The boy isn’t cooperating. As I claw my way toward daylight, I also have to fight a no-holds-barred wrestling match. He’s much stronger than he looks, and he’s clearly hysterical—his nails gouge my arms, and his right arm, which is wrapped around my throat, tightens like a noose.

I remember Gisco’s warning—he’ll be a responsibility and an added danger for us now, at every turn.

I unpeel the boy’s right arm from around my neck. As I break the surface I yank him in front of me. Gisco?

Over here. That fat cat had a nasty attitude, so I decided to take the plunge.

I thought you were going to show it who’s the king of the rain forest.

Why bother? This isn’t so bad. Nice water temperature, don’t you think? Sort of like a mineral bath …

Where are we headed? This kid is freaked out and I can’t tow him around all day.

That island looks like our best bet, the dog suggests, indicating a mud-and-grass hump that rises from the swamp.

Gisco, there were three huge caimans on that beach less than a minute ago.

Well, they’re not there now.

Right. Where do you think they’ve gone?

The dog suddenly looks wary. Good point. He scans the water. Maybe they swam away.

I appreciate his optimism, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong. They’re closing in on us. That’s not just a paranoid guess—I can feel it!

When Eko trained me on the Outer Banks, she tried to teach me how to reach out telepathically to wild animals. I couldn’t master the skill, but I did learn to sense the presence of top predators. When I ran into great white sharks, I could hear them—they gave off an electrical hum of pure evil.

Now I’m picking up something with a similarly nasty signal, but on a different frequency. It’s not emitting a high-pitched buzz, but rather a low drone, like a thirsty ghost circling toward freshly spilled blood.

Gisco, I can hear them coming for us!

I don’t see anything.

The drone comes again, closer. It exudes an unearthly patience as it closes in on us. I sense that countless eons of hunting have given the caimans this stalking maturity—they’ve been catching lunch this way since dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Gisco, we’re being pursued by Mesozoic predators! Maybe you can’t see them, but I can sense them, and they’re getting ready for a lip-smacking dog-and-boy McSandwich!

There they are, Jack! Gisco treads water and stares, panicked but riveted.

I follow the direction of his fearful gaze. Three faint lines are being traced on the smooth surface of the water by large objects swimming just underneath it.

Don’t move. Maybe they haven’t spotted us.