12. Chapter 9 – Ambrose
Breathe, Ambrose. Just mother-fucking breathe. In, out. In, out.
I could fucking scream. Panic and pain were fighting a shitty battle inside of me, and no amount of deep breathing was going to fix it.
My chest ached with every inhale, like the convict across the beach had shoved a knife into my solar plexus.
I wasn’t a doctor, but I was pretty sure I’d cracked a rib. More like ribs.
Fuck.
I’d been conscious for most of the descent.
After I pulled on my oxygen mask, I’d followed the emergency procedure protocol the British flight attendant walked us through, and held my chest to my knees.
Every mistake and humiliation flashed before my eyes like a movie montage of shame.
When I couldn’t take the punishment any more, I’d lifted my head for the slightest second, and saw the captain slide into the aisle a seat ahead of mine and strap herself in.
The plane bounced hard as I lowered back down and then—dark.
Was it possible to crack a rib off your own knee?
Maybe it had been the armrest because the seats in this plane economy were far from roomy.
I wouldn’t have broken a rib in a proper first class seat.
Anger flared hot at the base of my spine, flushing all the way to my cheekbones.
I shouldn’t have been on this plane at all.
The anger churned in my gut and left bile at the back of my throat, competing with the already bitter ashy flavor.
This was her fault. Captain Marley West was the reason we were stuck in the jungle.
I closed my eyes and drew in another deep lungful, cringing at the burst of pain and violent flash of white behind my eyelids.
Vicious disappointment replaced the discomfort when I opened them only to see this wasn’t a dream—we were still stranded, somewhere in the —on what appeared to be a dried up riverbed, surrounded by a thick network of trees on all sides.
The canopy was so dense, I could barely see the gray sky overhead.
That view was infinitely better than the reality down here. My gaze settled on the death trap that should have been our death sentence.
The small plane had landed on its belly.
The hull lay across the riverbed like a dam.
The metal was scorched black on the side we could see, the Aileron logo had melted into colorful drips that bled across it like some tragic painting I’d had to study from one of my bullshit electives in undergrad.
The wing was torn apart, as if it had exploded from the inside out.
How in the fuck had we survived?
Well—some of us had made it.
Not even half of the passengers remained.
Seven on the ground, all dumbly standing at varying points along the riverbed—some crying, most in numb shock—while the captain and her attendant tried to coax the last living passenger off the plane.
I didn’t see the point. If she wanted to stay, she had a right to stay.
I didn’t have the luxury of choices for most of my life.
I wouldn’t be taking it from someone else.
But it wasn’t my call, and I wasn’t volunteering to be a leader.
I’d help where I could, if it meant we could get out of this hellhole and I could get home.
I was grateful for the distraction. The task kept the panic from consuming me, even if it was a temporary reprieve. Even if it came from the woman I didn’t trust one bit.
The hole we’d escaped through was only five feet off the ground, and looked like it had been carved open by an errant propeller.
The razor-sharp metal had ripped open my shirt-sleeve when I was the last one to climb out, but I was nowhere near as roughed up as Danny, who’d taken a brutal slice through his thigh on his way down.
Torres, the convict, had done surprisingly well given his size.
As far as I could see, he didn’t even have a nick in his clothing.
It was too bad the detective didn’t suffer his own bleeding wound, but looking at him now, standing across the dry rocks and scowling, he looked far more inconvenienced than suffering.
That guy really rubbed me the wrong way. He had the energy of a man who kicked puppies for fun. Small dick energy prick.
“You’re putting those cuffs back on, Torres,” he growled, his voice echoing along the riverbed like a gunshot. “I don’t care where we are, you are still a prisoner under my care.”
Torres, to his credit, didn’t look bothered in the least. He stood at the edge where mud met jungle, his beefy tatted arms spread wide with his face to the sky, the grin plastered from ear to ear like this was the best day of his life.
Hell, I had no idea how inmates were treated in South American prisons. Maybe a plane crash was a field trip.
When Torres ignored him, the detective moved closer, too close in my opinion for a man who wanted to keep all his limbs.
I didn’t need to know what Torres was in prison for to know he could fuck me up.
He was bigger than most of the steroid meatheads at my gym, and so covered in tattoos and scars he looked like he’d won a battle with a caged tiger ten times over.
“Do you hear me, Torres? You. Are. Still. My. Prisoner.” The suicidal man pushed a finger into Torres pec, which was the wrong move.
Torres snapped his face down to the detective’s level, a few inches shorter, and the psychopathic scowl made me shuffle back a few inches, even though I was nowhere near them.
“You are not so big when you can’t drug me, Detective,” he spat, in a low, gravelly voice that could’ve commanded a prison yard in the movies. “Touch me again, and I will snap your fingers one by one and feed them to a jaguar.”
The detective’s sneer was all ego clearly, no substance, because he backed off a foot as Torres stared him down with an intensity that would make most men piss their pants.
Whatever we had to do to survive, I was not fucking with this guy.
A shuffle behind me drew my attention back to the plane.
Nicolas—I’d heard the captain call him Nikki——was clambering carefully out of the hole much more elegantly than I had.
He gently tossed his bag onto the sand and reached back up.
Captain West handed him another bag, a fire extinguisher, and a metal first-aid kit, along with an entire bucket of snacks and drinks.
He carefully placed every item off to the side, then reached back up through the space to guide the captain through it.
Her exit wasn’t nearly as graceful. She couldn’t maneuver through the awkward space in her tight pencil skirt and as she angled her body sideways, her chest caught on a jagged ridge of metal.
The rip of fabric was almost as loud as the detective’s bullshit threats.
Nikki swooped in to catch her when she tumbled toward the ground.
