My fingertips quivered on the cup of hot tea, it had been given to me in the hopes that it would calm me down, but nothing was going to calm me any time soon. The woman put in charge of sitting with me while I waited kept giving me looks of sympathy and asking if I needed anything, as if I could think of anything other than the horrible event I had witnessed. My mind could think of nothing else other than what could be happening to Tammy right now. Where they torturing her? Was she still in transit to somewhere? Then there were the darker questions, questions of scenarios that I wouldn't dare think too hard about in case they became all the more real.

"Ms. Jones?"

The detective appeared in the doorway, in his hands were Tammy's ID, passport, and anything else I had thought may be useful right away.

"Are you okay with speaking with me?"

"Yes," I distantly replied.

I got up slowly, finding it hard to focus on the reality around me. I felt like I was stuck in a dream, some nightmare that if I just hung in long enough I might wake up from. I would have given anything for it to just have been the worst nightmare I had ever had. The detective held the door open for me, then motioned to the chair before his desk while closing the door behind us. He waited until I had sat down in the chair before going around and sitting at his desk.

"I am detective Mullins. Your name is Elsie Jones, correct?" He asked.

For the first time since I arrived, I ventured a glance up to who I was speaking to. He was a middle aged man with too much scruff and deep set bags under his eyes. I wondered if he'd also been here since I came in. It was already noon and the kidnapping had happened not long after midnight.

"Yes," I answered, then cleared my throat so that my voice would work better than an airy squeak.

"What was your relation to Ms. Tamsyn Phillips?"

"Doctor," I corrected, "she is Dr. Phillips. She recruited me here to do some fieldwork related to various undiscovered species of the rain forest."

He nodded, his face morphing into something I couldn't quite understand. Pity? Sympathy? Before I could fully grasp his expression it had faded. Though it had only been there for a second, it made me feel uneasy and a shiver of fear ran down the back of my neck. He knew something about Tammy that he wasn't telling me.

"Yes, Dr. Phillips," he corrected.

He thumbed through the papers he had brought in with him. It seemed he was looking for something.

"What exactly had happened yesterday prior to the incident?" he asked.

"Dr. Phillips called the company working on the house that was in front of the section of jungle we were interested in," I explained. "They gave her permission to enter the site, so we went yesterday. The foremen of the construction site seemed to be very against us being there."

"Against how?" His eyebrows had twitched with the mention of the foreman.

"He was angry, I guess. He just gave off an aura of being dangerous. Tammy just seemed to glaze right over it, but I was scared."

"Did you think he would do anything to you?" The dectective had started to take notes, his pen scratching quickly over the paper. From what I could see of his writing, I wouldn't be able to decipher it even if I tried.

"Maybe," I admitted. "He watched me the entire time I was taking photos of a spot we were interested in."

"Why was Dr. Phillips interested in the spot?"

"She had heard a rumor that a strange animal had been found on or near the property. She wanted to find where it had potentially lain so we could work to identify it. I was able to take photos of it, they were on her laptop that I handed over."

He nodded, his pen not stopping, "I have seen them, they don't look like much."

"That makes sense," I said with a shrug, "but to a biologist, there's all sorts of clues there to help hunt down an animal."

"Just so that I have a clear picture of what we're talking about," he said, "what kind of animal are we talking about?"

I opened my mouth to spit out the word "centaur," but as soon as I tried, I found I couldn't. I knew it was important to be as accurate as possible, for Tammy's sake, but I couldn't help but imagine what would happen if the police just labelled us a couple of conspiracy kooks. I knew that there was a good chance it wouldn't effect anything, but my gut told me to shut up and not take chances.

"Ms. Jones?" His expression was serious and he had stopped writing. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes," I spat out with an awkward chuckle, "I just didn't now how exactly to describe it. She said it sounded like some type of deer or tapir, maybe even a capybara. It just seemed strange when thinking about the photos we took, the area indicated that one side of the animal was much heavier than the other, so who knows what it actually was?"

