16. Chapter 13 – Marley
Hot, smooth skin over my mouth, smelling of peppermint and man, woke me out of a fever dream of woods and wolves.
Panic seized my limbs and froze my chest, a scream building at the back of my throat. I snatched it out of the air before it could make a sound.
“It’s just Nikki,” the returning spirit of Charlie soothed in my ear, or in my brain—I wasn’t sure. My eyes, sandy with sleep, struggled to focus on the hovering form just inches above my head.
“Shhh, love.” The voice was so soft I could barely hear it over the fizz and pop of the fire.
Shaking my head, I shot to sitting, every muscle in my body aching. We were in the jungle. It was the middle of the night. Jamie.
Nikki held out a hand, and I took it. He hauled me to my feet, gently and soundlessly, as if I were lighter than air, then he beckoned me forward. In his other hand, he held a – torch?
The dry stick in his hand, about the thickness of my fist, held a damp piece of fabric molded over the top. The flame at the end of it was small but bright, the perfect guide for the few hundred feet of our trek.
It was almost a straight shot around the meander about fifty feet away, but light without the need to use the limited power on our cellphones was a blessing. What had he used for fuel?
“Smart,” I mouthed, pointing to the torch. He shrugged one rounded shoulder and winked.
“Saw it in a movie,” he mumbled back before turning on his heel to guide me toward the riverbed’s edge, my hand still in his. His grip was sure and strong, but his consideration of my shitty shoes reminded me once again of why Nikki won everyone over in a heartbeat.
Even in a plane crash, in the middle of the night, he was so damn thoughtful.
I let go of his hand as we rounded the bend in the riverbed where the only evidence of human beings in this jungle became us and our torch.
The sounds of the night became more apparent the farther we got away from the snapping fire. A chorus of cicadas hummed in the background, behind the soft rustling of leaves and the occasional shrill cry of tree frogs.
It was oddly peaceful, far different from the symphony of sounds in the Boreal Forest, which still brought on a panic attack every time I heard it.
The wire in my bra had poked into my sternum during my restless sleep, and I rubbed the tender spot while stifling a groan. We needed to be rescued for one thousand reasons, one being I couldn’t wear a tit-trap while sleeping for much longer.
Every step closer to our crash site dulled the sounds of the night and amplified the blood pulsing through my heart.
I had crashed this plane. Me.
Or I abandoned Jamie and he crashed this plane because I wasn’t there.
Bile burned the back of my throat, hot and bitter, but I swallowed it down before my shame could be on full display as projectile vomit.
The scenario was irrelevant. Memory loss or not, this disaster was my fault.
The universe had a sick sense of humor. Within fifty feet of the plane, the clouds behind it opened up, and the moon backlit the mutilated monstrosity.
Terror ripped through my veins and froze me where I stood.
Nikki immediately halted in his tracks his face filled with concern I could see easily despite the shadows dancing there.
“We don’t need to do this, love.” He spoke since we were far enough away to muffle our voices against the musical backdrop. “Someone will show up soon, it’s only a matter of days, and we—”
“We need to do this for Jamie,” I finished for him.
Dipping my head in a stiff nod, I forced one foot in front of the other until I was back by his side. Whatever we found, who we were doing this for was what mattered. If there was a chance I could get him back to his family …
I would get him back to his family.
Determination replaced the heavy saturation of guilt. It was time to take the lead. My plane, my fuck-up, mine to solve.
“If we’re both sure he’s not in the plane, I don’t want to go back in there,” I admitted with a grimace while we stared at our would-be aluminum coffin. “But let’s look for clues anywhere around the opening and canvass the plane’s perimeter.”
Nikki nodded and held his torch higher, his gaze remained caught on the space where the right wing used to be.
His eyes glistened behind the reflection of the firelight in his broken frames, and I knew then he felt it, too: this overpowering feeling of loss – of relief – and responsibility.
The ringlets across his forehead bounced when he tried to shake off the feelings, but the tightening skin around his eyes said it all.
Life brought cuts that healed and cuts that scarred. Our time here was a branding.
Without warning, his palm, smooth and warm, cupped my cheek, and my midnight companion turned his full attention toward me. For the briefest moment, he held me captive with the earnestness of his stare, flecks of sunrise orange reflecting off his glasses in the firelight.
“We’ll do this together, baby girl.” His tone held none of his flirtatious bravado. It was soft and soothing. A promise as his thumb stroked the length of my cheek. “No matter what we find, we will face it together, alright?”
Baby girl.
Butterflies flew through the pit of my stomach to dance with the anxiety and panic already having a party.
I could have done this alone—I would have done this alone—terrified and traumatized, but too stubborn to listen. Yet Nikki hadn’t hesitated. I trusted him. I could count on him.
“We do this together,” I repeated, unable to break eye contact as my breath skirted over his palm.
His eyes fluttered closed and he pursed those beautifully pouty lips together as if steeling himself for our next move.
His grip on my jaw tightened, then he pulled me forward, pressing those warm lips against my forehead.
The contact was delicate, reassuring—hot.
Another branding.
“Right,” he muttered, shaking his head as if warding off a trance.
He lowered his hand and held it out for me to grasp. I took it, the action less for practicality now than for comfort. I drew in breath after deep lung-cleansing breath to lose the memory of every single zombie movie I’d ever watched, but the scent of scorched earth and ozone made it impossible.
