Page 20

“Pringles, I’m going to need you to wake up.”

Rafa shook Miri’s shoulders. He’d let her sleep way longer than she had asked, but she’d needed it, as evidenced by the fact that he was having a hard time waking her. It was still pitch dark. But they couldn’t wait any longer. His father was coming, he could hear them.

“Miriam!” He shook even harder as he called her name in a whispered panic.

She stirred. Under any other circumstance, he would have thought she looked sweet. But not right now. Not when they needed to get going, and fast.

“Mmm. What is it?” she murmured. “Is it my turn to keep watch?” Her voice was sleepy. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe for the rest of the night. Let her sleep. Let her dream. But they didn’t have time.

“We have to get going. They’re coming.”

As if his words sent a bolt of lightning through her body, Miri zapped awake. She sat straight up. Her eyes were wide.

“Where?”

“There,” he whispered as he pointed off into the distance. They were still far enough away, but they were getting close. Their voices grew louder. His father shouting at his crew to hurry. He’d recognize his father’s voice anywhere, even hundreds of yards away, deep in the Amazon rainforest.

“Come on, we have to go,” Rafa said, taking her hand.

They grabbed their things and crept through the rainforest, careful not to make any noise. With Rafa’s father’s team close behind them, they couldn’t use flashlights, having to rely only on moonlight, which was sparse through the trees. They moved much slower than they had earlier in the day. Rafa’s heart pounded. He had no clue what his father would do to him if they caught up to them.

They stopped a few times so she could check her compass. They had probably gotten far enough away from Vautour, but Rafa still blocked the light from her flashlight anyway as she hunkered behind a rock or a tree.

“This way,” she whispered, taking him by the hand and pulling him in the direction of a large Wimba tree.

The giant trees lined the trail in two tight rows, almost like they’d been placed there, planted perhaps, rather than grown in the wild. The space between the trees was almost like a road. A road full of roots and vines that they had to climb over. But nothing else was in their way. They moved as quickly as they could over the roots. It would have been much easier in the daytime. But as he found out after spending the last week and a half with Miri, taking the easy way wasn’t in her vocabulary.

They neared the end of the trail of Wimba trees. There was a clearing. A clearing that led to a bridge made of vines, hovering over a deep ravine.

“I think this is it,” she said. “The bridge.”

He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Her smile instantly calmed his nerves.

“Come on, let’s cross.”

“This looks like something straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ,” she said, inspecting the sturdiness of the vines driven deep into the ground.

“I sure hope not. That would mean not just a bunch of bad guys behind us, but a float of crocodiles below.”

“I think we’re more likely to see black caimans,” she said, grinning.

“So in other words, this is exactly like Temple of Doom .”

“How about you go on out there and start jumping around like Short Round and let’s see what happens?” she joked.

“Do I need to change your nickname to smartass?”

“Nah. I’m good with Pringles.”

He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “All right then, Pringles, let’s do this. I’ll go first.”

The setting may have come straight out of a movie, but the bridge itself was nothing like the one in Temple of Doom . This bridge consisted of just three thick vines, almost in the shape of a triangle. Two for handholds, one to walk on, all being held together with other, thinner vines along the way. It looked sturdy enough, but it still was really only a bunch of vines wrapped together out in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. And was probably hundreds of years old…

Rafa took one step out onto the bridge, steadying himself with his hands on the “rails,” and then he shook. The bridge wobbled, but it didn’t fall. Well…here goes nothing.

“Hold on to your potatoes!” she called out with a laugh, channeling her inner Short Round.

He shook his head and laughed, then took another step out, shuffling his feet along the vines. Slowly, he moved across until he was hovering over the middle of the ravine. There was no going back now.

“Wait until I get to the end,” he called back to Miri. Who knew if it could hold both of their weight?

Rafa looked ahead at the remaining span of the bridge and back again. This is long. Then he glanced down. Really fucking long.

The bridge drooped under his weight, but he kept going. Almost there. Hmm…what’s that weird groaning sound?

“Do you hear that?” he called to her.

“Yeah, what is it? Do you think it’s an animal?”

“I don’t know. It’s like a creaking. Like…” He paused. Oh no. The vines. The vines coming unwound. “Shit! The bridge. It’s going to collapse.”

“Rafa!” she screamed.

The bridge sagged farther. He only had seconds, really. The vines started to unravel, pulling out of the ground from the far end where Miri stood. He realized that he had only one option: to keep going. He scrambled as far as he could toward the opposite end of the bridge before it gave way from under him, leaving him hanging from the vines against the side of the ravine. He hit the rock face with a thud but held on tightly.

“Rafa!” Miri screamed out again. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he grunted as he used all his strength to pull himself to the top of the cliff. Once he made it over the edge, he lay flat on his back and looked up at the sky, panting. That was close.

He turned back to look at Miri on the other side of the ravine. Well, damn. This just made things a lot more complicated.

“Stay there,” he called out. “I’ll look for another way over.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find any more bridges.”

“Maybe we can climb down.”

Even from the other side of the ravine, however, he could see the face that Miri was making: it was a terrible idea. Besides, the cliff walls were steep. And making it to the bottom meant crossing the river where black caimans were a real possibility.

“We don’t have time for that,” she said. “What about that?” She pointed over to a tree that had half fallen over the ravine. The trunk didn’t cover the distance, however.

“You’re not going to push that over the rest of the way, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, I think I can make it.”

“Make it? Pringles, what are you—”

He didn’t have time to finish his question before Miri was in a full-out sprint, running up the trunk of the fallen tree.

Goddammit. Why doesn’t she ever listen?

But as she reached the top of the trunk, she lifted her arms, grabbing on to a vine that hung from a tree on the other side. And like she’d practiced so many times, she swung from the vine and landed feet first at the edge of the ravine with a thud, like a fucking superstar.

“Let’s see Vautour and his crew do that!” she said with a wide grin.

He ran over and kissed her. “Please tell me you don’t do things this risky when you’re back home.”

“Would it change anything if I did?”

Rafa smiled. “Absolutely not.” He kissed her again, this time with more passion than the last. God, I love this woman.

The realization hit him like a refreshing blast of warm, tropical air. He could spend a lifetime kissing her. A new life that he wanted to start as soon as they got the hell out of this jungle.

“Look, here,” she said, locating a stone with a circular indentation at the edge of the cliff where the vine bridge had ended. She placed the medallion in the spot, and the arrow pointed northwest. “Come on. We’ve got to be getting close to the porta do corac?o da árvore.” The last landmark.

As they distanced themselves from the ravine, they pulled out their flashlights. With the vine bridge destroyed, it would be hard for Vautour and his team to make it over to the other side. Miri was right. Rafa doubted his father would be swinging from vines the way she had. It would take them a long time to cross, if they were able to at all.

The only landmark remaining on the list was the entrance: a door through a tree. They kept straight, consulting the compass to ensure they were going the right direction. Climbing over rocks. Dragging their feet through muck. Ferns whipping them in the face as they tried passing through.

They held their hands in front of them, swatting away leaves and branches as they made their way deeper into the forest, when suddenly, a thick wall of foliage blocked their passage. An impenetrable wall. There was no skirting around it. No getting through. This wall was made of thick tree trunks, spanning as far as the eye could see.

Miri ran her hand along the lush covering, looking for a way through before she stopped at one tree in particular. She ran her hands along its thick bark. Tracing every curvature with her hand. Feeling it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. This one feels…different. Not like a tree. More like stone.”

She pushed on the tree, and it gave way.

A door.