Chapter 2
Knox Preston stared at the silver dollar attached to a chain in the palm of his hand. Its twin was with his target. He closed his fingers around the pieces of metal that should still reside around his best friend Garrett Hunt’s neck. The charm was meant to bring good luck. Knox issued a grunt in response. Luck was made.
Feet dangling out the open door, Knox sat on the edge of the chopper waiting for the signal from Captain Booker Hayes to jump. Garrett died in a chopper crash a little more than a year ago. Now, his little sister Amy was in trouble.
Hayes didn’t have a landing permit, so they’d had to get creative. Fine. They’d found a way around it. They wouldn’t ‘technically’ land. When Hayes had said those words, he’d used his index fingers to make air quotes around the word technically. The plan for Knox to unhook himself from the monkey harness and then make the leap to the ground on Haye’s signal was a workaround. No harm. No foul.
Still.
Garrett should be the one sitting here in the chopper, preparing to rescue his baby sister instead of Knox. Sharp pain at the spot right in between his eyes blurred his vision. The headaches weren’t getting better but nothing would stop him from the rescue mission.
A year and a half ago, everything changed when his best friend was killed in the crash that should have taken Knox instead. The joint task force meant to rescue a group of dignitaries who had been taken hostage went FUBAR after a catastrophic rotor failure during takeoff, ending Knox’s military career. Signing on with the Yellowstone Branch of the Brotherhood Protectors gave him a reason to keep going. This mission, however, was personal.
“You doing okay?” Hayes asked, glancing over at Knox.
“Never better,” he lied, as he rubbed his thumb against the silver dollar. He’d believe in luck, if he thought it would help. But, hell, the only luck he’d ever had was Garrett’s family moving next door in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. Luck was a fickle bitch who’d waved her magic wand once and she wasn’t something Knox counted on—which he chose to see as an advantage. He put in the time, did the work, performed due diligence instead of relying on some shit he couldn’t see or touch, let alone depend on.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hayes continued. “We can send in someone else.”
“My responsibility,” Knox said, shaking his head. Garrett and Knox had grown up together in a small town outside of Houston, along with Garrett’s little sister Amy. The tomboy might have been four years younger but she’d tried her best to tag along with them.
“You hate water,” Hayes pointed out.
“That’s facts.” Knox couldn’t argue there. But some things were bigger than his fears.
“And remember the time I threw that rubber snake at you?” Hayes smirked, clearly amused at the memory and trying to lighten the mood. “You jumped so high you almost broke through the ceiling.”
“Like I already said, this isn’t a choice. It’s my obligation.”
“Even though you do realize your target is in the jungle to find and document one of the deadliest snakes in the world?” Hayes was having fun torturing Knox at this point. The best response? None.
“I look forward to it,” Knox lied again. It was one of those lies you tell yourself because you refuse to believe otherwise.
This mission was the least Knox could do for Garrett. His unspoken promise to take care of Amy wasn’t derived from a dramatic, smoke-filled, bullets flying, last breath, best friend dying in his arms oath. No. Knox’s commitment to Garrett went way deeper. It came from a lifetime of moments of Garrett showing up in the nick of time to save Knox from a drunk dad. Like the time he appeared a second before Knox’s inebriated father delivered what would have been a deadly blow with a fireplace poker. Knox had been a fourteen-year-old skeleton who had yet to fill out his six-feet-four-inch frame. The fight had been over Knox forgetting to vacuum the carpet before dear old dad came home after happy hour with his corporate buddies.
To this day, Knox had an almost violent physical reaction to the smell of tequila on someone’s breath. He had the scars to prove tequila hurt.
The chopper lowered to less than a ten-foot jump in a clearing. The base camp where Amy had begun this journey was a thirty-minute hike from the drop spot. No problem there. On the way over, Knox studied the map. He’d memorized the area where her guide had dropped her, according to her friend Lorna—the one who’d made the call to him to rescue Amy—who became sick after arriving at the meetup. Lorna’s sudden sickness might just have saved her life. It had stopped her from going into the jungle along with Amy. It had held her back where she’d watched a spooked guide return without her friend or boyfriend, leaving the two to fend for themselves with no transportation.
Knox had been Amy’s emergency contact in case anything went wrong, according to Lorna. Why him? Why wouldn’t Amy list her mother?
Because you have the skills to rescue her and her mother wouldn’t have to know,a little voice in the back of his head pointed out. He could barely hear it over the throb from the headache. But it was right.
Knox unhooked himself a moment before the call to jump came. He dropped out of the chopper and then rolled to minimize impact on his feet and legs. Between shattering his right ankle and wrist in the crash that had killed Garrett and the burns covering half his torso, his body couldn’t take impact like it used to. At least this mission was in the heat. Cold weather caused the rod in his right leg to ache from the inside out now.
