With zilch else to do, he walked around the lodge and down to the riverfront. To his disappointment, there was no familiar face watching the sunset from the dock tonight. He went to the edge of the dock and stood for a little while to watch the lengthening shadows on the water and listen to the noises of the animals in the jungle.

  Maryam came around the corner of the lodge just as he was walking up the lawn again. Tonight she was wearing an emerald-green summer dress, one that sported a much shorter hem and a much lower neckline than the one she had worn the night before. Her hair was gathered at the back of her neck with a matching green ribbon. As she came closer, he could see that it was long enough to cascade all the way to her lower back. “Fancy bumping into you down here again,” she said. “It seems we both have a thing for water.”

  “I like being near it,” Khan said. “It relaxes me. But the sad truth is that I swim like a leaden duck.”

  She laughed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Is that because of the cat thing?”

  He shook his head. “I was a really bad swimmer even before the cat thing happened.”

  “I apologize if that sounded like I was stereotyping your appearance,” she said, and now it was his turn to laugh.

  “It’s a common assumption,” he said. “I really take no offense.”

  “I’m glad.” She looked a little flustered despite his reassurance.

  “How has your day been?” he asked to get her mind off the subject.

  “Quiet,” she said. “It’s a nice change from my usual pace, I must say. I took the canopy walkway tour this morning. It really is wild out there. I must have taken about five hundred pictures. How about you? How was your day?”

  “Same,” Khan said. “Minus the canopy tour in the morning. It feels weird to walk around all day without a device constantly going off in your pocket.”

  “I felt it buzz a few times anyway, but it was all just in my head,” she said. “Phantom texts.”

  “I left mine on the plane. Wasn’t thinking about pictures. Now I wish I had brought a proper camera. Remember those? A gadget that only did one thing?”

  “My father has one that still uses film,” Maryam said. “Remember that? I tried to teach him the whole digital thing, but he won’t get in front of a computer. He’s happy to stay in the twentieth century.”

  She looked back at the lodge, where the sounds of low voices and clinking dishes came through the mosquito screens on the open windows. “Do you have any plans this evening?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Khan replied without hesitation.

  “I’m starving. Would you like to have dinner? We can do that not-a-date. I mean, while the opportunity presents itself. In case we don’t run into each other again.”

  “I would love to have dinner with you,” he said. “I mean, have dinner at the same table with you. In a completely un-date-like manner.”

  Maryam laughed. “All right, then. Let us have dinner in friendly proximity.”

  * * *

  —

  The lodge was a wide-open space where almost every table was visible from almost every other table. The only few spots that would have kept them out of sight of Galante and Ernesto’s group were taken by other guests. When Maryam and Khan sat down together, he glanced over to Galante, who gave him a leering smile and a nod before returning his attention to the group.

  “You’re not having dinner with your mates tonight,” Maryam observed.

  “We’re not really mates, to be honest,” Khan replied. “We just travel together. They are doing a business retreat.”

  “And what are you doing while they are having their retreat?”

  “I’m keeping an eye out. I’m in the security business. Personal protection.”

  “You’re a bodyguard?”

  He nodded. “What about you? What do you do for a living?”

  “It’s terribly boring,” she said. “I work in international public relations.”

  “I don’t think that’s boring at all.”

  “Well, I’ve been on a few business retreats myself. I’ve been to international conferences. And I’ve traveled with a lot of company presidents. I rarely ever see a bodyguard with them. Especially not one like you. Your friends must be working in a much more interesting field than most people.”

  “They’re in the import/export business,” Khan said.

  She smiled wryly. “Oh, I am quite sure they are.”

  The waiter arrived with the menus, which were appropriately eclectic for an eco-resort in the middle of the jungle. They spent some time perusing the options and talking about the entrées on offer. “Piranha,” Maryam said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that.”

  “I can honestly say that I’ve never had that, either,” Khan replied.

  “Then let’s try it,” she said. “Let’s get a little daring. I can get steak anywhere.”

  “I’m up for it,” Khan said.

  “Excellent.” There was a twinkle in her eye when she said it.

  “I did want to ask you about that tiger eye,” she said. “If you really don’t mind.”

  “I do not,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

  “What’s it like?”

  “My left one can see in the dark. But it’s color-blind, and it’s never in sync with the right one. It’s like they are tuned to different wavelengths. I always see two pictures. I got headaches from that for years. Now my brain has learned to tune out one eye and just ignore the feed.”

  “How about that,” Maryam said.

  “In fact, the whole tiger side is a pain in the ass sometimes,” he added. “Everything is asymmetrical, not just the eyesight. I get hotter more quickly on the left because of the fur. The left arm is stronger, so I can’t max out weights at the gym without getting lopsided on the lift. And all my clothes need to be tailored to measure. And I mean all my clothes.”

