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“Ask me what you really called to ask me.”

Noah took a moment, as if summoning the nerve. “Have you ever heard of a Project Naïveté?”

Kate froze, but she managed not to convey any reaction over the line. “What if I have?”

“I want to know about it.”

Kate took a breath. “I’m sorry, Noah. I can’t help you.”

“Actually, I want to helpyou.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Then let me explain.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Not on the phone. Meet me tomorrow morning at eight a.m. Same place I not so accidentally ran into you on Sunday. No one will have to know about it.”

He meant their “chance” encounter on the jogging trail.

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“I hope I’ll see you there.”

“Good night,” she said, but Noah had already hung up.

Chapter 21

Patrick’s eyes fluttered open to the strange equivalent of a seventh-story view. Surrounding him were enormous green leaves, tangled vines, skinny branches—and flowers. Brilliant white. Spotted purple. Bold magenta. Thousands of dew-covered orchids that clustered in the treetops and thrived in midair. The valley floor was about seventy-five feet below. Suddenly, the realization came to him.

He’d been swallowed by the jungle’s canopy.

The last thing Patrick remembered was flying. Then darkness. Somewhere between flight and unconsciousness had come the fall, but he had no memory of that sensation. It had all happened too quickly.

Patrick shifted gently to his left, but even the slightest redistribution of his body weight caused a spindling branch to slide out from beneath his legs and catapult toward the sky. Patrick lay perfectly still, even forcing himself not to breathe too deeply. The loss of another supporting branch or vine could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, sending him from this heaven-like field of orchids in the sky to a most unfortunate landing far below.

He took stock of his condition. The canopy had broken his fall, but the rips and tears in his shirt and pants were too numerous to count. Scratches covered his body. Most were minor, but a bloody wound to his forearm had left a large brown stain on his sleeve. He tried to move his wrist but couldn’t. Slowly, biting through the pain, he rolled up the sleeve and, to his relief, saw no protruding bone. Just a sprain, hopefully.

Lucky to be alive,he reminded himself.

A pair of blue-and-yellow macaws landed on a branch above him tofeast on berries, and then flew away. He envied their ability to fly but did not despair. He’d climbed countless trees as a kid, sometimes a bit too high for his mother’s comfort, but he had always managed to make his way down, though a sprained wrist wasn’t going to make this any easier. He took a firm grasp of the nearest vine with his right hand and then, slowly, drew his knees toward his chin. A second spindling catapulted upward, then another, and the chain reaction was unstoppable. In an instant, the supportive bed of vines and branches beneath him was gone, and gravity did its dirty work. Patrick dropped like a stone but held tight to the vine. His arm nearly ripped from his shoulder, as the fall became more of a swinging sensation. Flashes of Tarzan crossed his mind, though his landing was more city boy than king of the jungle. His chest slammed into the tree’s massive trunk, but he managed to wrap his arms around a sturdy branch about twenty feet above the ground. From there, he lowered himself safely to the ground. He couldn’t see the river, but the comforting sound of rushing water was coming from somewhere beyond the thick underbrush, which only made him thirstier. He followed the noise through the jungle and drank like a man who’d found rain in the desert.

A large rock near an eddy offered a dry and comfortable place to sit. The winding river cut an S of daylight through the jungle canopy, and as the breeze coursed through the treetops, Patrick caught a glimpse of the gray granite cliff that had nearly taken his life. Those final terrifying moments were still a blur, but his recollection was that Javier had done nothing to help him. It was hard to fathom, and the details still eluded him, but Javier, it seemed, had actually been worse than no help.

Patrick considered his options. He could stay put and wait for someone to find him. But if Javier had let him fall—or had evenmadehim fall—waiting for rescue was no option at all. He climbed down from the rock and started walking downriver. If he could just keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, he was certain that eventually he’d find a camp, a farm, a town—maybe even a Starbucks. He walked nonstop for thirty minutes, he guessed, though he had no reliable wayto measure the passage of time. He saw plenty of wildlife, but no sign of civilization. Hunger was becoming an issue. His last meal had been beans and rice at camp. He wondered if they were looking for him.

He wondered if Javier had tried to push any of the others off the mountain.

The jungle was thinning. Another hour or so into the journey, the terrain became more agricultural. He pulled a plant from the ground. It was an onion, which he quickly devoured. Before him lay an entire field of onions, intercropped with a magnificent, blackish-purple plant with bright scarlet flowers. He recognized the blossoms only because he’d binge-watchedNarcoson Netflix, the story of drug lord Pablo Escobar. It occurred to him that he was one of very few Americans ever to see firsthand the raw materials for heroin.

Patrick kept walking downriver, but there was no sound of rushing water in these flatter stretches of land. The world was so quiet at this altitude, which triggered thoughts of the proverbial tree that falls in a forest. The weather changed quickly, too, and it was suddenly raining, lightly at first, but then a downpour. He headed away from the river and into the forest for cover. The rain pattered on the leaves above him. Several yards into the jungle, completely unnoticeable from the river, he found a cottage on stilts. It was constructed of roughly hewn logs and had a thatched roof. Several smaller huts were nearby, but the place was overgrown with foliage, and he saw no sign of another human being. Perhaps it was seasonal housing for thecampesinoswho worked the onion harvest, whenever that might be.

“Hola!” he called out, but there was no response.

Patrick continued deeper into the forest and soon discovered that the camp was much bigger than he’d thought. He found benches and tables configured like an outdoor mess hall. He passed another cottage and a latrine, beyond which was another cluster of small huts. Some of the huts had doors. Others didn’t. He stopped and looked inside one of them. It was empty, except for the chains on the ground, and the ceiling was too low for any grown person to stand upright.

He felt chills, realizing that this was not seasonal housing for farm workers. The chains were shackles, and the quick history lesson that Olga, the trainee, had given him about the FARC came back to him. The place may have been abandoned, but enough evidence of human suffering remained to mark it as one of the many remote locations where the FARC kidnappers had kept their hostages, this godforsaken mountain outpost in the middle of nowhere, next to the fields of poppy. It pained Patrick to consider how many months or even years of a person’s life had been wasted in this hut, chained to a post. Who could do that to another human being?

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