Free Shadow Play by Katherine Sutcliffe Page A

perilously close to spilling as the animals inside scattered in alarm. The old man rattled unintelligibly at Sarah, and when he shoved his way around her, Kan hurried to usher him away, berating the old Indian for his lack of manners. Only after the two had merged with the crowd did she turn back to Kane, intent on demanding his answer. She'd had enough of his indecision. She was sorry she had come here, and as the raucous cries of the shoppers rose to an earsplitting pitch, her aggravation intensified.
    Due to the swarms of people around them, Sarah was momentarily separated from the American, and it was all she could do to elbow her way toward him again. That was when her eye caught on the features of a man in the distance. Standing several yards behind Morgan, he appeared and disappeared in the flood of people between them. Only when he turned his head to speak to his shorter companion, revealing the jagged scar on his cheek, did she realize who he was.
    The American grabbed her arm and attempted to move her out of the stream of traffic. "Look," he said, "I'm sorry about your fiance." He raised his voice and spoke louder.
    "But the Amazon is no place for a man, let alone a woman. Now, why don't you run along home and write your fiance" a nice long letter explaining—"
    "Mr. Kane."
    The men began moving through the crowd, their eyes fixed on the American. There was something sinister about the taller man's sharp features, and the thin smile showing beneath his shaggy mustache sent a chill up Sarah's spine.
    "Mr. Kane," she repeated more urgently.
    Taking her hand, he slapped her ring into her palm and closed her fingers around it. His smile was unexpectedly tender as he said, "Chere, asking me to take you to Japura is a little like—"
    "Mr. Kane! Please! There are two men approaching you, and if you will only shut up long enough to hear me out, I will tell you that I saw them outside your house the night I came to visit you."
    His every muscle froze. Very slowly he straightened and, staring over her shoulder, said, "How many of them are there, did you say?"
    "Two."
    "What do they look like?"
    Doing her best to keep her eyes on his face and not allow them to drift toward the pair who were now no more than twenty feet away and closing fast, she replied, "One is tall and gaunt with a mustache and a scar."
    Morgan caught her arm and, turning her up the crowded alleyway, gave her a nudge that almost toppled her. ' 'Get lost,'' he ordered,' 'and don't come back. Ever. Under- stand me? Go home to your fiance' and his pretty butterflies and—"
    Someone screamed.
    Morgan ducked, grabbing Sarah as a volley of gunfire ripped through the fetid air, the staccato bursts reverberating among the myriad sounds of the bazaar. Cheers erupted from oblivious shoppers who believed that someone had set off fireworks. Others who'd witnessed the attack shrieked and scattered in all directions.
    Sarah hit die ground first, then Morgan, diving and rolling, grabbing her wrist and dragging her behind him even as he leapt back to his feet and began pushing his way through the crowd in search of a route of escape from King's assassins. By the time he banged against the first stack of wooden crates with his shoulder, he had removed his hunting knife from its scabbard.
    "What are you doing?" Sarah cried. "Kane, what in God's name is happening?"
    The stack of crates tumbled over, spilling chickens and roosters to the ground with high-pitched, frantic cackles and a flurry of white feathers. Someone began screaming obscenities over the melee as Morgan kicked several of the shattered boxes aside. Dragging Sarah with him, he began zigzagging down an alleyway despite the shoppers and vendors who were pressing in curiously.
    "Stop him!" the man with the gun cried to the onlookers.
    Morgan wove through the crowd using his elbows, cursing the idiots who had attempted to kill him during the peak shopping hour, when three quarters of Georgetown's residents were at