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 allshot worried glances at her. Maybe theyshouldhave 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 besomeonewho can get us.”
“By the time I called others, word had gotten around. Those who hadn’t already talked to Carlos called us ‘os caçadores 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 Ididfind 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.
