They came to a stop at the riverfront ten minutes later. Khan looked around and failed to see anything that looked like a resort, only a boardwalk and a cluster of tourism-oriented shops.

  “This is the place?” he asked.

  Galante laughed. “No, this isn’t it. You can’t get there by road. It’s a few miles down the river. The only way in or out. How do you feel about boats?”

  “That greatly depends on the boat,” Khan replied.

  * * *

  —

  The boat was fine. It looked like something out of a fantasy movie with elves, an arched roof supported by intricately carved support struts, all light-colored wood and sleek lines. It came gliding up the river against the current from the north, cutting through the brown water with a foaming bow wave.

  There was a small crowd waiting on the boardwalk near the dock. Khan scanned them out of habit to assess any potential threats. Some of the people here had arrived on the shuttle bus with him—the Spanish-speaking family with the little boy, a quartet of young men who were obvious rich kids out for a good time, and a few older couples in expensive attire. None of them raised Khan’s concern level, but one of the people on the boardwalk stood out to him for reasons that had nothing to do with security.

  Over by the far end of the boardwalk, a woman was looking out over the water at the approaching boat. She was wearing sunglasses and an elegant light-blue jumpsuit that left one of her shoulders bare. A matching pair of weekend bags stood by her feet. She wore her black hair in a braided updo that hinted at a lot of length. All in all, Khan thought that she was one of the most attractive women he had ever seen. He was wearing his own sunglasses, and he kept his head moving to make it look like he was checking out the sights around them like almost everyone else, but he couldn’t help glancing over at the woman far more often than was necessary for a security assessment. In the sunlight, her skin looked like it had the same shade as his own, which made him guess she was of Indian or maybe Middle Eastern descent. Her jumpsuit looked expensive and tailored, and left no doubt that she was fit and very shapely.

  The elvish boat pulled alongside the dock to tie up. A minute later, the crew had secured a gangway with a rope railing, and the group of resort guests began boarding.

  Rafe and Jax were seasoned enough that Khan didn’t have to tell them to board last, to make sure no potential attacker could choose to sit near them. When they stepped onto the boat at the back of the group, Khan saw that the woman he had spotted earlier was sitting near the back. The remaining seats were club-style, every two rows set up to face each other, and he sat down with Galante and the others, picking the side that let him watch the back of the boat. He glanced at the woman. If the tiger half of his face gave her any pause or surprise at all, she wasn’t showing it. Her expression remained detached and relaxed behind her sunglasses.

  Then they were on their way down the river. The engines of the boat were electric, so quiet that Khan could only hear the splashing of the screw at the back of the hull as the captain throttled up. “Odd spot for a resort,” he said. “It must cost a fortune to keep the place supplied.”

  Rafe shrugged. “Ecotourism is all the rage right now. Sustainability and all that. And our friends charge plenty for the experience. It doesn’t exactly cater to the budget traveler crowd.”

  Khan nodded. Every major criminal outfit had a way of turning illegal money into aboveboard profits. There was some admirable ingenuity in combining a socially responsible trend with a bulletproof way to launder dirty money, he thought.

  They were almost in the middle of the river now, hundreds of yards from the shoreline, the dock half a mile behind the boat already. The water looked like coffee with a lot of cream, heavy with muddy sediment from the rain forest. Khan watched the wildlife nearby for a while, birds circling overhead and diving toward the water in quick dashes to snatch unseen fish. After a few minutes, he chanced another look toward the woman in the back of the boat’s open-air cabin. To his surprise, he caught her gaze just as she turned quickly to avert her eyes, and he felt a heady little rush of excitement when he realized that she had been looking at him.

  You’re either a green assassin, or you like what you see, Khan thought. I really hope for both our sakes that it’s option B.

  * * *

  —

  The resort was nestled into the jungle on the shoreline where the Amazon made a long and lazy quarter-mile bend. Two dozen rustic cabanas stood in a wide semicircle amid the trees, surrounding a central lodge that was two floors tall and still managed to look like someone had put it together out of driftwood over the years, with a thickly thatched roof and wooden beams that had the appearance of centuries of age. Khan had learned enough about the expenses involved in making something new look convincingly old to know that this resort had cost a fortune to carve into the jungle, ten miles away from any roads or other infrastructure.

  Their cabana was one of the units closest to the river. From the central lodge, walkways made of large tropical hardwood tree slices led to all the cabins like the spokes of a truncated wheel. Khan left Rafe and Jax with Galante at the lodge, which had a large restaurant and a swank-looking bar, then went ahead to the cabana by himself to do the initial security sweep. Once he was convinced that nobody had hidden any explosives or other unwelcome surprises, he went back to the lodge to fetch the others.

  “What do you think?” Galante asked when they walked into the cabana Khan had just scoured for twenty minutes.

  “It’s as clean as can be,” Khan said. “There’s a lot we won’t have to worry about without mobile networks out here.”

  “I mean this.” Galante gestured at their surroundings. “Pretty fucking nice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s posh,” Khan admitted. From the outside, the cabanas looked basic and a little rough, but the luxury on the inside could hold its own against any high-end resort he’d ever visited: marble counters, polished hardwood floors, tasteful and obviously expensive furniture.

