After settling Caitlyn into her hammock, Alex maneuvered her way into hers, then pulled the mosquito netting over her bed and secured its edges. She ached from head to toe; even her fingertips pulsed with weariness.
Stretching out on the damp hammock, she closed her eyes and tried to force herself to relax. Last night she had slept two or three hours, and she needed at least as much sleep tonight if she were to continue to function. Her muscles were still obeying, but on several occasions during the day she had tried to move one of her arms and discovered that it hung as limp as a noodle from its socket.
Ataxia—the inability to voluntarily coordinate muscles. Today, her arms, tomorrow, who knew?
Rest, Alex. Deep breaths. Think about the day, think about tomorrow, but relax as much as you can. Sleep will not come until your body and mind are at rest.
As always, her thoughts turned to the day just passed. After spending half the morning uselessly beating the shallow waters with a fishing pole, she had handed the stick to Lauren in order to join Caitlyn, Emma, and Deborah at the clearing, where the men were building the rafts. After the guys laid out a group of appropriately sized logs, under Bancroft’s direction the women took lengths of vine and wove them under and around each log, lashing each to its neighbor. The work had scraped and cut Alex’s fingers, but she’d gladly suffer the pain if Bancroft’s rafts carried them safely to Kenway’s healing tribe.
“I feel like we’re part of the Swiss Family Robinson,” Caitlyn had chirped, her face red as they worked in the equatorial sun.
“Get the sunscreen from my bag,” Alex interrupted. “Smear some on those freckles, will you? You’re going to be in severe pain if you don’t.”
At the water’s edge, Lauren squealed as something splashed in the shallows. “Help! Something’s in there!”
Deborah rolled her eyes. “That’s the point, Lauren. Whatever it is, we want it. Caiman, electric eel, fish, piranha—if it moves, spear it.”
“I am not about to spear one of those crocodile things.” Lauren marched toward them, then dropped her sharpened stick at Caitlyn’s bare feet. “Why don’t you try your luck, kid?”
Alex turned to face Carlton’s girlfriend. “She’s busy. But if you need something to do, you might look for some fruit. Kenway found bananas. If you look around, you might get lucky.”
The young woman raked her hand through her hair, then stalked off, but Alex knew she wouldn’t wander far from the group. Women like Lauren were ornamental around the office but useless when thrust into the real world . . .
Or an Amazonian rain shower. Without warning, bruised and swollen clouds swept over the lake; a moment later, spits of rain filled the rising wind. The touch of a breeze was odd enough, for winds rarely penetrated the canopied rainforest, but these gusts whipped the lake, coaxing the black waters into whitecaps.
A wave of wet heat swamped over their camp, then the sky opened and rain came down, erasing the world.
The women had retreated into a natural arbor where they huddled under the leaves of a giant elephant’s ear bush (Alocasia odora, Olsson later informed them) and resigned themselves to wetness. A few moments later, Kenway had come charging over like a lunatic, his dark hair turned into slick black ribbons by the rain, his eyes wide with something that might have been protective concern . . . and, unless her feminine instincts had completely atrophied, that concern had been directed particularly at her and Caitlyn.
Groaning, Alex turned onto her side in an attempt to derail that particular train of thought. Dealing with Caitlyn’s infatuation with the noble doctor would be difficult enough when the expedition ended. She would not—could not—afford to make things harder by encouraging an unrealistic relationship.
She felt a smile twitch the muscles at her cheek. He had looked . . . interesting, though. Like Natty Bumppo from The Last of the Mohicans, rising out of the wilderness to rescue the woman who’d won his heart.
No—she knocked her fist against her forehead. What was she thinking? Better to worry about survival, about her health, about her daughter. Maybe these fantasies were an undocumented aspect of her illness, part of a mental weakness too embarrassing to be reported.
Blowing out her cheeks, she stretched along her hammock and felt the wetness of her socks against the fabric. Water could be hard to manage in the field. One of her colleagues had once gone on a jungle expedition and washed her clothing in a stream. Afterward, she made the mistake of hanging her wet clothes on a bush to dry. While she worked, flies landed on the wet cloth and deposited their tiny eggs amid the woven strands. Days later, the researcher had been wearing her shirt when the larvae hatched. The larvae then burrowed into folds of the researcher’s skin, leaving her to later wonder how she had come to be intimately infested with maggots.
Alex rubbed her hand over her face in an effort to scrub the distasteful memory away. Such realities were inescapable in the tropics. Maggots and their ilk were probably one of the reasons natives found it easier to wear no clothing at all.
