Instead, she wrote a long letter to Hermina with instructions to share it with Doug. In it, she summarized the events since her return to Brazil, including every name she could remember. The waitress at the coffee shop first tried to return some of the tip Natalie had left, thinking it was a mistake. Then, finally convinced that her windfall was no accident, she provided an envelope for the letter and most gladly agreed to get postage and mail it.
It was time.
The Jeep's fuel gauge was between three-quarters and full, and under the tarp in back were five-gallon stores of gasoline and purified water. Throughout her career as an international track star, she had always traveled well, and she could probably count the nights she had spent in a tent on the fingers of one hand. Now, she had survived her first night sleeping in the back of a car in many years. Whatever lay ahead for her, she knew, was almost certain to include many more firsts.
The morning was clear and pleasantly warm, promising yet another flawless day. Natalie swung onto the expressway north, trying to get into the rhythm of Carioca driving, which did not often involve the use of directional signals or mirrors when changing lanes, nor the use of brakes at almost any time. On the seat beside her was the rather crude map she had drawn to Dom Angelo. Questions about the place continued racing through her brain with the speed of the cars whizzing past her on both sides. Most vexing of those questions involved the possibility that Dora Cabral was simply mistaken in believing that the village had anything to do with Natalie's ill-fated cab ride and the loss of her lung. It was too cruel even to consider that the poor woman had been killed in error. But if she really did know something, what could possibly be the connections between a med student from Boston, a nurse in Rio, and a tiny hamlet in the Brazilian rain forest?
Highway 44 west, located essentially where she had expected it to be, was a pleasant surprise — a recently paved two-lane road with painted center lines, soft shoulders, and not much traffic. If her estimates were right, there would be a cutoff fifteen miles up on her left, probably unpaved, that snaked through the mountains in the general direction of Belo Horizonte, the large capital of the state of Minas Gerais. A hundred miles this side of Belo Horizonte, what looked on the maps like a one-lane road would dive off to the left. And somewhere on that road was Dom Angelo. It was a long shot that she would make it without difficulty, but if determination mattered, she was going to find the place.
Five miles from where she suspected the road toward Dom Angelo might be, she slowed and began carefully inspecting and analyzing each turnoff. She was in the steep foothills of the easternmost rain forest. The two-lane road, no longer newly paved, and now pocked with potholes, rose almost continuously and turned sharply with little notice. Traffic was light, and it was often a minute or two before a car passed her in either direction.
Natalie slowed even further and rolled down the windows. She might have been imagining things, but the oxygen-rich air felt different in her lung. Deep, fulfilling breaths came easier and more frequently. Her pulse actually seemed slower. The forest came close to the road on both sides, shielding her from the late-morning sun. At various points, a broad, rushing stream appeared and ran parallel to the pavement for some distance before darting off into the dense underbrush and trees.
The paved road had leveled when Natalie saw the cutoff. It was a well-worn dirt and gravel road, more than one lane wide, but probably less than two. A crudely painted sign that read CAMPO BELO had been nailed to a tree with an arrow painted beneath the words. By her estimate, Campo Belo was the nearest town of any size to Dom Angelo, but it was impossible to gauge the distance between them. Although she was almost certain she had found the road, Natalie checked the mileage and rechecked her map. At last convinced, she turned left and began a slow, roller-coaster climb through increasingly dense forest.
Excitedly, she began to allow herself to believe that she was going to make it to Dom Angelo without a major hitch. The going was slow, and six cylinders rather than the four the Jeep had would probably have made a big difference, but she was going to make it.
The first time she sensed trouble was when she pulled off to the side to stretch and have a brief meal of sliced meat, cold juice, and half a chocolate bar. She had been on this road for twenty or twenty-five minutes and had passed only one car coming in the other direction, but as she cut the ignition, just before the heavy silence of the forest enfolded her, she heard something. It seemed like the skidding of a car on gravel, along with the briefest noise of an engine. Then, in moments, there was nothing. Could it have been just an echo from her own car? Probably, she decided. Probably that was it.
