by CJ Lyons
“So he’s English?” Caitlyn asked.
“No. American. Studying abroad. He and Maria met in a chat room devoted to pre—” Linda paused, frowning.
Vicky supplied the details. “Preclassic Mayan Civilization of Mesoamerica.”
Whatever that was. The girls began to fill in the blanks without Caitlyn’s prompting, so she stayed quiet and listened.
“You see,” Linda said, “Prescott works with this Professor Zigler. He’s been looking for this Dresden Codex something place his whole career. Maria volunteered to help and go over his data using modern technology.”
“And she found it!” Tracey interrupted.
Linda shot her a look and continued, “So the professor came out of retirement and organized a dig at this lost temple. Apparently folks have been searching for it for like a century but they were looking in the wrong place.”
“Of course they had to keep it a secret. Not just because of the treasure and looters it might attract, but also the natives—”
“Indigenous people,” Vicky corrected.
“The Mayans have this big political deal, their land, their heritage, something like that.”
“They’re just trying to stop the exploitation of their culture and history.”
“Yeah, but that leaves all those temples and buildings just rotting in the jungle when people like Prescott and Maria could be studying them, learning tons of stuff—”
“And finding tons of treasure.” Vicky’s voice held a hint of disapproval. “There’s no way in hell the government will let the Mayans keep all that gold for themselves. They’ll confiscate it, sell it to the highest bidder.”
Caitlyn intervened. “Tell me more about this Prescott guy. And the professor, Zigler. Are they with Maria now?”
“Of course,” Linda said. “Maria’s not stupid. Professor Zigler is famous—if you’re an archeologist. He’s been retired, so out of the spotlight for the past few years, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to work with him.”
“He met her in Guatemala?”
“No. A man that important wouldn’t leave his work just to pick up an undergrad volunteer. He sent Prescott.”
“Does Prescott have a last name?”
“Prescott Wilson,” Vicky supplied. She got off the sofa and rummaged through one of the bags scattered around the room, then handed Caitlyn a sheet of paper. “Maria took this screen shot of him during one of their Skype calls.”
It was a color printout of a man in his late twenties. Blond, handsome, aristocratic. “So Prescott picked Maria up—”
“At the port. Santo Tomás. We all met him.”
“Maria definitely lucked out there. Compared to the drunken frat boys we’ve met here, at least,” Tracey said.
“And where’s this dig, this lost temple?”
They looked at each other. “We don’t know.”
“They had to keep the location a secret,” Linda explained. “Maria said everyone thought the temple was at the bottom of a lake—”
“Lake Izabel,” Vicky supplied.
“Right, Lake Izabel, but they were wrong. It was really like thirty-some miles away, in the jungle, near another lake, where it’d been forgotten for centuries. All that time looking, and Maria’s the one who finally found it.”
“How’d she do that?” Caitlyn asked, not liking the creepy tingling crawling up her spine as she listened to their story. It was too involved and convoluted to be a routine con—and there was no money exchanging hands. If they’d just wanted to kidnap a college girl, there were easier ways. And there’d been no ransom demand … at least not yet. But this whole thing felt so very wrong. “Maria is only a sophomore. How could she help this famous professor?”
“She’s very gifted,” Linda defended her friend. “Especially with maps and satellite images and shit like that.”
“Prescott showed her the professor’s data,” Vicky explained. “They had tons of it. Geological surveys, thermal and infrared scans, satellite imagery going back twenty years, even aerial photos they’d found in some archive. Problem was, they had too much data. And no way to interpret it.”
“Until Maria,” Caitlyn said. Talk about reeling in your mark. But why? What did they want with Maria?
“Right,” Tracey said with pride. “She worked for weeks on it, used all her spare time. Used tons of crazy special computer programs and stuff to analyze it. Even one she got from NASA. But then she put everything together and figured out where the temple and treasure were. So of course the professor invited her to join them. She had to jump through tons of hoops, fill out all sorts of forms, plus there’s no credit, but she’s hoping the professor will let her join for real come summer.”
Linda nodded. “But her parents would never approve. So she decided to prove to them that she can take care of herself and we came up with a plan.”
“Right.” Caitlyn fought the urge to roll her eyes. “The plan. How did you guys pull that off?”
“We left the boat together at Santo Tomás. Prescott picked up Maria and we went sightseeing with this hunky guide, Jorge.”
They all smiled simultaneously, remembering Jorge.
“But the ship’s records show that Maria got back on board.”
“Before she left, she gave us her passport and passenger ID. When we got back on board, Linda dropped her bags, distracting the security guy, while I scanned her passport under the bar code reader.”
“Then we just carried her ID with us, taking turns to use it to buy stuff so the computer would think she was still here.”
“And that’s all there was to it,” Linda finished with a smirk. They all sat back, crossing their arms, daring Caitlyn to find fault with their plan.
It took everything she had not to lash out at them. Had she been that foolish and naïve and plain old stupid when she was their age? She took a breath and calmed down. Yes. She had. And so had all her friends. Made you wonder if Darwin was right after all.
