Emma noticed. “Do you believe in the devil, Ms. Ortega?” she said evenly.
Camilla frowned, but her lips curled up slightly. “I believe in good and evil.”
“Hmm, I never used to believe in him. But I do now.” Emma continued to look deep into the woman’s eyes, trying to decide.
“You won’t frighten me off.” Camilla tilted her head. “So… ”
Emma knew she didn’t have the time to wrestle with this now. Besides, there was something she needed the woman to do. And something that only a local with knowledge of the Amazon and its workings could do. If she wanted to come so badly, she needed to earn her way in.
Emma decided. “I need you to do something for me. Consider it a test. Or an entry fee.”
“Sure, what is it?” Camilla smiled benignly.
“To find and contact someone in the Amazon, the jungle, that I haven’t been able to. Can you do that?” Emma lifted her chin.
“Sure can; try me.” Camilla looked serious.
“I’ll give you the details — it’s important. Do it, and you’re in.”
Camilla nodded. “Consider it done.”
“Good; we leave for Caracas in ten days. Be ready.”
Camilla continued to look serious. “We will be, and thank you.”
They swapped phone numbers, and Camilla then turned and made a call. In a few moments, a car pulled up with a larger man sitting in the driving seat that had obviously been parked close by.
Emma sighed and closed the door. Now she had to break it to the team that they’d suddenly picked up a couple of extra members… who were press. She groaned.
“They’re gonna kill me.”
Camilla jumped into the car and slammed the door. She turned and grinned. “We’re in.”
Juan’s mouth dropped open. “You’re good; you’re real good. So what’s the plan?”
“We leave in ten days, so we need to prepare. We join their team. We’ll be with them the entire way. Filming the entire way.”
‘They’ll let us film… everything?” Juan’s eyebrows shot up.
“I told them that they could review the footage. But I never said we’d delete anything. Just make sure you back everything up to the secondary camera drive.” She turned back to the front of the car. “We’ll be there, right there, when we all find out what happened to Mr. Ben Cartwright and his friends. And if Ms. Wilson had anything to do with their disappearance, then she may find her stay in Venezuela is a lot longer than she expected.”
CHAPTER 13
Ben woke to sunshine on his face, and he blinked a few times before even remembering where he was. The warmth of the rays had also warmed the guano in the cave, and a miasmic steam began to rise off the fishy-smelling paste.
He sat up as the small reptilian birds flew past him, in and out, gathering the morning’s fish from the ocean surface. Ben turned about and immediately spotted a few nests close by with grey, leathery-looking eggs nestled within.
He scrambled over and lifted three, tearing the oblong cases open and drinking their protein-rich contents. He wrinkled his nose at the bitter sardine taste of the first two, and then the third from a different nest turned out to be a bit further along, containing soft bones and a hint of salty blood. It didn’t matter what they tasted like; he needed the protein for his energy. Nothing was wasted anymore.
Ben wiped his mouth, and several times across his beard, and sat staring at the view while ignoring the stench of the small pterodons. It was entrancing and he moved closer to the cave mouth and then inhaled the odor of the sea — the fresh saltiness, drying weed, and warming sand. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it.
It all felt familiar, and he could have been back at home, looking out over the expanse of never-ending blue water from a pier down at a California bay. That is, except for the sight of long necks lifting, swan-like, from the water, and diving back down to be gracefully raised once again with flapping fish in their toothy mouths.
He watched them for a while longer, mesmerized by their grace and beauty. Like a pod of whales, he thought, as the group of plesiosaurs moved together, some huge, their slender, shining necks rising 20 feet from the end of large cetacean-like bodies, and others small, no more than six feet in length, obviously their calves.
Ben closed his eyes and sat for a while, letting the sun warm his upturned face. He relaxed, something he was rarely able to do in this time of tooth and claw, and let his mind drift to not if, but when, he would be back home.
What would he be doing now? he wondered. Would he be fixing up a motorbike in his garage? Would he be drinking with his buddies at one of the local bars? He inhaled, smelling stale beer, ancient cigarettes, and the press of bodies.
Or would he be out somewhere with Emma, sitting under a tree, talking, or perhaps just holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. He groaned, feeling a wave of homesickness wash over him.
While there is life, there is hope, he reminded himself. His eyes flicked open to the sound of squawks and clicks from down along the beach. Two theropods, both only about four feet tall, walked like a pair of ostriches along the sand at the high tide line. Now and then, their necks would drop to pick something from amongst the weed to be gulped down. Probably dead fish, he guessed.
Even though they were both fairly small, he knew from experience that those triangular heads contained teeth sharper than those of a wolf. And they cut like shears. Best to avoid ones even that size.
In another few minutes, they were well out of sight. The tide was drawing out, and Ben looked down into the large, natural pool below him. It was roughly circular, hundreds of feet across, and a perfect lagoon. And by the look of it, the breakwater rocks had trapped a good deal of sea creatures in its depths.
The water was extremely clear, especially in the shallows that ran for several hundred feet, but then there seemed to be a ledge where it gradually dropped deeper and then toward the far edges closest to the ocean, it must have been over a dozen feet deep, and a type of kelp weed stopped him from seeing the bottom. Still, even in those shallows, he saw fish darting back and forth.
He grinned; they had no idea what a human was like, or whether they were even dangerous. He bet he could spear one with ease.
His mouth watered; he hadn’t eaten fish in years. Even raw fish with the ocean’s natural saltiness would make a change from berries, tubers, and even a dinosaur’s tough and gamey meat.
Ben turned to look over his shoulder, which immediately elicited some loud and serious warnings from the small pterodons sitting on their nests.
“Hey, guys, looks like I might not be able to join you for dinner tonight.”
He chuckled, lifted his spear, and looked down over the edge of the cliff. “We can do this,” he said. He noticed he spoke to himself quite a bit now. Hearing his own voice was better than not hearing any voice at all. It somehow made him remember he was a human being.
There was a ledge that would take him all the way to the horseshoe-shaped beach. He was kinda looking forward to it; even as a kid, he loved peering into rock pools and turning over stones to see what weird sea thingies lived underneath — crabs, octopus, starfish, urchins, and tiny fish with huge mouths like a mudskipper.
He pulled off the tattered remains of his boots, now held together with vines and animal hide, and began to thread his way down the cliff ledge. It only took a few minutes and in no time, he was able to leap the last few feet, feeling the sand scrunch beneath his feet as he landed. Ben made fists with his toes, smiling as he remembered the sensation from his childhood.