Chapter 3 The Canopy Split #2
"And you didn't think to mention this," Riley says, her face curled into a grimace, "before we walked two hours into the jungle first thing in the morning."
"He asked me to keep it quiet."
"He's missing, Santi!" she barks.
"Yes," I say dryly. "I'm aware."
There's another silence, this one with more weight to it.
"So someone pulled him," Derrick says, reading the situation the way he reads acquisition targets by finding the logic underneath. "Before he could file."
"That's what it looks like," I say.
"Which means they knew he was documenting," Nora says quietly. "Which means they've been watching him. And us."
The group absorbs this while the jungle runs its noise above us, completely indifferent to the events unfolding.
"Right," Alex says. "Then we definitely go back. This isn't a missing-guide situation anymore, this is—" he gestures at the jungle around us "—I don't even know. And we are not equipped for it."
"He's two hours into a restricted zone with people who pulled him off a trail to stop him from filing a report," Erica says. She has put her phone away, and her voice is different—the playfulness completely gone. "Every minute we stand here debating is a minute further away he gets."
"Erica—" Derrick starts.
Erica's gaze flashes. "I'm not saying we all go in after him. I'm saying that whoever is coming with me needs to move, and it needs to be now." She shoots a steady look at Riley. "You're coming, right?"
Riley's eyes narrow slightly, and her spine stiffens.
She takes a step forward, but Derrick grabs her arm.
She snatches it out of his grip in an instant and glares at him.
"I'm going," she says forcefully. "But Alex is right that someone needs to go back.
The lodge needs a full brief before they deploy.
Location, context, Cumbre Verde, the restricted zone, all of it. "
Erica nods at Riley while Derrick's jaw works behind her. "I'm coming with you," he says sharply. Riley's brows rise ever-so-slightly, but she says nothing.
"Me too." Nora steps forward.
"And me," Ryan says.
"I'll go back," Alex says. "I know the lodge protocols."
"I'll go with you," Channelle says. She has been quiet throughout, running her own calculation. "I have Carmen's direct line. I know what information the rescue team needs and how to give it to them."
Alex grips Derrick's shoulder once, briefly, and nods at Andrew with a grin. "Don't let him do anything stupid."
"Hey," Andrew says.
"You know exactly what I mean."
Andrew opens his mouth. Closes it. "Fair," he says.
Riley thanks Channelle, and then the two of them move back down the trail toward the lodge. The rest of us are standing at the bend, looking at the path ahead.
Ryan has his map out. "Forward trail continues northeast. If Mateo went off the main route to the left toward the restricted zone, there may be signs indicating where he went. Or was taken." He looks up.
"Agreed," Riley says gravely.
We move.
***
A hundred feet in, we find a strip of green fabric, torn at the edge too cleanly to have snagged. It's sitting on a thorned plant at head height where it would be easily spotted. It's the same green as Mateo's vest.
Riley leans toward it without touching it. "He did this on purpose," she says.
"Heading northwest." Nora is looking at the angle the thorned plant faces, into the dense growth beyond the trail.
"Should we call out his name?" Derrick asks, looking to Riley to make the decision.
She does a little double-take, as if she's surprised he's asking her opinion. Then she frowns and shakes her head. "I don't think we should. We don't know what kind of situation he's gotten himself into here."
"Agreed." Erica looks deadly serious now. So different from the carefree and joking woman she'd been with Nora earlier.
We push further up the trail to the sound of birdsong and the distant falls. No Mateo to be seen.
"The light's changed," Ryan says.
He's right. The gold-diffuse quality that's been filtering down through the canopy all morning has shifted—grayer now, flatter, the shadows deepening between the roots.
Above us, through a gap in the canopy, the clouds have a different quality to them.
Building. Moving faster than they were an hour ago.
"How fast does the rain come in?" Andrew asks.
"We need to make a decision about the trail," Riley says. "If a storm hits while we're this far in—"
The first drops come through the canopy.
The canopy's too dense for us to feel its full force yet, but the sound of it arrives on the leaves above us in a percussion that builds fast, the drops getting heavier, the sound moving from scattered to continuous.
Within sixty seconds, the trees shed water in streams, and the trail surface darkens.
The air around us has gone from humid to saturated.
"That's the storm," Ryan says.
"Yes, Ryan," Erica says in a clipped tone. "Thank you."