  She laughed, and he was glad to hear the sound of it.

  “That’s not so bad,” she said. “And I am sure it comes with perks.”

  “It does,” he admitted. “But I am not going to lie. Sometimes I do wish I could trade those perks in just to be my old self again. My scrawny, symmetrical self.”

  Maryam smiled wistfully. “I would say that I know that feeling,” she said. “But I’m sure I really don’t, so I won’t assume.”

  Khan returned the smile. From three feet away, she was beautiful, but from across the table, leaning toward him the way she did, with her gaze focused on his face, she was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. In the protection business, one of the oldest cautionary tales was that of the honey trap: the attractive person showing up in the principal’s orbit who was seemingly tailored to the romantic tastes of the bodyguard. Enchant, ensnare, distract. But he had his instincts and his ability to smell stress and fear. He could tell that she was holding back on a lot of things, but there was no malice coming from her. He didn’t know whether all the things she told him were the truth, but he knew that she believed they were true, that she hadn’t manufactured them just to appeal to him.

  I’m either extremely lucky, or she is extremely skilled and I am about to be the world’s biggest dumbass, he thought.

  * * *

  —

  For all its exotic flair, the piranha was just a fish, but at least it was a tasty and expertly prepared one. The wine was an exceptionally good pairing, and over the next two hours, they drank most of the bottle over dessert and post-dinner conversation. Khan noticed that Maryam could hold her liquor remarkably well for someone who was less than half his size. She was smart and funny and quick-witted, and he couldn’t remember when he had last enjoyed talking to someone else this much.

  Over at the table across the room where Galante and Ernesto were still holding court, the head count of their group had grown as the evening went on. The table for six had become a table for ten, expanded by another tabletop carried over and put into place by the lodge staff, and four women were sitting with Galante and his cartel friends. Under normal circumstances, Khan would have been right by Galante’s side to make sure none of the new additions to the party had ill intent. But Galante had Rafe and Jax, and the women looked like they were not there entirely by fortunate happenstance, Khan had enjoyed a bottle of Colombian Chardonnay on top of a nice meal, and nobody seemed concerned about threat levels or close protection tonight.

  If they are going to treat it like a party, then maybe I shouldn’t feel bad about playing along, he decided.

  * * *

  —

  They were long finished with their flan and almost at the bottom of the second bottle of wine when their waiter came over to the table. “Just to let you know, it is now nine o’clock and the kitchen is closed. They will turn up the music for the next two hours. The bar will be open until eleven if you wish to continue with your beverages.”

  “Thank you.” Khan nodded at the waiter.

  They looked at each other as the waiter walked off toward the kitchen.

  “They will turn up the music,” Maryam repeated. “Wonder how loud it will get in here.”

  They had the answer a few minutes later. The waitstaff moved half a dozen tables from the center of the restaurant and did some well-practiced reconfiguring, and the music from the speakers on the ceiling changed from classical background ambience to Latin dance tunes just a notch or two below nightclub-level volume.

  Khan made a face. “I don’t mind salsa at all. But this is a bit much.”

  “I agree,” Maryam said. “This won’t do at all. I don’t want to have to shout for the rest of the evening.” She put her napkin on the table in front of her and pushed her chair back. “What do you say we take the rest of this bottle of wine and then go for a walk outside where it’s a little quieter?”

  Khan looked across the room at the table where Galante and Ernesto were living it up with their entourage. The girls were now strategically distributed, each with a guy on either side, and they were all engaged in what looked like a local version of beer pong. Neither Galante nor Ernesto seemed at all concerned about being murdered. Between the two of them, they had four bodyguards at the same table. One more sitting nearby wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. He resolved to come back in a bit to show presence again, but from the looks of it, this crew was going to stay here until closing time and probably well past. Nobody would miss him for a while yet.

  Khan pushed back his own chair and got up. “I think that’s a fantastic idea. Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  —

  Outside and away from the lodge, Khan almost sighed with relief at the relative lack of noise.

  “That must have hurt your ears,” Maryam said.

  “You have no idea,” he replied. “It’s like someone poking my eardrums with a shrimp fork.”

  “I’d say that I can imagine, but I know I probably can’t.”

  “I have to hang out in nightclubs with clients. It’s part of the job. But I have a special set of noise-canceling earbuds for that. Trouble is that I left them at home. Didn’t think I was going to need them out here in the jungle.”

  The pathways from the lodge to the cabanas were lit up again with the solar-powered lamps, long chains of warm electric fires flickering in the darkness. The jungle was far from quiet, but all the chirping and screeching was music to his ears compared with the high-volume musical assault in the lodge. Khan didn’t quite know whether it was caused by all this wilderness or the attractive company walking with him, but he felt like all his senses and emotions were amplified tonight.

