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Miri couldn’t imagine a single instance in her life when she’d need the skill of swinging from a vine and landing in a crouched position, but boy did it feel great to stick that landing.

Almost as good as it felt having Rafa’s hands on her body.

When was the last time she’d experienced that warm, full-body tingling sensation? Had she ever experienced such a sensation?

After their jungle rendezvous, they eventually found their way back to Felix and Logan. Several hours had passed since Anissa, Dr. Quinn, and the rest of the crew had taken off, but it felt like they’d been out there for days. She glanced over at Rafa sitting beside Felix and Logan. Who was he? Where had he come from? In all her thirty-one years of life she’d never met someone she’d had such a strong physical attraction to as Rafa. With his looks, surely she wasn’t the only person drawn to him like a magnet. It was hard not to stare at him. Wonder about his life story. Imagine what he looked like with his shirt off.

Probably had an eight-pack hidden under there. Firm. Hard. Soft to the touch. She pictured her hands running along the ridges of his shoulders, slowly making their way to his pecs with a smattering of dark hair before traveling down to the ripple of his abs. He’d flinch at the delicate glide of her fingertips, but only for a moment. Stepping into her, he’d press his warm flesh against her, placing his hands behind her back and pulling her in. He’d stare down at her as he lifted her chin. His eyes would shift from her lips to her hungry gaze, waiting to taste him. His mouth would open as he leaned in, and—

“You all right over there?” Felix called out.

Miri jumped, realizing she’d been staring intently at Rafa. He eyed her curiously, then tossed her a mischievous smile as if he could read her thoughts. No. That wasn’t possible.

Was it? God, she hadn’t said anything out loud, had she?

“What do you mean? Of course I’m fine,” she told Felix, calming her voice as best she could.

“If you’re worried about the van coming back to get us, I’m sure they’ll be back soon, that’s all,” Felix said.

She released the breath she’d be holding, thankful that she hadn’t been over there acting out the scene playing in her head. Miri looked up at the pink-and-purple sky as it quickly vanished, taken over by a creeping darkness. Darn it. She’d hoped the other van would make it back before sunset. It should have only taken them five or six hours to get Dr. Quinn to the hospital, drop the rest of the crew at the port to catch the boat to the resort, and make it back to pick up Miri and the others. At this rate, it might have been faster—and easier—to take a boat from Manacapuru up the Rio Negro and onward up the Rio Branco. If that had actually been an option.

Without warning, Rafa stood from his position between Felix and Logan, who’d already resumed their conversation, and meandered over to Miri before plopping on a log beside her. Oh God. What is he doing? What is he going to ask me?

“What?” she asked.

“What, what?” he retorted.

“What are you doing?” She eyed him suspiciously, trying to figure out his motive.

“You’re here all by yourself. I came over to keep you company…”

It had been ages since a man had kept her company .

“You’re not actually worried about the van, are you?” he asked.

She shook her head and pulled out the satellite phone from a bag alongside her. “They would have called by now if there was an issue.” She shook the phone as if it proved there wasn’t a problem. Because, sure, a little wave solved everything.

“Got any snacks in there?” he asked, leaning over and peeking in.

She pulled the bag away and smiled. “Finished your M&M’s already?”

“Nope. I’m saving them for an emergency. Got any more Pringles?”

“I told you, the Pringles are mine.”

“I know, but I’m a huge Pringles fan.” His words hung in the air, and suddenly she wasn’t sure they were talking about snacks anymore.

“You are?”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmured, pressing his lips together.

“What kind?” she asked, staring at his mouth.

“It doesn’t matter. Ever since yesterday at the airport, however, I can’t seem to get them out of my mind.”

She gulped as her eyes shifted all over his face, though his eyes never left hers.

“What…what is it that you like about them?” she asked.

He shrugged. “What’s not to like about them? It’s no ordinary chip.”

“Some might say they are kind of boring.”

He laughed. “Boring? Hardly. So are you going to give me a taste?”

