Knowing Corrie Mejía, however, it was going to take more than a few coffee beans to keep her there. She might have been bright and chipper this morning, but Ford was well aware of the temporary nature of their getting along. Dammit. He’d done this for her and she was going to leave him here in the cold.
Or, rather, in the hot, sticky jungle.
“Let’s get this over with so we have time to get back to the airport, okay?” he said, snapping back to the reality of a Mejía-Matthews partnership and shaking free from the hold she had on him.
She blinked twice, as if dumbfounded by his curtness, before he sighed and walked away. What was there to be surprised about? He knew how this would all end—with Corrie on an evening flight back to the States and Ford weighing whether he should press on or abandon the entire expedition. Honestly, he didn’t know why they were even going through the motions by showing her the site, but moments later, ole Ethan was already hot on the trail, escorting Corrie through the thick brush of ferns and bromeliads.
Ford hung back as Ethan narrated the trek, telling Corrie about the land, warning her to mind her step, assisting her through the dense forest and the uneven terrain—as if she needed it. The woman ran through jungles and built rafts without tools. Pretty sure she could handle herself over a few rocks and fallen trees.
The two of them laughed and joked, catching up on their lives and reminiscing about old times. Ford tried blocking them out, but it was no use. Corrie’s laugh was distinctive and intoxicating. He’d forgotten how much he’d enjoyed it. It started with a burst, and then turned into an uncontrollable rolling of laughter before ending with a couple of inhales to catch her breath. It was a real laugh, not one of those tiny, polite giggles. No, Corrie’s laugh was anything but cute and was genuinely Corrie—an I give zero fucks whether you like my laugh kind of laugh. Ford had managed to trigger a few of them back in the day. Though the ones at the library were the most memorable, receiving several shhs and a threat that they’d get kicked out of the building if they weren’t quiet.
It had taken lots of work, but he’d earned those laughs. Real laughs. And now Corrie was practically giving them away for free at everything Ethan said. Ethan was funny, but he wasn’t that funny.
Why was it bothering him so much, though? Why was everything about Corrie’s being here getting to him?
If only he didn’t need her.
“And voilà! This is it,” Ethan announced once they’d reached their destination.
The site really wasn’t much to look at. From the top of the ravine, they stared into the work area: about a dozen square holes measuring six by six scattered about the cleared jungle floor, roped off in a grid for tracking purposes. Piles of sifted dirt sat along the outsides of the site, discarded after confirming the soil was free of any artifacts. Blue tarps covered the work site to shield from both the rain and the relentless sun. Even as deep in the jungle as they were, the sun still pounded on them every day. Great for a tan. Not great for working in ninety-degree heat.
Ford pulled up alongside Ethan and Corrie, then called out to the rest of the crew behind them, “All right, everyone. Go ahead and get started.”
They watched and waited until the crew descended into the ravine, leaving Corrie, Ford, and Ethan standing alone at the top.
“So . . .” Ford started.
“So . . .”
“This is it.”
“That I can see. What brought you here?” Corrie asked.
Wasn’t that obvious? Wasn’t she supposed to be the Chimalli expert, after all?
That was what he wanted to ask, but he knew better than to press his luck on Corrie’s chipperness for the day.
“The Lacandon,” he said, as if that were enough to explain. “And the distance from Tenochtitlán.”
“And who found this particular spot?” she asked, crouching and putting her hands in the dirt.
Ford and Ethan glanced at each other. What on literal earth is she doing? So these were the stories he’d heard so much about. And not just the ones about her running down jags and schmoozing with mob bosses. No, the stories about her methods. How she felt the earth. Meditated during her lunch break. Lay in the dirt. Something about listening to the ancients speak to her or some woo-woo shit like that. They certainly didn’t teach this in grad school.
Some people thought her methods were weird. Others thought she was spiritual, and that spirituality led her on the right path. Ford was intrigued, though he also found lying around to meditate to be a giant waste of time. When he went on digs, he wanted to find things. He didn’t want to speak to dirt or ghosts.
“I did,” he said, standing straighter and shifting his stance. “And then Ethan came with me to scout it out about a month before we broke ground.”
She nodded slowly, as if taking what he said under advisement. Ethan looked at Ford again and shrugged. The urge to prod her for her thoughts nagged at Ford’s senses, as did his desire to beg her to tell him what they were doing wrong.
Because after the first couple of weeks of apparent success, they’d hit a wall.
And not an ancient wall. That would have been a spectacular find. No . . . they hadn’t found anything in more than two months.
“What kind of artifacts have you found?” Corrie stood, brushing her dirty hands against each other and descending into the ravine without waiting for them.
Hot on her tail, Ford and Ethan followed.
“Um, a couple of flints. And a piece of obsidian,” Ethan explained, trying to keep up.
“Where?”
“There,” he pointed. “And also there and there.”
She kept walking, past the crew, past the tents, past the holes dug into the ground. She’d barely paused to look at what they were doing.
“And let me guess, you haven’t found anything in a while, right?” she asked, finally coming to a stop at the far end of the ravine and bending down again, giving Ford a view straight into her cleavage.
“How did you know that?” he asked, trying not to stare.
She glanced up, and he quickly averted his eyes. “Because I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
He looked back at her as she stared up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun shining through an open area in the tree canopy. “That’s why I’m here, right? Because you thought you had the right spot, but now you’re not finding anything?”
Admitting it to Ethan was one thing, but admitting it to Corrie was another. But she was right—she wouldn’t have been there otherwise. If they’d been finding artifacts left and right, there wouldn’t have been a need to call in reinforcements.
“All right. And? What do you think the problem is?”
“Well,” she said, standing again and placing a lump of dirt in Ford’s hand, “you’re not in the right place.”
No. No, that couldn’t be right. Ford had scouted out spots for weeks. He’d read everything there was about Chimalli, including Corrie’s hundred-page dissertation three times. Each account described the lush bowl-like oasis where Chimalli had settled, far from Tenochtitlán. Given the descriptions of the hot, muggy climate, heavy rainfalls, and abundant tropical rain forest trees, the location was most likely situated on the outskirts of the Lacandon Jungle. Old abandoned Mayan territory. A place beyond the reach of the Aztec Empire in the hope that Moctezuma II and his army wouldn’t go looking there. This location checked all the boxes. Ford had trekked hundreds of acres in this jungle before settling on this location.