17. Chapter 14 – Nikki
Thirst was a bitter maiden.
She clawed my throat with her nails, holding me hostage with the urge to drown my sorrows in a vat of whiskey.
The tiny bottle of vodka in the pocket of my trousers called to me, but I ignored their siren song. I’d just taken a nip an hour ago. At this rate, I’d have nothing left by morning.
Our two stalkers underscored the fog of need. Had they followed out of concern for our safety, or was something else amiss?
My broken lenses and the flickering torchlight muddled their expressions, but I was close enough to see Ambrose stared through me, his brows and lips pursed into thin, judgmental lines.
Madman was a silhouette of muscle and bone in my periphery, his body language relaxed. Nothing seemed to faze this man.
I was most assuredly not relaxed. The two bricks felt like lead in my palms, their heaviness foreboding. My stomach bottomed out at the implication of their presence.
When Jamie had left Marley and me to speak with the luggage loader, I’d witnessed something changing hands.
“Give me a moment, mate. Just need to speak to Rinaldo for a sec,” Jamie had said.
Our copilot’s gambling habit was no secret. The man loved a good game of cards and a bet on a fútbol match even more. I’d assumed he owed Rinaldo a spot of cash, but now, holding what I assumed to be cocaine, I had to wonder …
“Those are worth more than a million pesos on the street,” Madman declared calmly, despite standing beside a steel tomb in the middle of the jungle in the middle of the night in the middle of what appeared to be a drug smuggling operation.
Had I a drop of acid on me, I’d have sworn I’d taken it. Drugs on our plane? Millions of dollars worth? Flabbergasted wasn’t even the word.
I’d practically tripped over them all while navigating the cramped quarters of overturned bags and supplies.
The battery-operated emergency lighting had activated, presumably during the crash, turning every luggage shadow into a potential corpse.
A large duffel bag had ripped open during the flight, and several blocks wrapped in cling film now littered the floor.
As much as I was treading a careful line with our Madman, my attention remained on Marley.
Marley, whom I had to fight every urge within my body not to kiss earlier.
I didn’t need to see the whites of her eyes in the soft glow of the torchlight to know she had nothing to do with this, but she hadn’t taken her gaze off the bricks in my hands since I’d slid down the hatch opening moments before.
Was she connecting the dots between Jamie’s disappearance, too?
“There’s more,” I murmured softly into the charged night air. Her head snapped upward, fixing her perilous stare on me. “Maybe a dozen,” I added.
Sadness filled her eyes long before it reached her mouth. I was sure her thoughts matched mine. Was Jamie somehow in on this? Sense said he had to be, but my heart wasn’t interested in sense. Not yet.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Ambrose—dependable, mouthy Ambrose—drew closer, radiating a magnetic storm of ire and indignation.
I didn’t need to read his features to feel it.
The man was so tightly wound, he’d soon snap.
If it weren’t for this perilous situation, I’d coax it out of him, let him burn some of that energy out on me.
He was, unfortunately, precisely my type.
Marley spoke before I could.
“We are not fucking kidding you, Ambrose.” She’d taken on her schoolteacher scolding persona, but I was too rattled to properly enjoy it. “This isn’t about you. Why were you following us?”
Yes, Ambrose. Why were you following us?
“Don’t turn this around on me.” He was close enough now to see the ripple of amber flash through his eyes. “How can I trust you, Captain?” He spat out her title as if it were dirty. “First you crash our plane, and now we find out you’re drug runners? What in the fu—”
Heat flushed through me, as did a Neanderthal-like urge to defend her honor. This man was scared, hurting, and in need of someone to blame. I understood his position, related to it even, but his desperation to pin his misfortune on Marley was more than I would allow.
I dropped the dirty packages onto the sand, but before I could fist his shirt and shake the living shit out of him for his disrespect, Madman beat me to it.
With one large hand, he gripped the back of Ambrose’s neck, holding him firmly in place. Ambrose’s handsome features dissolved into a grimace of pain, but he snapped his lips shut. Message received.
“Apologize,” our resident criminal growled, the command so softly given, yet as terrifying as a gorilla’s roar. “Now.”
I had to hand it to him. Though smaller, Ambrose refused to cower under the weight of Madman’s threat.
He stared through Marley with a stoic determination that rivaled my mother’s when Father refused to go to the Isles on holiday.