“Still awake, Alexandra?”
Kenway’s deep voice startled her out of her reverie. When her eyes flew open, she saw him standing a few feet from her hammock, his form silhouetted by the dying campfire.
“Good grief, Kenway!” She pushed herself up onto an elbow. “If I was sleepy, I’m certainly not now. You almost scared me into adrenaline overload.”
“Sorry.” He stepped closer, daring to lean one hand on the tree supporting her hammock. “I saw your hammock moving and thought you might be awake.”
She stared past him into the darkness. “What’s the matter? Something wrong, or are you experiencing temporary insomnia?”
He laughed softly. “I think I could sleep standing up—which is why I’m walking around. I did lie down, but Bancroft came by to ask me to take the first watch. He’s gone out to look for Chavez.”
The confession strummed a shiver from Alex. Chavez had gone out to hunt for game about an hour before sunset. It was now an hour past.
Her heart began to thump almost painfully in her chest.
Don’t panic.
With an effort, she turned her thousand-yard stare toward Kenway. “Are you worried about him?”
“I’m afraid I am. I treated Ya-ree, remember? Someone from some tribe in these parts speared the fellow. I don’t think the natives around here take kindly to intruders.” He gentled his tone. “But Chavez is an expert, right? While I wouldn’t be too keen about roaming around in the dark, he knows the jungle. And he was carrying a very big gun.”
Alex propped her head on her hand, her anxiety slipping away as she stared at Kenway through the mosquito netting. The rising moon was brighter tonight, very nearly full, and backlit his profile when he turned to survey the camp.
Caitlyn was right, the doctor was easy on the eyes . . . and, despite Alex’s previous doubts, apparently genuinely concerned for her and her daughter.
Perhaps concern wasn’t a bad thing.
“Thanks for the bananas today,” she said, intending her words as an olive branch. “I noticed you slipped Caitlyn an extra one when no one was looking. While that wasn’t strictly fair, I appreciate your concern for a growing girl.”
He turned, his smile shining through the darkness. “Maybe I was hoping she’d share it with her mother.”
“Well.” She looked away, grateful for the cloak of shadows about her hammock. His words roused feelings she had thought long dead, but she couldn’t afford to entertain them.
“That’s not exactly a compliment,” she said, edging her voice lest he get the wrong idea. “You seem to be telling me I look tired and run down.”
“You do.” He paused to sip from the water bottle in his hand. “I think we all do, actually. In a few more days, I suspect we’ll all begin to look as wild as the natives on those National Geographic television specials.”
A moment of silence stretched between them, then he lifted his bottle, positioning it in a sliver of moonlight. “Have you noticed the water in this lake? It’s not muddy like the Amazon. It’s as dark as a good cup of tea.”
She pretended to shudder. “I can’t get used to drinking brown water. But perhaps if I think of it as coffee . . .”
She was about to ask if he’d packed any scones or clotted cream in his gear when a startled scream broke the stillness. Hammocks swung, mosquito nets lifted, and Bancroft spilled out of the shadows with his weapon ready.
Pushing the netting away from her bed, Alex looked to Caitlyn’s hammock. Her daughter’s eyes shone through the fine mesh.
“Caitlyn, stay in bed.”
“What’s happening, Mom?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll let Mr. Bancroft find out.”
Immediately Bancroft, Carlton, and Kenway sprinted toward the source of the sound. Alex watched them go, a creeping uneasiness at the base of her spine.
“What’s going on?” Lauren’s voice had risen to a shrill pitch.
“We don’t know,” Deborah replied calmly. “I’m sure Bancroft will tell us everything in a few minutes.”
They waited, the seconds stretching themselves thin, and Alex strained to listen through the night sounds. She heard the usual rustlings and chewings and the flutter of greenery on the screen above her head, followed by the rumble of men’s voices and the swishing of tall grass.
She exhaled in relief a moment later when the three men returned with Louis Fortier between them.
The little perfumer was weeping.
“I didn’t see him until I stepped on him,” he cried between sobs. “And then—quelle horreur, what could have happened?”
Bancroft and Kenway looked at each other, some sort of unspoken agreement passing between them, then the doctor put his hand on Fortier’s shoulder.
“I have medicine to help you calm down,” he said, leading Louis toward his hammock. “What happened is a terrible thing, absolutely, but you must not lose your head. Not now.”
Alex watched as Carlton and Bancroft retreated into the darkness, armed with flashlights and a length of rope. Straining to hear, she waited a few moments longer, then jumped when she heard a splash.
