I touched the wall, surprised that it wasn’t flat. The Incas hadn’t shaved the stones to make them even, and looking at the differently sized and shaped pieces, I couldn’t figure out what held them together.

“There’s no mortar,” Jesse added, as if reading my mind. “I’m not kiddin’ about nobody today understanding how they put this together. It’s like the biggest jigsaw puzzle on earth.”

When I looked at the panorama of the city on the mountaintop, all I could think was how much I wished Claudia could have seen it. My sister had never cared much for travel, and she’d mocked me for flitting from place to place, but this would have impressed even her. My chest constricted when I thought of her, to the point where it sometimes became hard to breathe. It was as if her memory could strangle my heart. Then I heard a short, sharp shriek and felt a jolt of adrenaline crackling through me with the force of electricity.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Jesse.

“Sure did. C’mon, it was from this direction, I think.”

We followed the stone path and heard another scream. Both of us rushed to the top of a steep staircase. At the bottom, completely still on the stone landing, was a woman’s crumpled body.

❖

The Next One to Fall will be released in a new eBook and paperback edition in November 2020.