Smoke Screen Read online

  She concentrated on birdcalls instead of her breathing. She was learning to identify New Zealand's birds. If it was a useless skill for an American, she didn't care. She had hardly been aware of the existence of birds before she had come to Waimauri, but now their trills and songs woke her in the morning and lullabied her to sleep at night. On impulse, she had even bought a bird book.

  "Have you ever seen a kiwi in the wild?" she asked, three paces behind Adam.

  He had been waiting for complaints, not for questions about ornithology. "No. They still live in the forests, but they're shy."

  "For good reason. I guess hiding is their only defense." Paige took advantage of Adam's slowed pace and caught up with him. "They've been badly cheated. What fun is it to be a flightless bird?"

  "About as much fun as to be a helpless child."

  Paige knew Adam was thinking about Jeremy, and she could see the parallels. She had wanted to ask him more about the little boy, but she hadn't known how to broach the subject. Now, as gently as she could, she did. "Why do you suppose Jeremy brought the jumper to my door that day? He's frightened of me now, but when he first came to the door—"

  "He was hoping you were Sheila."

  She was silently shocked.

  Adam went on, ignoring her expression. "Jeremy knew I was taking a present to a woman. Apparently, in his little head, there was only one woman I'd be giving presents to. He's been looking for Sheila everywhere since the day she left him. No matter how she mistreated him, she's his mother."

  There was nothing she could say to make the horror go away. Like the New Zealand kiwi that had never known a predator until the arrival of man, helpless little Jeremy had been completely at the mercy of careless whims of his mother. And still he loved her.

  "He'll find a woman he can trust." As she said it, she hoped it was true.

  "My family tries."

  Paige thought about the exuberantly warm woman who had been taking care of Jeremy. Somehow she doubted that kind of demanding affection was what the little boy needed. But then, who was she to say?

  "Do you recognize this?" Adam asked, changing the subject.

  The vegetation had changed subtly as they'd walked. Now it was sparser, and scrub had replaced the pasture land and tall trees. "We're getting close to the edge of the thermals," Paige answered.

  "You weren't very far when I found you."

  "I felt like I was. If you hadn't found me, I might still be standing in the same spot."

  "Before we go any farther, I want a promise."

  Suspiciously she waited.

  "Don't get cocky because you're getting a guided tour. You'd be a bloody fool to think you could come back on your own after one trip in with me."

  "Not one trip, Adam. Many trips. I want to come when you look for the mauri. I told you."

  "No."

  "We're discussing property owned by my family," she reminded him. "I have a perfect right to be here anytime I choose."

  "Not with me as guide."

  "You, on the the other hand, have no right to be here unless I give my permission." She said the words politely, but they were backed by her most rigid posture.

  "And how do you intend to keep me out?"

  "I don't. I intend to come with you."

  He let out a frustrated sigh. "Why?"

  Her answer was hard to form. Part of it was because she wanted to know all she could about the property to be sure she negotiated a good deal, but there was more, too. "I guess it's mostly because I'm intrigued," she said at last, her chin lifted defiantly. "I don't intrigue easily."

  He wanted to tell her what he thought about bored little rich girls who needed new toys, but even as he opened his mouth to say the words, he knew they weren't true. Paige wasn't a bored little rich girl. She was a woman struggling to find meaning in her life. He couldn't fault her for that, because he knew better than she did why so much of her life had been meaningless.

  "What intrigues you?" he asked, more harshly than he'd intended.

  "Adam, I'm not trying to become part of something that's not mine," she said, misinterpreting the emotion she saw on his face. "And I know the thermals aren't really mine, that it's an accident my family owns them. It's just that the mauri is important for you and the people of your hapu. I guess I'm looking for something important, too. Maybe if I help you find the mauri, I'll find something for myself, too."

  Adam felt Paige slip inside him again, a feeling he'd never known with anyone except a big-eyed, black-haired cousin who once upon a time had trustingly placed her hand in his. Only then he'd been too young to see the dangers.

  He turned away, angry, afraid, resigned. "I can't keep you from coming," he said gruffly.

  Paige wondered why she felt disappointed. She shouldn't have expected Adam to understand. Apparently she hadn't yet shoved yesterday morning far enough away. The man she had glimpsed on her front porch was best forgotten. "Then you'll let me know when you're looking?"

  "When it's convenient."

  She recognized a compromise when she heard one. "Fine. I just hope it's convenient more than once or twice."

  Adam set the pace again, but their way was often barred by the branches of shrubs and by rocks too large to step over. Paige was grateful they were walking slower, but she was learning again how poorly prepared she was for this kind of physical test. She was just about to swallow her pride and ask him if they could rest when he stopped again.

  "When I found you, you were over the ridge, down in the Valley of Regrets," he said, pointing to their left.

  "If I liked country-western music, I'd hum along." She laughed at his expression. "I rarely make jokes, Adam. You ought to be safe for the rest of the day. Tell me about the Valley of Regrets."

  "Better yet, that's where we'll start."

  She put her hand on his arm before he could move away. "Can you give me a minute? I'd like to catch my breath."