She ate quickly, listening with a constant ear for any sound beyond the birds and insects of the midday rain forest. Then she pocketed her Swiss Army knife and shifted her hunting knife from her duffel bag to the front seat. Just an echo. That was all.
For the next mile or so, the road seemed to narrow as it went steeply uphill. To the left, rising from the edge of the road, was a nearly sheer, heavily forested hillside? to the right, an increasingly steep drop-off. If a car approached now, it would be impossible for them to pass, and someone would have to back up. Natalie drove with her attention equally divided between the challenging road ahead and the dusty emptiness behind. Her jaw was clenched, and her hands were white on the wheel, in part from the tension of negotiating the road, but also from the sound she had heard.
It was then that she was hit from behind.
She must have momentarily taken her gaze off the rearview mirror, because the jolt, a substantial one, was a total surprise. Reflexively, she jammed on the brakes, causing the Jeep to be pushed toward the drop-off at a forty- five-degree angle. She would have gone over right there had she not switched to the accelerator and floored it while at the same time spinning the wheel back to her left. The side of the Jeep tore against the hillside, uprooting bushes and gouging the trunk of a tree.
Natalie knew, even before getting a fix over her shoulder on the driver, that it was Rodrigo Vargas. In the moment their eyes met, he grinned and waved.
Then his car, a large black Mercedes, dropped back a few feet and charged again. This time there was absolutely no escape. The Jeep was airborne before Natalie could even react, careening through the trees and dense brush for what seemed like an eternity. It hit the ground, still upright, with jaw-snapping force. The windshield shattered, the doors flew open, and the one on her side was immediately torn away. The Jeep bounced high enough to clear some underbrush. Turning partway over, it just missed a tree. Belted in and holding the wheel with all her strength, there was little else Natalie could do.
Finally, the car took a vicious hit on the left front fender, then pitched forward in a graceless cartwheel before coming to rest, wheels spinning, on the passenger's side, facing uphill.
The first thing Natalie knew with certainty was that she wasn't dead. She was strapped to her seat at a hideously awkward angle, and was bleeding from someplace above her left eye. The car was filled with a chemical fog, apparently from having the airbag deploy then deflate. Her right hip was throbbing, but her arms, hands, and feet all responded when she called on them to move. Whether it was from the tank or the five-gallon can, there was an increasingly strong odor of gasoline.
She unsnapped the seat belt and pulled herself up and out of where the door had been, stifling a cry whenever she moved her right hip. A contusion or muscle tear, she decided, but not a fracture. It would slow her down, but it wouldn't stop her. She noticed her hunting knife caught beneath the handle of the passenger door. Painfully, she leaned across, retrieved it, and slipped it into the elastic waistband of her pants. The Jeep had come to rest so far down the embankment that she could not see the road through the thick foliage, but she knew that somewhere up there, Vargas was preparing a descent to check on his handiwork and, if necessary, to finish the job.
She hobbled away from the Jeep and then knelt, head down, and listened. From not too far below she could hear rushing water? from above, nothing. Then the mosquitoes began — lone fighters and squadrons, attracted by her sweat, her breathing, and her blood, buzzing into her ears and nose.
No movement! she warned herself, staying in a crouch as the first wave began biting.
No movement, no sound!
'Natalie!' Vargas's call pierced the forest. 'Natalie, are you all right? It was stupid of me to have done that. If you're hurt, I want to help.'
Natalie peered back up the steep, densely forested embankment, but could detect no movement. Six inches at a time, operating on all fours, forcing the intense ache in her hip from her mind, she worked her way parallel to the hillside, farther and farther from the wreck. That Vargas had a gun, she had no doubt. She had the knife, but her mobility was limited, and her speed nonexistent. Every movement of hers along the sodden ground left crushed ferns and broken branches. Soon, Vargas would be following that trail. Her only chance, and that a small one, was
