“I’m so happy right now I could cry.” She stared at him with her big, beautiful brown eyes glistening with the threat of tears. “Thank you, Ford. Thank you for bringing me here.”
Ford’s heart swelled—he’d done that. Ford Matthews had made Socorro Mejía so overjoyed that she’d almost cried. But he couldn’t take all the credit.
“You brought yourself here. Thanks for bringing me.”
She smiled at him, but something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Movement. Through the vines.
“Corrie, watch out!”
Ford barely had a second to react before a snake lunged out of the tangle of vines straight toward Corrie’s hand resting on the brick. With speed he didn’t even know he possessed, Ford lunged toward her, reaching one hand to grab the snake right behind its head, and the other to pull Corrie out of harm’s way. She screamed as the impact caused them to tumble, with Corrie landing on her back and Ford kneeling over her, one hand on the ground next to her head and the other still holding the snake. Its mouth agape, fangs ready to sink into flesh as its tail end thrashed around, trying to get loose. But Ford kept squeezing behind its head, protecting them from its fury. Lifting himself as he straddled Corrie’s hips, Ford gathered the snake and whipped it through the air as far as he could throw it.
Corrie breathed heavily beneath him, still clearly in shock, and he looked at her. Her chest heaved and her hair splayed out over the dirt, with sticks and other debris stuck between the strands.
Didn’t matter—she still looked gorgeous.
He reached down, delicately plucking a twig from her hair. Much to his surprise, she didn’t yell at him to get off her. Instead, her breathing slowed as her gaze softened, and she eyed him with purposeful intensity. His hand traveled to her face and brushed away a speck of dirt from her forehead, then another from her cheek, and another that allowed his thumb to linger dangerously close to her glisteningly enchanting lips.
“Did you literally grab a snake in midair to save me, Dr. Matthews?” Her voice was like thick warm honey. Sweet and viscous, coating Ford’s insides with desire. She’d never said his name like that before. Said Dr. Matthews like a seductress. The only thing that had ever come close was when she’d moaned his name this morning in the tent.
“I believe I did, Dr. Mejía,” he said to her with hooded eyes as he leaned in, placing his hands on either side of her head. His deep voice growled through his throat. “But are you acknowledging that I saved you? Because I believe that’s the third time I’ve come to your rescue on this trip.” His lip turned up with a quirk.
“Third?” She smirked.
Her hands reached to his waist, sending an inferno soaring through his body.
“Well, there was the time I saved you from falling off that boulder, then when I pulled you out of the river, and now here I am with my snake maneuvers.”
He inched closer to her as she tightly tugged on his belt loops.
“Well, Indy’s got nothing on you. He would have left me to die if a snake came at me.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I was named after Harrison, then, and not Indiana.”
He leaned forward, their faces less than a foot apart. Her full lips begging to be kissed. Her entire body begging to be near his. Eight years. Eight years since he’d let this same moment pass them by in the library. He wouldn’t be letting this moment pass again.
“Mayday! Mayday!” Jon’s panicked voice yelled through the walkie. “Dr. Matthews! Dr. Mejía! Mayday!”
Fuck.
Corrie and Ford scrambled to get up, reaching for Ford’s backpack containing the walkie-talkie. Worst-case scenarios ran through Ford’s head. Broken leg? Puncture in the raft? More snakes? Cheetahs? Shit. While he and Corrie had been messing around, something bad had happened.
This time Corrie didn’t fight Ford for the walkie. He pulled it out of the backpack and called back.
“Jon? What happened? Is everything okay?”
Crackle . . . crackle . . .
“Dr. Matthews! We need you. Come quick!”
“Where are you? And are you okay?”
Crackle . . . crackle . . .
“Oh . . . yeah. We’re fine. But we think we found something. South of the raft.”
Fine? They were fine? Did those two have any idea what they’d interrupted? After all their goading that morning, they deserved to be strangled.
“We should get going,” Corrie said, standing and brushing the remaining dirt and debris from her clothes and hair. Ford’s heart sank.
And like that . . . the moment faded. Again.
They hiked back to where Jon and Memo stood waiting beside a moss-covered boulder. Ford examined it, but there wasn’t anything special about it. Another rock half-buried in the dirt. Nothing like what he and Corrie had found up top. They’d better have something good or Ford would never forgive them.
“So, what’d you find?” Corrie asked, striding up to them.
“Well, you told us to look for a cave. Something that might not be obvious. ‘Hidden by nature’s curtain,’ I believe was what you said,” Memo started.
Then Jon picked up the story. “And we saw this boulder and all the moss. And, honestly, we would have missed it if Memo hadn’t tripped—”
“And I fell right through,” Memo finished.
Corrie and Ford each scanned the boulder. There were no holes in the ground. No cracks in the stone. If this was what they brought them down here for . . .
“Fell through what?” Ford asked, his patience wearing thin.
Memo smiled. “Through this.”
He reached his hand to the sheet of moss and pulled it back like a curtain. A cave. Hidden by nature.
“What the . . .” Corrie said, walking toward it.
“They’re vines,” Jon said. “Vines that have grown over the top of the boulder and are covered by moss.”
“Yeah, when I fell and put out my arm to brace my fall against the rock, it gave underneath.”
She stepped into the pitch-black crevice, placing her hand against the wet rock before resting her forehead against the back of her hand. Ford moved closer to get a peek inside, shining his flashlight into the dark abyss. The cool air from the seemingly never-ending cave hit him with a blast. Cold. Dark. Damp. He’d never truly believed Mendoza’s account, but now . . . well, now it was looking to be the answer.
Nature’s curtain.
Chapter
Eleven
She was the luckiest woman in the world. Soon they’d have to rename her Badass as Fuck Mejía. She’d done it. She’d found Chimalli’s final resting place in less than three days.
Well, Ford, Jon, and Memo had helped. But they wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for her. Because they, like everyone else, had disregarded Mendoza’s story. But Corrie knew. Mendoza had been right. And soon they’d prove he was right by finding actual artifacts. Finding evidence.