James Rodriguez

I'll stay within 50 yards of camp radio check every five minutes.

Emily didn't argue further.

She knew I wouldn't go beyond sensible risk parameters.

I moved toward the northeast boundary, stepping through the perimeter light into darkness.

The jungle wall loomed 20 yards ahead, dense and impenetrable in the night.

I stopped at the edge, shining my light between massive tree trunks.

The beam penetrated perhaps off before being swallowed by vegetation.

The whisper came again.

Closer now, my name.

Unmistakable.

This time, James, I froze.

Not because of the voice itself, but because I recognized it.

A child's voice, a specific child's voice.

My light caught movement between two trees, a small figure partially obscured by undergrowth.

I adjusted the beam, and there she stood.

Tara, my daughter, ten years old, wearing the yellow sundress from the photo on my desk at home.

Her hair in the same uneven pigtails she'd insisted on doing herself that morning.

The morning of the accident, three years, four months and seventeen days ago, the rational part of my brain catalogued the impossibility.

Lara died on an operating table in Baltimore while I was deployed overseas.

I didn't make it back in time.