. There was no need to have done that, no matter how much he hated Atayahuanco and everything connected with it. If he’d given some indication that he wanted out, he could have flown out on the supply helicopter with me yesterday.’ He sent her a lightning glance. ‘He wasn’t that much of an asset.’
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