Chapter 19
Murky Water
Over an hour had passed since Zach disappeared into the jungle, and David hadn’t stopped—not for water, not for air, not for anything.
Lena watched from the corner of the room as he hunched over the exposed circuit housing, fingers nimble and relentless, surrounded by a chaos of wire fragments and half-gutted panels.
His shirt stuck to his back, soaked through.
She grabbed a tepid bottle of water from the stash she’d discovered and snapped it open with a pop that echoed through the room.
“Hey, Genius,” she squatted beside him, holding out the open bottle. “Drink. You’re pushing too hard.”
David paused like someone coming out of a dream, blinking through the sweat tracking rivulets down the sides of his face. Then, a tired, crooked half-smile slid into place—unexpected and almost bashful.
“Welcome to crisis mode.” He took the bottle from her and drank in deep, urgent gulps, like he’d suddenly remembered his organs needed water.
Lena stayed crouched beside him, close enough to smell the sharp scent of ozone and skin, sweat and solder.
His arm brushed hers as he pulled the bottle away and pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead.
Without ceremony, he peeled off his glasses, fogged and streaked useless by heat and exertion.
He scrubbed at his eyes and forehead with the hem of his shirt—lifting the damp cotton to reveal a flash of taut, sun-kissed abs etched with defined muscle lines Lena absolutely did not need to be studying right now.
She winced and forced her eyes upward instead, only to catch the edge of a knowing smirk.
He frowned down at his filthy glasses before tossing them to her. “Hold these.”
Lena caught them on reflex. The frames were smooth in her hands, lighter than she expected. She stared down at the lenses, then lifted them to her eyes. Her brows furrowed.
They were clear. Not vaguely, not slightly, but completely clear. No distortion, no magnification, no hint of prescription glass.
Her heartbeat picked up. Why would he wear them if he didn’t…?
Before she puzzled it out further, a jolt coursed through the shed.
The machine in front of them gave a metallic twitch, like a sleeping dragon snorting awake.
Next came the hum—low, powerful, steady.
The lights on the panel flickered once before aligning themselves in an orderly, functional sequence.
“Yes,” David breathed. He straightened and rolled his shoulders with a groan that almost sounded human.
His shirt clung to those muscles a geek shouldn’t have, his hair spiked in chaotic directions like some mad scientist. Sweat sheened across his face and neck, and something in her relaxed at the sight of him upright and grinning.
Lena let out a surprised laugh—half relief, half hysteria, all nerves finally unclenching.
“You are officially my favorite tech wizard,” she grinned as he reached for the glasses still dangling from her fingers.
He slipped them back on, the transformation back to geek anchoring. Normal.
“I’ll add that to my very prestigious resume,” he said dryly as he tucked a multi-tool into his back pocket. “‘Tech wizard,’ ranked just below ‘human lightning rod’ and ‘part-time goat wrangler.’ Though now I need to know—do you have another tech wizard? Should I feel threatened?”
She snorted. “You’d know if there was competition.”
A knowing half-smile. “Stop distracting me, Firecracker.”
He straightened, serious again, focus coiling through his frame.
“Watermaker’s functional, circulating into the reservoirs now.
That’ll give us time—some, anyway—but we still can’t restore full pressure to the resort until the pipe is repaired,” he said, back in motion already, hands darting over his tablet.
“It’s only patched, of course. It will take hours to fix it all properly. ”
He glared at the door. “Where the hell are my supplies?”
“I haven’t heard from anyone, including Andy.” Lena braced herself for the thunderclap. Her voice sounded small in the cramped, humid room, the air saturated with burnt plastic and the dull minerality of groundwater. “No one is answering the phone in Maintenance.”
David didn’t explode so much as detonate.
His jaw snapped rigid, lips thin, and his fingers curled around his phone with white-knuckled determination.
His shoulders, already tense with the weight of being the only person standing between the resort and a full-blown logistical disaster, seemed to arch and lock.
He thumbed a contact with clipped intensity and pressed the phone to his ear as he paced in short, agitated strides. A full minute passed—long enough for Lena to note every beat of her pulse.
David swore, soft yet vicious, and hung up before stabbing another number. “Zach, anything?”
Lena edged closer, alert and anxious, wishing he’d put it on speaker. He tilted his head fractionally as he listened, eyes narrowed like he could will better answers from thin air.
“Thanks. We may have an issue,” he said, voice grim, muscles bunching under the damp fabric of his shirt.
Not that she noticed. “No one from Maintenance is here. Andy isn’t answering his phone.
More immediately, I need PVC pipe to replace the broken sections before we can restore water pressure to the resort.
Right now, only one line is intact, so there is very limited access.
The good news—if we can call it that—is that the watermaker is back online. It’s refilling the tanks now.”
His voice faltered on the word 'refilling.' Not from weakness, of course not, but from the sheer monumental effort of keeping his frustration in. Lena’s stomach clenched. She couldn’t remember him ever looking this close to burnout.
He listened again, nodding at whatever Zach was saying. Then, unexpectedly—ridiculously—a small laugh broke from David’s throat, dry and tired and even a little amazed. He ended the call and turned toward her.
“Zach’s on it. He’s going full bloodhound on the maintenance crew and the supplies, so we have a few minutes to grab some food.”
