“You’re right. My dad will give me whatever I ask for. Let me talk to him.”
“So you can tell him your cousins are dead?” She shakes her head, and her earrings jangle. “Get back in line.”
“I swear I won’t tell him.”
“And I should believe you because you look so sweet and innocent? Hernán Valencia’s daughter would take food from orphans, if that’s what it took to get her way. Just like her father. Let’s go.”
Anger burns beneath my skin like hot coals. “I am just like my father.” In the sense that she has no idea what either of us is really capable of. “I’m not going to tell him about Maddie and Ryan, because pissing you off wouldn’t be in my best interest. So just tell me why you need his resources and I’ll make it happen.”
Silvana stomps toward me, mud splattering around her boots with every step. She grabs my jaw in a bruising grip, and I fight the urge to pull free, because I know what this is. Like Holden, she needs to believe she’s in control—right up until the moment I show her that she’s not.
“Resources?” Her furious gaze slides from me to Sebastián, confirming that I’ve just driven the wedge between them deeper. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that.
“What do you want? Trucks? Boats? What are you trying to sneak across the border? Or, who are you trying to sneak across?”
Silvana snorts, and her men grumble angrily.
“Why do Americans always assume everyone else wants what they have?” Álvaro demands.
“Because they’re spoiled and egotistical,” Julian answers.
“We’re not smuggling people into the States. We’re going to use your dad’s ‘resources’ to teach you and the rest of your privileged, arrogant countrymen a lesson in humility.”
Chills wash over me as Silvana’s gleefully cruel smile drives her point home. My dad’s resources can deliver anything to anywhere in the world, in a matter of hours, but I doubt she plans to teach us a lesson with reams of paper and pallets of lip gloss.
She’ll use Genesis Shipping to smuggle weapons. Or explosives.
Bombs.
Silvana and her men aren’t just kidnappers. They’re terrorists.
Fear freezes my tongue to the roof of my mouth, but I hold her gaze to disguise my horror.
If my dad cooperates to save my life, he’ll be helping them kill who knows how many hundreds of innocent people.
MADDIE
I kick Moisés again. Then again. And again. With each blow, he cries out, cursing me in Spanish. My next kick splits his lip, and blood pours from his mouth.
“Maddie!” Luke shouts, but I hardly hear him over Moisés’s grunts and the roar of my own raging pulse.
My boot splits open Moisés’s cheek. I pull my foot back for another blow, but Luke wraps his arms around me and drags me away from my target.
“Let me go!” I thrash and kick, trying to break his grip, but he’s stronger than he looks.
“Maddie. Killing him won’t bring Ryan back.” He has to say it right into my ear to be heard over Moisés’s shouting. I really did hurt the bastard.
“I know.” I stop struggling and he lets me go. “Let’s shut him up before he brings every gunman in the jungle running.”
“I got it.” Luke heads for the line of tents, then comes back with a scrap of white cloth and a roll of duct tape so quickly that he could only have gotten them from his own stuff.
He shoves the material into Moisés’s mouth, then tapes over it with a strip of duct tape. A striped bit of elastic sticks out above the tape. “Is that . . . underwear?”
Luke shrugs. “It’s clean. It’s the only thing I had that was small enough to fit into his mouth. Not that my underwear is small.” His face turns bright red. “Not that it’s big either. I mean . . .” Finally he gives up with a sigh. “Stop talking while you’re ahead, Luke,” he mumbles.
“I’m not sure you were actually ahead.”
I kneel at my brother’s side and carefully unclasp his medallion. It’s all I have left of him and of my father, so I fasten it around my own neck and tuck it inside my shirt.
Luke clears his throat as he backs toward the bunkhouse, obviously reluctant to intrude on my private moment. “Um . . . I’ll go get the shovel. I put it in the utility shed.”
“You . . . ?” I blink at him in sudden understanding. “You buried him?”
Luke shrugs. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Thank you.” I stand and pull him into another hug, and my tears fall on his shoulder. “You . . . Thank you.”
When I let him go, he gives me a self-conscious nod, then scruffs his hat over his curls and heads toward the bunkhouse.
While Luke is gone, I position Ryan’s arms over his chest, then I start pushing the dirt over him again. Moisés has stopped yelling behind his gag, and the ambient wildlife sounds have faded into the background—for a moment, it feels like the entire jungle is honoring my brother with a moment of quiet.
Fresh tears blur my vision as I work, and I am sniffling again when Luke’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Let me do it.”
I stand, and he gently shovels dirt over my brother’s face while I fight fresh tears. “Ryan nearly died once before,” I whisper. “Last year. After our dad died. He started drinking, and I used to find him passed out. Barely breathing.” My finger traces the pink line on the back of my arm. “So one night I showed him what he was doing to himself.”
“That’s how you got your scar?” Luke asks as he wipes sweat from his forehead.
I nod. “At my cousin’s Halloween party. I matched him drink for drink, until I passed out and my arm went through a glass bottle. He checked into rehab the day I got out of the hospital, and he hasn’t had a drink since. He—” My voice breaks. I clear my throat and start over. “He decided to live.”
GENESIS
“Teach us a lesson?” Penelope hisses as she pushes her way between me and Indiana on the narrow trail. “They’re going to punish us just for being American? What did our country ever do to them?” “Poison their crops, livestock, and people with herbicides,” Domenica says over her shoulder, from a few feet ahead. “And not just in Colombia. It happened to my uncle’s farm in Peru.”