Caitlyn didn’t waste time reprimanding them—it wouldn’t help her find Maria. “How was Maria going to get back into the country without her passport?”
“She was born in Guatemala. Her parents moved to Florida when she was only a few months old. But she has two passports. She was going to use her Guatemalan one.”
“And if that didn’t work or if she had any trouble, she’d go to the U.S. consulate in Guatemala City.”
“We made sure she had their phone number programmed in her cell.”
“Worst case, she’d call her parents. They’d bail her out—and then probably make her quit school and join a convent or something.”
“They’re so strict.”
“And old. They just don’t understand what it means to have a dream.”
“Not a clue. Just because their lives turned out boring doesn’t mean ours have to.” They nodded in unison, condemning parents everywhere.
“Do you have the professor’s contact info?”
Linda and Tracey looked away. Vicky answered, “Prescott said they have a satellite phone. That way she could call if she needed anything.”
“But she hasn’t called?”
They all shook their heads. “See, she’s fine,” Linda rationalized. “If she was in any trouble, she would have called.”
Right. If Prescott was legit, if the sat phone was working, if the trouble happened after she arrived at the dig, too many ifs to count. “And none of you know exactly where this site is?”
“It’s a temple hidden in the jungle. It belongs to the Mayan rain god, Chaac,” Vicky supplied with a gush, trying to make up for their lack of helpful information. Teacher’s pet, Caitlyn guessed.
“Do you know where in the jungle?”
She drooped with disappointment. “Maria showed me the satellite photos, but I didn’t see a map or anything. All you could see was green everywhere, it was on the side of a mountain and there was a huge waterfall beside it. You couldn’t even tell there was a building there hidden in the trees. Not
in the regular photos. It just looked like another hill. Part of the mountain.”
Not much help. Caitlyn thought again about the elaborate ruse that lured Maria to Guatemala. It was clear Maria had been targeted. Far too risky not to have someone watching Maria, making sure she didn’t alert the authorities or change her mind. “How about before you left Orlando? Have any of you noticed anyone watching Maria? Maybe someone out of place?”
Linda and Tracey exchanged glances. “You mean like the pervs?”
“What pervs?”
“A few old guys, always following us around,” Tracey answered.
Linda rolled her eyes. “They even showed up when we went out dancing the night before we left.”
“I thought I saw one of them here on the ship,” Vicky interjected as if she didn’t want to be left out. “Well, maybe. I haven’t seen him for a few days.”
“Not since Maria got off?” Caitlyn asked. The girl nodded.
After grilling the girls and receiving only vague descriptions of three men, Caitlyn took Maria’s U.S. passport from them and handed them her card with her contact info. “If you girls think of anything more, if you see one of the men, if you hear from Maria—or Prescott or the professor—I want you to call me. Right away. Day or night. Do you understand?”
Another group nod. This one the slightest bit sheepish—but not sheepish enough. Finally Vicky asked, “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not in any danger. Not there with the professor and all those archeology people.”
Caitlyn couldn’t resist. “She’s alone in the jungle a thousand miles from home with strangers who may or may not be legit. And she hasn’t made contact with anyone in over thirty-six hours. What do you think?”
Suddenly they got it. Eyes went wide, hands clutched for each other’s comfort, a few tears appeared. Caitlyn reached for the door.
“Tell Mr. and Mrs. Alvarado we’re sorry,” came a quiet plea from the couch. She didn’t bother to turn back to see which girl had uttered it. “We thought we were helping.”
Caitlyn left to find her way back to the security office. Friends like that …
CHAPTER TEN
Maria had spent the night at the river. At first she worried about animals coming to the water to drink, but she felt safer there than trapped in the claustrophobic confines of the thick jungle undergrowth. At least at the water there were no snakes. She’d rather take her chances with jaguars than snakes. Well, maybe not, but it was harder to imagine jaguars with every rustle below the ground cover.
She’d found a relatively dry patch along the riverbank and used a rock to carve a niche into the mud, then lined it with ferns to make it waterproof and add insulation. She used more ferns and palm fronds to defend against the chilly mist that gathered over the river.
Of course she hadn’t counted on the torrential storm that flew down the gorge, thunder ricocheting from one rock face to the next, leaving her teeth aching. No amount of padding with plants could protect her from the rain and water splashing up to her feet. But moving up into the jungle seemed even more dangerous as the ground grew muddy and unstable while lightning flashed between the trees, each strike closer than the last.
Finally she just huddled, letting the rain lash her, trying to imagine she was somewhere else. Her teeth chattered as she curled up in the mud, knees to her chest, hugging herself for warmth, rigid with fear, alternating between crying for her parents, weeping over Prescott, and sobbing in terror with each new sound and motion the darkness brought.
As for any possibility of sleep, fear took care of that.
At first light she drank her fill of the river water, filtering it through her folded-up bandanna into her bottle. After bathing in the water, she turned to the thought of food. She’d had heart of palm salads back home, but had no idea what part of the palm tree they came from. The root? Stems? Inside the trunk? Didn’t really matter, since she had nothing to cut into the plants with. She settled for peeling back some of the palm fronds, slicing her hands with their sharp edges, until she reached the stringy white fibers at the center of the stalk.
