Chapter 6 Signal
Riley
By the time the rain lets up, my shirt is clinging to my back like a second, colder skin, and my legs burn from the constant, careful descent.
We have the high trail—the one Mateo had been leading us along before he… stopped leading us. I refuse to let any panic break through the barrier I've erected in my mind. Things are fucked up enough without me losing my head.
"This way," I say, already moving. "The ground's higher on the left fork. Less washout."
Derrick falls into step without question, and Andrew brings up the rear, phone held up at intervals like he's hoping the universe will take pity on him and grant one bar of signal out of sheer aesthetic appreciation for how much he wants to see his daughter's face.
Nobody argues with my decision-making. They follow, and some small, tired part of me clocks that this is how things used to be. But things had changed, so slowly I hadn't noticed until the resentment kicked in.
"You good?" Derrick asks, stepping up to walk beside me instead of behind.
"Wet mostly," I say and shoot him a small, playful grin. "Kinda freaked out about Mateo. Hoping the others didn't get sucked into a watery grave."
"Just another day at the office."
I snort. "Another thing to add to the Adler Brand Statement: luxury accommodations, life-altering relationships, and complimentary near-death experiences." I glance sideways at him. "I'm putting it on the website. Right under the spa menu."
"Still want me to try and buy this resort?"
"Ah... I need to think about it some more. How are you holding up?" I peer at him through my lashes. Things have been off-kilter with Derrick for a few months now. It's like we can't quite figure out the dynamic, and it's been getting worse since the wedding.
"Better once we've got a signal."
"Won't be long. There's a ridge clearing about fifteen minutes up—Mateo pointed it out on the lagoon overlook the first morning. Said it's the only spot on this side of the park where the trees are thin enough to get a bar."
He arches a sweaty brow at me. "You remember the lagoon overlook briefing," he says. "From day one."
I don't know why I remember that. I remember things; it's sort of my whole deal. I shrug one shoulder. "My big ol' brain does its own thing. We don't question it. We tiptoe around it and hope it doesn't get mad, right? 'Cause if it does, we have to shut me up and shut me down, huh, Derrick?"
His face falls, and I know he's remembering yesterday when he demanded that I calm down and ignore those pigs from the other group. When he told me not to "embarrass him."
He stops in his tracks and reaches for me. "Riley—"
"Don't." It comes out faster and sharper than I mean it to, old reflex outrunning better judgment. "Not now."
Derrick's temper rises, too. "It's never the right time, though, is it, Riley? Every time I try to—"
"GUYS." Andrew's voice cuts through, too loud, delighted about something that has nothing to do with either of us. "Guys, I think I have a signal. One bar. Maybe a ghost of a bar."
The argument doesn't finish so much as it gets shelved, mid-sentence, the way everything between us has been getting shelved for months.
Andrew holds the phone up like an offering to whatever god governs satellite connectivity in the Gran Sabana, and for ten very long seconds, nothing happens.
Then it buzzes.
"It's ringing," Andrew says, faintly stunned, like he hadn't actually believed it would work. "It's actually—hello? Hello, can you—" He turns away from us, hand cupped around his mouth, pacing in a tight circle the way people do when a connection feels too fragile to trust with stillness.
I use the lull to get my bearings properly. Ridge clearing—Mateo wasn't wrong, the canopy genuinely does thin here, opening onto a gap with a partial view down into the valley, gray and green and rain-blurred all the way to a horizon I can't see the end of.
I peer out into the distance, wondering if we'll spot Nora, Santi, Ryan, and Erica soon, praying that they're all okay.
"That's the lodge," Andrew says, lowering the phone slightly, his face arranging itself into a sharper seriousness.
"Carmen. She's got Alex and Channelle there already.
" A pause, listening. "Yeah. Yeah, we're all—well, we're okay, we're together, but only three of us.
The others got separated." Another pause, longer.
"Hold on, let me—" He looks at me, helpless.
"She wants headcounts and positions, and I don't—"
"Give it here."
I take the phone mid-sentence. "This is Riley Mitchell," I say, already running the structure in my head—what they'll need first, what they'll need second, what can wait.
