Page 166 of The Lost Guardian

“After that…why don’t you come back to Los Angeles with me?” he asked. “I can show you around, just like you’ve been doing for me here.”

Ali’s smile widened.

“We can finally get that drink at Gina’s,” he added.

“You’re not going to stand me up this time?” she teased him, and he leaned over to kiss her. She tasted like lime and beer.

“Never again,” he promised.

“It’s a date,” Ali said.

The adventure continues...

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Iquitos, Peru

José Fernandez raised a shot glass to his lips and tilted clear liquid into his mouth. Cheap pisco burned from his throat down to his stomach.

Ugh, qué asco, he thought, gaze locked on the older man in front of him. His face betrayed nothing.

The man—Thiago, José remembered—curled his lip and sucked air through his teeth.

Then he laughed.

“All right, kid, maybe we can do business after all.”

José bristled at being called a kid. He was in his twenties now. But he didn’t correct him. Instead, he opened his arms wide. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You have the money?”

José did not.

“Por supuesto,” he lied smoothly.

“Let’s see it.”

“Let’s see the map first.”

Thiago’s forehead crinkled. There were a few wiry-looking white hairs poking out from the thick shrubbery of black atop his head. They wiggled at the action, and José had the wild impulse to pluck them out.

“That’s not how this works, kid.”

José leaned an elbow against the tall wooden table, ignoring the unidentified sticky liquids that would no doubt stain his leather jacket.

The bar—if this run-down shack in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon could be called a bar—was fairly empty. It was only ten in the morning, so José wasn’t surprised. But even without backup, Thiago was a dangerous man.

José did some calculations as he scanned the room, yawning as if he had all the time in the world. The peque peque boat, his getaway vehicle, would only wait another ten minutes.

He needed to hurry this along.

“It’s a lot of money you’re asking for,” he said, keeping his voice light. “I need some assurances that you’re not going to slip me a page of your daughter’s doodles instead. Though I’m sure she’s a wonderful artist.”

“I don’t have children.”

“Pity. I’m sure you’d make a wonderful father. Even so, I need proof you have what I need.”

Thiago’s frown deepened.