Heat and humidity assaulted him almost the minute he touched ground. Limping, he gave Hayes a thumbs up. The chopper hovered for a second longer, then banked right and went straight up.
What the hell was Garrett’s baby sister doing out here?
Amy had been an annoying kid back in the day. She’d gone off to college somewhere up north, he believed, rarely coming home. At least, they weren’t home at the same time. He’d lost track of her and then couldn’t face her or her mother after Garrett’s death.
After getting the call from her friend Lorna, he’d pulled up Amy’s social media. She’d changed, grown up, to the point he barely recognized her. Hair that used to be cut barely long enough to cover her neck had grown soft, silky, and halfway down her back.
Blue eyes the color of the sky on a spring morning in Texas had softened with age. She’d grown tall. But then, what had he expected? Her to still be the fourteen-year-old kid sister?
Strange how that worked. You leave a person or place for years, maybe a decade, and when you return you expect nothing to change. The people not to age, despite knowing full well that isn’t how time works. Somehow they remained frozen with your last memory of them, forever caught in that moment. In Amy’s case, it was fourteen. In Knox’s eyes, she was still that angry all the time, door-slamming teen who wanted to shout at them and hang with them in equal measure.
The brain worked in mysterious ways.
A pair of eighteen-year-olds didn’t have patience or time for anyone’s little sister. Garrett had always been protective of Amy, but that didn’t mean he wanted her hanging around all the time. Garrett’s stance made the subject a nonissue for Knox. But he’d been amused at how frustrated Garrett became when Amy tried to tease Knox.
All water under the bridge now.
Thirty minutes turned into twenty at the pace Knox kept. He made it to base camp exactly twenty hours after the call had come in. Amy and someone by the name of Donnie had been abandoned by their guide in the jungle and were in trouble.
Although Amy and Knox hadn’t spoken in ages, she’d managed to leave behind an emergency number…his. This must have been Garrett’s work if she couldn’t reach him, because Knox never gave out his private, encrypted number.
A black-haired female who was average height, five-feet-five-inches came running toward him the second he stepped out of the thicket surrounding the encampment. She wore all green—green cargo pants and a green long-sleeve shirt. Her clothes looked like she stepped off one of those adventure clothing store catalogs. She had a knife strapped to her thigh in a sheath, the blade looked to be good-sized.
“You must be Knox,” she said, grabbing her side as she slowed her pace.
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded. “I take it you’re the one who called me.”
“Lorna,” she said, outstretching her hand. “My best friend is in trouble.
“So you said.”
“My boyfriend was also left behind,” she continued.
Again, no new information. He nodded. “Is the guide who abandoned them here?”
She shook her head.
“A.J. came highly recommended, so I don’t know why he was suddenly unreliable,” Lorna informed. “He mumbled something about seeing spirits that warned him and that he had to get out of the jungle or he would bring bad luck onto Amy and Donnie.”
There was that word again…luck.
“Said it would end up a death mission if he’d stayed with them,” she continued.
“So, he just left them out there?” Knox stated. It was obvious but he was still pissed off about it.
“He’s never done that before,” Lorna said. “Donnie has worked with A.J. in the past. He’s supposed to be the best.”
Knox would like five minutes alone with the guy who essentially left two people to die in the jungle. “I still can’t believe he wouldn’t give the others a choice.”
“Donnie would have turned him down anyway,” Lorna said with a frown. “This mission means everything to him. We have no more funding after this. We have to make something happen or…”
“What?” Knox heard himself snap. “Get an office job?”
Lorna shot daggers at him as she folded her arms across her chest.
“We need to get moving,” he said, figuring there’d be time for apologies later.
“I was just about to say the same thing,” Lorna answered. “Here’s the rub. I managed to keep the canoe, but we don’t have a guide.”
“I’ve studied the map. I can get us to where they were dropped. I’ll assume they are still in the area.” Knox prayed he wouldn’t be bringing back bodies. Either way, Amy was coming home.
A knot formed in his chest as he remembered what had happened the last time he was in Central America. The universe couldn’t be so cruel as to allow Amy to die on the same continent as her brother. Could it?
Had it?
He gave a mental headshake and refocused. “You have a canoe?”
“This way,” Lorna said before turning and hurrying over to a hollowed-out tree with thatching inside.
Time was the enemy. The longer Amy was out here unprotected, the higher her chances of death would be. In the jungle, a carcass would be picked clean in two days.
He held onto the canoe while Lorna boarded. “What happened to everyone else here?”
