Chapter 17
My heart hammered as I gripped Kat’s limp body to my chest and charged through the relentless bushes, aiming for the roaring waterfall. My muscles were like leather, and I fought absolute exhaustion to keep moving.
Kat’s breaths were shallow and uneven, and her lifeless expression scared the crap out of me.
Peering over my shoulder, I searched the bushes, expecting bullets to start flying again. Kat’s father had detailed two crooked cops who had been involved in his murder.
I couldn’t believe one of those bastards had found us so quickly.
Fucking crooked cop had betrayed his badge. But I shouldn’t be surprised. In this poverty-stricken country, corruption was everywhere.
And until I got Kat and me out of here, we had crosshairs painted on our backs.
A vine snagged my ankle, and I stumbled forward and crashed onto my knees.
Kat moaned.
“Sorry, babe. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”
I forced my body to stand and adjusting her limp body in my arms, I barged through a shrub with thorns like tiger claws.
“You’re going to be okay.” Repeating the mantra, I pushed on.
I searched the sky for the chopper, the bushes for more assholes with weapons, and ahead for the tumbling waterfall that dominated all sounds.
With every step, rage and paranoia competed for attention in my brain.
But most of all, my focus was on Kat. She will not die.
No fucking way. She was too young. Too innocent.
She’d entered my soul.
Finally, the clearing appeared, and I marched into the open space. Mist from the torrential waterfall clouded the air, and the roar from the tumbling water echoed up from the pool it crashed into at the bottom.
I scoured the sky. “Where are you guys? Come on. Come on.”
Kat groaned.
“It’s okay, Kat. They’ll find us. Keep fighting, Kat. You fight like I know you can.”
Come on, guys. Where the hell are you?
I lowered her to the ground, and as I adjusted her dad’s shirt over her wound, it took everything I had not to check beneath the bloody cloth.
The thumping chopper blades added a heartbeat to the roaring waterfall.
I scanned the sky, and the chopper emerged from the jungle with its blades slicing through the mist. Waving my arms, even though I knew they couldn’t hear me, I shouted until my throat burned.
The chopper dipped, confirming the pilot had seen me. But he drifted away. Shit! Where the hell will he land?
Squatting beside Kat, I rested my hand over hers as the chopper pilot made two broad sweeps overhead.
On the second swing around, through the open chopper side door, Corbin waved to me. Across his chest was his sniper rifle, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Corbin was one of the best snipers around, and with him covering our backs, if anyone did attack us, they were toast.
As the chopper lowered, the downdraft from the rotors peppered us with grass, leaves, and spray from the waterfall. I covered Kat with my body and waited for the signal from my team.
In a ballsy demonstration of incredible piloting skills, Walker lowered the chopper over the giant sinkhole. Ty filled the doorway with Corbin as one of the chopper skids touched down on the edge of the cenote. With the rest of the chopper hovering over the hole, Ty jumped out and raced toward me, panning his weapon left and right.
I scooped Kat into my arms. “Here we go, Kat. We’re getting out of here.”
I hugged her against my chest, unsure if she even heard me.
Ty reached my side. “Man, are we pleased to see you.” He gripped my shoulder.
“You too,” I yelled over the thumping chopper beat. “Did you save Pedro and my other tourists?”
Ty nudged me toward the chopper. “Let’s get you loaded and get the fuck outta here.”
He dodged my question, and my head nearly split in two with a barrage of negative thoughts.
Hunching over, I carried Kat’s limp body toward the open door of the chopper, and as Ty helped me get her inside, Corbin kept his sniper rifle aimed at the jungle around us. Seconds after climbing into the cabin, Walker lifted us airborne.
As we soared over the trees, I pressed my hands onto the bloody cloth on Kat’s bullet wound and prayed that she would be okay. Her face was deathly pale, and her eyelids flickered like she was fighting a nightmare.
“We need to get her to a hospital,” I yelled to my men seated opposite me. “But what about Pedro and the rest of my tourists? Did you find them?”
“We got them,” Ty said. “One is dead. The rest are shaken but okay. They beat the crap out of Pedro.” His expression went so dark, my chest clamped.
“How bad?”
He shook his head. “A few broken bones, but his eye doesn’t look good.”
“Bastards! Did you kill them? How many were there?”
“Only three, and yes, they’re dead. They didn’t give us much choice when they turned on the prisoners they’d tied to the trees.”
“Fucking hell.” Kat’s unconscious body on the metal floor was my priority, but I had to help my other tourists, too. “Where is Pedro and the rest of my group?”
“Knox took them in your bus.”
“Shit. They could still be in danger. The asshole who attacked Kat and me was a cop. I killed him.”