  "You've done well." Adam watched her eyes light with pleasure in the brief unguarded moment right after he spoke. He was surprised that such a small compliment would please her. He knew just from looking at her how often men must have sung her praises.

  Paige leaned against a tree and filled her lungs. Once in the thermals, she wasn't sure if she would want to breathe again. "I've read what I could about this area, so I understand a little of how it was formed. The thermals are caused by volcanic eruptions, aren't they?"

  Nodding, Adam explained further. "The eruptions form basins called calderas, which are produced when the roofs of underground chambers of magma collapse."

  "Magma?" She struggled to remember her college geology.

  "Molten rock. Calderas follow the climax of a cycle of major volcanic activity. We know of four in the central North Island. By world standards, our volcanoes are very young, so many of the landforms haven't been modified by erosion."

  "And that would make them important, wouldn't it?"

  "Geologists love New Zealand."

  "How much have these particular thermals been studied?"

  "We see teams in here from time to time. Students doing dissertations, professors doing textbooks. This area is fairly small compared to others, though, and there aren't any phenomena here that the other, better known, areas don't have, too. I'd never get rich leading expeditions."

  "Why you? Because your property backs up to the other side?"

  "My family has lived here for generations. I've been taught every inch of the land. Once my ancestors knew the location of the mauri."

  She asked the logical question. "Why didn't someone pass on the secret?"

  "Generations ago the tohunga who knew the location had only one son. The son married an Englishwoman, and apparently his father felt there was no longer anyone he could trust the secret to. It died with him. Are you ready?"

  "I guess so."

  Adam strode away. He didn't want to discuss tribal history with Paige. It was too tempting to tell her that the tohunga had been her great-great-grandfather.r />
  Paige carefully followed Adam up the ridge and down into the tiny valley. Loose stones made balancing tricky, and she was forced to duck under the branches of the manuka shrub. The air had been tinged with the smell of sulphur since they had passed out of the denser forest, but now it grew stronger still. One minute the area was sparsely forested but normal in appearance, the next they were in hell.

  The Valley of Regrets had been well named. Paige was glad to be able to examine it without fear of ending up there permanently. Directly in front of her the ground bubbled like a witch's cauldron; to her right the scorched grass gave way to a spurting stream of water, not a geyser, but certainly not a spring like any she'd ever seen, either. The path seemed to wind to her left, but when she took a step in that direction, Adam held her back.

  "I wouldn't." He reached down and lifted a long branch that was lying on the ground beside him. "Watch." He drew it back over his shoulder like a spear, then let it fly. It landed on the "path" she'd planned to take and lodged with the hissing noise of an overheated radiator.

  "Lovely spot. Just right for a picnic." Paige tried to suppress a shiver but didn't succeed.

  "You were right over there." He pointed to a tree on the other side of the bubbling ground. "Actually, you were fairly safe. The only logical way for you to go would have been back over that hill, around through those trees and out of the thermals."

  "Why don't I feel vastly relieved?"

  "Because you're an intelligent woman."

  She knew she hadn't shown much intelligence the day she had tried to explore by herself. "I was warned people have died in here."

  "It's a warning to keep in mind. All the thermal areas have their dangers. Scalding mud, poison gas."

  "Gas?"

  Adam took an audible breath. "Smell the sulphur in the air? That's hydrogen sulphide, five times as toxic as carbon monoxide and almost as lethal as cyanide."

  Paige wanted to hold her nose. "Why are we still alive, then?"

  "It's safe in this proportion. Concentrated, it can kill in minutes. Sulphide's denser than oxygen, so it hugs the ground, accumulating in hollows close to its source. Excavations, poorly designed swimming pools, houses without adequate under-floor ventilation."

  "Air that's dangerous to breathe, ground that steams under your feet. It's a surprise to me that anyone settled here."

  "I imagine it's a surprise that you've got a fight on your hands for this piece of ground, too."

  "It is." Paige tried to figure out what to do next. "If we can't go straight, and we can't go right or left, where do we go?"

  "We're going right. Do you mind getting wet?"

  "I mind getting scalded."

  "It's more like a hot shower. Come on. Just stay right behind me and do what I do."

  The spurting spring emptied into a small, bubbling pond. There was a narrow pathway between the two, and, as Adam had predicted, they did get wet from the resulting spray, but the water was comfortably warm. "Why does the pond bubble, then, if the water feeding into it isn't hot?" Paige asked when Adam had led her to a rocky clearing.

  "The pond's really fed by a hot spring beneath it."

  "And is that what made the mud bubble back there?"

  "Mud pools form when steam and gas are released under a mixture of rainwater and mud created by reaction of the rock with acidic fumes. When the weather's been dry, the mud forms steep-sided cones, and when it's wet, as it has been lately, the mud looks like lakes of lava." Adam reached out and wiped a drop of water off the tip of Paige's nose. "In the bigger, really spectacular boiling mud pools, you can see both, and the activity is even more dramatic than this one."

  "Is the whole area this bizarre?"

  "Some more, some less. It's probably the parts that seem normal that are the most dangerous, because they seduce you into believing you're safe. And you're never safe here."

  Paige wondered if Adam was trying to scare her into abandoning her quest for the mauri. "Not even if you know the area as well as you do?"