“It was just the three of us and A.J.,” Lorna said with a visible shutter. Dark circles cradled her eyes, indicating she most likely hadn’t slept last night. She’d been sick, or so the excuse for not going had been. Had she faked illness to get out of the mission, sending her best friend in her place? To what end?
Lorna sat dead center of the canoe. “I can paddle.”
“It’ll be faster if I do it,” he countered, taking the lead after shrugging his rucksack off his back. There were enough supplies to last three days. He had no idea what condition he’d find Amy in, or what she might need medicine-wise. He’d packed a small first-aid kit along with fresh water and energy bars.
“How well do you know the jungle, Mr. Preston?” Lorna asked.
“Knox,” he corrected. “When you say Mr. Preston, I look over my shoulder for my father.” The knot twisting in his chest at the mention of the man was on a need-to-know basis. Lorna didn’t need to know. “And I’ve been here before.”
“So you’re aware of the arrow-wielding tribes and the rogue mercenaries,” she said.
He nodded, noticing the change in smell as the jungle enveloped them. It had a dark, musky, mud-like quality. And, yes, he knew about being porcupined, which was the reason he’d rather listen to the monkey calls and other sounds instead of talk. These types of attacks might be rare these days with the backlash that came with them, but they still existed.
“I should probably tell you something else, Knox,” Lorna said.
“And then will you be quiet so I can listen?” His voice came out sharper than intended.
“A.J.’s wife stopped by to check on me a few hours ago,” Lorna began, her voice tight. “Said two men came around asking about the white people who went into the jungle.”
“I’m guessing A.J.’s wife didn’t tell these folks about you camping here,” he said.
“No,” she confirmed. “But the men were armed to the hilt.”
Mercenaries? It didn’t make sense. “I thought you said the three of you were here to document anacondas in the Flooded Forest.”
“I did,” Lorna said. “We were…are. That’s the whole reason we came.”
“And funding is the reason you told your boyfriend and Amy to leave you here so no days were wasted?” He needed to hear her say the words so he could tell if she was lying. At this point, he didn’t see any reason for Lorna to send her best friend—according to Lorna anyway—into the jungle with her boyfriend. What would she have to gain?
“That’s right,” she said. “We can’t afford to lose time, and A.J. is a popular guide.”
“I doubt he will be once word gets out about this, unless people realize Donnie had the option to go with him and the danger was explained to him,” he muttered under his breath. “And, of course, it’s not his fault if Donnie is too much a fool to listen.” Knox had known sherpas who would die with a client in the Himalayas before they would abandon a person who trusted them. He somehow doubted A.J. would just disappear. He must have said something to Donnie first.
“A.J. came out looking like he’d seen a ghost,” she said. “I’m not happy about what happened either, but A.J. said he circled back to find them and couldn’t.”
Well, shit. “And you picked this moment to tell me that bit of news?”
Lorna shrugged as she shot more daggers at him. They were at an impasse. She didn’t want to be around him any more than he wanted to be around her. “You would have come either way, right?”
He didn’t respond.
“She talked about you once,” Lorna said, her voice had a lost quality to it now.
Had she given up on finding them alive?
“Yeah? What did she say?”
“Just that you were basically better than a Marvel hero,” Lorna confided.
Shit. He didn’t want to hear that right now.
“We have known each other for a very long time,” he finally said. “I was eighteen the last time we were in the same room and about to head off to the military.”
“With her brother, right?”
“Yes,” he said, hearing the catch in his voice. “You knew Garrett?”
“Mostly through Amy, but yes.”
“What did she say about him?” he asked.
“That he trusted you with his life and if anything ever happened, she should trust you with hers,” Lorna said softly.
He was too choked up to respond.
“I’m sorry if that’s too personal,” Lorna interjected. “You might not know Amy very well anymore, but I do. She’s my best friend and I’m the reason she’s in here, alone, probably scared to death, if not al?—”
“Not until we know one way or the other,” he cut in. “Until we find a body, we assume this is a rescue mission, not a recovery mission.” Again, his words came out harsher than planned. With effort, he softened his tone when he added, “Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Lorna stated.
Night or day, the jungle was its own living ecosystem.
“A.J.’s wife said he refused to speak for hours after he returned to their village,” Lorna continued. “He just sat next to the fire, squatted down, holding onto his knees. Clearly upset at what he saw and the fact he came back without Amy and Donnie.”
Whatever he saw out here might have taken the lives of those in his charge. “How skilled is Donnie in the jungle?”
“He’s great with maps,” she said, brightening.
Without a canoe of their own, they could be winding their way through the jungle back to base camp right now.
