The Treasure by Jennifer Lowery

his pals. She had hoped to never see that look again.
    Brody inched toward her, machete raised, ready to strike. But, strike at what? And why wasn’t he answering her?
    “Brody?” she said warily as he approached with that deadly looking knife. “What are you doing?”
    When he swung straight at her head, she screamed, her life flashing in front of her eyes. Her only thought was that he’d gone insane and she had seriously misjudged him and now he was going to chop her head off and leave her to rot on the jungle floor where no one would ever find her.
    The machete sliced through the air close enough to hear the
whoosh
of air against her cheek. Something fell on her shoulder and she screamed again. She stumbled back, tripping over a root and falling hard on her backside.
    A red, black and yellow snake landed in her lap and she let out a blood-curdling scream, smacking it with her purse as she tried to scoot away from it, chanting, “If-red-touches-yellow-you’re-a-dead-fellow-but-if-red-touches-black-you’re-okay-Jack,” as she moved.
    Panic hit her when she seen the red stripes touching the yellow ones. Not only because she was deathly afraid of snakes, but because she read about the deadly coral snake in her survival manual. And this was most certainly a coral snake.
    “Get it off,” she cried. “Brody. Please. Help me.
Red is touching yellow
.”
    To her horror, Brody leaned down and picked up the snake with one hand. Amelia screamed, imagining him getting bit and the venom killing him within minutes. “Brody, no!”
    “Would you stop screaming,” Brody said, holding the snake up. “It’s dead.”
    “Dead,” Amelia repeated slowly, staring at the snake swinging in the air above her head. Brody had sliced it clean through. “You … you weren’t trying to chop my head off,” she breathed in relief, her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest.
    “Chop your head off?” Brody said with a tiny scowl. “Tempting as it may be with all your screaming, no, I wasn’t.”
    “Please, throw that thing away.” Trembling, Amelia turned away. Even obviously dead, it terrified her. How could he be so blasé? She could have been bitten and died.
    It landed in the bush seconds later along with its other half. Dropping her bags on the ground, Amelia drew in a shaky breath. “Can we sit for a minute? I need a minute.”
    Brody didn’t sit and she didn’t argue. Instead, she closed her eyes and waited for her nerves to calm. “How did Aunt Pan do this?”
    “With grace and a whole lot of grit,” Brody answered to her surprise. She hadn’t expected him to answer.
    Amelia opened her eyes to look up at him. “Tell me how you met her.” Anything to distract her from the snake that almost killed her.
    Brody shrugged out of his pack and set it on the ground before leaning back against a tree. “Not much to tell.”
    “Did she charter a flight from you?”
    “Eventually. She wanted to rent one of my planes and pilot herself to
Paraíso
.”
    Amelia smiled. That didn’t surprise her one bit. Her aunt had an independent streak a mile wide. “But you didn’t let her?”
    “My plane. My rules.”
    “You chartered her into the jungle then?”
    “As far as I could. Her guide took her the rest of the way.”
    Amelia frowned. “Guide?”
    “A man by the name of Charlie Weston.”
    Her frown deepened. “I know that name. Aunt Pan spoke of him a couple times. He was a professor or something. Archeology, I think. He went on adventures with Aunt Pan sometimes. Treasure hunting, writing papers, whatever professors do.”
    “They were lovers.”
    Amelia gasped. “Why would you say that?” She shook her head. “No, they were acquaintances. They explored together. Aunt Pan never had a relationship that lasted more than the time she spent in any particular place, which wasn’t long. She was a free spirit. Falling in love wasn’t her style. What makes you think that?”
    Brody cocked an arrogant brow and she