Forcing myself to continue all the way to the lab, I park and check inside, just in case she managed to make it back. No sign of her. The lights blaze—Li left them on so Mik could see them from a distance—but it’s empty.
Tightening the straps on my pack, I steel myself for the climb. The trail—if you can call it that—is barely passable. Between the driving rain and the wind, it’s half destroyed. My foot sinks into a six-inch-deep hole full of water ten minutes in, and I almost go down.
“Mikayla!” Shouting into the wind is useless, but I have to try. After close to an hour, I’m soaked to the bone, but Site One is just across the river and up a final steep climb.
The roar of the water is deafening, and the bridge…it’s hanging on to the shore by sheer will. If I cross it, there’s every chance it’ll collapse under my weight. But I don’t have a choice. Mikayla could be on the other side.
The wood cracks and strains with every step, but miraculously, it holds. Picking up the pace, I push myself through the last two tenths of a mile and squeeze through the narrow opening into the caldera.
The flashlight beam sweeps around the basin, and my God. It’s so beautiful. Dozens of orchids cling to trees and large rocks, their roots gnarled and twisted like thick ropes. The entire space is smaller than a couple of baseball diamonds, but every single inch of it is green.
Clearing the caldera takes too long, and though the rain isn’t as heavy as it was back at the lab, from the state of the ground, any evidence of Mik’s presence—if she even made it here—is long gone.
A couple of the orchids look…odd though. Their roots are smaller. Shinier. And they’re not as well entrenched as the others. Like someone’s disturbed them recently.Wasshe here? Did Mik do this trying to take samples? I pull out my phone, snapping a couple of photos.
Retreating to the rocky passage guarding the site, I have to duck under a curtain of hanging vines, and in my periphery, a scrap of orange fabric catches my eye. Mikayla’s backpack. It was by her bed when I kissed her at her door a little after 1:00 a.m., and I’d commented on the color.
“For visibility,” she’d said. “The Mexican government promised us they’d patrol regularly up by the sites to deter the poachers.”
“Poachers? Mik, that sounds dangerous. And who’d want to poach orchids? You can buy them in every grocery store.”
“Not this one. And if it goes extinct, all chances to use its roots to help treat Parkinson’s go out the window.”
She was here, and she left her backpack behind. It’s open, everything inside soaked. A large plastic box with glass vials in individualized compartments, tools, a USB drive in a waterproof bag, a granola bar, and half a bottle of water. She’d never just leave this. No ID, no passport, no phone. The sample box is empty, so something pulled her away from her work before she could start.
The icy pit in my stomach grows, and a large drop of rain slithering down my back only adds to my overwhelming sense of dread. “Mikayla! Answer me!”
She can’t be far. Zipping up her pack, I secure it to mine with a couple of carabiners and push to my feet. The GPS shows a large, flat area on the other side of this spire, and I start picking my way over the rocky trail, stopping every few steps to sweep the flashlight around the area and call her name.
When I emerge out onto the plateau, fear coils in my gut. Though the rain has half obscured the depressions, the tire tracks are still visible. Someone had a vehicle here. A big, heavy one. At least the size of the Land Rover. I follow the tracks for half a mile until they disappear, then return to the muddy expanse and search every fucking inch. Nothing.
Staring up at the dark sky, letting the rain pelt my cheeks, I beg whatever deity is up there to give me something. Anything. “Mikayla! Mik! Please answer me!”
“Some of the trails have steep drop-offs.”
Corey’s words echo in my ears, and I adjust my grip on the flashlight and retrace my steps on the way back to the grow site, searching for anything out of place. Small rock slides, any place the trees are sparse enough for someone to slip and fall over the edge. Every few feet, I aim the flashlight over the side of the cliff, peering down at the steep decline, calling her name.
And then the beam catches a glint of something. I almost missed it, but the rain is starting to let up now, and it’s easier to see. There it is again. Twenty feet down. I grab the small pair of binoculars. “Fuck, Mikayla. No.”
She’s on her side, the small, rocky outcropping barely six feet wide. Spindly tree branches—some dead, some not—half-obscure her, but enough are broken that I can see her hands, shoulder, and part of her face.
I have to get down there—and find a way to get back up.
I’m trained for this. To operate under the most intense conditions. But nothing prepares me for the fear that a woman I care for—a woman I think just might be the one for me—could be dead. My hands shake as I withdraw the rappelling line and secure one end of it around a large tree trunk. I don’t have my belay controls, but the gloves I’m wearing will grip well enough—even in the rain.
Careful not to disturb too many rocks on my way down the cliff lest they fall directly onto Mikayla, I lower myself down slowly, hand over hand, until my boots are solidly on the ground next to her. My bad shoulder aches, but I ignore the pain.
“Please be alive,” I whisper as I kneel, strip off one of my gloves, and press my fingers to her neck.
A faint heartbeat. Thank fuck. But she’s so cold. Her lips are tinged blue, and—goddammit. A zip tie is wrapped tightly around her wrists. Someone did this to her. The glint I saw? Her bracelet. The amethyst and tourmaline caught the light when nothing else would have.
I yank the hunting knife from the sheath on my thigh and snap the plastic in a single quick motion. “Mikayla, can you hear me, sweetheart?” I don’t want to move her. The fall could have broken her neck, her back…any number of bones. But if I don’t, she’ll die of exposure. Between the wind and the rain, she’s probably half-hypothermic already. Her fingers are badly pruned, which means she’s been out here for hours.
I squeeze her hand, and she coughs weakly, then tries to draw in a wheezing breath. Relief sends me onto my ass, where I shed my ruck and paw through it for one of her inhalers. “Breathe out, Mik,” I order as I gently part her lips and hold the mouthpiece in place.
Her eyelids flutter, and with my hand on her chest, I can feel the exhale. Dispensing a dose of the Albuterol, I wait, praying, until her lungs expand. She manages a second breath, then a third, each deeper than the last.
“Mik, it’s Austin. I’ve got you now. Can you open your eyes? I need to know how badly you’re hurt.”