Ty did a double-take. “A cop? Fuck me.”
“He was as bent as an elbow. And I have proof.” I nodded at the backpack containing her father’s journal. “But I don’t know how many are working with him.”
“If the three we killed were also cops, then we’re in a ton of trouble.” Ty’s expression grew grim.
“I know. We need to get the hell out of Mexico,” I said.
“We’ll take you to Cancun airport,” Ty said. “We have a private jet waiting to take us stateside.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Kat won’t make it. We need to take her to the hospital here. But we’ll need to watch our backs.”
Corbin slapped his rifle. “That’s what this is for.”
“But as soon as Kat is stabilized, I want her out of this country. We need Hank’s help.”
Ty squeezed my bicep. “You look after Kat and let us worry about everything else.”
He reached into a bag and removed a phone. As he made a call, I adjusted my hands over Kat’s wound.
When her eyes opened she seemed to look right through me.
I leaned forward to talk into her ear. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re taking you to the hospital. You’re going to be fine.”
Her mouth moved, and I eased in so I could hear her. “Please make sure Mom gets Dad’s journal.”
I jerked back, shaking my head, then leaned into her ear. “That’s for you to do. So, you need to hang in there, okay? Your mom needs you, remember.” I kissed her forehead, and in her ear, I said, “I need you, Kat.”
As I swept bloody hair from the cut on her forehead, she nodded.
“That’s it. You’re going to be just fine. You’re a fighter, and you’re going to fight this. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Good girl. Now rest.”
She closed her eyes, and with a fire trapped in my throat, I studied her torso until her chest rose and fell with a shallow breath.
“I have the medics ready for us at Tulum Hospital,” Walker said. “And Hank will contact someone he trusts down here to give us a hand.”
As my mind careened all over the place, the jungle below morphed into a landscape of crumbling third-world homes and congested streets. Finally, Walker lowered the chopper onto the rooftop of Tulum Hospital, kicking up a dust cloud that shrouded our visibility.
The chopper landed, and as the medical team rushed over wheeling a rickety stretcher, I scooped Kat into my arms.
Ty and Corbin climbed out of the chopper with me, and as I lowered Kat onto the trolley, four medical staff swarmed around her.
I felt fucking useless as they went to work checking her vital signs.
As the hospital staff pushed the trolley across the roof toward a pair of large swinging doors, I ran with them.
“What’s her injury?” a woman in a blue uniform yelled over the chopper’s whirring engine.
“She was shot in her lower abdomen, and she’s lost a lot of blood. She was conscious until a few minutes ago.”
“What’s her blood type?” she asked as we shoved through the doors.
“I don’t know.”
In the corridor, my bare feet slapped on the cold floor, and the stretcher’s squeaky wheels sounded like they were screaming. At an elevator, a young man in scrubs pressed the only button way too calmly for my liking.
“Is she going to be okay?” I blurted, even though I knew they couldn’t answer yet.
“What’s her name and age?” the woman asked.
“Katherine Reynolds. She’s twenty-five.”
“Are you family?”
“No, I’m her, um, boyfriend.”
“I need you to stay right here. What’s your name?”
I shot my gaze to Kat and back to the woman. “I’m Colton Henderson. She was on a scuba diving tour with me and I’m?—”
The doors opened, and they pushed Kat inside.
“We’ll take it from here.” The woman raised her hands, halting me.
The doors slid closed, and my heart broke as Kat’s lifeless body disappeared from my view.
Corbin came to my side. “She”ll be okay.” He nodded with conviction, but his eyes betrayed the certainty in his tone.
I didn’t trust myself to speak.
With my stomach twisting into knots, we returned outside.
The chopper’s rotor blades were still spinning, but the noise had settled enough that I could at least think.
Despite Kat being in good hands, we were still in a load of trouble. More corrupt cops could still be out there, and they would bulldoze everyone to contain the secret they thought they’d buried nearly a decade ago.
Walker climbed out of the pilot’s seat, and I shook his hand. “Thanks for saving us, buddy.”
“All good. Trust you to get into a mess in the middle of nowhere, though.” Walker was usually the quiet one, and it was rare for him to give anyone shit. Maybe that daring rescue put energy in his veins.
“You only know some of what happened.” With the hot Mexican sun belting down on us, I gave them a summary of the abandoned truck and two skeletons we found in the cave, the murder of Kat’s father, the biohazard coverup, and the corrupt cops behind it all.
“Fuck me. That’s some serious shit,” Corbin said.
“Yep. And that’s why I need to get Kat and my other tourists out of Mexico before I have more blood on my hands.”
Walker nodded. “You stay with Kat. We’ll find Knox and round up those other tourists.”