Not a professional catch either. His hand lingered on the back of her thighs when he lowered her to the ground, like she was precious cargo. Was she fucking him?
The way she immediately moved away from him said otherwise. Intentional distance, like Theresa and I at work parties. Well—any parties. Life.
So, unrequited then. I couldn’t blame him in the looks department.
Our dubious captain was beautiful, even with tear-stained cheeks and covered in soot.
Dark hair, full lips, curves to grab and hold on to—a younger Sofia Vergara in uniform.
A uniform that now had a gaping hole in it, exposing her bulging breasts to the world. Perfectly round, perky breasts.
She didn’t seem to give her exposure any attention at all. Her blood-shot green eyes turned their focus on us.
On me.
They were large eyes, eyes you could easily get lost in and share all your truths to. I didn’t want to look at them, but they’d captured me in a moment of weakness.
“Thank you for getting everyone out safely, Ambrose.” The earnestness, the gratitude of her tone conflicted with everything I knew about her. This woman was certainly not our savior. Why did she keep acting like this? Guilt?
Before I could respond, she surveyed the others—people I hadn’t paid much attention to before now, other than the dickhead detective and the convict.
“Emilia has decided to stay with the plane,” she said with a note of finality. “So, we are all that’s left. Our plane has what’s called an ELT – an emergency locator transmitter. As long as we stay close by and visible, we have a chance of being found.”
All that’s left … so the second pilot hadn’t made it either. This savior complex of hers was definitely from guilt.
I had to look away as the acid roiling in my stomach threatened to become hateful words.
As justified as it was, I wasn’t stupid enough to eviscerate the one person who seemed to know what she was doing.
Nikki’s calm reminder had stuck. I didn’t trust her, but he seemed trustworthy enough. He hadn’t abandoned his post.
She turned her attention to the rest of the group and confirmed my suspicions.
“I have survival training, and I’ll do my best to keep us safe, but we’re going to have to work together.
First, we need to address our injuries and bandage them up as best we can, and then we need to assess what we have—food, water, medicines.
It’s going to get dark soon, and we’ll need to make a fire. ”
Nighttime in the jungle. Despite the disgusting heat, a quiver of fear racked through my body. Fuck.
“Is it safe to be around the plane?” One of the women with the rhyming names asked – the brunette one.
The captain—no, I wasn’t calling her that anymore—Marley’s face fell.
“I don’t know for certain,” she admitted, running a hand through her knotted hair.
She pointed beyond my back, and like the others, I turned to see what she was pointing at.
“The riverbed is narrow but long. We can set up camp farther down the bank to reduce our risk, but we don’t want to be too far away for a rescue. ”
So, still within range of a deadly blast? Fantastic. My hands shook as I held them tightly by my sides, drawing in small gulps of air to mitigate the pain from basic breathing.
Breathe, Ambrose. Breathe. There’s an ELT—they have to know we’ve crashed already, right? Just a day or two and you’ll be home. Breathe. Breaaaaaaaaaathe.
Three years of pranayama breath practice and I couldn’t keep a rhythm whatsoever. Fucking useless.
“Do we know where we are?” Brooks spoke from behind me, their voice quiet and despondent.
Marley pushed up her sleeves and exposed a black, chunky, military-style time-piece.
“I can’t be sure,” she admitted. “My memories leading up to the crash are a little fuzzy.” She raised her wrist to highlight the out-of-place watch.
“We’re a couple hundred feet above sea-level and pointed northwest. But Nikki believes we were over northern Colombia when we dropped altitude.
So, we’re likely somewhere in the Darién Gap. ”
My stomach dropped farther than it had when the plane fell out of the sky. The Darién Gap. The most treacherous territory in the world, controlled by cartels and one thousand other creatures that could kill us in a heartbeat. No cities, no civilization.
The panic I’d been trying to stifle flooded my chest with obnoxious adrenaline. Even if we were found, it would take weeks—right? There weren’t even roads in the Darién Gap, for fuck’s sake.
And I was going to trust the captain who’d gotten us into this shitty situation to take us farther away from the one place we could be rescued? Fuck that.
Eyeing the destroyed plane, I assessed my chances. All engineering designations weren’t created equal. I could design and program one of the most intuitive algorithms on the planet, but I knew fuck all about planes. Was it actually a ticking time bomb, or a way for this woman to cover her ass?
“Who needs medical attention?” she called out, opening the box to reveal tapes and gauze. “Nikki and I will tend our wounds, and then we’ll move out.”
Stepping back, I watched her kneel by Danny’s side first to examine the gash in his thigh. I wasn’t letting her anywhere near my ribs or my skin.
I wasn’t going to get home. My promises to Ravi would never be met, I’d never turn my company around, and my father’s entire legacy would be dishonored by the incompetent son who disappeared in a plane crash because he’d chosen to fly economy.
I had zero survival training. I’d attended science camps, not Boy Scouts. I was fit, but I didn’t have the bulky muscle like Torres or the people skills like Nikki. I was about as useful as Danny with his torn-up leg.
The icy panic melted into a much more manageable emotion. Hot rage.
Marley West had completely fucked me over, but I wouldn’t live without her.
Clenching my teeth until my jaw popped, I turned on my heel and walked away from the group, farther down the riverbed where she’d pointed.
She called my name, but it was muffled by the pounding of blood pumping in my ears.
If I unleashed my rage right now, it would be every bit as damaging as a plane explosion.
I couldn’t risk it.
As I strode farther away, each step compounding the pain across my ribs, I became more assured of my strategy.
I’d play ball. I’d do everything she asked of me, everything the group needed. I’d survive the jungle.
Then, when we made it out of this hellhole alive, I was suing Captain Amelia West and Aileron for every cent it was worth.