"What are you doing?" he calls after me.
"I want to see."
"You'll hurt yourself."
"I don't care."
Driven by rabid determination, I curse the overgrown roots around the tree for blocking access to it, but once I find my way through them I'm grateful for them because they help propel me upward until I reach the first branches. I'm not an outdoors girl, and it shows. I'm panting when I'm only halfway up the tree. In my defense, this tree is higher than a three-story house. Once or twice I slip, which may be because I can't bear to look too closely at where I'm putting my hands. The entire surface of the tree is covered with a mushy moss, and by the creepy tingles on my fingers every time I grab a branch, I have the uneasy feeling there are plenty of tiny, multi-legged animals I don't want to see lurking inside it. I've never been a fan of animals with more than four feet.
When I reach the top and wedge myself between two branches, I breathe relieved, happy I made it.
And then I taste bile in my mouth as I take in the sight in front of me. Nothing but green tree-tops. Everywhere. Dense, and stretching as far as I can see. The tree I'm in isn't even high compared to the ones I see in the distance, which makes me think we are on some kind of hill. No sign of the river, or anything that might indicate there are human settlements nearby. If we leave the plane, there is nowhere to go. I make a full turn. From what I can see, in a radius that seems like a few hundred miles, there's no sign of civilization, or a path.
Our best bet is to find the Amazon River and walk alongside it. Human settlements are most likely close to the water. But there's no saying how many miles there are to the river or which direction is the right one. And the jungle isn't a good place to set out on foot, hoping for the best. No… Our hope will have to come from the sky. Which is empty. No planes or helicopters. Not even a distant sound.
A knot forms in my abdomen, and I start another full turn but stop when my head starts spinning. I rest on the branch, closing my eyes. Chris will come looking for me. He will. Determined not to lose my faith, I start climbing down the tree. I cringe as nameless small creatures crawl on my fingers, but I keep my eyes on my destination and manage not to panic.
Until I only have one set of branches between me and the roots, and my hand touches something cold, slimy and far softer than a branch could be. In the fraction of a second it takes me to register it's a snake—a large snake—I instinctively withdraw my hand, which throws me off balance. I hit the roots with a loud thump, landing on my right ankle and twisting it slightly, then stumble forward until Tristan catches me.
"What—?”
"Snake," I mutter, fisting his white shirt, seeking refuge in the warmth of his arms as cold sweat breaks out on every inch of my body. Right. Legless animals have just surpassed multi-legged ones on the list of creatures I despise. Strands of hair stick to my sweaty face, and as I push them away, my engagement ring comes in sight again. And I start crying in earnest, with tears and sobs that wrack my body. As much as I tried to convince myself Chris will find us when I was on top of the tree, down here that seems an impossibility. Tristan is saying something, but I can't make out what.
"I am so glad Kyra isn't with us," I say between sobs.
"Yeah, me too," Tristan says, his arms tightening around me. At least neither Tristan nor I have any children. He has parents, though. Strangely, I feel relieved that my parents aren't alive anymore. I can't imagine what a hell they'd be going through if they knew their only daughter was lost in the Amazon rainforest, most likely dead.
"Chris will do everything to find you, Aimee. Don't doubt that for a second."
"I don't." I say, his words giving me strength. That's true. If I am certain of one thing, it's that Chris will do whatever it takes to find me. Being the heir to his father's multimillion-dollar empire, he has the resources to do it. I don't know how long I stay curled against Tristan, overwhelmed, weak, and sweating. He tries to soothe me, his arms embracing me with an awkwardness groomed over years of spending hours at a time in each other's company, the silence between us interrupted only by polite requests. Our relationship has always been stilted, so different from the relationship I have with the other employees in Chris's household.
Well, his parents' household—the Moore’s have an enormous villa with an even more enormous garden just outside L.A. Chris and I live in a spacious apartment downtown with no employees at all. But we're at his parents' house so often, it's almost like a second home. We were there three weeks ago to celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday. Their staff has been with them so long they are like one big family: the cook, the maids, the gardeners, and my beloved Maggie—the woman who cared for Chris and me when we were kids. Our parents were close friends. Since my parents’ work took them away from home for months at a time, and Chris and I were the same age, I spent most of my childhood at Chris’s home, with Maggie babysitting us.
Chris's parents kept her as housekeeper after we were grown, because she had become like family. I am very close to her and on friendly terms with the other staff. Tristan is the only one who actually works for Chris, flying him around the country about once or twice a week to visit the company's subsidiaries. I see Tristan often, because when Chris doesn't fly out, Tristan is my driver. But we haven't grown any closer because of it.
Still, his presence is like an anchor for me. I rest my head on his hard chest, my cheek pressing against his steel muscles. His heartbeat is remarkably steady. I want his calmness and strength to overpower my despair. I stay in his arms until I've cried out my weakness. Then, with a newly found determination, I stand up.
"Let's walk until we find a river—any river, then we can continue downstream. It must flow into the Amazon. They can find us easier if we're on the river. And if they don't find us," I gulp, "we have a better chance of finding a settlement along a river."
Tristan, his shirt so soaked from the humidity he looks like he's been walking in pouring rain, shakes his head. "For now our best course of action is to stay here, near the plane. It's easier to spot a plane than two people. They might be able to figure out where we crashed. The first forty-eight hours after a crash are when the search missions are most intense."
Relief ripples along my skin. Forty-eight hours minus the ones when I was knocked out. Then we'll be going ho
me.
"I want to start a fire," I say. "If they send planes over, they will see the fire, right?"
He hesitates. "I doubt they can see a fire down here with the canopy so thick." He's right. The rich canopy weaves itself in a dome above us, allowing slim strings of light to drip through it here and there, drawing loops of light that illuminate the humid cloud-like shadow surrounding us.
"I still want to start a fire."
"We will. There’s a way to build it so it’s safe even with so many trees nearby. We need a lot of smoke. That'll rise up far above the canopy. It'll be an excellent indicator of our location. It'll be tricky finding dry wood, though. Almost everything here is wet."
"But that's good for smoke, right? Wet wood?"
"Yeah… but we need dry wood to start the fire."
“Can’t we start the fire with one of those mirror shards? I don’t know much about it, but I saw that on TV once.”