24. Chapter 21 – Maddox #2
“I don’t believe he would do this,” she repeated, body shaking. “There is no way he would do this!”
Instinct pushed me closer, the need to protect her spurring me to wrap my arms around her shivering body. She stiffened, but didn’t turn me away and her frustration molded into anger against my bare chest.
“I know he’s innocent, Madman. There has to be an explanation for this. We need to find him.” Fierce determination colored her tone, her words abrupt against my sternum. “I need him to tell me what it is.”
She clenched her fists against my pecs, and her vibrations strengthened as the violence in her body sought release.
“Shhhhhh,” I soothed, stroking a palm over her hair. “We will get to the bottom of this.”
She was convinced of his innocence. I was not. My only priority today was her and Clube de Morte’s survival. I would not always be here to protect her. But I could grant her this grace with a simple search of the woods.
Furious tears glistened in her eyes. She buried her face in my chest and drew deep breaths, refusing to release them. I tightened my hold and stood deadly still as she faced her battle inside, a soldier ready to take her orders.
Her curves melded into the hard planes of my body and the softness of her hair tickled the bottom of my chin. I allowed myself the pleasure of simply holding her, this woman who’d saved me from certain death.
When she’d calmed and her breathing slowed to a normal pace, I broke the silence, offering her an outlet for her hurt.
“Hit me,” I commanded. I gripped her wrists in one fist and pushed her away from my body to stare deeply into her eyes. “Hit me like you would him, given the chance.”
“I’m not going to hit you, Madman.” She shrugged out of my hold and stared up at the sky as if the sun could evaporate the evidence of her pain.
“And I wouldn’t hit him, either. Jamie is important to me—he’s—” She cut herself off and drew in a slow breath.
“I just want to understand. Fuck, why can’t I remember? ”
She slapped a palm over her face and rubbed it down to her chin, the defeated grimace contorting her beautiful face.
The plane crashing had upended all of our lives, those still fortunate to live. But no one more than the captain of the sinking ship with a snake for a partner. She needed a sense of control, answers to push her forward.
I would give that to her.
“Here.” I handed her the boots and gestured for her to sit on the rocky outcrop on the other side of the burned-out fire.
“Put these on and we will look for clues.” Reaching for the T-shirt, I tugged it on over my head.
The small wound from the jaguar claw on my biceps twinged when the cotton rubbed along the bandage.
It was infected—I’d checked last evening—but it was the least of my worries.
While she laced up the boots, I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt and tore open the cocaine packaging, sprinkling it on the damp earth like sowing seed, before opening another to do the same on a patch of dirt several feet away.
I dragged my feet across the ground to blend it into the soil like fertilizer. The next rain would wash it away.
I sneered in distaste at the powder that ruined good men and women, killing people slowly by magnifying their trauma was only useful for torture. To inflict it on the innocent was its own form of evil.
Swallowing the sour bile at the base of my throat, I ripped apart another package. Trading it was the key to my survival. I would not hold the lives of strangers above my own.
“I thought we’d just bury them,” she admitted a few moments later, once the sixth package had been distributed. “Isn’t this bad for the environment?”
“I do not see any fish. Do you?” I ripped open the seventh brick. “Buried can be discovered. This is millions of dollars worth of uncut product—someone will come looking for it.”
Dangerous men would hunt this valley to get their prize. We would be long gone by that time. Clube de Morte would be rescued, and I would be halfway to Panama.
Gulping loudly, she bowed her head in acknowledgment. She made no move to help me, and I would have stopped her if she had. I could own this crime for her.
“Thank you,” she whispered when I had finished the task. Rolling up all of the plastic, I put it in the fire pit she’d made. “You’re welcome, Captain. Do you have a lighter?”
She pulled a small cigarette lighter out of the backpack and lit the plastic on fire, jumping away from the emitting smoke.
“Do not breathe it in unless you wish to get high,” I said seriously, backing away from the singing film.
Satisfied the plastic would burn nothing else, she followed me toward the riverbed’s edge. “I don’t need to be high to see things,” she quipped cryptically.
Before I could question, she’d moved several feet in front of me. “Can we look at each side of the river together? I’d offer to split up for the sake of time, but this spot gives me the creeps.”
