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Adam grinned back at her.
“Come find out,” he said and ducked under a branch, forcing Ellie to hurry after him.
They followed the line of a vine-draped cliff of pale limestone that rose overhead and curved raggedly to the left. A few minutes later, the forest parted to reveal the course of a quick-rushing stream. Water leapt over the rocks, churning up white foam.
A wonderfully refreshing mist filled the air. Ellie relished in the cool feeling of it against her skin.
“Looks like we’re back on the map,” Adam commented. “And would you look at that?”
Ellie’s relief was replaced by an awed surprise as she saw what loomed over the place where they stood.
The cliff jutted out across the river in the shape of a massive bridge thickly covered with moss, orchids, and ferns. Life clung to every crevice, thriving thanks to the constant damp of the cataracts.
“TheArch Hollowed by the Hand of God!” Ellie burst out wonderingly.
They had found the next landmark.
Ellie grinned up at Adam. He grinned back—his eyes crinkling warmly at the corners—and she was suffused with the knowledge of how completely, utterly happy she was.
“What happens now?” she asked, pitching her voice louder to be heard over the rapids.
For just a moment before Adam responded, it felt as though the answer drifted to her through the warm air and the droplets of water that danced on her skin.
Now you kiss him.
The impulse rang through her like a bell. Ellie caught her breath against it.
She shouldn’t. They were colleagues. Colleagues didn’t kiss each other.
Her heart didn’t seem to care about that logic. It continued to bounce around inside her chest like a child whacking at a drum set.
Adam glanced out over the rapids.
“Let’s find someplace a bit dryer to take a better look at that—” he began.
He stopped. His eyes widened as the brush at Ellie’s back audibly rustled.
Ellie froze as something hard poked into the space between her shoulder blades.
“I have a better idea,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind her. “How about instead you both put your hands up in the air where I can see them?”
Adam’s hand flew to the Winchester slung over his shoulder—but stopped there as the stranger behind Ellie spoke again, punctuating his words with a further prod at Ellie’s back.
She felt uncomfortably certain that the object jabbing at her was the barrel of another rifle.
“Uh-uh,” the stranger warned. “You really don’t want to do that. Kohn ya, Flowers!” he called out.
The branches behind Adam shifted, and someone else stepped onto the bank of the cataract. The new arrival topped Adam by at least two inches in height and probably three stone in weight. His cheeks, hued a rich mahogany, were round and friendly under a wide-brimmed straw hat.
He leveled the Enfield rifle in his hands and greeted them in cheerful Kriol.
“Weh di gaan an?”
“Tek ih shatgan, Flowers!” snapped the voice behind Ellie.
Ellie still hadn’t dared to turn around and see what the fellow looked like. He spoke his English and Kriol with a sharp, Spanish-inflected accent.
“Cho, Mendez,” Flowers replied. “I’m getting around to that. You mind?”