Miri’s eyes grew wide. “Here?”

“Why not here?”

“I mean, as in right now? In front of Felix and Logan?” she asked, shifting her gaze between them.

Rafa furrowed his brow. “Why would they care about us having a snack? Unless you don’t want to share,” he then added in a whisper.

Miri’s face turned bright red. No, purple. He was talking about actual Pringles, not her. And now he likely thought she was an even bigger weirdo than he’d probably thought before.

She opened her mouth to backpedal, when the satellite phone rang in her hands. “I’ve got to—” she started, waving the phone at him before giving up entirely on trying to produce an excuse and answering the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, Miri. It’s Anissa.”

Please tell me you have good news.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Anissa continued.

Shit.

“What is it?” Miri asked. Might as well get on with it.

“I’m unable to find anyone who can make it out to you tonight. The earliest I have found is someone who can pick you up tomorrow morning,” Anissa said.

“Tomorrow?!” Miri blurted out. Rafa, Felix, and Logan all shot worried glances at her. Maybe they should have crammed into the other van with as much equipment as it could have reasonably held.

“I know. I’ve tried everything, though,” Anissa said.

“Why can’t you come back with the other van?” Miri asked.

“Because when I told the car company owner, Carlos, what happened, he refused to let us take the van again. He said he doesn’t want to chance us messing up another vehicle.”

“Well, what about another company?” Miri asked. “There has to be someone who can get us.”

“By the time I called others, word had gotten around. Those who hadn’t already talked to Carlos called us ‘os cacadores de tesouros.’ Treasure hunters.”

Miri hated that term. The archaeologists she knew were scholars. Historians. Preservationists. They weren’t in it for a quick buck—the cost of graduate school alone thwarted any argument to the contrary. But Miri had lost count of the number of times someone had asked her about searching for treasure. A lost civilization wasn’t treasure. It was a key to the past.

A clue to life’s greatest mystery: Where had humans come from?

Miri’s search for knowledge and the answers to that question had led her to this field. The last thing she was looking for was gold to line her pockets. Anyone who thought otherwise clearly wasn’t familiar with the cost of student loans.

“No one seems to want to help us,” Anissa continued. “They kept saying they didn’t want to get in trouble with the protectors, or something like that. Even the company I did find is charging us quadruple their normal price. I’ll keep trying to find someone sooner, but chances are looking slim, so you might want to get comfortable.”

Miri sighed. It wasn’t ideal, but they had food and supplies. They could make it work if they really had to.

Which, as it turned out, they did.

“How is Dr. Quinn?” Miri asked.

“His hand is broken, or as the doctor said, ‘shattered.’ There’s no way he can continue this expedition,” Anissa said. “Plus, he’s got a serious concussion. He was talking all sorts of nonsense. Saying he needed to call his boss about the unfortunate turn of events or he’d lose his house. He was begging me for his phone, even though I told him I’d already let Mr. Larity and Drs. Mejía and Matthews know what had happened. Honestly, I can’t even make sense of half the words he’s saying between his slurred speech and talking about agents and bad guys coming after him.”

“Bad guys?” Miri repeated, wrinkling her nose.

The others’ ears perked up again.

“I know, right?” Anissa said, almost with a laugh. “He clearly hit his head harder than we thought. You would have thought he was talking about the plot for the next Indiana Jones movie. They had to sedate him so he’d calm down.”

Anissa continued talking, but she might as well have been speaking in Portuguese. Miri’s mind went in circles, from Dr. Quinn to inventorying how much food they had to sleeping arrangements—which then led her mind straight to Rafa, who was watching her intently.

“—and so I’ll call you when I have a better estimate of what time they’ll be showing up tomorrow,” Anissa said, snapping Miri back to reality. “You’ll be okay, right?”

“Yes, I’m sure we’ll survive. I mean, how much trouble can we really get into out here?” Miri asked.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Anissa responded. “It’s the Amazon, Miri, and we’ve already had a few mishaps today.”

Good point.