She didn’t wait for my answer, guiding us over to the tail end of the plane. The tangled trees and dense ferns grew to the edge where the rainforest should meet water. I had offered her a chance at answers, but I needed them as well.
I was high as a child’s kite when I’d been walked onto the plane, but a hazy memory continued to blur at the edges of my vision every time I closed my eyes. Diaz speaking to the missing captain before we entered the plane with lowered heads and shaking hands.
Discerning what was real and imagined was a challenge when I’d had enough heroin in my system to settle a bull. But it was an image I wasn’t able to shake.
She continued to believe her copilot was innocent. I did not know the man, but was under no such illusions. What man hid when his crew needed him? What man ran in the face of danger?
A guilty one.
I would give her the weapon back once she’d properly seduced me, but I would require her promise to use it on Diaz the moment he threatened our safety.
Something larger was at play, but I did not know all the pieces.
This Jamie was the key. I now had my insurance in place, and the surprise gift of cash. I would bide my time until I knew.
If only to remain in my captain’s presence for a little longer.
We walked along the edges of the bank for several minutes, her leading, me following. We scanned every few feet for crushed foliage or signs of human interference. There was nothing.
“Let’s try the other side,” my captain suggested, her voice layered with disappointment. I followed her across the dry bed as cloud cover moved in, another storm on the horizon.
Several feet from the plane, deeper into the narrowing of the river, we found the first clue.
The embankment was high here—about four feet above the silt. A thick palm print of dried blood had imprinted so thickly on a tree root beneath a canopy, the rain failed to wash it away.
“Here.” I beckoned, pointing it out to Marley. She leaned in closer, her soft body becoming rigid.
“That’s definitely human,” she whispered, glassy eyes landing on me in confirmation. “I guess we start here.”
Offering her my hand, I hoisted her up into the jungle and followed behind, clenching my fists to stop the inherent need to squeeze the plump cheeks in front of my face. The dense trees and wild bushes were ominous in the darkness of the leaf cover.
Another bloody print, partial but defined enough to match the previous, had landed on another tree trunk just a few feet away at eye level.
The jungle hummed all around us, teeming with watching eyes and hungry stomachs. I gripped her hand in mine and pressed forward, determined to search quickly. The gun remained in the small of my back, but I didn’t want to waste a bullet on an animal trying to survive.
The ammunition was best saved for the human animals. They were far more dangerous.
Another smudge of blood decorated a tree several steps in front of us—the mark almost black against the soft brown bark.
Tugging her forward, I was pleased the hiking boots held her upright far better than the heeled shoes.
The underbrush was thick though, and we both stumbled over roots and stuck into thick clay.
She released my hand and took a few steps in front of me while I scanned ahead of her for our next clue.
Before I could find it, she screamed with closed lips, the sound trapped in her throat like a high-pitched choke. My heart sped up, desperate to find the source of my ángel’s distress.
Her body had grown as rigid as the corpses on the plane, an easy target.
A coiled mass of brown and white stripes lay at her feet, beady red eyes watching her.
She backed into my chest, quaking with fear, her weakness on full display. Snakes.
The reptile hid its tiny head within its rings, and a sharp, musky smell filled the surrounding air. Its instinct was to hide, not to bite. Non-venomous.
Squeezing her shoulders, I pushed her behind me before snapping out to grip the snake behind its head and at the root of its tail. I threw it as far as I could into the thick bush before turning to her.
“You’re trained to survive jungles, but you’re afraid of snakes?”
Her pouty lips drew into a thin line. She straightened, not bothering to hide her fear as she gazed into the trees where I’d thrown the creature. “I have survival training,” she corrected, “not jungle-specific. My father hated snakes, so they weren’t really a part of the rubric.”
So, her father had trained her. An enthusiast, or her own version of a madman? Before I could ask, hesitant eyes shifted to me.
“Were there a lot of snakes in prison? How did you know how to do that?”
“I was a landscaper before I took on the title of inmate.” Shrugging my shoulders, I proceeded into a small opening in the ferns recently trampled through, though by man or beast, I couldn’t be sure.
It was a narrow path—we could barely fit a single file foot at a time.
“There are snakes in every yard in every country in South America. They are like mosquitoes.”