Page 91 of The Lost Guardian

“Shhh,” Ali murmured.

“Did you just shush me?”

“Shhh!” she repeated, and Santiago gritted his teeth. But, in the sudden quiet, he did hear something.

Running water.

“Is that?” he asked before they both charged ahead, trampling grass and snapping branches as they muscled their way through the foliage. They broke past a tight cluster of trees and came face-to-face with a gently gurgling creek.

“Oh.” Ali sighed, dropping her pack and moving as if she was about to peel off her shirt. She paused, glancing at Santiago.

“I’ll just…” he said, motioning upstream to a slight bend in the creek, which he followed out of sight.

Then he abandoned his own bag, whipping off his shirt and dunking it in the water. Santiago brought the sopping fabric to the back of his neck and squeezed, letting the cool rivulets trickle down his spine.

He repeated the motion over his torso, splashed more against his face, savoring the sharp contrast of icy water against the heat of his skin. He even kicked off his shoes and socks, soaking his feet to the ankle.

As his body temperature dropped, so did his anger, roiling shame settling into the space it left behind. What had he been thinking, talking to Ali like that? It wasn’t her fault they hadn’t found any trace of the shaman. She had led them forward the entire day, and he had acted like an ass.

She started it, the childish, stubborn part of his brain insisted, but Santiago wasn’t certain that was entirely true.

He pulled his clothing back on slowly, his now-damp shirt like a balm against his sun-drenched skin. Then he picked up his bag and inched back toward Ali.

He coughed loudly. “Decent?” he asked.

There was a pause.

“Yeah,” she replied.

He rounded the corner and saw that, like him, she had doused her shirt in the stream. It clung to every one of her curves, reminding Santiago of those marble statues of goddesses they had in his museum. He discovered in himself a sudden appreciation for the Greek and Roman wing.

Santiago sat on a rock near her.

“Listen, I’m sorry about—”

“It’s fine,” she said, waving him away. “The heat, you know…”

Tension was thicker than humidity in the air.

The silence between them turned the trickling stream into a pounding roar, the rustling of foliage an overwhelming rattle. The chirp and buzz of insects became a tuneless, screeching symphony. Somewhere, an owl announced its presence.

Santiago cleared his throat.

“Did you know that Peruvian owls always hunt in pairs?” he asked Ali. His voice was quiet, but the small scowl that marred the skin between her brows told him that she had heard.

“They do,” he continued. “Because they are Inca-hoots.”

For a moment, it seemed like the entirety of the forest paused, allowing Santiago an eternity of silence to reflect on his humiliation.

Santiiiiiii, he admonished himself. That was your solution?

But then the most beautiful sound in the world interrupted his self-reproach.

Ali threw her head back and laughed.

Relief crashed through Santiago’s body, and his tensed shoulders lowered a fraction.

Her laugh was incredible. He’d heard it before, of course, but never tired of it. She laughed with her whole body, breaths in staccato, and when he was really lucky, she snorted a little at the end.