She had caught only the faintest glimmer of black as the helicopter zoomed past, leaving the tall canopy swaying in its wake. She continued staring upward, wondering if she’d blown her only chance at rescue, when she felt a hard sting on her cheek.

She brought her hand to her face where Patrick Sewall had struck her. “Don’t you dare do that again!” he shouted, the cords in his neck taut.

Fifteen hours later, Gina’s cheek still stung from the blow. She set the bowl down on the rock beside her and peered at the ceramic artifact fifteen feet away.

The ground around the bowl was dark and wet. Not long after Patrick struck her, a storm had blown in. It rained for most of the night and again that morning, and Gina couldn’t be certain the words she’d scrawled into the soft earth hadn’t turned into a muddy mess. Hopefully, the weight of the heavy bowl would keep the earth beneath it dry.

But maybe it wouldn’t come to that.

If Martin could keep up his charade for a few more days, maybe the helicopter would return. Or they might encounter a search-and-rescue group on the ground. The longer they stayed in one place, the better. It was odd, but Gina could feel that Thomas was close. He was in Bolivia; she was certain.

She turned at the sound of feet slurping through the mud. Patrick was pulling Martin behind him, stalking toward the pyramid. Martin glanced in her direction and gave her the softest of winks.

Patrick Sewall had kept them separated the previous night—probably to prevent them from trading information and coming up with an escape plan—and Gina was forced to sleep in one of the soldiers’ tents. Thankfully, Bill had forced three of the soldiers to cram into another tent and Gina was alone.

Fortunately, in the hour before Gina informed the soldiers that Martin was awake, the ethnobotanist had told her everything: About the twelve years he’d spent bouncing around the Amazon, studying with different shamans and tribal healers. About finding the golden jaguar and then the pyramid. About being captured by the Nsé-Eja and how they had kept him locked in a cage. How, before his escape, Martin had learned that the ruthless tribe was seemingly immune to cancer. About the publication of Martin’s book, which detailed the whole ordeal, and his meteoric rise through academia. How, two weeks earlier, Patrick Sewall, the president of Belippa Pharmaceuticals, had stuck Martin with a syringe just inside the door of his Calgary home and kidnapped him. And how Patrick was trying to get Martin to lead him to the village that had nearly killed him thirty years earlier so they could find the cure for cancer.