A few moments later, Bancroft, Carlton, and Kenway returned to the campfire. Standing by the flames, Bancroft dropped a gun onto a blanket, then turned to face the circle of hammocks.
In a moment of clarity, Alex realized that Bancroft had been carrying two guns—one in his hand, and one in his holster. That could only mean—
“We have found Raul Chavez,” he announced, his face pale in the moonlight. “The carnivore ants got to him.”
“How?” Deborah had rolled out of her bed and stood shivering in the moonlight. “How could carnivore ants attack a full-grown man?”
“He was unconscious on the ground.”
The entomologist shook her head. “That’s insane. Why would he lie down in the jungle when camp lay only a few meters away? Chavez knew better.”
Bancroft looked at Carlton, who nodded almost imperceptibly. With some sort of permission granted, Bancroft pulled something from his pocket. “We found this lodged in his neck.”
He powered on his flashlight, then held a slender object to the beam. Squinting, Alex could barely see something like a splinter between his fingers.
The security chief gave Alejandro Delmar a faintly accusing look. “Can you explain this, sir?”
“A poison dart.” Delmar’s voice had gone flat. “Made from a sliver of the inayuga palm and designed to immobilize an enemy. The paralysis is not permanent, but the ants must have gotten to Chavez . . . before he woke up.”
Alex looked away as nausea roiled in her belly.
“Somebody’s out there.” Lauren stepped out of her hammock, her feet bare. “Good grief, Ken, somebody’s out there!”
“Of course.” Carlton shrugged. “They’re probably the people we’ve come to find.”
“Chavez would not have felt anything.” Wrapping her arms around herself, Deborah moved into the dim glow of the fire. “The bite of the carnivore ant numbs the victim. His limbs would have been insentient long before he died.”
Lauren moved toward the men, her eyes blazing. “You expect me to stay here with some crazy savages out there?”
“They didn’t mean to kill him.” Delmar’s eyes had gone dark and unreadable in the firelight. “There is no honor in killing a man unless you are face to face with your enemy. They meant to paralyze him. I think they wanted to capture him, but something frightened them away.”
“Mom?” Caitlyn’s voice trembled.
Alex fumbled for the shoes she’d stashed at the end of her hammock. “I’m coming, honey. Stay put.”
Bancroft pinned Delmar in a steely gaze. “Why Chavez?”
Delmar shrugged. “He is Indian. You are outsiders. Chavez was less intimidating.”
Deborah pulled her flashlight from her pocket. “I’d like to see the ants, please.”
Bancroft scraped his hand across his face. “Not possible. We disposed of the body.”
“I understand, but I still want to see the ants. Will you take me to the spot where you found them feeding?”
“You threw him in the lake?” Lauren screeched like a starlet auditioning for a B movie. “Ken, I’ve had it. I want you to take me out of this godforsaken place now!”
As Alex hurried to her daughter’s hammock, Emma Whitmore stepped free from her mosquito netting. “I know it’s asking a lot, but could we possibly retrieve the body and carry it back to the lodge? His people will want to bury him properly.”
“Dr. Whitmore.” Delmar’s dark face and direct eyes, which could intimidate most people even from a good distance, filled with exasperation. “You are in the tropics. Burial must take place quickly here, because decomposition—” he hesitated as Alex pointedly cleared her throat, reminding him of the child in their midst—“well, we could not wait. Chavez would understand; his family will understand.”
“And you, sir, are a disgrace to your ancestors.” Emma drew herself up to her full height of five feet, maybe two inches. “If you were living in the jungle with your forefathers, you would burn the body and then drink the ashes so a part of your brother, your heritage, would forever be a part of you.”
“I do not follow the practices of my forefathers,” Delmar interrupted. Though he had to be ticked off by Whitmore’s sanctimonious sermonizing, his face remained locked in neutral. “I am an educated man, a product of a higher civilization. And Chavez was no brother of mine.”
Leaving her teammates to squabble over their differences, Alex crawled into Caitlyn’s hammock and slipped her arms around her daughter. Holding Caitlyn’s damp head against her pounding heart, she realized the full horror of what had happened. Raul Chavez had supported a wife and four young children in Iquitos. Now his wife would either have to find employment or depend upon the charity of relatives . . . not an easy thing when families routinely averaged ten or twelve members.
Would Chavez’s children end up sleeping on the crowded sidewalks of that river city?
She pressed her hands over Caitlyn’s ears as Emma’s and Delmar’s bickering combined with Lauren’s hysterics. The younger woman might be worthless in the wilds, but she had a point. Someone was out there—and so far, contact with them had proven deadly.