Chapter 7
Jordana dreamt of her mother. She’d had dreams about her mother before, but this was different. It was happy. It was peaceful. Her mother held out her hands for Jordana and smiled with pure joy.
“Follow your heart, my sweet girl. You’ll find the love I found with your father if you do.”
The dream was technically short, but the time they spent together felt as if it lasted all night.
A kiss drew her from the dream. Her mother smiled even more.
“Go to him. I love you, Jordana, and am so very proud of you.” Her mother faded as Jordana opened her eyes.
The storm had passed and Forrest was kissing her temple.
“Good morning. Are you still cold?” Forrest asked her.
“No, I feel wonderful.” And she did. She was warm in his embrace. The smell of rain and nature mixed and then the dream. Everything was going to be okay. She knew it. “Let’s get the hell out of this jungle.”
Forrest chuckled, kissed her temple once more, and was about to pull away when she reached behind her to stop him.
She rolled over to face him and kissed him.
She channeled all the feelings from her dream and from the past two days with him into the kiss.
She wanted him to know how special, valued, and safe he made her feel.
“Okay, now we can go,” she whispered to him once they ended the kiss.
It was another long, hot day of hiking. Her shoes were barely holding on, but they were much better than not having any.
The time in the canoe also helped her feet heal a bit.
However, she knew infection was likely. She hoped that the poultice she’d made from plants she found as they hiked and had been putting on every chance she had was preventing infection, or at least mitigating it.
Suddenly, Forrest stopped walking. “I hear something,” he whispered as he pulled her off the path. Moments later two men on mules appeared with two additional mules following them.
“Stay here,” Forrest whispered before slipping from the jungle onto the path behind the men. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for me, would you?” she heard Forrest say loudly.
He had the gun in his hand as the men turned their mules slowly around. “Forrest Townsend?” one of them asked in accented English.
“Depends on who is asking.” Forrest seemed entirely at ease, even though Jordana knew he wasn’t. Yet, the gun never wavered in his hold.
“KAT sent us. If you’re Forrest, then the password is pirate.”
The man didn’t look like much of a bodyguard. In fact, neither of them did. They looked like two skinny indigenous men who had spent some time in the city based on their T-shirts advertising Brazil’s football team.
“I’m Hati and this is Kaito. Your brother Kane sent us,” the leader who looked all of twenty said. The other boy looked even younger. Their appearance didn’t inspire confidence, but at least they had the right password and didn’t look as if they were going to kill them. “Where is the woman?”
Jordana watched as Forrest didn’t answer. Instead, he cocked his head at the two boys. “How do you know Kane?”
“By accident. Kane was down here working on the release of a client who was kidnapped by a cartel. We were searching for our grandmother. She’s the head of our tribe.
She went to the city to lobby for our people and never came home.
Turned out he heard us looking for our grandmother.
Kane got his client free. The client told him that there was a tribal woman also being held but she wasn’t being ransomed.
They were going to kill her because she’d gone to Mr. Alves with information about drug runners in the and Mr. Alves was closing in on them.
She had warned other tribes, too. Kane found us and the three of us went to the compound, which wasn’t much, and freed her. ”
“Along with other hostages,” Kaito added. “Which is why when Kane got in touch with us, we came. We owe him our grandmother’s life.”
“We have a satellite phone,” Hait told them. “If you would like to call Kane to confirm.”
Forrest was quiet for a moment then held out his hand. “Thanks for the rescue, boys.” Jordana almost laughed. He thought they were young too. “Meet Jordana Alves.”
Jordana took that as her cue to leave her hiding place.
The men bowed their heads to her when they saw her.
Then they spoke in Portuguese, telling her it was an honor to help them.
A flash of her mother smiling came across Jordana’s mind.
These must be the two angels her mother had sent to guard them.
“We brought you mules to ride,” Kaito told them.
Jordana signed with relief. Forrest helped her up and then he mounted his mule. “What’s the plan?” Jordana asked.
“We have a day’s ride to our car. Then we’ll take you to Manaus,” Hati answered.