“He can work a knife, and he knows a decent amount about finding food,” she continued. “This is the first time here, so that makes it harder to say how well he’s navigating the area, and he’s never been left alone before.”
“First time to the Flooded Forest or the Amazon?” His cotton shirt was already drenched with sweat.
“Both,” she supplied.
Knox figured this wasn’t the right moment to point out that Amy and Donnie could have run into other hazards besides wildlife and illness. Illegal deforestation ran by criminal networks posed another serious threat for a documentary filmmaker. These networks wouldn’t want their activities filmed.
Then there was corruption. It existed in every government. Brazil was no exception, which would mean someone else who knew this area well, had possibly grown up coming here navigating this area, could be lurking.
Based on Lorna’s knowledge, Donnie wasn’t exactly as skilled or experienced as he should be, considering his guide had run away. If anything happened to Amy, Knox would deal with A.J. at a later day and time.
Hours passed on the water, leaving Knox’s imagination to run wild. His injuries hurt like hell, but he could compartmentalize the pain. He’d pay for making that choice later. Right now, though, he was on top of the pain using sheer adrenaline and grit. Or insanity. An argument could be made for the last explanation.
A sound to his left caused him to stop paddling. He held the oar still, slowing their progress so he could ascertain if there was a threat.
The chopper crash might have taken a lot from Knox, but his hearing was intact and as sharp as ever. He gestured for Lorna to lie low. Thankfully, she did without questioning why. His serious expression, the potential threat seemed to take hold.
Good. You never knew what you were working with going into a fight with someone new. Lorna got quiet and did as instructed. He could work with that.
Sounds of someone or an animal thundering through the nearby trees caused commotion from the treetops. Monkeys called, filling the air. Whatever was flying through the jungle was being chased. He managed to paddle closer to the shoreline. It was high noon, but you couldn’t tell. The jungle was disorienting. A storm was rolling in.
Thunder cracked as the first raindrops fell, pelting Knox. There was no time to reach for the ballcap tucked inside a pocket of his rucksack. He needed to figure out what the hell was charging toward them ahead of the storm.
Or was it the storm they were trying to outrun?
The canoe was close enough to the shore for him to grab hold of a tree trunk. It bent and stretched as he held on for dear life after dropping the paddles inside the canoe. The hull of the canoe was between his thighs as he tried not to allow them to be swept away with the water rushing faster with the onslaught of rain.
His body reminded him just how damaged it was when he exerted himself as he grabbed his ruck. Again, he tucked the pain away in another file that would reopen at an inconvenient time later. It always did. His head still pounded but the constant throbbing was background noise at this point.
Body extended like a rubber band, something had to give. Legs dangling in the water with God only knew what else, he wrapped one arm around a bendy tree trunk.
The thought of capsizing, ending up in the water, threatened to suck him under and spit him out. Knox didn’t swim. Not voluntarily. And he’d hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to on this trip. His muscles started to twitch as memories haunted him.
“Grab my hand!” he shouted to Lorna. The driving rain drowning out every other sound, including his thoughts.
Lorna made a move for his extended arm, grabbed hold.
With a yelp, she fell out of the canoe, causing it to capsize.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Now, they were both in the water. The rain kept their presence hidden and deafened the splash. At this point, nothing could be heard over the pounding rain.
Knox managed to swing, fold his body in half in a move Tarzan would appreciate, and launch Lorna toward shore. Another yelp broke through the driving rain as she closed her eyes and let go.
She tumbled onto solid ground a second later, then scrambled onto all fours as if aware of how dangerous the jungle floor could be. The circle of life happened here and humans weren’t guaranteed a spot at the top of the food chain. It was a humbling thought, but Knox knew to respect his surroundings.
His legs dragging in the water tightened the knot in his chest a couple of rachets. Rain caused the tree trunk to become slippery.
With effort, he managed to bring his left hand up and onto the trunk essentially putting it in a choke hold. He didn’t want to think about all the monsters in the water below. Or the fact he was dangling above a river that could swallow him whole and never spit him out.
His left hand slipped off the trunk.
It was now or never.
Pulling on all the strength he could muster, he grabbed back onto the tree trunk, pulled his legs up to his chest, and shimmied down the base until Lorna could grab hold of his hand and help pull him onto land.
A rustling noise louder than the rain sounded to their left. A figure broke through the trees, coming into view.
“Amy!” Lorna shouted, bolting toward her best friend.
The two embraced as Knox surveyed the area to figure out what had been chasing her.
“Two men with big guns,” she said, motioning in the direction she came. “We can’t stay here.”
The canoe had been swallowed by the river. How the hell was he going to get them out of here alive?