Chapter 1

Inside lay a single sheet of yellowed paper, folded into thirds, and a small wooden carving no larger than his thumb. Larry recognized the carving immediately—a hummingbird in mid-flight, wings outstretched, its beak extended as if sipping nectar from an invisible flower. He had seen it before, in a display case at the Lima Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, during his honeymoon forty years ago. That artifact had been stolen six months later, a fact that had haunted him ever since.

The note was handwritten, the ink faded but legible: "Señor Hinojosa—They have taken the Heart of the Sun. I am too old to retrieve it. You are not. Follow the path of the river that sings. —Your friend, Dr. Alvarez."

Larry set the carving down and stared at it. Dr. Alvarez had been dead for fifteen years. He knew this because he had attended the funeral, had stood in the rain beside the open grave, had shaken hands with the widow who wept silently into a lace handkerchief. And yet here was a letter, signed in the dead man's unmistakable hand, with its looping "D" and the tiny flourish at the end of the "z."

He walked to his bookshelf, the one that took up the entire wall of his small apartment, and pulled down a worn volume titled "Forgotten Civilizations of the Amazon." The book fell open to page 147, where a photograph showed the Heart of the Sun—a disk of hammered gold, embedded with emeralds and turquoise, said to have been used in ceremonies that aligned with the solstice. Below the photograph, a caption noted its current whereabouts: the Lima Museum. The same museum where Larry had spent thirty-two years as head librarian, cataloging thousands of artifacts, memorizing their histories, and watching over them like a shepherd with an unusually dusty flock.

His hands trembled as he closed the book. Not from fear, though there was plenty of that. From something else—the same feeling he got when he found a long-lost book in the stacks, or when a patron returned a borrowed volume with a grateful smile. Purpose.

Larry had never been to the Amazon. He had never left the city limits of Lima, in fact, except for that one honeymoon trip to Cusco. His idea of adventure was a new crossword puzzle or a particularly challenging Sudoku. The jungle, with its heat and its insects and its hidden dangers, was the opposite of everything he had built his life around. He liked quiet. He liked order. He liked knowing where the next meal was coming from and that his slippers would be waiting by the door when he came home.

But the Heart of the Sun was gone. And someone—someone who knew Dr. Alvarez, who knew Larry, who knew where he lived—had sent him a map fragment and a wooden hummingbird that matched the one he had seen in the museum display case. The logic was simple: if he did not go, no one would. And the artifact would disappear into a private collection, unseen by the public, its history erased.

He picked up the carving and held it to the light. There was a tiny hole drilled through the base, as if it had once been attached to something larger. A staff, perhaps, or a ceremonial headdress. He turned it over and saw, etched into the bottom, a single word: "Paititi."

The lost city of the Incas. The place where, according to legend, the last remnants of the empire had fled, carrying their gold and their gods into the impenetrable jungle. The place where the Heart of the Sun was said to have been kept.

Larry took a deep breath and reached for his phone. He dialed the only number he knew by heart—his daughter's. It rang twice before she answered.

"Dad? It's almost midnight."

"I know, sweetheart. I'm sorry. But I need you to do something for me."

"What is it?"

"Cancel my newspaper subscription. And water my plants for a few weeks."

There was a pause. "Dad, where are you going?"

He looked at the hummingbird in his hand, at the map fragment on the table, at the open book showing the photograph of the stolen artifact. He thought about the heat, the insects, the unknown dangers. He thought about his age, his knees, his fear of heights. And then he thought about the hummingbird, frozen in mid-flight, reaching for something just out of reach.

"I'm going to find a river that sings," he said.