My heart dropped to my stomach and my eyes darted to infront of me instead of at the ground, watching my feet. Victor dashed to the right, away from where he had been, yelling Tammy's name. I felt myself stiffen in fear, my mind playing through all the terrible scenarios that could have just taken place. Perhaps our guide had been wrong and a jaguar had just pounced her or perhaps she had mistaken a viper as just a harmless stick and was now succumbing to the poison. Either option was equally terrifying, the nearest large hospital was at least a half hour away, that is a long time when someone is fighting for their life. Another scream for help snapped me out of my trance and I haphazardly ran towards where I had seen Victor disappear in the foliage. It no longer mattered that my legs were exhausted or in pain, adrenaline was coursing through my veins.

"Tammy!" Victor yelled again, only this time it was not a question, he had found her.

Breaking through a mess of vines, I stumbled onto the scene, Tammy was hanging upside down from a tree branch, her right foot caught in a noose like some weird old Saturday morning cartoon.

"Get me down!" she cried, her face red with pain, tears streaming down her face. "I think it pulled my hip out of its socket!"

Victor jumped into action, following the line of the rope down the branch and tree trunk. He pulled out a pocket knife from his back pocket and sawed through the rope. It felt like it took minutes, but in only a few seconds the rope began to fray, then snap, dropping Tammy to the ground. My heart sank again as I realized she had fallen headfirst.

"Tammy!" I screamed, terrified that I had just seen someone snap their neck. "Are you okay?!"

With a loud groan, Tammy pulled herself up on her elbows, hair full of leaves and twigs. Victor was quick to bend down and assess the situation.

"Anything broken you think? Does your head or neck hurt?" he asked in rapid fire.

"My head?" she asked, a bit disassociated. "I guess it's okay. My hip…"

"It looks dislocated," Victor confirmed, "it's sitting lower than your left. You two wait here and I will go get some help."

Before either of us could agree, he leapt up into a dead run and crashed through the jungle, back towards the direction we had come from. I took his place and scrambled to crouch over Tammy to keep her calm and awake.

"Do you remember where you are?" I questioned.

"Yes," she said, slightly less dazed than she had been moments prior, "I think my head is okay." She gingerly reached up and felt around her scalp, then let out a puff of air. "Maybe a little bruised, but nothing feels too swollen or broken, maybe I lifted up my head enough when I fell to not hit it first."

"That's likely." I was certain that if she had fallen head first she wouldn't have been able to put together a coherent sentence. "Are you in pain anywhere else besides your hip?"

Tammy slowly moved the rest of her joints and rolled her neck around carefully.

"I think I'm fine other than the hip," she reported, "but that could just mean I don't feel it yet. After trauma the body can go temporarily numb."

"Let's hope that's not it," I replied.

Now that I was certain Tammy wasn't in immediate danger, I could feel my adrenaline receding, leaving me exhausted and shaking. I snuffled over to a fallen log and weakly took a seat, my stomach bubbling with nausea.

"Are you okay?" Tammy asked.

"I'll be fine," I insisted, though I could tell my face had to be pale and I felt clammy. "I was just really afraid that something terrible had happened."

"I would argue that it did," she said with a wince. She was trying to wriggle her way to the tree she had been cut from so she could lean up against it.

"Why would anyone even have a trap like that set up?" I asked in dazed wonder. "I know we're off the trail, but still, it's obviously dangerous."

Tammy laughed lightly, a smirk forming on her face. "I think we're the exact reason someone set up this trap. This isn't some village with a tribe on the cover of some magazine, this is a modern town with people who have modern jobs and homes, I doubt anyone is doing any hunting with snare traps."

"So they were set up for us?" I couldn't believe that someone could see a couple researchers as enough of a danger to take drastic measures to keep us away from something.

"Not necessarily for us," she groaned, having finally made it to the tree, "but people like us who are coming to snoop around. I think we're really on to something, they don't want anyone to find out what happened here."

It was a theory, though I personally felt it was a bit far-fetched. It was becoming apparent that Tammy found evidence in everything, even if we didn't have any direct links that the events were connected. I didn't necessarily think she was wrong in her conclusions, but perhaps a little too quick to jump in any one direction.