  “I want to show you the spot I found today while I was walking around,” Maryam said. “It’s rather neat.”

  “All right,” Khan said. “Lead the way.”

  She walked around the lodge and down a torchlit path that didn’t connect to any cabanas. Instead, it led to the nearby tree line, where it disappeared in the jungle. Khan saw the little pools of light from more electric torches glowing in the darkness amid the trees. He looked back at the lodge. He’s got Rafe and Jax and the twins, he thought. If something goes down, I’ll hear it. I can be back there in fifteen seconds.

  If anyone had put this scenario in front of him as a theoretical exercise, he would have slapped the shit out of any protection team member who went along with it. She could be leading him away to clear the path to his principal, to make things a lot easier for a hit squad. But there was no sense of danger in the air. Maryam looked back over her shoulder to see if he was following, and there was a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye that went to his head more than the wine they had just finished over dinner.

  Fuck it, he thought. If I die, it will be a sweet death. And if there’s no danger, I’ll end up kicking myself forever.

  He followed her down the path and into the forest. The torches marked the way as it was snaking through the underbrush. Even the managed jungle at the edge of the resort was so dense that he couldn’t see the lodge or any of the cabanas anymore once they were a hundred feet beyond the tree line. The sounds fell away, too, until the thumping Latin beats from the lodge were muffled and indistinct.

  At the end of the path, a hundred yards into the jungle, there was a little clearing. In the center was a cluster of small pools, arranged in a rough circle around a massive tree stump. There were shelves nearby with rows of folded towels, and a drying rack next to it. When Khan stepped closer, he saw that the tree stump was artificial but carefully crafted to look hundreds of years old just like the buildings at the resort. The pools were all carved out of the foot of the stump, but set at different heights, and the craftsmen had made privacy dividers between each pool that looked like gnarled roots. The water was obviously from an artificial source, so clear that it could only be filtered, and so warm that the surface was steaming a little in the humid night air.

  “Nobody’s here,” Maryam said with a chuckle. “I figured the place would be full in the evening. But I guess nobody wants to walk off into the jungle at night.” She looked at him and bit her lower lip. “What do you think? Want to get a little wet without the risk of turning into caiman dinner?”

  He looked at the pools. The moonlight that had made it through little gaps in the jungle canopy around the clearing was painting silvery stripes across the surface of the water.

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” he said.

  She smiled and shook her head. “Bathing suit. You Yanks and your puritan streak.”

  She reached up behind her neck and untied the ribbon that held her hair loosely together. Then she gathered it all up and used the ribbon to hold it in place in a quick updo. A moment later, she had slipped off her loafers and climbed out of her summer dress. Underneath, she was wearing a white bra and panties that seemed rather sheer to Khan even in the low light.

  “There, that will do just fine,” she proclaimed. She took a towel off the rack and walked around the artificial tree trunk until she found a pool that was at the right height for her liking. As she climbed in, she looked over her shoulder at him.

  “Come on. Or are you shy about taking off your shirt?”

  There were offers that were safe or even wise to refuse, but Khan quickly decided that this was not one of those. He unbuttoned his short-sleeved shirt and peeled it off his body, then kicked off his shoes. His khakis came down a moment later. Now he was down to his silk boxer shorts, but it still seemed like he was wearing about four times as much fabric on his body than she was.

  The water of the pool was deeper than it looked from the outside. He stepped in and found that it reached a fair bit above his waist. His boxer shorts billowed up around him, the thin silk inadequate as makeshift swim trunk material. Maryam was a good deal shorter, and the water was all the way to her shoulders. The part of the pool closest to the central trunk had a sitting ledge, and she let herself float up onto it. Her underwear made no better swimwear than his own; her white bra was clearly not designed to remain opaque when wet, but it didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  Khan had never been shy about the appearance of his body since his card had turned, but he hardly ever found himself in a situation where he unexpectedly had to strip down in front of an attractive woman. He felt an unwelcome sense of self-awareness—something he hadn’t experienced since gym day in middle school, when he’d had to bare his skinny and bony pubescent body to his classmates. But Maryam didn’t show any indications that she was repulsed or turned off by the fact that the left half of his body was covered in orange and white fur with black stripes, that the left side of his face had three-inch canine teeth, or that rough white whiskers were jutting out from his upper lip. She just watched him with a little smile as he submerged himself slowly until he was in the water up to his shoulders.

  “You’re really built,” she said when he had settled in on the ledge next to her. “Was that one of the cat perks?”

  He nodded. “I was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet before the cat event,” he said. “Once I was through, I was more than twice that, and most of it muscle.”

  “I’ve never met someone like you.”

  “You mean a joker-ace?”

  “They’d call you a knave where I live.”

  “Knave,” he repeated. “Not sure I’d like that one any better. A lot of people back home are using ‘jack’ for that now. The younger ones.”