She hung up with Anissa and fidgeted with the phone in her hands for a moment, trying to think of a way to put a positive spin on their situation.

“So…I take it you already know what I’m going to say?” Miri said, tugging on her earlobes.

“We’re stuck here overnight,” Felix said, very matter-of-factly.

Miri scrunched her face and gave them a shaky nod. “But it’s not all bad. At least this way we’ll get to know the rainforest a little better,” she said with an upbeat flourish. “Did you know the Amazon is home to over two point five million…” Miri let her voice trail off as Logan and Felix stared blankly at her. Okay, so maybe they weren’t interested in getting to know the insect species up close and personal.

“What are we supposed to do out here all night?” Logan asked.

Miri fiddled with the phone some more. “Hopefully we can find a couple of books or a pack of cards in someone’s bag to keep us entertained?” she said.

Logan sighed, then turned to Felix and said, “Let’s gather some firewood.” The two of them headed into the forest, leaving Miri and Rafa alone again.

“What were you saying about bad guys?” Rafa asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Miri said, tucking the satellite phone back in her bag. “Anissa says Dr. Quinn is delirious, is all.”

“Delirium doesn’t sound like nothing,” Rafa said, lifting his brows.

“You know what I mean,” she responded, waving it off.

“Not really. Is Quinn okay?” he asked.

“He’s definitely got a concussion, and his hand is broken, so he won’t be coming back. But otherwise everything is fine.”

“You have an interesting definition of ‘fine,’?” Rafa said, tilting his head. “Not sure I’d classify being stuck out in the middle of the Amazon rainforest with a broken-down van as everything being fine.”

“It’s only for one night. I’m sure we’re not in any danger,” Miri said.

“ Are you sure about that? Bad guys? Do you even know anything about Quinn?”

The chirps, hoots, and howls from the forest seemingly stopped as Corrie’s warning popped into Miri’s head. Tell no one about this .

Surely Corrie didn’t mean Dr. Quinn. He was a renowned archaeologist. A legit scholar.

Wasn’t he?

Fuck. She needed to know.

“I’ll be back,” Miri said, hopping up from the ground and heading over to the van without waiting for a response from Rafa so she could read Corrie’s letter again. See if it had any other clues.

She rounded the van once Rafa couldn’t see her, then she ducked inside, digging through her bag for Corrie’s note. Vautour has spies everywhere…There’s no telling who he might have gotten to.

Dammit. No clues.

Miri carefully folded the paper and tucked it back into her satchel. With a sigh, Miri scanned her surroundings as if this broken-down hunk of junk or the rainforest would give her a sign. You’re being ridiculous , she thought, rolling her eyes at herself.

Bad guys? Seriously?

Shaking her head at her gullibility, Miri started to back out of the van when she saw it.

Dr. Quinn’s bag.

His bag must have fallen on the floor during the collision. And with all the ruckus to get him to the hospital, it must have gotten overlooked.

Maybe Miri could take a quick peek inside.

Usually Miri wasn’t one to go snooping into other people’s belongings. Something she’d learned the hard way at fourteen years old when she thought it would be funny to look through her older sister’s diary and read, God, why is Miri so WEIRD?

Capital W-E-I-R-D weird.

There was nothing like reading that to make Miri feel like even more of an outcast than she already was. She and her sister eventually came to understand each other now that they were adults, but, oof. Miri could have done without the almost two decades of that voice in the back of her head.

So did she truly want to know what was in Dr. Quinn’s bag? Did she really need confirmation that all this talk about bad guys and spies was really the ramblings of a concussed fool?

Unless…unless Dr. Quinn had something to hide.

Miri scurried between the seats to retrieve his bag, reaching under the bench and giving it a quick yank. But it didn’t budge.

Crap.

It was stuck on something.

She crawled under the seat, stretching her arm around the strap of his pack. Tugging. Pulling. Grunting as she wrenched it in her hands.

“What are you doing?” Rafa said from behind her, causing her to startle.