Futile, yet persistent. Admirable when used for the right reasons.
At present, it just made me want to give him a wallop.
Detective Diaz’s gun sat heavy in my pocket, but I refused to remove it unless we were threatened, a protective device only. I hadn’t truly thought we’d need it, but I wasn’t leaving it anywhere near our outpost for the detective to find and pocket again.
“Thank you for your—ah—protection, Madd- Madman.” Marley broke the silence, her tone placating and smooth.
“But I’d rather Ambrose apologize on his own.
” She bent down and retrieved an errant branch on the soil, likely from when the nose hit the trees.
She picked up another and laid it into a small pile a few paces from the plane.
“He’s being an asshole, but he’s not wrong. I crashed the plane, and apparently, we are drug runners. But I think we need to clear a few things up.”
Whirling, I glared at her. “You did not crash the plane, Marley. Stop saying that!”
She ignored me and continued to gather a pile of brush, the torchlight bending awkwardly in her hand. Frightened we’d have a burn to contend with, I grabbed it from her and held it above her head so she could continue the task.
Madman released Ambrose from his hold, and he fell to the ground, cursing under his breath.
“What are you doing?” I asked, only slightly mollified she’d stopped saying those terrible words aloud. Did she honestly believe she was solely responsible for this tragedy? I couldn’t bear to see her hold that weight on her heart.
“Building a fire,” Marley stated calmly, fingers twitching, beckoning for the torch to light the collection of dead wood gathered in front of her. “So we can talk.”
She set it ablaze with ease. Was this what Girl Scouts taught in America? I made a mental note to ask her where she received her training. Once the fire sizzled to her satisfaction, she stared back at Ambrose and Madman, who’d watched silently from their position.
“Come on, Ambrose,” she coaxed sweetly, bordering on mocking. “You need answers, so let’s go over the facts.” Her brows curled inward in a grimace. “The facts I remember, anyway.”
She took up residence on the dirt floor, looking ridiculous in her oversized clothing and heels, and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Her glossy dark hair was pulled into a tight ponytail at the top of her head, casting a college-dormitory silhouette onto the cracked ground beyond the firelight.
Her shorts rode up as she sat, and I noted the thick cord of a raised, purple scar starting at the knee and running upward to where fabric met skin.
A similar cord wrapped around my insides.
Something—someone, perhaps—had hurt her.
My baby girl.
Lowering my body, I sat next to her, a respectable distance away, but close enough to reach for her, if necessary.
I wrapped my arms around my knees in an attempt at comfort while Ambrose slowly stepped toward the fire, as if relenting to Marley was an admission of defeat.
He slowly lowered to sitting with a clenched grimace of pain.
He sat on the edge, as far away from the pair of us as he could, but he sat all the same, and his expression morphed from discomfort to expectant.
Marley smiled tentatively at the other man in our little midnight party who hadn’t yet moved. “No need to beat anyone up on my behalf, okay, Madman? We’re probably going to need your help to sort this out.”
Madman’s face was a mask of heavy stone, but he dipped it in acknowledgment and moved closer to the fire.
His eyes roamed the chunk of metal at our backs before scanning the dark shadows in the jungle to our front.
Once satisfied, he opted to stand at the helm of our fire, assuming the role of sentinel.
Our transported prisoner had taken the role of our guard. How ironic.
“Let’s set some ground rules first,” I suggested as I stared down the hostile man seated opposite. “No schoolyard name-calling, no interrupting, and you agree to reserve your judgment until you’ve heard what we have to say. Can you agree to that?”
A stiff nod. Right, then. My part in this assembly was over. While Marley took the helm, I could travel down one thousand different paths of anxiety in my head, wondering where our copilot had disappeared to, why we were transporting drugs, and fantasize about my next drop of drink.
“Alright, Captain.” I dipped my head in her direction. “Let’s talk facts.”
“Facts,” Marley repeated, her gaze fixed on the flames before us as if they held the answers to our questions. Her head snapped upward, catching Ambrose in her snare.
The vivid green of her irises had darkened to deep emerald, and they held the composure of a monarch doling out counsel. Fair and discerning, not a drop of her own personal pain in view.
The Baron would admire the breadth of her control. It only made me nervous. Those with the most control unraveled the fastest, and hit the hardest when they finally came undone. I couldn’t allow it to happen—not again. Not to her.