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“We need to do more of it,” said Kate, and she turned to direct the movers.

Chapter 17

“Just don’t look down,” said Patrick.

Olga, the only woman on Javier’s team of guides, was behind him, clinging to the rocky face of a cliff, paralyzed with fear.

They’d walked for hours, mostly uphill along a narrow and sometimes overgrown jungle path. As they approached the gorge, Javier had made an announcement. “Olga,” meaning the female guide, “is a virgin. This is her first trip with us. She will lead the way from here.”

It was soon obvious to Patrick that Olga the rookie was not passing this test of acrophobia. The path was at its narrowest along the edge of a steep cliff. The rocks were slippery; the footing unsure. Each hiker was equipped with a Y-configured rope and two carabiners, a type of quick-release shackle used by mountain climbers. Pitons, steel spikes with eyelets, protruded from the cliff face, hammered into cracks in the rock by previous climbers. The technique was to have at least one carabiner clipped to an eyelet at all times, connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting along the way. Still, it was an unsettling fact that, with one misstep, a cheap metal clip was all that stood between life and the certain death of a two-hundred-foot fall into the gorge below.

“I’d rather take the challenge of the dancing knife than do this,” said Olga.

“Just a few more steps,” he said.

Patrick chose his next step carefully, planted his foot, then moved to the next spot. Olga followed his exact foot placement. The final step was a bit of a reach. Patrick imagined himself at the top of the climbing wall he’d mastered as a teenager at camp, always the fastest to reach the top, never one of those kids who gave up and had to be lowered tothe ground by harness. He stepped onto flat ground and pulled Olga toward him. She fell into his arms, which he rather enjoyed, and for the first time he saw her smile. It was a pretty one.

Javier approached. “All right, Romeo. Balcony scene’s over. On to the hot tub.”

Patrick thought he was joking about the hot tub, but Javier’s gaze directed them toward the pond ahead, a gaping hole in the jungle canopy where the sun made rainbows in the clouds of steam that wafted up from the surface. Patrick could feel the heat in the soles of his boots, and each step toward the water’s edge brought the audible crunch of ancient volcanic cinders beneath the overgrowth of fallen jungle foliage, grass, and mosses that had gathered over the centuries.

Olga knew the area well enough to explain.

“It’s an extinct volcano,” she said.

A tiny geothermal paradise where nature warmed the waters to bath temperature. For Patrick, who hadn’t showered since leaving Washington, this was heaven on earth.

“You have ten minutes,” said Javier.

Patrick stripped down to his underwear, humility be damned, and jumped in. The others quickly followed.

“You too, Olga,” said Javier. “You’re one of them until you prove yourself guide-worthy.”

Patrick looked away as she shed her clothes, but from the looks on the male guides’ faces, they seemed to very much enjoy the view.

The waters warmed Patrick to his core, soothing the joints and muscles that ached from sleeping on the cold, damp ground. He’d done more than enough climbing in the last four hours, but he couldn’t resist the boulder beside a towering stand of wax palm trees, the shortest of which had to be at least a hundred feet tall. He pulled himself up on the rock, shimmied up a few yards of the waxy tree trunk, and soaked Javier with a well-aimed cannonball. Then he swam toward Olga, who was talking to the other men about Javier’s knife trick.

“I think he’s crazy,” said the guy from Chicago.

“No,” said the accountant. “Everything here is choreographed. He didn’t want anyone to accept his challenge. He wouldn’t haveletanyone accept it.”

Olga agreed, careful not to discredit her boss. “It’s just a mind game. Something to test your mental toughness.”

The two men swam toward shore, leaving Patrick alone with Olga. She was treading water, the ripples on the surface making a blur of her body below, which made her even more alluring.

“By the way,” she said, “don’t let Javier’s crack about Romeo bother you.”

“It didn’t. But I am surprised he knows Shakespeare.”

She laughed. “I’ve watched the real movie at least ten times, but I’m sure Javier plucked that line from the martial arts version,Romeo Must Die.”

A bird sang from somewhere in the forest.

“Ah, ’tis the nightingale,” said Olga, borrowing from the playwright.

Patrick smiled, liking her sense of humor. “No. ’Tis the lark.”

“Are you saying it’s time for you to go home?”

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