  “Four bedrooms,” Galante said. “I’m in the master suite. You three sort the rest out any way you want.”

  The three smaller bedrooms were all roughly the same size, so Khan picked the one closest to Galante, to have the shortest distance to the principal if something went down in the middle of the night. Rafe and Jax didn’t seem to care much about their room assignments. Khan had them move into the bedrooms by the main entrance, where they would be the first line of alarm.

  “We’ll shout for you if anything goes down,” Rafe said to Khan when they were all squared away.

  Khan flashed a grin, and he saw with a little bit of satisfaction that Rafe jumped just a tiny bit at the sudden baring of the tiger teeth.

  “If anything goes down, the odds are pretty good that I’ll know it well before you,” Khan said.

  * * *

  —

  The resort had been pretty in the daylight already, but when the sun began to set, it transformed the place into something different altogether. The orange sky muted the vivid green of the jungle and gradually darkened it into blue and gray hues. The walkways from the cabanas to the lodge were lined with solar-powered lights, and as the sunlight faded, they came on one by one, glowing in the gathering darkness and outlining the paths with overlapping little pools of warm, golden light. And all around the resort, the jungle came alive with sounds, nocturnal animals stirring from their rest and beginning their own days.

  With Galante hanging out at the lodge bar with Rafe and Jax by his side, there was nothing to do for Khan, who didn’t feel like drinking and socializing tonight. Instead, he took a stroll across the property to reinforce the map he had been drawing in his head, then walked down to the river to look at the sunset.

  The entire stretch of the resort’s waterfront was a wide strip of manicured grass, interspersed with bushes and small trees, and some guests were mingling on the lawn to watch the sun setting beyond the jungle canopy. Khan was looking for a particular face, and after a few moments, he spotted it down by the water’s edge.

  The last few yards from the lawn to the river were a ledge of red clay, and the woman he had noticed earlier on the dock and the shuttle boat was walking on the clay with bare feet, taking slow and measured steps that told Khan she was savoring the experience. She was carrying white leather sandals in one hand, holding them by the heel straps. She had changed out of the light-blue jumpsuit she had worn on the ride here. Now she was wearing a sleeveless blouse and a summer skirt that ended just above her knees. As he was watching her, he felt an unusual pang of anxiety. He had never considered himself shy when it came to talking to women, not since his card had turned. The ones who were repulsed or scared by his tiger half usually made their distaste or fear unambiguous, and the ones who were intrigued by it seldom needed much encouragement to approach him. But right now he felt as insecure and awkward as he had been when he was still skinny and nerdy teenage Sammy Khanna, bottom entry on every girl’s romantic wish list at his school.

  For a moment, that new anxiety almost got the better of him, and he thought about turning around and going back to the lodge. But then she turned around to walk back the way she had come, and their eyes met before Khan could pretend to be looking somewhere else. She flashed a friendly smile at him, and he returned one out of reflex.

  This isn’t fucking middle school, he thought. And I’m not shy little Sammy anymore. He walked toward the river and nodded at the dark water behind the woman. “I have no idea what wildlife hides in there,” he said. “But if they have alligators here, it’s their hunting time right now.”

  “They do have alligators,” she replied. “Black caimans. One of the biggest crocodilians on the planet.”

  She had a distinctly British accent that sounded incredibly attractive to Khan’s ears.

  “And you’re not worried about ending up on the menu?”

  She smiled again and shook her head. “Caimans are pretty rare these days. And I’d be a tough dinner to catch.” She looked over her shoulder at the water. “Also, they have steel netting out right in front of the resort. It’s bad business to let your guests get carried off by the local wildlife.”

  He laughed. “I suppose it is.”

  “Don’t worry. I know this is a nature preserve, not a petting zoo.”

  They had been closing the distance between each other gradually as they were talking, and now Khan was standing right at the edge of the grass while she was on the edge of the clay, six feet away.

  “You look like you wouldn’t have anything to worry about out here,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “A large alligator would be an interesting problem. But I’d hate to have to get into it with an endangered species.”

  She stepped onto the grass and put her sandals down, then slipped her feet into them. Somewhere in the darkness of the forest beyond the clearing, something rustled and splashed, and she looked that way, sudden alertness in her posture.

  “Not a caiman,” he said. “One of those water-pig things. I forgot what they call those.”

  She chuckled. “A tapir?”

  “Hey, it’s my first time in the jungle,” he said. “Appearances notwithstanding.”

  “Can you see in the dark with that tiger eye?”

  He nodded. “But not as well as you’d think. Just rough shapes and movement. My hearing is much better.”

  “So you could hear that it wasn’t a caiman?”

  “High center of gravity, walks on hooves, rustles the underbrush about this high up.” He brought his hand to his waistline to demonstrate.

  “You can hear all that exactly from a hundred yards away? I guess nobody ever gets to sneak up on you.”

  “Not usually.”

  “Quickly, and don’t turn around. How many people are walking around on the grass behind you?”

  He listened intently for a few seconds. “Seven. Two couples, three people by themselves.”

