And yet there had been uncertainty in her voice. Inboththeir voices. Almost hesitant, waiting to see if the other would take it back.
Though neither of them did. But that little glimmer of doubt. That speck of uncertainty. It gave Rafa hope that maybe she was still thinking about him, too.
False hope, seeing as it wasn’t like there was anything he could—or rather, would—do about it. But he liked imagining that she saw something in him like he’d seen in her.
For the fifteenth day in a row, they set out into the rainforest, taking a different path than they’d taken the prior days. Not that it mattered. Most days they somehow still ended up in the same place: always at the rim of a ravine at least half a football field wide and thirty feet deep, bounded by a steep wall of vegetation, leaving them with no place to go but back from whence they came. By the look of things, this morning wouldn’t be any different.
“Haven’t we seen this tree before?” Jerry, one of the equipment techs, called out, wincing as he lugged a giant bag on his back on the trail bordering the ravine.
From the outside, it seemed a silly question. After all, howcould a person tell one tree from another in the Amazon, full of millions of trees? But this particular tree—a walking palm with a hearty network of stilt-like roots towering almost seven feet high—stood out among the crowd.
And they had one hundred percent walked by it at least a half dozen times in the last couple of days. Rafa could identify it by the row of bromeliads growing along one of its branches, which he had noticed days ago.
“You say that about every tree,” Felix said, coming up beside Rafa and rolling his eyes as if to say,Can you believe this guy?
Rafa snickered. He, Felix, and Logan had formed a bit of a friendship over the last couple of weeks. It was too bad they didn’t live near each other in the States. And that Rafa was lying to them.
“Well, how aboutyoutry carrying this bag sometime, andthensee how you feel about circling the same trees day in and day out?” Jerry said, stopping and letting the bag fall to his feet.
“How about you try not complaining every day?” Felix said, spinning around.
Miri may not have had a tipping point, but it sure seemed the rest of the team did.
“Hey, hey,” she said, pushing through the crowd already gathered around Felix and Jerry like they were ready to spar. “We’re not going to do that. I’m not going to have people fighting on my watch.”
A group of monkeys started howling at the disturbance.
“Great,” Miri said, throwing up her hands. “Now look what you started.”
“Yeah, you’d better watch it,” Rafa said. “You don’t want Dr. Jacobs goingNinja Warrioron you.”
Miri rolled her eyes, but not without first flashing him the sexiest smile, and then she turned to head back on the trail—right before tripping on a root sticking out of the ground and losing her balance. She stumbled sideways a few steps, straight toward the path’s boundary at the rim of the ravine.
“No, no, no, no, no!” she called out as she fell over the lip.
“Miri!” Rafa yelled as he reached for her, but it was too late.
Rafa leaned over the edge, witnessing Miri flailing her arms through the air as she dropped. She grabbed on to one of the vines hanging from the trees, her momentum swinging her to the other side of the ravine and straight toward the steep wall of vegetation. Anything could have been on the other side of that greenery. A sheet of rock. A tangle of trees. Another drop-off. It was virtually impossible to tell from this vantage point.
Helpless, Rafa watched from above as Miri braced herself for impact.
Whoosh!
One moment she was there, and the next she was gone, swallowed by the greenery.
The group froze, all except Rafa, who took a tentative step forward, his arms straight out to his sides to keep the others from falling into the ravine.
“Miriam!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, his heart pounding so hard he could barely breathe. “Miriam! Answer me!”
Hearing nothing, Rafa rushed into the ravine, sliding down the dirt, when a riotous sound resonated through the forest. He paused. Was that…laughter?
“Miriam!” he called out again. “Are you okay?”
“Yes!” she called back, instantly settling his heart. “Come quick! I think I found something!”
Rafa looked over the vast expanse of the ravine—it wouldtake a while to trek through the thick understory—then he climbed back out, took hold of a vine, slung his camera around to his back, then said to the team, “Meet you over there,” before throwing himself over the edge and swinging toward the thick curtain of leaves and vines. His body stiffened as he reached the barrier, clenching his eyes tight and praying with all his might.
Swoosh.
