“I don’t know what to think anymore. My gut tells me they’re bad to the core, and I know without a doubt King didn’t ask them to help us. He ordered them to keep an eye on us.”
“I agree. Hopefully, your heart-to-heart with them will do the trick.”
“Bad bet,” Sam said, and slammed the tailgate.
Led by the glow of the rising sun, they walked down to the bridgehead. As advertised on their map, twenty yards to the east of the bridge, behind a copse of bamboo, they found the trail. With Sam in the lead, they headed upriver.
The first quarter mile was an easy hike, the path three feet wide and covered in well-groomed gravel, but this soon changed as the grade steepened. The trail narrowed and began going through a series of switchbacks. The foliage closed in, forming a partial canopy over their heads. To their right and below, they could hear the river gurgling softly.
They reached a fork. To the left, the trail headed due east, away from the river; to the right, down toward the river. They paused only a few moments to double-check their map and Sam’s iPhone compass, then took the right-hand path. After another five minutes of walking, they came to a forty-five-degree slope into which rough steps had been cut. At the bottom, they found themselves facing not a trail but a rickety suspension bridge, its left side affixed to the cliff by lag bolts. Vines had overrun the bridge, so tightly twisted around the supports and wires that the structure looked half man-made, half organic.
“I have the distinct feeling that we’re looking down the rabbit hole,” Remi murmured.
“Come on,” Sam said. “It’s quaint.”
“With you, I’ve come to equate that word with ‘hazardous.’”
“I’m crushed.”
“Can you see how far it goes?”
“No. Keep ahold of the cliff side. If the span goes, the vines will probably hold.”
“Another lovely word, ‘probably.’”
Sam took a step forward, slowly shifting his weight onto the first plank. Aside from a slight creaking, the wood held firm. He took another cautious step, then another, and another, until he’d covered ten feet.
“So far, so good,” he called over his shoulder.
“On my way.”
The bridge turned out to be a mere hundred feet long. On the other side the trail continued, spiraling first down the slope, then up. Ahead, the trees began thinning out.
“Round two,” Sam said to Remi.
“What?” she replied, then stopped short behind him. “Oh, no.”
Another suspension bridge.
“I sense a trend,” Remi said.
She was right. On the other side of the second span they found another section of trail, followed by yet another bridge. For the next forty minutes the pattern continued: trail, bridge, trail, bridge. Finally, on the fifth section of trail, Sam called a halt and checked his map and compass. “We’re close,” he murmured. “The cave entrance is below us somewhere.”
They spread out, searching up and down the trail for a way down. Remi found it. On the river side of the trail, a rusted cable ladder affixed to a tree trunk dangled in space. Sam dropped to his belly and, with both of Remi’s hands wrapped around his belt, scooted forward through the underbrush. He wriggled back.
“There’s a rock shelf,” he said. “The ladder stops about six feet above it. We’ll have to drop.”
“Of course we will,” Remi replied with a tight smile.
“I’ll go first.”
On her knees, Remi leaned forward and kissed Sam. “Bully King’s got nothing on you.”
Sam smiled. “On either of us.”
He shed his pack and handed it back to Remi, then crab-walked through the underbrush. He wrapped his arms around the tree trunk, then slowly lowered himself, legs dangling and feet probing, until he found the ladder’s top rung.
“I’m on,” he told Remi. “Starting down.”