Page 127

“Will you take me?” he asked her, his voice quiet. “Are you here to lead me?”

He blinked, and it was the same chimú as before, a wild, dirty mountain dog with a silly, lopsided grin. She wagged her tail and barked again.

This time when she dove through the trees, Santiago hastened to follow.

43

The chimú dog did not lead Santiago to the snake-head boulder.

Instead, she brought him back to the site of the boat crash.

Well, shit, Santiago thought as he scanned the wreckage.

He couldn’t see Ali from where he stood, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Why else would the Shepherd have brought him?

He wasn’t sure if the pressure in his heart and the twisting in his gut was because he was afraid to find her…or because he was afraid that he wouldn’t.

She could help, he thought. She’s better at this and has as much reason to stop the curse as you. More, even.

He thought of Naya then, of how scared Ali must be that—after all those years she’d raised her—the younger girl would die for Santiago’s cowardice. Shame burned his cheeks.

If there even is a curse, another voice in his head cautioned him. We still can’t be sure that it’s real.

We’re condemning people to die if we don’t believe it and it turns out to be true, he argued with himself.

She’ll betray you again. It was a whisper in his mind but may as well have been a shout.

She might pretend to go along with him, only to stab him in the back for her boss. Despite what they had seen, what they had gone through, Ali’s loyalties could still lie with Bernardo Torres and his money. He could be setting himself up for more disappointment.

But the truth was, despite how far he had come, he wasn’t sure he could make it to the end without her.

Shit, he thought.

“I have no choice,” he whispered, as if saying the words out loud could steel his resolve. To his surprise, it did.

The chimú had been sitting patiently by his leg, watching him debate with himself. When he finally stepped forward, the dog sprang up, wagging her tail and heading for a thick cluster of trees at the edge of the riverbank. This time, he immediately followed her.

The dog led him half a mile or so through rough thicket. More than once, his clothing snagged on brambles, but he pushed through. About ten minutes later, he saw Ali.

Relief. Fear. Excitement. Disappointment. Rejection, longing. Hate. Love. He couldn’t land on one emotion; he felt them all, a hurricane kicking up inside his chest. He made himself continue toward her anyway.

Ali was using part of a fallen tree as shelter. She leaned against it, looking unwell. She was pale and clammy, and her hair hung in dirty, limp strands around her face. The bandaging on her wound was stained with red, evidently having bled through the night.

Her glasses sat crooked on her face, left lens still cracked through the center.

Her perfect almond eyes, which had been squeezed shut, shot open as he approached. Emotions flickered over her face in speedy succession: fear giving way to relief, quickly replaced with trepidation. He felt a small flash of comfort, realizing that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to feel.

“Sant— Rios,” she said, her voice breathy and dazed. “How did you find me?”

“It doesn’t matter. What are you doing out here?”

“Torres’s men were searching for us,” she said. “They followed the river to the crash.”

Santiago looked at her bloodless face and then at her wound. “They have helicopters. They probably have medicine. Why not let them help you?”

She shook her head. “I stopped working for them a long time ago. I’m not one of them, Rios. Not anymore.”

Santiago wanted to believe her.