"I need you to get a pen." I tell them exactly what happened and roughly where we were separated.
I lay it all out clean. "You need to prioritize Mateo and the other group, unaccounted for since we split up. "
"Understood," Carmen says. "Rescue path is coming from the north, out of the secondary trailhead—they'll reach the reconnect point first, then fan out. Four-hour window, given the terrain and the rain."
"Four hours." I do the math against the light, against how long everyone's already been out here, against what four more hours of rain does to people who are already soaked through and running on adrenaline fumes.
"Copy. We'll hold position here unless you tell us otherwise. Better signal, easier to find."
"Copy that. Stay where you are. We'll radio when the rescue team is in range."
I hand the phone back to Andrew, who takes it like it's fragile, and for a second, none of us says anything. The rain ticks through the canopy gap. Somewhere below us, invisible, the falls keep making their one continuous sound, indifferent to all of it.
"Okay," Derrick says eventually, exhaling. "Okay. Four hours?"
"Four hours," I agree.
"We should find actual cover. This clearing's good for signal, bad for staying dry.
" He's already looking around, assessing—the same scan he runs on every property he walks into: exits, hazards, what needs fixing first. "There's a denser stand of trees back the way we came.
We passed it ninety seconds before the clearing. "
"Good call," Andrew says, already turning that way.
And that's it. That's the whole thing. A handful of words from Derrick and the group is moving again, all of us falling in behind him like he's the one who's been carrying this whole afternoon, and nobody looks back at the woman who told the lodge exactly where everyone was, who built the extraction priority on the fly, who's been doing the actual work of keeping this small piece of the world coherent since everything fucked up.
I'm not angry. This is a different feeling, one I can't bring myself to examine closely. And I don't think it's Derrick's fault, at least not entirely.
I rebuilt the company's security infrastructure from a folding table in an operations center at one in the morning, and Derrick was the name on the press release.
I closed the French Riviera acquisition's technical due diligence in four days flat on a hurry-up order from Roman, and the board thanked Derrick for his "strategic vision.
" I am, by any honest accounting, very good at being the reason things work, and also very bad, apparently, at being remembered as the reason.
But I built that habit a long time before Derrick Adler ever walked into my life, and old habits do not politely retire once the rest of your life gets better.
I helped build something. And then I stepped to the side, every time, so the story could fit the frame everyone already had ready for it.
I have no right to be mad about it.
And yet.
"Riley." Derrick's voice is gentler than when he addressed the group. His brow is creased, and I can see his hesitation. He wants to reach for me, but he doesn't know if he should. "You went somewhere."
I frown. "I'm right here."
He does reach for me this time, his finger brushing my forehead. "You went somewhere in that big ol' brain of yours."
I lean into his touch, and he moves to cup my cheek, looking relieved and a little heartbroken. When was the last time I let him show me affection like this?
Tears blur my vision, but I blink them away. What a stupid time to have a relationship epiphany.
"What's going on, baby?" he asks as Andrew trudges into the distance.
I could let it go. I have a good history of burying my feelings and deciding "now" is not the right time.
"Carmen thanked Andrew for the headcount," I say instead, as apparently today is not a letting-it-go day.
"And then she's going to write up the incident report, and in that report, the headcount and the extraction priorities are going to be attributed to 'the group.
' Somewhere down the line, someone is going to ask who handled comms with the lodge, and the answer everyone defaults to will be you.
Because you're Derrick Adler, and that's just what people assume, the second a man with your last name is standing in the room. "
Derrick doesn't flinch. He doesn't argue, either, which I notice, and which matters.
"You think I take credit for that."
"I think you don't correct it." I keep my voice level.
This isn't the fight it could be if I let my temper loose.
"I watched you not correct it after the system breach two years ago.
I watched the board thank you for 'turning the company around' when I was the one who actually rebuilt the entire security architecture from scratch in a week with three hours of sleep a night.
You didn't lie. But you didn't say anything.
And not saying anything, when you're standing at the front of the room, and I'm standing at the side of it, has the exact same effect as lying. "
He's quiet for a long moment. The rain finds a gap in the canopy and drums hard for a moment directly above us, then eases.