Night of the Condor Read Free

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 selfpreservation,' 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