That’s all the encouragement I need to tell my sister how I ended up working for Satan.
“He sounds like a handful…” Summer chuckles when I’m done. And that deep part of me that is linked to her for life whoops with joy that I could cheer her up a little. “How about the rest of the team? Anyone interesting?”
“Bah, the security team guys are all buffs, but they take themselves too seriously. The only fascinating fella is the topographer.”
“Fascinating how?”
“Think tall Viking warrior with dirty-blond hair and ice-blue eyes that stand out against his tan skin. Oh, and did I mention? The man has a beard.”
“Ew. I hate beards.”
“Just because you’ve never kissed one; his looks like the soft type.”
“Well, enjoy your bearded Viking.” Summer yawns. “I’ll let Mom know your team is cool.”
Leader aside, I think, but only say, “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
I have no response, and she doesn’t say anything else. Suddenly our easy flow of conversation is gone, and things become super awkward again.
After a few seconds, Summer yawns, a bit too loudly to be genuine. “Well, the movie’s over, and I have to go if I want to wake up at a decent hour tomorrow…”
“Yeah, right. Of course.”
“Thanks for calling.”
For a few brief, wonderful minutes we’ve been the Knowles twins again, inseparable from birth. But now we’re back to walking on eggshells around each other. I still haven’t forgiven Summer for what she did, and she knows it. A conversation, no matter how nice, isn’t enough to mend our relationship.
But, as I said: baby steps.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll let you get to sleep. Night.”
“Night.”
When the line goes dead, I drop the phone on the nightstand and lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
Lana was right: holding a grudge is no good. Now that I’ve talked to Summer, I feel a million times better, at least mentally.
Physically, I’m about to melt. The room has gotten too hot; the air conditioning is crap and does nothing against the midday Thai heat. Good thing there’s an ocean just a few yards away. I change back into my bikini and go for a swim.
Logan
“Man,” I say to Archie, snapping my fingers. “I’m talking to you.”
Archie, Tucker, and I are seated outside at a table in the shade under the giant wooden hut where the resort serves breakfast and lunch. We’re discussing more in detail the laser-scanned images of the area we are to explore on foot and the difficulties we might encounter reaching it. But it seems I’m the only person interested in the topic. My two friends are staring behind my shoulders like two hypnotized dummies.
“Sorry.” Archie’s ice-blue eyes flicker to me. “I was enjoying the view.”
A twitch of his mustached upper lip lets me know he’s not talking about the ocean.
I turn toward the beach just in time to see Miss Pain-in-my-ass Knowles walk out of the sea with the same sex appeal of a Bond girl in a 007 movie: wet hair swept back, water dripping down her body, wearing a bikini so skimpy it makes the shorts she had on before look like nun-ware.
If that wasn’t enough, she walks straight to the beach shower.
“Tucker,” Archie says. “Please tell me there’s going to be open showers at our camp.”
I turn back and find both of them still staring like imbeciles.
“No,” Tucker says. “But if we ration drinking water we could make one just for her.”
“I’m ready to die a happy, thirsty man,” Archie replies without removing his eyes from the photographer.
See? See? That’s why I didn’t want a woman on board. It’s objectively disrupting. And a woman like that…
I throw another furtive stare behind my shoulder just as Winter closes the water faucet and walks back to the beach to go lie down on a chaise lounge by the shore, finally out of sight.
“Okay,” I say. “Now that the show’s over, can we please concentrate?”
“You should learn how to appreciate the small joys of life, Logie Bear,” Archie says, using my college-football-playing-days nickname.
“A groundbreaking discovery of an ancient, untouched city is what would give me joy.” I flare my nostrils and point at the open maps on the table. “You were saying we won’t have a clear path of approach?”
Archie throws me another don’t-be-such-a-spoilsport look before he continues. “What these images tell us is that beyond this position”—he points at the red-circled area Tucker has selected as our base camp—“we will have to hack our way through every inch of jungle to reach across”—he moves his finger to the other red circle on the map identifying our destination, code-named Area X—“to here. It’s a jungle stretch just shy of fifteen miles that will take us at least seven or eight days to clear.”
“Tucker,” I say. “What is your suggested approach? Should we advance each day, leaving enough time to circle back to the main camp, or should we set up secondary, one-night-only camps as we go? I’d prefer this second solution; it’d save us time.”
“I’d rather circle back to base, at least for the first few days. Unless you want to get eaten by a tiger, that is.” He stares down at the aerial pictures, where only thick green vegetation is visible. If it weren’t for the correlated laser scans, no one could’ve guessed the jungle harbors more than just vines and trees. “The place we’re going is so wild, the animals there must’ve never seen a man.”
“That’s why we hired a security team. I’m sure they can scare off a few big cats,” I counter. “Those military guys don’t look like they’re joking around.”
Archie scoffs sarcastically. “Aye, aye.”
“Still,” Tucker says. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us out there, and I’d rather we all got back in one piece. It’s not an everyday thing to reach one of the last unexplored regions on Earth.”
Archie pulls at his short beard. “Let’s hope we actually find something when we get to Area X.”
We have to. I’ve put everything on the line to organize this trip. My career, my reputation… I can’t fail.
The legend of a lost city made of gold and hidden in the thick of the Thai jungle has haunted me since I first heard it the summer of my freshman year in college, when I spent a month backpacking in this country. Since then, finding the legendary city has become an obsession of mine. I’ve spent years collecting every scrap of research I could find on the topic.
But the area the various rumors pointed at had always been too vast to grant any real hope of success. Until I heard of a new technology that could take an aerial scan of even the thickest forest and reveal what lay hidden underneath. A city.
But will it truly be the legend I’ve spent years tracking and obsessing over?