“So you can tell him your cousins are dead?” She shakes her head, and her earrings jangle. “Get back in line.”
“I swear I won’t tell him.”
“And I should believe you because you look so sweet and innocent? Hernán Valencia’s daughter would take food from orphans, if that’s what it took to get her way. Just like her father. Let’s go.”
Anger burns beneath my skin like hot coals. “I am just like my father.” In the sense that she has no idea what either of us is really capable of. “I’m not going to tell him about Maddie and Ryan, because pissing you off wouldn’t be in my best interest. So just tell me why you need his resources and I’ll make it happen.”
Silvana stomps toward me, mud splattering around her boots with every step. She grabs my jaw in a bruising grip, and I fight the urge to pull free, because I know what this is. Like Holden, she needs to believe she’s in control—right up until the moment I show her that she’s not.
“Resources?” Her furious gaze slides from me to Sebastián, confirming that I’ve just driven the wedge between them deeper. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that.
“What do you want? Trucks? Boats? What are you trying to sneak across the border? Or, who are you trying to sneak across?”
Silvana snorts, and her men grumble angrily.
“Why do Americans always assume everyone else wants what they have?” Álvaro demands.
“Because they’re spoiled and egotistical,” Julian answers.
“We’re not smuggling people into the States. We’re going to use your dad’s ‘resources’ to teach you and the rest of your privileged, arrogant countrymen a lesson in humility.”
Chills wash over me as Silvana’s gleefully cruel smile drives her point home. My dad’s resources can deliver anything to anywhere in the world, in a matter of hours, but I doubt she plans to teach us a lesson with reams of paper and pallets of lip gloss.
She’ll use Genesis Shipping to smuggle weapons. Or explosives.
Bombs.
Silvana and her men aren’t just kidnappers. They’re terrorists.
Fear freezes my tongue to the roof of my mouth, but I hold her gaze to disguise my horror.
If my dad cooperates to save my life, he’ll be helping them kill who knows how many hundreds of innocent people.
MADDIE
I kick Moisés again. Then again. And again. With each blow, he cries out, cursing me in Spanish. My next kick splits his lip, and blood pours from his mouth.
“Maddie!” Luke shouts, but I hardly hear him over Moisés’s grunts and the roar of my own raging pulse.
My boot splits open Moisés’s cheek. I pull my foot back for another blow, but Luke wraps his arms around me and drags me away from my target.
“Let me go!” I thrash and kick, trying to break his grip, but he’s stronger than he looks.
“Maddie. Killing him won’t bring Ryan back.” He has to say it right into my ear to be heard over Moisés’s shouting. I really did hurt the bastard.
“I know.” I stop struggling and he lets me go. “Let’s shut him up before he brings every gunman in the jungle running.”
“I got it.” Luke heads for the line of tents, then comes back with a scrap of white cloth and a roll of duct tape so quickly that he could only have gotten them from his own stuff.
He shoves the material into Moisés’s mouth, then tapes over it with a strip of duct tape. A striped bit of elastic sticks out above the tape. “Is that . . . underwear?”
Luke shrugs. “It’s clean. It’s the only thing I had that was small enough to fit into his mouth. Not that my underwear is small.” His face turns bright red. “Not that it’s big either. I mean . . .” Finally he gives up with a sigh. “Stop talking while you’re ahead, Luke,” he mumbles.
“I’m not sure you were actually ahead.”
I kneel at my brother’s side and carefully unclasp his medallion. It’s all I have left of him and of my father, so I fasten it around my own neck and tuck it inside my shirt.
Luke clears his throat as he backs toward the bunkhouse, obviously reluctant to intrude on my private moment. “Um . . . I’ll go get the shovel. I put it in the utility shed.”
“You . . . ?” I blink at him in sudden understanding. “You buried him?”
Luke shrugs. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Thank you.” I stand and pull him into another hug, and my tears fall on his shoulder. “You . . . Thank you.”
When I let him go, he gives me a self-conscious nod, then scruffs his hat over his curls and heads toward the bunkhouse.
While Luke is gone, I position Ryan’s arms over his chest, then I start pushing the dirt over him again. Moisés has stopped yelling behind his gag, and the ambient wildlife sounds have faded into the background—for a moment, it feels like the entire jungle is honoring my brother with a moment of quiet.
Fresh tears blur my vision as I work, and I am sniffling again when Luke’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Let me do it.”
I stand, and he gently shovels dirt over my brother’s face while I fight fresh tears. “Ryan nearly died once before,” I whisper. “Last year. After our dad died. He started drinking, and I used to find him passed out. Barely breathing.” My finger traces the pink line on the back of my arm. “So one night I showed him what he was doing to himself.”
“That’s how you got your scar?” Luke asks as he wipes sweat from his forehead.
I nod. “At my cousin’s Halloween party. I matched him drink for drink, until I passed out and my arm went through a glass bottle. He checked into rehab the day I got out of the hospital, and he hasn’t had a drink since. He—” My voice breaks. I clear my throat and start over. “He decided to live.”
GENESIS
“Teach us a lesson?” Penelope hisses as she pushes her way between me and Indiana on the narrow trail. “They’re going to punish us just for being American? What did our country ever do to them?” “Poison their crops, livestock, and people with herbicides,” Domenica says over her shoulder, from a few feet ahead. “And not just in Colombia. It happened to my uncle’s farm in Peru.”