"It would be best to make for some higher ground than this," Ryan says, looking around us nervously as the ground floods.
"Good idea." Riley is already moving, leading the group forward toward a rise in the trail.
The rain is crashing around us, the trail already slick underfoot.
Roots that were manageable twenty minutes ago now need real attention to move around.
We move in a cluster, faster than we've moved all morning, the trail narrowing as it climbs toward an upper junction.
We almost make it.
The slope to our left goes out, hardly making a sound over the deafening roar of the rain.
Just a low sound like an exhale and then the trail edge simply isn't there anymore, a four-foot section of earth and root detaching in the rain and sliding into the gully below.
It takes the lower path with it and leaves a gap that closes off the route as cleanly and finally as a door.
We all stop.
On one side of the gap are Riley, Derrick, and Andrew. Ryan, Erica, Nora, and I are on the other side.
We all look down at the gap and the churning earth.
"That's not jumpable," Nora says.
"No," I agree.
Across the gap, Riley looks at us through the rain. Frustration and despair swirl on her features, but she takes a deep breath and calms Derrick, who is close to panicking next to her.
"Branch trail," she calls across, and her voice carries even through the rain. "Ryan has a map."
I realize that she's not talking to Ryan and me but to the women, locking gazes with Erica first, then Nora. "You're good?"
"We're good!" Nora calls back.
"Hell yes, we are." Erica's grin is almost savage.
Riley holds their gazes for one more beat, and then she turns and leads the two men left with her away from the dangerous gap. Within moments, they're swallowed by the jungle.
Nora's hand circles my wrist and tugs gently. I realize she and Erica are now leading us away from the edge of this new chasm, while Ryan and I are simply staring, dumbfounded.
Thank God for the Adler women.
"Branch trail, Ryan," Nora says, snapping Ryan out of his stupor. "Get your map out."
Ryan has his map out before she's finished the sentence, water beading off his sleeves. He orients quickly, fingers tracing the route. "Branch trail runs parallel—reconnects with the main route two miles north. Longer but navigable." He looks up. "There's a ravine crossing about eight minutes in."
***
Nora
The bridge is a narrow timber span across a six-foot drop, and in dry conditions, I imagine it looks entirely reasonable. In these conditions, with brown water running fast beneath it and the rain still coming, it looks like a crossing I would not have agreed to if I'd had the luxury of choosing.
It sways slightly as Ryan steps onto it, one hand on the rope guide, moving with deliberate care. He clears it in under ten seconds and turns back on the far bank.
"One at a time," he calls. "It's fine. But don't rush it."
Erica goes next.
And despite Ryan's warning, she moves quickly—too quickly, I think, even as she's doing it. She's three-quarters of the way across when her foot finds the wet patch on the third-to-last plank.
It happens fast. Her weight shifts; the plank doesn't hold the angle she needs; her arms go out, and she's down on one knee on the span, one leg through the gap between the boards, the water visible and moving fast six feet below her.
"Erica!" Ryan is already moving back onto the bridge from the far side.
"I'm fine—" She's pulling her leg back through, but the motion rocks the whole span, and the post on our side groans audibly, shifting in ground that has gone soft and unstable in the last few minutes of rain.
Santi's hand closes around my arm before I've fully registered that I was moving toward the bridge myself.
"No," he says.
"She's—"
"Ryan has her." And he does—Ryan is at her side now, one hand under her arm, getting her upright and moving her the last few feet to the far bank.
Erica makes it across, breathing hard and favoring one knee, but she's on solid ground. Ryan starts checking her over thoroughly, finally getting to use every part of his preparation.
I look back at the bridge. The near post has moved another visible degree. The whole span is sitting wrong now, the angle subtly different from what it was thirty seconds ago.
"My turn," I say, and step toward it.
Santi doesn't let go of my arm.
"No," he says again. Quieter this time, but with a certainty underneath it, I haven't heard from him before. "You're not crossing that."
"Santi—"
"It held for Ryan because he's light on his feet and moved fast. It nearly took Erica with the wet plank and a normal step.
" His eyes are on the bridge, reading it the way he reads everything, but his grip on my arm hasn't loosened.
"It will not hold a third crossing in this rain.
I'm not watching you find that out the hard way. "
There's a complete lack of room for negotiation in his voice, and I must admit, I really don't want to step on that precarious bridge.