Lena blinked, disoriented by the sudden switch, like someone had flipped a page in a book she was still reading. “Food?”
“Yes,” he said with finality, already striding toward her golf cart like it might vanish if they didn’t reach it fast enough. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and you,” he shot her a glance, a shadow of his usual sardonic humor returning to his voice, “look one stiff wind away from passing out.”
Lena slid behind the wheel. The moment he dropped into the passenger seat, his whole body slackened with exhaustion. He slumped back and closed his eyes, sweat glistening on his throat and forearms, his damp shirt clinging to the hard lines of his torso.
“I’m beat,” he muttered, voice raspy but lighter, like some invisible hand unclasped from around his ribs. “I hate working in those sheds. They’re like saunas on the best of days. Today, it felt like someone stuffed a server rack into a volcano.”
Lena started the cart and steered it toward the cafeteria. Her hands quivered on the wheel; her mind swirled. Systems failing. Staff missing. Sabotage. Yet amidst everything, they still had to remember to breathe, to drink, to eat.
The wind stirred against her face as she picked up speed, carrying the scent of baked earth and salt-drenched foliage. David tipped his head back on the cushion, eyes still closed, face angled to the sky like the sun held an answer he couldn’t code his way into.
And somewhere deep within her, Lena felt it too: a fragile, tense thread holding everything together. Not steel. Not certainty. Only the grit of exhausted people who refused to let this place be torn apart.
Lena’s fingers tightened on the golf cart’s steering wheel as her gaze snagged on the sleek outline of a black SUV beyond the curve in the path.
It was parked at an angle, barely visible in the shadows of the banyan trees.
The windows were pitch-black, the kind that didn’t reflect anything but absorbed the light.
Goosebumps prickled along her arms regardless of the soupy heat pressing on her skin. She looked again, but saw nothing out of place.
“David,” she said, tightening her grip. Her voice came out quieter than intended, scarcely above the crunch of tires on the gravel. Her heart pounded unevenly, like it remembered how easily it could break.
“Hmm?” He was still slumped in the seat, eyes shut, the wear of the morning honed his sharp edges. Sweat beaded on his temples, his shirt clung across his chest, but he hadn’t once complained.
“There was a car,” she forced a lightness into her voice. “Near that clump of palms. Black SUV. Tinted windows. Just… sitting there. But now it’s gone.”
David sat up straight, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Zach’s guys, maybe? They could’ve rotated checkpoints.”
“Maybe,” Lena said, doubt clear in her voice as the cart rounded the bend—nothing there now but vague tire impressions already softening in the moist earth. Her skin itched like it always did when something wasn’t right, her instincts whispering from the back of her skull.
But Zach’s people didn’t leave tracks. Not visible ones. And resort security vehicles displayed window tags and identifiers. This one was sleek, anonymous.
Lena swallowed hard. “It felt like they were watching.”
David didn’t answer right away, but she saw him pull out his tablet with renewed intensity, lips clamped shut as he opened a security overlay. The shadows of the trees flickered across his face as they drove under the canopy, light breaking here and there like shattered glass.
“Any camera feeds near the maintenance road?” she asked.
“Two,” he said, brow furrowed. “But guess what—they went offline around 2 am.” He looked up and offered a lopsided grimace that didn’t quite pass for a smile. “Whoever trashed the water plant planned their route well.”
Lena wet her lips, the taste of salt and copper sharp in her mouth, like she’d bitten her tongue. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“Nope.” David leaned back again, but now alertness returned to his eyes. “I’ll run facial recognition on what’s stored before the outage. More fun for later.”
The path widened, and the resort buildings came into view like the calm center of a storm. Everything looked normal from here—guests sipping breakfast mimosas on balconies, staff setting up the pool deck with practiced efficiency. It was a polished illusion, all of it.
Lena no longer trusted quiet moments.
A rivulet of sweat slid down her spine as the aroma of bacon and fresh coffee drifted toward them from the open door of the cafeteria—an indecently normal smell. Her stomach rumbled with hunger, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since—god, yesterday?
David hopped out of the cart first when she parked, stretching with a husky groan. “That was not even remotely five minutes. You should consider a side hustle in stunt driving.”
Lena offered a half-laugh, but it didn’t quite land. Her thoughts were still on black metal and tinted glass and the way the air had thickened around her back like someone breathed down it. Even now, her nape still tingled in awareness.
David tilted his head. “Hey. You okay?”
She looked at him—really looked—and saw that beneath the sarcasm and tech obsession, he was as tense as she. His jaw was clenched, not slack with exhaustion. His fingers hovered near his tablet, like he couldn’t let it go, not even for breakfast.
“No,” she said. “But I will be. After I eat, maybe yell at more people, and figure out what the hell a black SUV is doing creeping around with staff missing and the water system trashed.”
David gave her the smallest nod. Solid. Resolute. “We’ll figure it out. You, me, Zach, and hopefully the rest of our missing crew if they ever show up. One thing at a time.”
She swallowed down the knot still lodged in her throat, but nodded back.
He entered the cafeteria first, and she followed him in—straight into the chilly, air-conditioned brightness that smelled like cinnamon rolls and panic held at bay. Before she let the doors slip shut behind her, she cast one last peek over her shoulder.
The jungle lay stifled. Still. But it didn’t fool her for a second.