Bitter and they did little to take the edge off her hunger, but it made her feel like she wasn’t totally inept. After all, she’d survived a night alone in the jungle, in a storm that rivaled the tropical squalls back home. Not many kids her age could say that.
She hiked downstream, feeling more confident that she could actually make it to the hospital that day. Until she stopped to rest and exhaustion and hunger and the heat of the day combined to knock her off her feet for several hours. Hours when anything could be happening to the professor and his people. She woke with her mouth dry and her heart heavy with fear and guilt. Never should have stopped, even if she had practically fallen to the ground, she was so damn tired.
Despite her nap, she was dizzy when she pushed to her feet. Her arms and legs moved slowly, as if the air were thicker than mud. Welts left by lashing branches during her race through the trees and insect bites from her night spent huddled in the mud covered her body. She scratched absently as she checked her watch. Almost four. From the topography around her, she guessed she still had at least a mile to go before reaching the lake—maybe two. And the light was fading fast.
The river burbled cheerfully beside her, oblivious of her panic. It was a fast-moving river carved out of the foothills, but the largest waterfall she’d had to climb down as she followed it was maybe ten feet high. And it had gotten flatter, smoother, the farther west she came. Could she risk it?
Her father would say yes. But what decided her was the thought of spending another night in the wild, of what might be happening to the professor and his people, the blood on Prescott’s face, and yes, the deep, primal need for human contact, for civilization.
She stepped into the water, icy cold from its trek down the mountains, walked until it came up to her knees, then sank into it, feet facing downstream, and let the current take her.
Staying afloat in the river with its rocks and turns and churning water wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. Maria had once gone tubing down the Ichetucknee when she’d visited friends in Gainesville—that river was nothing like this one.
After being sucked under for the third time, Maria realized she had to get out, risk going by land, even if it did take longer. She tried to swim for shore but the current held her tight. Then she heard the noise she’d been dreading: the roar of a waterfall.
The sun was barely a scarlet memory in the sky, leaving shadows that filled the river gorge. The current smashed her into a boulder, trying to spin her under it where she’d be trapped, but she managed to keep her head and arms above water, hugging the rock face as she inched along it, aiming for the shallower eddies that ran toward the riverbank. The current forced her to the south bank of the river where the gorge wall was a steep cliff and large boulders had tumbled into the river.
It took the last of her energy and she got pretty banged up along the way, but finally she collapsed faceup in the mud. Shivering uncontrollably, she watched as stars began to appear overhead. She wouldn’t last another night out here, not as cold and wet as she was. And the professor and his people needed her to get them help.
Coughing out the water she’d inhaled, she pushed herself to her feet and struggled on. The roar of the waterfall got louder, the rocks and boulders she had to navigate over or around got larger, until she climbed onto one final rock ledge only to realize that she’d come to the end.
The river vanished into churning white water plunging over the side of the mountain. On her side of the water a sharp rock face reached toward the sky, a few scraggly trees breaking its knifelike silhouette. She couldn’t climb up. Couldn’t swim over to the less rugged terrain on the other side of the river where trees sloped down the mountain to the lake below. She crept out to the edge of the limestone cliff and looked down. It was about twenty-five feet or so to the bottom of the falls. They emptied out into a lake and on the far side of it she saw lights. N
ot stars, but man-made, real lights.
The clinic. She’d made it. Almost.
No way to tell in the dark what lay at the bottom of the cliff. The water was probably deep enough, but what if there were boulders and rocks waiting below? Or alligators—did they have alligators in Guatemala? She couldn’t remember reading about any.
She peered into the darkness. The water roared like a freight train. The rock face beside it was polished smooth. Even in daylight, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to climb down it.
She stood, inching her toes out over the edge of the cliff. Back home, as a kid, she’d never been afraid of heights, had loved racing up the high dive and shouting to her father to watch as she hurled her body through the air as far as she could push gravity. This was just like that.
That’s what she told herself as she backed up to get a running start. Her best bet was to land as far out into the lake, away from the rocks and rapids as she could. Given the height she had to work with, she thought she had a good chance.
If the lake was deep enough, if there were no hidden rocks or submerged trees or alligators waiting for her.
She heaved in one breath after another, filling her lungs to capacity. Prescott’s bloody face, the sound of the gun roared through her mind, eclipsing the sound of the waterfall. Then she pushed off, running, until she ran out of ground and found herself soaring through the air.
The last thing she thought of before hitting the water was she wished her father could see how brave she was. She hoped he’d finally be proud of his little girl.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The only good thing about the intel she’d gotten from the girls was the look on Broadman’s face when Caitlyn told him how easily they’d outwitted his state-of-the-art security system.
Hector and Sandra, aghast at the idea of their daughter left behind, wanted to fly to Guatemala immediately, but the pilot quashed that idea, saying that he couldn’t get clearance until morning. They settled into a hotel for the night, the Alvarados in an executive suite, Caitlyn in a regular room, hoping they didn’t fly off without her.