“Nothing,” she said as she quickly let go of the bag and lifted her head, hitting it underneath the seat. “Ouch!”

But now she couldn’t move. Dammit. She was stuck on something.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No…I…I’m stuck,” she said, twisting her arm around atop her head and trying to wriggle herself free. “My hair…ow.”

What a disaster.

“Here, stop moving,” he said, inching into the van beside her. “Let me help you.”

“It’s okay, I can get it,” she yowled.

“You’re making it worse.”

His body snaked beside hers. There was barely enough room for Miri on her own. With Rafa in the mix, they were like a couple of sardines in a tin can. If the twisting of Miri’s hair weren’t causing extreme pain, she might have actually enjoyed this.

He finally made his way under the seat face-to-face with her. “I see what it is. Your hair is caught around this metal thing. Hold still and I can probably get it,” he said, lifting his hands into her hair.

She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, scrunching her face to keep from yelping.

“What were you doing under here?” he asked as his fingers plucked at pieces of her hair. “And don’t say nothing,” he quickly followed up, flashing her a gentle but telling smile.

“I was…I was trying to get Dr. Quinn’s bag.”

Rafa wrinkled his brow, then tipped his head to check for Dr. Quinn’s belongings before turning back to her. “What’s in there?” he asked, continuing to work on her hair.

Miri opened her mouth to reply, when Rafa pulled on a piece of hair too tightly and she hissed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve almost got it, though.”

For a moment, Miri debated not answering Rafa’s question. But clearly she’d been snooping. There was no hiding it.

“I was checking to see if Dr. Quinn had any clues,” she said.

Rafa stopped for a moment, eyeing her curiously, before continuing again. “Clues about what? About the location of the Moon City?”

Miri shrugged, at least as best she could. “I don’t know. Bad guys, I guess? Now that I’m saying it out loud, though, I realize how ridiculous that sounds.”

“It’s no more ridiculous than thinking you saw a warthog in the Amazon,” he said, giving her a wink. “There, I think I got it.”

Miri lowered her head and rubbed the spot where she’d been stuck, still tender from the pulling. “Thanks,” she said.

“No problem. Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Here,” he said, reaching over and massaging his fingers through her hair. His fingertips danced along her scalp, sending a tingling sensation throughout her body. “Better?”

“Mm-hmm,” she purred, not realizing how dreamy she sounded. “I mean, yes. Yes, it’s better. Thank you.”

He smiled at her, then tucked his arms underneath his head as they lay on their sides staring at each other.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“What are you thinking about?”

What was she thinking about? She was thinking about the way his fingers felt between the strands of her hair. How dangerously close his body was to hers and the fact that he wasn’t doing anything to expand that distance. How this was the third time today their bodies had made contact.

All those things swirled through her mind, though lingering in the back of it—and in her peripheral vision—was Dr. Quinn’s pack.

“Do you think Dr. Quinn was up to something?” she asked.

He tipped his head a bit to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Anissa said something about how he was looking for his phone and was going to lose his house. I know he has a concussion and all, but something isn’t sitting right with me.”

“I’m not sure. Personally, I didn’t know anything about Quinn before this trip. It does seem a little strange, though. Maybe this is all a sign or something,” he said.

“What do you mean, a sign?” Miri asked.

“Like that we shouldn’t be out here. Maybe this is the Moon City’s way of telling us it doesn’t want to be found.”

“What?” Miri said, shaking her head. “No, that’s not what I’m getting at.”

“Let’s face it, Pringles. We’re not exactly off on the right foot here.”

“We need to get to base camp is all, and then everything will be back on track.”

Rafa opened his mouth in an apparent protest when the hum of a vehicle in the distance caught all their attention.

“Do you hear that?” Miri asked.

No way. No way could they be that lucky.

They twisted and turned to pull themselves out from the van—though not without Miri noticing how firm Rafa’s abs were when she wriggled out from the tight space—and they walked up to the road to see where the noise came from at the same time Logan and Felix emerged from the forest. A white pickup truck caked in mud came barreling along the road right toward them.

