“I want the logs in the river by nightfall,” he said. He suddenly felt strangely euphoric. And if Jamal appeared before then? Then he would kill Jamal.

Ramón still stood, watching him. Abdullah sat and looked at him. “You have something to say, Ramón? Do you think we have lived in this hellhole for nothing?” Abdullah smiled.

For a brief moment he pitied the man standing before him as if he were a part of something important. In the end he, too, would die.

“Do not disappoint me. You are dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” Ramón said. He spun on his heels and strode from the room.

SHERRY AWOKE on the riverbank with the vision once again stinging her mind. Casius glanced up at her from a rock where he worked over a palm leaf, twisting a root. He motioned beside her. “Your shirt’s right there.” Two holes had been worn through to his shoulder blades. She pulled it on and walked over to him.

“That stuff on your face doesn’t come off very easily,” she said, noting the camo paint had survived the river.

“Waterproof.”

She looked at a small puddle of salve he’d forced from the root onto the palm leaf.

“And what is that?”

“It’s a natural antibiotic,” Casius said.

She winced, remembering the slide. “For your back?”

He nodded.

“Can I see?”

He twisted his back to her. His shoulder blades were worn to glistening red flesh.

“Here.” He handed the palm leaf back to her. “This will help. I’ve seen this stuff work miracles.”

She took the palm. “Just wipe it on?”

“You’re the doctor. It has a mild antiseptic in it as well. It’ll help with the pain.”

He flinched when she touched the seared flesh. Sherry smeared it on, tentative at first, but then using the whole palm leaf as a brush. He groaned once, and she let up with an apology. A sense of déjà vu hit her like a sledge when he winced, and for a moment she felt as though she were in a hospital working with a patient in the emergency ward—not here in the jungle bent over the assassin.

But then she was seeing things strangely these days. Everything was one big déjà vu. Casius just fell into the pot with the rest.

They left the river with Casius insisting they get to a town as soon as possible. He had to get her to safety and return for the priest, he told her. He took to the jungle as if he knew exactly where they were. A hundred questions burned through her mind then.

They had just escaped some terrorist who planned to do something with a bomb, if she understood the vision now. She was supposed to die for this? No, that was only Father Petrus’s talk.