I tried so hard to act cool, but I couldn't stop my hands from shivering, even while clenching the mug with all of my strength. The detective turned his head to the side slightly, seeming to observe my body language, but whatever he determined, he didn't comment further on.

"Ms. Jones," he continued, "is there anything else you can think of that has happened since you arrived that might be clues to what happened?"

"It was not our first run in with the foreman," I explained. "He was definitely not happy to see us the first time. Also we tried going off the property and just explore the jungle around the area and she was caught in the snare. That's why she was being treated for a dislocated hip."

"You think the traps were intentional?" he questioned.

I looked up at him and let out a long breath of air. "Tammy had said a few times that she thought there was some sort of conspiracy going on concerning the property and the animal we were looking for. At this point, I think I have to agree with her, why else would this have happened? Yes, I think the traps were for us, or for anyone out looking in that area."

"Okay," he said simply as he finished up his notes.

I was surprised that he had accepted my answer. I had experienced it all myself and still wasn't sure that all the pieces made sense.

"There are a few problems with this case," he began, leaning back in his chair. "The first is that the construction site you had visted did not have any workers scheduled to be there due to a dispute between the owner of the property and the construction company. So whomever was there was not with the company and I don't suppose either of you thought to check his ID?"

"No."

My body felt numb, like all my limbs had gone to sleep at once. Fear trickled down to my stomach, making my mouth water in a way that only made me feel like I needed to throw up more. She was completely right, there was a conspiracy.

"Did he give any name, number, anything?" the detective pressed.

"No, he didn't want to seem to speak to us."

Detective Mullins grunted and shook his head. "Not much we can do with no information and the description you gave earlier is pretty vague."

"Please tell me that you can still help find her," I begged through teary eyes.

The strange, haunted expression skimmed across his features once again and my stomach turned with horrible recognization. The expression was not just sympathy, it was something more intense than that. It wasn't just he knew something I didn't, he knew something that he didn't want to tell me. The world around me started to feel surreal, the lights in the office billowing and distorting as the tears welled up completely in my eyes. His voice sounded very distant as he gently, but matter-of -factly told me that her body had been found a couple hours ago by a river fisherman. It appeared that she had been drowned and they had left her body to be swept out to sea.

The next thing I remembered was waking up on the paramedics stretcher. An EMT leaned over into my view and began to speak french, I couldn't even find the strength to inform her that I had no idea what she was saying. My vision was hazy and the front of my clothings was damp and sticky, the stench of vomit filled my nose. My confused brain strained to make sense of what was happening, of where I was and why I was strapped down. I fought to get free for a moment before the painful memory of what I had been told came flooding back. A whole new wave of nausea washed over me and I panicked to turn my head to vomit. The EMT spoke gentle, calming words while holding up a bag for me to be sick into. She gently pulled my hair from my face and helped me right myself when I was done, going so far as to dab my tears with the edge of the sheet underneath me.

I could do nothing but lie still, tears falling from me at a rate that I didn't know was possible as they loaded me into the ambulance. Many interested people had gathered around the ambulance in the parking lot, wanting to see what all the fuss was about. In the back, with the door closed, I felt much safer, though not any better.

"Comment vous appelez-vous?" The EMT asked with a soft smile.

"I can't speak french," I said, my voice weak.

"Ah," she said, suddenly understanding. "What is your name?"

"Elsie Jones," I said.

"American?" she questioned. It was obviously not a required question, but something to make small talk about.

"Yes."

"I have always wanted to visit." She checked my vitals and wrote them on her chart. "What are you doing in this country?"

"I was here for school with a professor," I explained. My heart felt like it swelled painfully in my chest as I tried to talk through the tears.

"She is the one the gentleman who called for us told me about?"

I nodded, trying desperately not to start sobbing or throwing up again. My body felt on the edge of collapsing under my own sorrow and fear that it could have easily been me with her in the river. Had I hestiated for just one more moment or made a single sound, they would have surely taken me too and that was too much for me to even begin to process or understand. This had just been a trip to investigate something, we weren't there to hurt anyone or make trouble, it never crossed my mind that one of us would die in the process.