They waved their arms to get the truck’s attention, as if it could miss them. Four people on the side of the road deep in the Amazon wasn’t an ordinary occurrence. Thankfully, the truck slowed down and pulled up beside them. Miri prepared to butcher her way through some Portuguese to explain their situation, when the tinted window rolled down to reveal two white guys in baseball caps—one Red Sox and one Nationals.

Odd.

“Everyone all right?” Red Sox asked.

Americans.

“Um, yeah. I mean, no, not really. Our van,” Miri said, thumbing back to the van as if it wasn’t already obvious. “It got stuck.”

The men craned their necks to peek. “Anyone on their way to get you?”

“Not until tomorrow,” Miri said.

“We’re stuck out here,” Logan chimed in.

“Any chance you got a winch?” Rafa asked.

“Nah, man. Sorry,” Red Sox responded. “Not much out this way, though. Where are you headed?”

Miri hesitated for a moment before answering. “To an eco-hotel downriver from Caracaraí.”

“Well, hot damn. If that isn’t a coincidence. We’re heading that way ourselves,” Red Sox said.

Well, that was a coincidence. Miri glanced over at Rafa, noticing his eyes narrowing at the men in the truck. Clearly his wheels were spinning.

“I looked. There aren’t any ferries that go up that way from here,” Miri said.

“We chartered a boat. Got a local guide waiting to take us upriver past Caracaraí. If you want, you can come with us,” Nationals said.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Boys’ trip,” Nationals said with a wide toothy grin. “A little private Amazon tour.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Boston, originally. Though this one had to go and move to DC. Traitor,” Red Sox said, tossing a sarcastic glance at Nationals. “By the way, I’m Hunter and this is my buddy Kevin.”

Kevin waved two fingers in a salute near the brim of his baseball cap.

“So what say you? The river’s not too far, but we gotta get going before the boat decides to take our money and ditch us,” Hunter continued. “We’d planned to make it to Caracaraí by midday tomorrow, so we can drop you off on the way.”

“I say heck yes,” Logan said.

“Hold on,” Miri said, turning to her crew. “We can’t leave our equipment.”

“Toss it in the bed,” Kevin said. “You can squeeze in in the back seat here,” he said, pointing to the extended cab.

“Sounds great,” Logan said, rushing over to the van to start unloading the equipment.

“Sweet,” Hunter said, throwing the truck in park and hopping out to help.

“What do you think?” Miri whispered to Rafa as the others started loading the truck.

Rafa rubbed the back of his neck, turning his face so the others couldn’t see him speak. “I don’t know. Something about this feels off. A little too coincidental.”

“I was thinking that, too,” she said. “I guess it’s possible these guys are just your everyday Good Samaritans.”

“Is that really a thing? An everyday Good Samaritan?” Rafa asked, cautiously eyeing the others. “I mean, we haven’t seen a single vehicle the entire time we’ve been on this road. What if these are the bad guys Quinn was talking about?”

“Or what if this is a sign that we shouldn’t quit now? It’ll get us to base camp sooner than if we wait for the pickup tomorrow.”

And it would save the expedition the quadruple payment.

“All this nonsense about bad guys is getting to us, that’s all.” Right? She continued, “Besides, there’re four of us and only two of them.”

“Are you saying you can take them?” he asked, raising his brows.

“Are you saying that you can’t?” she retorted with a playful smile, trying her damnedest to bring a little levity to the situation.

“I don’t know, Pringles, but I really don’t want to find out the hard way,” he said, clearly not buying what she was selling. “I’ve got a bad feeling, is all.”

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t share the sentiment. But she’d played it safe her whole life and look where it got her: on a fast track to the archaeologist’s graveyard. The place where nobodies like her went to wither away cataloging artifacts in a crusty old basement while other archaeologists— real archaeologists—explored the world.

Archaeologists like Corrie.

WWCMD?

“Don’t worry,” Miri said to Rafa. “Like I said earlier. Everything will be fine.”