Our footprints didn’t make a dent in the crumbling dirt, but concentrated dust piles in small circles every few feet showed signs of hopefully human activity.
I kept my head down to the ground, determined not to miss anything, while keeping alert to any unfamiliar sounds, unable to shake the zombie sentiment.
If I were Jamie, hurt and confused, where would I head? Had he thought he was the only survivor and panicked? Maybe he had headed up the river on the other side?
We crept toward the rear of the plane, me on the inside, Nikki protectively hovering on the outside against the dark woods. Unidentifiable critters skittered across the silty ground beneath our feet, their black bodies reflecting off the clay-red backdrop.
Approaching the tail, a dark, wet spot in the earth caught my eye. I scanned its surroundings, then upward over the plane’s hull. A bloodied palm print glared like an evil beacon against the metal.
“Shit,” I hissed, drawing Nikki’s attention. His gaze snapped up to the spot I couldn’t tear one eye away from, and his lips pursed into a thin line.
“Let’s go.” He waved me forward with the torch. Sure enough, about four feet away, a similar imprint, like the side of a fist dipped in red ink, sat on top of the silver at a similar height. None of the survivors in our care had come around this far; I was sure of it.
My pulse resumed its preferred pace of galloping horses. My feet tried to keep up with its stride, anxious to see if our friend was alive, hurt, or worse.
Another imprint, a little farther away this time.
We rounded the rear to the opposite side of the plane and my heartbeat came to an abrupt stop, seizing in my chest with a single squeeze.
The single oversized passenger door of the rear-entry plane had two bloodied handprints in their full form against its hull, as if someone had tried to push it upward with its manual emergency release.
Not someone. Jamie. Only Jamie would know how to do that.
Our Cessna’s rear door, which served as dual access to both the passenger cabin and the cargo hold, was open, lifted by several inches on its hinges.
The acrid scents of metal and singed plastic wafted out of it, and the slowly decomposing bodies inside likely added to the mix in the intense moisture and heat.
It hadn’t been open when I got the passengers off the plane. I would have noticed an air gap when I’d unbuckled Nikki. Which meant it had been opened after we’d left.
Had Jamie stumbled down the riverbed and come back, trying to get access to the luggage in the cargo hold, still thinking we were all dead on the other side?
It didn’t make sense, but the disorientation he’d have experienced wouldn’t have made anything make sense. I knew what it was like to be desperate, afraid, and alone.
Numb and dumb—even Jamie wasn’t immune. But if he was thinking clearly enough to think of that …
I allowed the spark of hope to grow, the heat of it warming my icy sense of panic. We needed to see inside.
Nikki wordlessly handed me the torch and reached beneath the jarred opening to lift the metal higher.
The hydraulic hinges groaned against the pressure, but released another few inches, giving us better access to the inside.
The torch was hard to maneuver around the opening to get a visual of the luggage.
We’d spiraled through the sky at top speeds—I could only imagine how destroyed every piece was.
I leaned in closer with our only source of light while Nikki pulled himself about four feet up into the compartment. He cursed under his breath when he hit his head against something hard.
Another sound caught my attention: a dull thud against metal.
Fuck. I waved the torch to the left and right, a primal fear forcing every hair on my body to stand on end.
My shadow danced along the silver hull, but I saw nothing else besides the plane and the outline of swaying palm fronds behind it.
The moon continued to light up the riverbed beyond us, no living creatures beyond the spiny skeletons of millipedes crawling across the deserted ground.
Old wounds bled into my mind, the taste of fear on my tongue far too familiar. I held the torch over my head to light up the space between Nikki and the door.
“Hurry, Nik,” I begged, my love for my missing friend locked in a bloody battle with my desperation to escape the terror crawling up my body. When he didn’t answer, my panic morphed into mania. “Nik?”
Another thump, this time from within the plane. Fuck, there were zombies, real zombies, fuck, fuck, fuck. Rationality went out the window as the terror lit up my hindbrain. Fuck, fuck, fu—
His feet came first, before his lean body slid out of the bottom crack of the door to the ground below, with two paperback-sized white brick bundles in his hands.
Nikki.
A live human man, not a zombie. My visceral panic eased, only to make way for the electric zing of shock. Was that –
He held up the packages, a rare frown folding his features into hard lines against the firelight.
“Marley, did you know we were transporting cocaine?”
My brows hit my hairline, and my heart plummeted to the bottom of my well-worn heels.
“What the fuck?” Another thump and a snarl—human – growled from behind us.
I whirled around to see Ambrose Park’s signature glare, the swords in his eyes sharp enough to slice. With clenched fists at his sides, the rage in his body practically vibrated like a charged weapon.
“What the fuck,” a dark, raspier tone murmured, a statement of agreement, not a question. Maddox Torres stepped out from behind the tail three feet beyond Ambrose’s frozen form. Apparently, they hadn’t come together, judging by the surprise that dulled the daggers in Ambrose’s gaze.
The four of us stood in a standoff, the hum of the jungle our solo serenade as we stared at each other’s shadows thrown against the wall.
The cloak of dread became a suffocating blanket of disoriented horror.
Jamie was still missing, we’d been transporting illegal drugs, and apparently, we had two stalkers in the night.
I hoped to hell Nikki’s charm could work us out of this one.