Unlike the previous day, when she’d kept sneaking glances in his direction, Farah had yet to make eye contact with him in the three hours they’d been working. Several feet behind her, Bernita and Alejándro were busy cataloging as well. Between the four of them, it would take another few hours to finish digging around, brushing off, photographing, and making detailed notations of the fifty-two—now forty-nine—artifacts.

Andy’s stomach rumbled and he called to the others, “I’m going to grab something to eat. You guys want to take a break?”

“No, I’m good,” Farah said without lifting her head. The Bolivians echoed her sentiment.

Andy considered going over to Farah and apologizing for a third time—she’d rebuffed his first two attempts—but decided it would be best not to smother her.

“Okay,” Andy said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

No one responded—all three transfixed by the task at hand. Andy weaved his way through the marked artifacts and ducked under the yellow caution tape. He made his way down the jungle path to the riverbank.

After the heated argument with Roth, Goytia and his soldiers had headed back to base camp, but everyone else was there. Camila was hanging from a low branch of a large mahogany tree. Libby, Darnell, and Sean were sitting on the dirt. Roth stood a dozen feet from the water, skipping rocks across the brown water of the swollen river eddy.

Darnell tossed Andy an energy bar. “Find any more gold?”

“Nope,” Andy replied, leaning down to pick up the bar that had slipped through his fingers. “Just a bunch of pottery.”

“Incan pottery though?”

Andy felt twenty eyes on his chest. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Roth said, turning away from the river. “Of course, it’s Incan. It’s all Incan. You know damn well that this is Paititi!”

Andy and Libby made eye contact. She pulled her lips back from her teeth: the international symbol for “Uh-oh.”

Andy said, “Actually, it’s not Paititi.”

The jungle went silent.

“You’re an idiot,” Roth said.

“And you’re an asshole,” Andy was surprised to hear himself say. “Apart from the three Incan artifacts—the ones that were looted—nothing else we’ve discovered since we’ve arrived has been Incan.”

“That’s not—”

Andy put his hand up. “The stonework of the pyramid, while good, isn’t up to the standards of the Incas. Yes, the humidity and acidity of the jungle would increase the rate of erosion more than it would in the dry air of the Andes, but even taking this into consideration, if the pyramid were Inca, the stones would be far more uniform.

“Most, if not all of the clay artifacts appear to be utilitarian in nature. Incas made pottery either for practical use or for ceremonial use. They wouldn’t offer cups, bowls, and other vessels to their gods.”