He pulled himself straight, letting his gaze roam the dark recesses in the cleft. The crack was bare meters across, packed with trees, vines, and brush. “No way past if there’s a chokepoint full of predatory vines, brown caps, or a tangle of fast roots, huh?”

“Not unless we can climb around them. You any better at climbing than you were outside of Tyson Station?”

“Thankfully, for once I can say that I am.” He allowed himself a triumphant smile. “A couple of months on Donovan, not to mention the quetzal in my blood, has worked wonders.”

She studied the angle of light on the canyon walls, the packed tufts of cloud rolling in from the east. “We’ve got maybe three or four hours before dark. And you know what happens at dark.”

“Welcome to Donovan?”

“Correct. Let’s get dressed and get the hell up and out of here.”

After all, Talina only had ten rounds in that pistol of hers. If there was any bright lining to their situation, it was that whatever they came face-to-face with in that narrow slit in the rock, it would be up close and personal.

Made him wonder. What was the point of being madly in love with a woman if he was going to be dead in a matter of hours?

Seemed universally unfair.

59

The way Bill Martin was positioned on the kitchen floor, skin peeled back, guts exposed, blood everywhere, the single kidney left outside his body in the puddled gore . . . could it be real? Michaela stumbled sideways against the kitchen island to brace herself. Tried to understand what she was seeing: blood—smeared and pooled—the colors of the exposed organs, the dark red-brown of the liver, the pink lungs, intestines tan-gray, the stomach rose-pink. And then there was the head, split in two like a . . . a . . .

She turned away, the image of the brain sagging and bloody in that transected skull nightmarish. Beyond belief. The kitchen seemed to reel, spin, and she clutched the counter to steady herself. This couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

Iso Suzuki’s frantic call had brought Michaela at a run, her bathrobe wrapped around her, her skin still dripping from her shower. Now she wished she’d taken the time to at least put on shoes.

Iso stood back by the door, her round face slack with disbelief, her eyes large and stunned. The woman was shivering, her entire body wracked. “This is how I found him,” Iso kept protesting. “I was going to get a cup of tea for Bryan. So when he got out of the shower, he’d have it. I . . . I . . .”