  She laughed brightly. “You were not just making that up. Impressive.”

  Khan had felt instant physical attraction to people before, but never like this. It was as if the specific combination of her appearance, smell, and voice had tripped a switch in his brain that had never been activated before, some sort of hormonal amplifier he hadn’t known to be there.

  She held out her hand.

  “I’m Maryam.”

  It took him half a second to get over the case of sudden paralysis that had befallen him—an eternity in tiger reflex time. Then he shook her hand. Her grip was smooth and firm. “Samir,” he said. As soon as the word was out of his mouth, he realized that he hadn’t introduced himself by his proper first name in years.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Samir.”

  “You as well,” he replied.

  “Those blokes you came with on the boat,” she said. “Friends of yours?”

  His bodyguard sense kicked in again at the seemingly innocuous question and overrode the hormones, albeit with some effort. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re just taking a long weekend to get away from it all. Digital detox, and all that.”

  “This is definitely the place for that,” Maryam said.

  “What about you?” Khan asked.

  She laughed. “You’ll think it’s kind of dumb.”

  “Try me.”

  “I made a bet with my sister. I was going to spend my holiday out at the oceanside resort in Lima. She saw an article on the reserve in National Geographic and said I should come here instead. She said there was no way I could go without a screen for an entire week and a half.”

  “No kidding,” Khan said with a chuckle.

  “I have a thousand quid riding on it.”

  “I don’t think that’s dumb at all,” Khan said. “Even if I don’t know exactly how much that is in dollars.”

  “I’d look it up, but it seems we don’t have any network coverage out here,” Maryam replied, and they both laughed.

  By now, the setting sun was completely out of sight beyond the trees, and the lights from the lodge drew long shadows across the lawn. All around them, nocturnal creatures chirped and screeched in the jungle, thousands of voices in the warm evening air.

  “I guess I should get this clay off my feet now before these sandals get stained permanently,” Maryam said.

  “Don’t let me keep you,” Khan replied. “I should go see what my friends are doing. But it was nice talking to you.”

  She looked at him for a moment as if in consideration. “I’m going to be frank with you. I didn’t come here to pick anyone up. Or to get picked up by anyone. But maybe we can have a drink together sometime this weekend.”

  “I’m not here for that, either,” Khan replied. “But I’d love to sit down with you for a drink. In a not-a-date sort of way.”

  “All right, then. It’s a not-a-date. I am sure we will find each other.”

  She walked up the lawn toward the lodge, and Khan smiled as he watched her stride away.

  I very much hope so, he thought.

  * * *

  —

  The cartel people arrived the next afternoon on one of the little elvish boats. Khan accompanied Galante down to the dock to welcome them. It was a cloudy day, with a light breeze that rustled in the treetops, and the water of the river looked a bit choppier than yesterday, little foam crowns topping the ripples on the surface.

  The cartel bossman was a stocky guy with curly black hair and a three-day beard shadow. He stepped onto the deck and greeted Galante with a hearty handshake. “Giovanni, amigo. Good to see you again.” He looked over at Khan. “You brought a new face this time.”

  “This is Khan,” Galante said. “He’s been with me for a while, but he wasn’t with me the last time I came here. Khan, this is Ernesto. We’re going to be doing a lot of business with him in the future.”

  Ernesto nodded at Khan, who returned the gesture.

  “Pleasure to meet you, jefe,” Khan said.

  Behind Ernesto, his two bodyguards appraised Khan from behind their sunglasses. They were mirror images of each other, obviously identical twins, dressed alike in every detail. Ernesto clearly didn’t have any security concerns because he was already walking up the dock toward the lodge with Galante, strolling past Khan without an ounce of anxiety showing in his scent or his body language. His bodyguards followed, carrying weekend bags in each hand.

  * * *

  —

  They had barely sat down at a table in the lodge restaurant when the waiter showed up with the first round, lowball glasses with a honey-colored drink in them that was topped by foam and dusted with nutmeg.

  “Traditional welcome,” Galante said to Khan and handed him a glass. “Ever had a guaro? Aguardiente. It’s the national drink down here.”

  Khan had no idea what kind of liquor guaro was, but the drink smelled far less strong than he had expected, and when he took a sip, he was pleased to find that it was a tasty combination of anise and fruit. “Está bien,” he said. Ernesto nodded his approval.

  They finished their drinks, and another round came to the table. Khan tried to get the measure of Ernesto’s bodyguard twins, who were named Antonio and Bernardino. They were jovial and chatty with Ernesto and Galante, but whenever Khan said something, they merely listened with polite interest and didn’t engage, and he stopped trying after a while. When the group got ready to order dinner, three rounds of drinks later, he excused himself and left the table, detailing Rafe and Jax to watch Galante.

  Outside, the sun was setting again. Khan walked the perimeter of the lodge to check for unusual sights or sounds. Then he went back to the cabana and did another thorough security sweep. Just like yesterday, there was nothing in the cabana that hadn’t been brought in by them, and nothing was disturbed or out of place. It wasn’t the first time he had been brought along by a client as security eye candy, but this place was such a low-threat environment that it felt like he was collecting money for nothing.