Coltrane’s strength failed. His vision dimming, he fumbled to try to peel Nolan’s hands away. He brushed against the shutter button on the camera, unintentionally tripping it, the camera’s whir barely audible, the last sound he might ever hear. No! Conscious of Tash’s frightened presence, he told himself he had to save her. He rammed his knee into Nolan’s groin. Again. Again. Nolan lurched back in pain.

It was the sweetest breath Coltrane had ever known. As he filled his lungs, Nolan kept stumbling away, needing to gain as much time as he could to recover from his pain. Then Nolan took one step back too far, tripped over vines, and toppled backward into the wreckage of a ruined building. Coltrane gaped. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him, he thought, for the decayed thatch of the collapsed roof suddenly came to life when Nolan landed, poles and twigs and strands of fiber thrashing into motion, snapping at Nolan, twisting, rippling over him, and – Oh, my God, Coltrane thought, those aren’t poles and twigs and strands of fibers. Those are snakes.

Nolan barely got a shriek out before his body tensed and trembled, dying. Snakes that had made their home in the ruin slithered out of the doorway.

“Tash!”

Momentarily paralyzed, she snapped into motion and rushed toward Coltrane. As the snakes hissed and coiled, Tash and Coltrane raced from the chaos of the ruins, staring frantically around to make sure they weren’t running into others. Every bush seemed a danger, every cluster of flowers a trap. They squirmed onto the wall, hesitating, afraid of what might be hiding beneath the shrubbery below them. The quick-legged scamper of a lizard made Tash cry out and jump down past ferns, racing toward the car.

Coltrane was only a few hurried strides behind. They scrambled into the car and yanked the door shut, breathing in a frenzy.

“Dear God,” he managed to say. His chest wouldn’t stop heaving. Sweat mixing with the blood from his swollen lips, he turned toward Tash, whose head was pressed exhaustedly against the back of the seat. Her eyes wide with panic, she stared at the ceiling.

“Are you…” Coltrane filled his oxygen-starved lungs.

“I think I’m…” Her chest rose and fell in alarming turmoil. “I think I’m all right. He had me trapped. If you hadn’t climbed to the top…”

“How the hell did he know where we’d be?”

“He shouldn’t have. We were careful.”

“I don’t understand. What did we do wrong?”

“Somehow he followed us.”

“I can’t believe I’m still alive.”

Trembling, Tash held him.

“I was sure I was going to fall,” Coltrane said.

“Alive.” Tash held him tighter. “My God, I was so scared. I am scared.” Her mouth was suddenly on his, and the pain of the pressure against his mangled lips was nothing compared to the life-affirming force of their embrace. Alive, Coltrane thought.

14

BUT HE COULDN’T STOP FEELING NUMB AND HOLLOW.

“Talk to me,” Tash said.

He kept shaking his head, staring out the window.

“What are you thinking?”

The car seemed filled with the smell of fear and death.

“Get it out of you,” Tash said.

“We can’t leave him like this.”

“We can’t take him with us.”

Coltrane frowned toward the ruins.

“All those snakes. You’re not suggesting we go back there and get his body.”

“Of course not,” Coltrane said. “But we can’t just drive away. Somebody has to be told.”

“The police? No way.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“You bet we do,” Tash said. “We can get back to the States as fast as we can. The Mexican police scare me to death. They have a different kind of law down here. It’s based on the Napoleonic Code. You’re not innocent until proven guilty, the way we’re used to. The reverse. You’re guilty until you prove you’re innocent, and this might not look like self-defense to them. They might decide it’s manslaughter. What if someone thinks you pushed him onto those snakes? Down here, they don’t believe in the right to a speedy trial.”

“But the village knows we went up here,” Coltrane said. “It’s a safe bet they’re also aware of another stranger in the area, that Nolan went up here. So what are they going to think when you and I come down but Nolan doesn’t? Some of them are going to get curious enough to hike up and look around. As soon as they find Nolan’s body, the police will be looking for two outsiders in a car that fits this one’s description. They’ll be waiting for us at the airport. Because we tried to run, we really will look guilty. Don’t you see that we have to go to the police before the police come to us?”

15

A RED PONTIAC WITH A RENTAL-CAR STICKER ON IT WAS PARKED among ferns at the bottom of the overgrown lane. Nolan must have left it there and hiked up, Coltrane thought. That’s why we didn’t hear him. The rumble of the surf muffled his footsteps as he walked up behind me.

About to turn left onto the jungle-lined road that led into the village, he had to wait for an exhaust-spewing yellow bus to rattle past. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tash fidgeting. Sweat stuck his back to the seat.

“Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop,” Tash said.

“What for?”

“If the driver says it’s going farther north to Acapulco, I’m getting on it.”

“Getting on it?” Coltrane looked at her in astonishment.

“A woman with my features isn’t going to have a pleasant time in a Mexican jail.”

“There’s no guarantee you’ll spend any time in a Mexican jail.”

“I’m not going to take the chance.” Tash kept hugging herself. “I saw the way those soldiers looked at me when they were checking for drugs and guns.”

“Tash, nothing’s going to happen.”

“You bet it isn’t – because the Mexican and U.S. police are going to sort this out after I get home.”

“But the local police will find out we were together.”

“Not if you tell them you went up there alone, that I wasn’t feeling well and took the bus back to Acapulco.”

“Tash-”

“Please. I’m asking you. Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop.”

16

“THAT VINE IS WHERE HE TRIPPED,” Coltrane said. His mouth throbbed where he had been punched. “Be careful. There were snakes inside that building the last time I was here.”

“Yes, I see one in the corner.”

“What?”

“An especially nasty type.”

Coltrane’s skin turned cold. He had needed all of his willpower to guide the policeman through ferns and flowers toward this spot. Now he needed even stronger willpower not to bolt back to the car.

“A team of medical experts will have to drive here from Acapulco to examine the body before they move it.” The policeman, the only one in the village, was middle-aged and heavy, with a thick dark mustache and solemn eyes. “You say you had a fight.”

“Yes.”

Coltrane had considered inventing a story in which he had happened to find Nolan already dead, but he couldn’t think of a way to explain his mangled lips, not to mention the bruises that the medical examiner would find on Nolan’s groin.

“Over a woman,” the policeman said.

“Yes.”

“And this woman…”

“Isn’t here. As I explained, she wasn’t feeling well. She took a bus back to Acapulco while I came up here.”

“But meanwhile, this man…”

“Came up here also.”

“He followed you from Los Angeles.”

“Yes. He was very angry about the woman. He and I had a similar argument about her back in Los Angeles.”

“But this time, while you tried to defend yourself, he stumbled back and…” The policeman gestured toward motion inside the building.

“I never meant for that to happen.”

“Of course.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you.”

“Yes?”

“The dead man is a U.S. police officer.”