ultimately contributed to their deaths.'
'I understand the overall scenario. I want to know what your gut tells you.'
Colton pondered his answer carefully. With so many variables, anything could have happened. The idea of soldiers and natives didn't feel plausible. The Ejercito del Peru, the Peruvian Army, would most certainly have mowed them down with automatic weapons and made sure their bodies were never recovered, and with their intimate knowledge of the Amazonas region, the natives would never have allowed the party to reach its goal in the first place if they'd felt threatened. So what
'I don't know.'
'And that's what troubles me, too.'
Colton paused and watched the mourners disperse from the gravesite and pile into the waiting limousines. The sun peeked through the cloud cover, but vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
'I want to show you something,' Gearhardt said. He reached into his jacket pocket, removed a folded handkerchief, and held it in his open palm. 'These were with my son's possessions. They found them in his backpack.'
Colton accepted the proffered handkerchief and felt the weight of its contents, or rather the lack thereof. He unfolded the fabric and studied the objects for a long moment before he looked up to find Gearhardt staring intently at him.
'I don't get it. Are these supposed to mean something to me?'
'I was hoping they would. They definitely meant something to Hunter, and for whatever reason he thought they were important enough to make sure he packed them in his hurry to flee the camp. We're dealing with a vast wilderness consisting of thousands of square miles of the harshest unmapped and unexplored terrain in the world. They're obviously a clue of some kind, but to what? The location? Or something else?'
Colton inspected the objects a while longer, then refolded the handkerchief over them.
'I have to admit, you've piqued my curiosity. However, it remains to be seen if you truly require the kind of dynamic solutions I provide.'
Gearhardt nodded, but Colton sensed his hesitation.
'What are you holding back?' Colton asked. He returned the handkerchief, which disappeared into Gearhardt's pocket again.
'I have two stipulations.'
'You know that's not how I work.'
'Humor me, Marcus.'
Colton licked his lips and tilted his face to the slight breeze. The smell of flowers and turned earth washed over him. There was something in the air, something intangible, something that constricted his intestines and fluttered in his stomach. It was a sensation to which he was entirely unaccustomed. He lowered his eyes to meet Gearhardt's and raised an eyebrow.
'I want this entire expedition documented,' Gearhardt said. 'Camera crews, various experts, the whole nine yards.'
'You do remember that your son was stabbed twice in the back, right?'
'How could I forget?'
'If you want me to babysit a bunch of civilians under potentially dangerous conditions, you're going to have to double your offer. I expect four million and a twenty-percent stake.'
'Done.'
'And your second condition?'
'I'm going with you.'
VI
Dr. Samantha Carson leaned back in her desk chair and sighed. Twin stacks of essay tests dominated the blotter in front of her computer monitor. She should have made the exam multiple choice and keyed the Scantron. That way she would have already been done and sitting comfortably on her couch at home with a glass of wine and the new Danielle Steel novel, her guilty pleasure. Instead, she could only stare at the heaps of paper with their scribbled chicken scratch and dread the daunting task ahead.
Normally, she would have already been cruising through them, but the news of Hunter's death had hit her like a truck. Granted, she'd only seen him a handful of times over the past five years, but they'd practically grown up together. While other children had been firmly rooted in their nuclear families and living normal lives, she and Hunter had been toted around the world by their parents like baggage, which wasn't to say their childhoods had been terrible, only...different. They had lived for months at a time in tents and haphazardly assembled Quonset huts in some of the least hospitable locales, playing in jungles rather than on jungle gyms, in the most remote regions of the world rather than in safe little cul-de-sacs. For a long time it had felt normal. It wasn't until she began to develop her own identity and discovered the need for friends and an actual sense of belonging that she realized what she was missing. Hunter had been a brother to her in every way but genetically. It just hadn't been enough for her, and she had jumped at the opportunity to matriculate at one of the most prestigious private prep schools in the country. Hunter had stayed with his parents, but they had always spent holidays and breaks together, and she had looked forward to every minute of it.
And now he was gone.
Sam had promised herself she would make more of an effort to stay in contact, but since her parents passed---her father from esophageal cancer and her mother from the resultant loneliness of a broken heart---she had buried herself in her work and held life at arm's reach. Her professorship was demanding. As co-chair of the paleoanthropology department, she was charged with securing funding and negotiating site leases in addition to the everyday tasks of teaching undergraduate anthropology and graduate-level studies in Indigenous South American Cultures. Throw in the responsibility of being one of the world's foremost experts on the Chachapoya culture, and it was a rigorous schedule that dominated nearly every free second of her time, which forced out all of the things she had originally abandoned the life her parents had given her to pursue. In the end, as the adage goes, she had become just like them, an isolated relic in the modern world doing everything in her power to live in the past.
Sam turned away from her desk and looked out over the commons. Young men and women with their entire lives ahead of them bustled between classes, milled around bike racks, tossed Frisbees and kicked hacky sacks. Here she was, barely thirty-three years-old with a tenured academic post, a leader in her field, and it saddened her that she couldn't identify with any of them.
There was a knock on her office door, followed by the slight squeak of hinges. It was about time her teaching assistant showed up. There were still the next morning's lesson plans to formalize, and she wanted to discuss a couple of changes in the---
'You look just like your mother.' She recognized the voice immediately and whirled to face her visitor. 'She had those same little freckles under her eyes.'
Leo offered an almost paternal smile. He hovered in the doorway for a few seconds before entering the room and closing the door behind him. He gestured to one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. 'May I?'
Sam could only nod. She hadn't seen this face from her childhood in years, and other than a few more wrinkles around his eyes, he didn't appear to have aged at all. After a moment, she noticed her mouth was hanging open and felt the need to say something.
'I'm so sorry to hear about Hunter. You know how much I loved him.'
Leo's smile grew weary. 'I had always hoped that you two would end up together. You had so much in