  "Not if you take it for granted. Things can change rapidly in a thermal area. Do you know about the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886?"

  Paige shook her head.

  "I brought some scones for breakfast. There's a pretty little pool not too far from here. Let's go sit there and I'll tell you about it."

  Paige had known that Adam regarded the thermals as something special to his heritage, but she'd had no idea he would find them so personally fascinating. He had grown up here, but still the bizarre landscape seemed as interesting to him as it was to her. So interesting, in fact, that he was forgetting, at least momentarily, to hide his enthusiasm. She wondered if this unguarded Adam was the Adam other people saw, or if this was just one of the rare times in his life when he felt free to be himself.

  She followed him along the rock-strewn path, stopping once to comment on yellowish smoke rising between two large boulders.

  "Fumaroles," he explained. "Hell's chimneys. You'll see more than a few today."

  The pool was a bright, clear green, and at Adam's encouragement, Paige trailed her fingers through the water. It was icy cold. Pongas, medium-sized, palmlike trees with lush fern branches, lined the far side, and it was easy to forget that they were relaxing in an area of incredible geological anomalies.

  Adam took napkin-wrapped scones out of his small backpack and handed one to Paige. Hot tea from a vacuum bottle followed, along with juicy oranges. She settled comfortably on the wide strip of grass leading down to the pool and waited for him to join her. He draped himself in front of her with perfectly coordinated masculine grace. Against her will, she thought of their kiss on her front porch and wondered what it would be like to have Adam kiss her in earnest. He had made it clear she would never know, and for a moment she let herself feel disappointment.

  She tried to shake the feeling with small talk. "This isn't the pool you were talking about swimming in, was it?"

  "Not unless you want to turn blue. You'd freeze."

  "You could revive me over a fumarole."

  He laughed, watching with fascination as her small white teeth severed a section of orange. "What do you think of all this so far?"

  "I'm impressed." She waited, but when he didn't say anything she decided to take a risk. "I don't like knowing I have any control over what's going to happen to this place. No one should own the thermals. They should own themselves."

  "No one ever really owns the land. We say, 'Whatungarongaro he tangata, toitu he kainga.' People pass away, but places still remain. Long after you and I are gone, the thermals will still be here, unless they're destroyed by careless usage."

  In more ways than one, they were on dangerous ground. Paige changed the subject. "Tell me about Mount Tarawera."

  Adam tried to shake off the feeling that he should pull Paige into his arms and dispense with small talk. He had known it was going to be hard to spend this time around her; he hadn't known that he would find everything she did provocative. An expressive sweep of her hand sent his blood pressure higher; her tongue darting out to lick drops of juice from her bottom lip was almost too much to bear. Apparently his long-enforced celibacy was taking a greater toll than he had ever imagined.

  Paige watched fire kindle in Adam's eyes, and her own response was immediate. She tried to tell herself that what she felt was the classic rebound syndrome. She couldn't possibly be over Granger this soon; her attraction to Adam was just a need to feel alive again. Even as the thoughts went through her head, her heart began to pound.

  Adam watched a slow flush warm her skin. Her lashes swept down as she reached for another orange slice, and he knew she had looked away because she, too, was fighting for control.

  "Do you know what a volcano is?" he asked in a low voice.

  "Vaguely," she said, her gaze focused on the orange.

  "I understand them intimately," he said with a derisive laugh. "The heat, and the unbearable pressure, and, finally, the explosion."

  Paige lifted h
er head and reluctantly met his eyes. She could read the heat and the unbearable pressure in the inky depths.

  Adam damned himself for letting his composure slip away. He forced himself to sound nonchalant. "Have you ever heard of the pink and white terraces?"

  Grasping the orange slice, she turned away from him to gaze at the water. "No. Should I have?"

  "They weren't too far from here. Once they were considered the eighth wonder of the world." Adam's eyes lingered on the proud curve of Paige's neck, the tension in her shoulders. He went on because it was all he could do. "The terraces were formed from sinter, a precipitate of silica. In this case, the sinter was deposited in steps. Thousands of tourists visited every year before Mount Tara-wera erupted and buried the terraces. As a consolation prize, an eight hundred foot deep hot lake was formed. The village of Te Wairoa was buried, too, and a hundred and fifty-three people lost their lives."

  Paige turned back to him, her face innocent of expression. "A tragedy."

  "They've uncovered parts of the village, and you can take a tour of it. It's a lesson on taking anything for granted."

  "Could something like that happen here?"

  "It's unlikely anything quite that spectacular could. But nothing ever stays the same. The thermals are alive. I've watched them change since I was a boy. And just when Jeremy begins to know them, they'll change again."

  Paige unwrapped her scone and began to eat, washing down bites with hot tea. Somewhere overhead a bird sang, and in the distance she could hear the sound of rushing water. She concentrated on everything except Adam.

  Adam watched Paige ignore him, and, like everything else about her, it fascinated him. He knew he had become obsessed with her, an obsession that would lead to nothing except pain for both of them. And yet each time he drew back from her, it seemed to bring them closer.

  Everything seemed to bring them closer.