Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I looked down at the medical bag. It was soaked through and stained. When I lifted it, river water drained out. But most of the contents were individually packed in plastic and should still be okay.
I hefted it onto my shoulder, turned upstream and started walking.
39
GABRIEL
The truck jerked to a stop. A soldier opened the tailgate and motioned for us to climb out.
We emerged blinking into the morning light. Whatever the place was, it wasn’t an army base. Just a small clearing in the jungle with a few white prefab cabins. It looked more commercial than military.
Soldiers surrounded us. I recognized Major Zamora, the Special Ops guy who’d been in charge at the “cartel” camp. But there was someone else there too, a civilian in a spotless white shirt and black slacks. He had fancy, blue-and-silver-framed glasses and he was sipping coffee from a travel mug.
“This is all of them?” the stranger asked. His accent was American. What the hell?
“All that’s left,” Major Zamora told him. “The woman died.”
He practically shrugged as he said it. I felt my hands curl into fists behind my back.
The stranger looked at us. “Who’s the leader?” He looked at me. “You?”
“Me,” growled JD.
I looked at JD in shock. If no one had spoken up, they would have had to interrogate us all. JD had just ensured that only he took the pain. I’d been on my own so long, I’d forgotten that kind of self-sacrifice existed.
The stranger definitely wasn’t former Special Forces: I was pretty sure he’d never served at all. But he attempted a swagger as he strolled over to JD and got up in his face, enjoying playing the badass. “You’re going to tell me what you know,” he told JD with a cocky grin. “And who you’ve told.”
JD lifted his chin a fraction of an inch and just stared silently back at the guy, telling him without words exactly how little he thought of him, exactly how easily he could kill him, even with his hands tied behind his back, if the guy didn’t have a squad of soldiers to hide behind.
The stranger’s grin crumbled. He looked away, embarrassed, then waved angrily towards one of the cabins. “Take him in there,” he ordered Major Zamora. “And start beating it out of him.”
40
OLIVIA
I stopped for a second and leaned against a tree, panting. I’d been walking for a solid hour, following the river upstream, but I wasn’t sure how much distance I was covering. The jungle was especially thick here, and without Colton and his machete to hack things out of the way, I had to climb over branches and twisted vines almost constantly. My thighs burned from crouch-walking under things and my arms were covered in scrapes, adding to the ones I’d picked up in the river.
I tried to walk on the riverbank as much as possible because the going was so much easier there. But the bank kept petering out and I’d have to head into the jungle again, sometimes walking for minutes before I could find a way on. Every time I lost sight of the river, my chest contracted with fear. Everything looked the same and it was way, way too easy to get turned around and wind-up walking in the wrong direction: it had happened twice already. As the sun rose, the air was heating up and I was already dripping with sweat. The doubts started to multiply in my mind. What if I can’t find the river again? What if I run into the soldiers? What if it’s just too far? I had no food or water, no gear to survive out here.
I pushed off from the tree and staggered on. There was no time for what ifs, not if I wanted to save Gabriel.
I ducked under a vine that stretched between two trees. As I looked up, I saw a man right in front of me.
I gave a startled yell and jumped back, my heart thumping. He was no more than ten feet away. He was stripped to the waist and was wearing a pair of loose cotton pants the same color as the undergrowth. He blended so well with the jungle that I’d almost walked straight into him.
In one hand, he carried a spear. But the tip was pointing up towards the treetops, not at me.
I swallowed. “Hi. Hola.”
There was a tiny rustle behind me. I turned and saw another two men. Where the hell had they appeared from? I must have walked right past them.
The man in front of me said something in a language that wasn’t Spanish and I heard one of the men behind me mutter something. They seemed a lot more relaxed than the ones we’d run into before. I guess an unarmed woman is a lot less threatening than six heavily armed men.