“Not sure. Something’s spooked him. Maybe a jaguar or something.”

She came over and said, “Well, I’d rather have a spooked dog than a jaguar.”

Unexpectedly, Chloe’s voice emerged from the other side of the fire, saying, “Did I hear a dog barking?”

They looked and saw she was sitting up under the nets. A few of the others headed over to her, so Tom faced the river again. The dog had calmed down and appeared relaxed now, but Tom still stared into the undergrowth on the other bank, wondering what it had detected in there.

He only gave up looking when he heard Joel in pep-talk mode, saying, “Okay, everyone, let’s have a good day today, a chance to recover, and then tomorrow we’ll head over the hill and launch the boats.”

Tom smiled, amused by Joel’s need to take ownership of their deliverance. He also sounded as though the events of yesterday had already been forgotten, and maybe he had already managed to put them out of his mind.

Tom envied him for that. Joel had acted stupidly and something terrible had nearly happened to him and Chris as a result, but in the end they hadn’t suffered any serious harm, and the trauma of being a captive would diminish in time and become a boastful story about a lucky escape in the jungle.

The real price of Joel’s stupidity had, as always, been paid by others, and Tom was one of those now, because he had killed people. He could remember their faces so clearly, and he had an uncomfortable feeling he’d never forget them—the two men in the barn, the old man with the white hair, the young guard.

He turned back and faced the camp, the group coalescing around the fire now. Chloe was on her feet and being helped to the fire by Barney and Mila—she looked a lot better, but Shen’s assessment was probably right about her not being ready to travel today.

They were all talking again too, animated, as cohesive a group as they’d been immediately after the crash. And standing there near the water with the dog lying nearby, Tom briefly felt about as far removed from them as he ever had.

But just then he realized someone was looking back at him—Alice—and when he made eye contact she smiled, even laughed a little, finding some amusement in the sight of him standing at a distance again. And Tom smiled too, thinking maybe his days of being an outsider were over, that he’d made connections now, perhaps even become part of a jigsaw puzzle of sorts.

As if to prove that, Kate walked over to him and said, “We’ll need a couple of people to keep a lookout while me and George are fishing. It takes a lot of concentration, so someone else needs to look out for predators.”

“I can do that.”