Chapter 4 #2
Forrest pulled the paddle from the river and rested it across his lap.
He’d been paddling for hours and must be tired and very thirsty, but he didn’t complain.
They continued to talk as the river pulled them along.
She told him about her family, her mother’s murder, and how close she was to her father.
He admitted he had thought the worst about her father when he’d learned he had refused to pay the ransom, but he now understood their connection.
“What about your family? Do you have a big or small one?” Jordana asked as he picked the paddle back up.
“Big. I’m one of nine children.”
“Nine!”
Forrest chuckled. “My twin, Rowan, and I are numbers seven and eight. My little sister, Penelope is number nine. She’s not so little anymore. She’s just thirteen months younger than me, but in my mind, she’ll always be the six-year-old girl doing ballet in the kitchen.”
“How old is your eldest sibling then? It must be a huge age gap.”
Forrest shook his head. “Not really. Mom went back-to-back-to-back. We’re all around ten to fourteen months apart. My eldest brother is only eight years older than me and I’m twenty-eight.”
“That’s how old I am,” she told him. Her heart fluttered with the excitement that they had something in common.
How silly was she? This was an escape, not a date.
Someone needed to tell her heart and other body parts that.
Jordana cleared her throat to try to clear her mind.
“So, tell me about this big family of yours.”
Jordana spent the rest of the day listening to Forrest talk about his family, their time growing up, their time apart, and now that they were all back together again. His voice soothed her nerves even as the sun set.
“Let’s stop here for the night.” Forrest paddled hard to a rocky shoreline. He turned and handed her the paddle. “Keep the boat right here. I’m going to tie it off.”
Jordana handed him the gun back and took the paddle.
She had to fight the slight current that wanted to push them back into the center of the river, but she managed to keep it in place as Forrest grabbed a rope, tied it to the boat, and then jumped onto the rock.
He walked just a few steps and wrapped the rope around a large boulder and then walked it back and tied it to the boat next to the first knot.
“Here.” Forrest held out his hand for the paddle. She gave it to him and he rested it on the bottom of the boat. “I have some protein bars I can pull out while you jump ashore. That is, if you want some privacy.”
“Thank you. That is much needed.”
Jordana hopped from the canoe and when she turned back, Forrest told her, “Stay close enough so I can hear you.”
Jordana nodded and hurried around the boulder and up onto the bank of the river.
She had a moment to herself and when she stood up, she looked right into a big camu bush right at the edge of the river.
The small rumberries were sour but packed with vitamins.
Jordana plucked as many as she could carry.
“Forrest!” she called out happily as she climbed back onto the rocks. “I got us some fresh fruit.”
“Don’t move!” Forrest hissed and then suddenly the machete was tossed with precision onto the rock next to her foot. Only it didn’t clink and fall into the river. It sank into something she couldn’t see in the dwindling light.
She stood frozen as Forrest bounded from the canoe, yanked the machete free, and brought it down repeatedly. The sound told her he was killing something, she just didn’t know what.
“Okay, it’s dead.”
Jordana looked down. Her eyes widened. The head of a giant anaconda lay separated from its body. Rustling in the leaves made her move. “Quick. Get it in the water. The caimans will get it instead of jaguars, and I don’t want them to get us, too.”
Jordana tossed the berries into the canoe and turned back to help Forrest. She took the head and tossed it as far into the river as possible. The water simmered and then the head disappeared.
“It’s so heavy,” Forrest grunted.
“It’s mature, probably a hundred twenty pounds in your measurement. I’ll grab the lower third. You grab the upper third and we’ll toss it together.”
They moved in silence and grabbed the heavy snake. “One, two, three,” Forrest counted down. On three, they threw the snake. It didn’t go far, but it was far enough that the current snatched it and sent the nearby caimans chasing after it.
“Are we safe here for the night?” Forrest asked her.
“I’d let out the rope a little, then I think we will be.”
They got resituated, ate, and she tried not to laugh at the sour face Forrest made when he ate the berries.
“Come, lie next to me. We need to get some sleep.” Forrest maneuvered so that he was under the seats and stretched along the bottom of the canoe.
It felt intimate to lie curled up with her bottom against his groin and his arm across her stomach.
However, it was also the safest she’d felt in a month.
Sleep came fast, almost too fast, since she didn’t get to enjoy the feeling of being in Forrest’s arms longer than the two minutes it took to fall asleep.