“Yeah,” Vern said with a sigh. “The people who took your girl—they’re looking for Paititi too.”

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“Wait,” Andy said. “Who’s looking for Paititi?”

I gave him a quick rundown on how Dr. Gina Brady was kidnapped, and that we now suspected that the people who took her were looking for the same lost city as the documentary crew.

I glanced around at the cleared earth where he’d been kneeling. There was a hole in the ground and the top of a stone was visible. I asked, “Have you guys encountered anyone else at any of the sites?”

“No.”

“You haven’t seen any evidence of camps or fires?” asked Vern. “Footprints? Anything that looks like someone had been to the sites?”

“It’s been raining off and on for the last few days, so any footprints would be long gone. And every place we’ve been so far looks like it hasn’t been touched in five hundred years.”

I found it odd that I had spent the same amount of time in the jungle, yet it hadn’t rained once. Gina had once told me that in the jungle there were several microclimates. One area could get rain seven days in a row, while another area just twenty miles away wouldn’t see a drop.

The snapping of twigs stopped the conversation, and everyone turned and waited for a man to emerge from the brush. In his late fifties, he wore wire-rim glasses and a tan hat. Like everyone else, he had a week’s worth of stubble—his, a perfect white.

“I thought I heard people chatting over here.” He stuck his hand out. “Nathan Buxton.”

After introducing himself, he gave Camila a little wave with his hand, then moving his finger back and forth between me and Andy, asked, “How do you two know each other?”

Andy quickly recounted our shared history and what I was doing in the jungle, then explained, “Nathan is writing an article about the expedition for National Geographic.”

“And possibly a book now,” Buxton said, clapping me on the shoulder. “What, with this new wrinkle and all.”

There was a soft squawk, and the same voice came through the radios attached to both Andy’s and Buxton’s backpacks. “We’re heading back to base camp in a few minutes. Let’s get everybody back to the petroglyphs.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Mark Holland,” Andy said. “He and another guy run a company called Television and Film Logistics and Safety. They’re both ex–Special Forces, and they run a pretty tight ship.”

“Special Forces?”

“British.”

Andy made his way to his pack and pulled off the radio.

He hit the talk button and said, “Buxton and I are headed back now.” He glanced up at me and the four other new arrivals and added, “And we’re bringing friends.”

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