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He was used to the whisper of waves over sand and an explosion of reds, oranges, and pinks on an open horizon. In the jungle, it was like God flipped a dimmer and let everything fade from sight.
    Vision faded, registering little aside from the lumpy outline of the rain forest canopy overhead while his ears filled with a hum that grew in reverse proportion to the light. If the jungle was a bustling village by day, it was a partying city at night, with every living being in it contributing to the concert from every story of habitation. There were ear-level whistles, overhead hoots, scratches from underfoot. Tweets and scrapes he couldn’t begin to trace, and the occasional low-toned growl that made even the locals huddle closer to their tiny fires.
    Made Cara huddle closer to him, too, which made all kinds of body parts want to join the party, too. God, it had been too long. Too long without her.
    A toothless old woman motioned them over to sit in the dirt across from each other, separated by a fallen log, then made them stretch out their forearms. She took out a hollowed-out gourd filled with something and started scratching it into his skin, using a stick like a pencil.
    “Ouch!” He tried pulling his arm back, but the woman was surprisingly strong.
    Cara just giggled. “It’s jagua. A fruit extract. It keeps the mosquitoes away.”
    “Does it work?” He grimaced as the woman etched a complicated pattern of black lines into his skin.
    “I guess we’ll see.” The way Cara said it hinted at something else.
    He looked up and found her eyes and stayed there a long, long time while the rest of the world — the screeching jungle, the scratching on his skin, the chicken muttering by his foot — all faded away. Far away, until it was just him and his princess and a whole lot of pheromones filling the air. The kind that let his imagination take them right back to their hut.
    Just when it seemed Cara was letting her guard down, he sensed her tense back up. He followed her frosty gaze across the clearing to a man who had just stepped into sight.
    “Who’s that?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Jean-Philippe Lefebvre. Some anthropologist type. Not too keen on outsiders.”
    That was pretty clear from the way the man stomped over like a charging bull. Wiry and tall, he seemed even taller once he got close. Tobin fought the urge to jump to his feet and let his height do the talking. Instead, he shot out a casual,
“Hola.”
    “Who are you?” the man demanded, staring him down through bloodshot eyes. “What do you want here?”
    Cara
, he nearly said, but swallowed it down. Not the point right now. “Tobin Cooper, pleased to meet you.”
    The man looked at him in disgust. God, what an asshole.
    From a distance, the man could pass as a local, but up close, a foreign accent and gray-brown hair gave him away. The scent of dope hung over his wiry frame, his heavily lined face.
    “Let me guess,” Tobin continued. “You’re French.”
    “Belgian,” the man all but spit back. “And you? American?” He said it like a curse.
    “Yup. Nice to meet you, Jean-Claude.”
    The man’s glare went to death mode. “Jean-Philippe.”
    Whatever.
    The man huffed and stomped off, and even the old woman painting Tobin’s arms rolled her eyes.
    “What’s his problem?”
    “Me. You. Us.” Cara shrugged. “He barely talks to me. Like I don’t exist.”
    Moron. What kind of man would ignore a woman like Cara?
    “He’s some kind of expert on indigenous languages and cultures,” Cara went on.
    An expert on hallucinogens of the jungle would have been Tobin’s guess, but he kept his mouth shut.
    “Apparently, he’s written a book.”
    Tobin shrugged. “Any idiot can write a book.”
    “Lefebvre seems to treat the village like his own private turf. Like any outsider is a threat to his little fiefdom.”
    “Seems to me he’s been playing Tarzan a little too long.”
    “And mixing a little too much of the local weed with his