Jordana nodded as they fell in line. Hati took the lead, then Forrest, then her, and Kaito took up the rear. “Will you tell me about your grandmother and your tribe?”
Jordana listened for over an hour as Hati and Kaito told stories.
The two cousins were hilarious and boyishly charming.
Their grandmother ran their tribe, which was a matriarchy.
It was small, only a hundred or so people.
Like other tribes, they had been feeling the pressure to leave the .
However, their grandmother believed their tribe could have more—history, culture, a home in the , and modernize too.
She’d sent several of the younger generation to the city for six months.
They worked, learned about modern society, politics, and technology.
One even stayed in the city and was studying to become a lawyer.
They brought back solar power technology, a computer, satellite phones, and a year’s worth of satellite internet, which they told Jordana was very spotty.
They were evolving and making a place in today’s world for themselves.
“Hati, be quiet,” Kaito hissed and Hati slammed his mouth shut.
There was someone on the path in front of them headed their way.
Before Forrest could tell Jordana to hide, Kaito had placed himself in front of her and shoved a giant hat on her head.
“Keep your head down,” he whispered to her as four men on horses appeared.
“Who are you?” she heard the new person ask in Portuguese.
“Hired guides for this missionary. Linger too long and he’ll start trying to convert you,” Hati answered with a little chuckle. “He paid us to help him find tribes to preach to.”
“And the woman?”
Jordana didn’t even breathe as they looked at her. “My cousin. She’s deaf, but she’s a healer. I didn’t want the missionary to die if someone got mad about being preached to. What are you doing out here? You look like city boys to me.”
“Looking for a man and a woman. Scientists. We’re going to need your cousin to take her hat off or I’m afraid there’s going to be trouble.”
“I’ll get her,” Kaito said, jumping from his mule.
Jordan felt Kaito shove her from the mule before she could take off her hat.
She landed on the ground, hard. What the hell?
It only took a second for her to look up from the ground and see Hati, Forrest, and Kaito fighting.
Hati and Kaito were like characters from an action hero movie.
Hati jumped from his mule, taking down the lead man.
Forrest charged one of the men as if Forrest’s mule and the man’s horse were jousting.
And Kaito did this leaping, running, jumping thing where he covered the ground to the enemy like a cross between a monkey and a jaguar.
Free running was what she’d heard it called.
Then Kaito was in the air, his legs wrapping around a man on the small horse.
The force of his impact dragged them off the horse to where he landed hard on the ground.
Kaito however landed on his feet with the man’s neck between his calves.
Kaito broke the man’s neck with a sharp swivel of his hips.
Well, Jordana wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing.
There was one more man who looked ready to charge her.
Bring it on. Jordana had been trained by her father.
She could fight fair and she could fight dirty.
She surprised him by not running away, but instead she ran at him.
Then he kicked his horse and charged toward her once his surprise wore off.
Kaito was doing his leaping, flying thing toward him from behind.
The man reached for Jordana and Jordana grabbed a nearby vine, yanking it hard and breaking it off.
She tossed the vine on the ground right in front of the horse.
The horse reared up to stomp on what it apparently thought was a snake.
The man wasn’t expecting it and tumbled backward from the horse.
He landed hard on the ground as the horse landed hard on the vine with its hooves.
Jordana raced around the horse, straight to the man lying on the ground, and kicked him right in the balls.
The man screamed but then Kaito was on him and there were no more sounds after the crack of his neck breaking.
“I think our break is over,” Hati said, pulling cash and any valuables off the men before he, Forrest, and Kaito dragged the bodies a couple of feet into the jungle and tossed them behind thick leaves and shrubs. The jungle would take care of the bodies.
“If this is your idea of a break, I’d hate to see what your vacations are like,” Jordana muttered as she took the reins of the horse and soothed him after the snake scare.
“I think it’s best if we don’t stop anymore,” Hati told them. “Grab their horses. We’ll take them and the mules and go through the night. We’ll reach the car in the morning and we can sell the animals. More men will be sent when these don’t check in.”
Jordana tied her mule to the horse and swung her leg over the saddle. “Let’s go.”