“Good.” I clapped his shoulder. “Keep me in the loop with Pedro and anything else going on.”
“Roger that.” Walker shook my hand, then strode back around the chopper and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
“Hey, Colton, watch your six, okay?” Corbin nodded at me.
“I will. You, too.”
“Always.” Ty shook my hand, then climbed into the chopper cabin with Corbin.
As the engines roared to life again, I remembered the crooked cop’s phone in my pocket. Without his face, the phone was useless to me. As I shoved it into Kat’s father’s backpack, I said to Corbin, “Don’t let this bag out of your sight. It has valuable evidence to take down those crooked cops.”
He winked at me. “Roger that.”
“Do you have a phone I can borrow?” I asked him.
He fished into his pocket. “Here. Take mine. The code is six, seven, eight, nine.”
“Thanks.” I shoved the phone into my swimming trunks.
“You got a weapon?” he asked.
“No, but I better not have one in the hospital. Last thing I need is to be arrested.”
Corbin wriggled his brows. “Understood. Keep your head on a swivel.”
“Will do.”
The chopper lifted off the ground, and the thumping blades drowned out the bullshit racing through my mind as I ran down the stairs. At the bottom, I sprinted through the front glass doors to the reception counter. As I heaved ragged breaths and tried to calm my thundering heartbeat, I waited for one of the three women behind the glass partition to give me attention.
I was on the verge of yelling at them when a young woman finally looked up at me. “?Cómo te puedo ayudar?”
“Hola. ?Hablas ingles?” I asked, hoping she spoke English.
“Yes. How can I help?”
“Oh, thank goodness. Katherine Reynolds was just brought in by helicopter, and I need to find out if she’s okay.”
Frowning, she turned her attention to the computer in front of her.
“Katherine Reynolds,” she repeated as she tapped the keyboard.
Her frown deepened. “She’s been admitted to emergency. However, there isn’t an update at the moment. There’s a waiting room on the third floor if you want to wait there.” She pointed to a bank of elevators across the room.
“Gracias.”
I sprinted to the elevator and jabbed the button several times until it opened.
On the third floor, I stepped into a room with sagging wall posters, paint peeling from the ceiling, dark stains dotting the floor, and at least twenty people seated in stiff plastic chairs.
Fighting the urge to scream, I ran to the counter at the front, and after repeating my questions from downstairs, I was instructed to sit and wait.
I sank into a chair in an empty back row and buried my face in my hands.
The events of the past few days played across my mind in a messy cocktail of swirling water, Kat’s laughter, bloody wounds, her spectacular kisses, killing that cop with my bare hands, and Kat’s lifeless body in my arms.
Forcing myself to stay focused, I used Walker’s phone to message Wyatt at Team Eagle with details of the corruption and crooked cops. I asked him to see if he could find photos of the two cops implicated in the journal and send them to me.
I needed to know if the man I killed was one of them.
For the next few hours, with my mind careening all over the place, I alternated between pacing the hospital waiting room and forcing myself to sit and rest. People were seated all around me, and they all looked like their hearts had been ripped out.
After what seemed like an eternity, a man in a white coat said, “Colton Henderson.”
I launched to my feet and dodged through the crowded seats to him. “Yes, that’s me. Is Katherine okay?”
He clasped his hands together. “The bullet did some serious damage, and she lost a lot of blood.”
“Son of a bitch.”
He glared at me so hard I swallowed. “Sorry. And? Will she be okay?”
“She is in recovery, and we’re monitoring her.”
“Thank you.” A wave of relief washed over me. “Can I see her?”
“No. We will let you know when she is ready for visitors.”
Feeling numb, I nodded, unable to find my voice.
The doctor gave me a weird smile, then turned and walked away.
After he passed through a swinging door, I sank into the nearest chair. Drained and emotionally spent, I stared at a stain on the floor that looked like a plane with one wing.
As I sat there, lost in my thoughts, my phone buzzed. I scrambled to grab it from my pocket, hoping it was news from Wyatt.
It was. I opened the two photos he sent through.
The first one was of Rodriques Gonzales, and although he was much younger in the photo, there was no mistaking that he was the cop I’d killed. In the picture, he wore a full police uniform and was having a medal pinned to his chest by Maria Layda Vizcaino Pineda—the Mayor of Tulum.
Oh, jeez. Is she corrupt, too?
I fucking hoped not. I’d had a few dealings with her, and she struck me as a woman who was fighting damn hard to keep her head above the water and not succumb to the bullshit she’d have to contend with every day.
I swiped to the next message from Wyatt, which advised that the following photo was of Juan Santhwente who retired from the police force four years ago. I opened the photo.
My blood drained.
The man in the picture was the man I had just spoken to in the white coat.