"I don't know…" I trailed off as I struggled to find the words for what I was thinking. I didn't want to dismiss her conclusion, because I had no proof that she was wrong, though she had no proof that she was correct either.

"First I got rudely told that I didn't know what I was talking about, then we were gruffly driven off from the construction site, now I get caught in a trap going in the backway to the site," she listed. "I know it sounds like something out of a conspiracy theory, but that's what I think we have stumbled into, a conspiracy."

"You think someone is trying to keep us from learning about the centaur?"

"Yes, someone or something." Tammy grimaced and adjusted her back against the tree. "They don't want us to find out what happened or what may still be there."

"I can't deny that I feel like something is going on," I admitted, "but I don't know if it's something directly related to the centaur. Maybe it was just a man that was found, maybe a murder or something and they came up with a rumor to cover it up. People would dismiss looking into something like a cryptid being found, most people tend to roll their eyes and laugh it off."

"I don't know, you could be right, but I could also be right and neither of us will know until we do the dirty work of figuring it out."

I shrugged my shoulders and stopped arguing, she was right, we couldn't know which account was correct until we looked further into it. Though, if the trap had been set up to keep people away from the scene, it scared me to think how far those involved might go to keep us away from the truth. The pit of my stomach got cold as the thought wandered into my mind that it would be easy to make us disappear. The likelihood of our disappearance getting much coverage would be slim at best, it would be more than reasonable to assume that we wandered too far into the forest and couldn't find our way back. It would be an easy, open and shut case, and that frightened me. There wasn't a high chance for anyone who wanted to hurt us of being caught and punished for their crimes. If this was as dangerous of a situation as Tammy was suggesting, the trip had gone from a field expedition to a life or death situation.

"This way!"

The voice was distant, but coming our way, it sounded like Victor directing help to us.

"Oh thank goodness," Tammy sighed, "I didn't know how much longer I could keep myself from crying. I need pain pills and a bed."

I stood and positioned myself in the direction we heard him coming from and called out where we were. A few moments later, Victor along with two other men came crashing through the forest. Victor pulled me aside and began to ask me questions in a low tone.

"Is she okay, her speech and thought?" he asked.

"I think so, she seems to be the same Tammy," I replied.

He nodded in head and broke away from me to help pull Tammy up on her one good leg. Using the men on both of her sides for support, she was able to limp along slowly, keeping her bad leg elevated off the ground. It would be slow going, but we would eventually make it.

"Keep an eye out," Victor warned, "if there's one trap, there will be others."

"Are there normally traps here?" I asked. I badly hoped that this was just some normal hunting and trapping location.

"No," he answered. His face was dark and serious. "I don't think we need to discuss this here, but if you guys are looking into something, I think this is a good sign to stop and back off."

Tammy cast me a glance with a "told you so" look on her face. I said nothing more and instead began to help Victor clear some of the path towards leaving the forest. I forced my mind to blank, because I did not want to accept and have to think about the situation we were in.

Nearly an hour later, we finally cleared the thick undergrowth and found ourselves back at the trail. The guys had pulled up a pickup truck before coming to get us and began to carefully load Tammy into the truck bed. It was a sight for sore eyes, I couldn't imagine walking very much further, my legs were jelly and my lower back was on fire. I climbed up into the truck bed with her to keep her steady on the ride along with one of the men. The other two hoped in the cab and we reversed until we were back into the town proper.

"He will take her to the hospital in the city," the man assured us before leaning back and closing his eyes.

My body badly wanted to follow his example and get some rest, but my brain was still reeling from the whole situation. I had never in my life felt like my wellbeing was truly in danger. Maybe I had lived a charmed life, but I had never experienced any medical scare or found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was not prepared for the possibility that there was a real threat and I didn't know if I even wanted to continue the adventure. It seemed like a silly idea to keep pursuing something that had a real chance of harm, I knew that my family, if they knew the situation, would find some way to scrap enough money together to fly me home right away. In that moment, watching the pain on Tammy's face as we sped towards help, I deeply considered if that was the path I wanted to take. All I had to do was pull out my phone and type a sentence or two and I would be saved, but for some reason, the phone stayed in my pocket.