100 Hours

I brush dirt from my hands onto my pants, struggling to think now that the adrenaline boost is starting to wear off. “No one knows they’re missing, and there’s no one left to help them.”

  “Who?” Luke shakes his head when my intention sinks in. “Maddie, we can’t go after them.”

  I watch Moisés thrash on the ground like an angry caterpillar. Silvana and Sebastián and their men killed my brother and kidnapped my cousin. Sebastián used me in Cartagena. They have to pay for that. But I can’t drag Luke into any more danger. He wouldn’t even be out here, if not for me.

  “You’re right. You should find somewhere to camp nearby until the next supply shipment comes. You can’t wait here. This is the first place they’ll look when Moisés doesn’t come back.” I duck into my brother’s tent in search of supplies. “Keep trying to get ahold of your parents. With any luck, I’ll be back before the helicopter gets here.”

  “Maddie—”

  I grab my brother’s spare clean shirt, and when Luke realizes I’m changing, his face flushes and he turns around.

  Dressed, I say a silent apology to my brother, then I dump his pack on the floor of the tent to take inventory. My hand closes around a familiar shape in one of his backpack pockets, and I hold my breath as I pull out an insulin reservoir and clutch it like the life raft it is. Ryan saved the leftover insulin I usually throw out when I change my pump injection site. Just in case.

  The cartridge is one-third full, and I still have a little left in my pump. That’s around thirty hours’ worth of insulin, at the rate my body typically uses it.

  But my body doesn’t typically hike through the jungle three days in a row.

  “You can’t take off into the jungle by yourself!” Luke plants himself in the tent opening, blocking my path. “And you can’t go up against armed kidnappers!”

  So I slide the vial into my pocket before he can see it and borrow the partial-truth move from my cousin’s playbook. “Genesis has the rest of my insulin.”

  Luke’s mouth snaps shut, and I can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes “Fine. I’m coming with you.”

  I don’t have time to argue with him. Silvana is getting farther away with every second we waste. “Then grab what you can carry and let’s go.”

  We only find two other backpacks left in the camp: Luke’s and Moisés’s. And there’s no blood where the campers were lined up on the ground. “Does this mean the other hostages were marched out alive?” I ask. Were the gunshots just for show, or were they shot somewhere else?

  “I don’t know.” Luke stuffs several PowerBars and a flashlight taken from the bunkhouse into his bag. “I hid too far away to hear much more than gunfire, and when I came back, I only found your brother.”

  The reminder of Ryan’s death makes my chest feel tight.

  Luke kneels to pick up Moisés’s rifle. “Ready?”

  I swing Ryan’s bag over my shoulder. “Do you even know how to use that?”

  “In theory.” The gun makes a metallic clicking sound. “I have a rifle badge, but I’ve never shot an automatic.”

  A Boy Scout with a gun. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or worried.

  As Luke and I leave the bunkhouse with our backpacks loaded, I stop at my brother’s grave and kneel in the dirt. “Ryan, I swear that when this is over, I will take you home.”

  36 HOURS EARLIER

  GENESIS

  Holden sits next to me on the damp log. Before he even opens his mouth, I know I’ll hear his “reasonable” voice—the one he saves for authority figures and people he wants to impress.

  The one he never uses with me because he knows I see through it. But Domenica and Rog are sharing a sleeve of cookies a few feet away, and they can hear everything he says.

  “Hey, Gen. You and I have always made a good team.” He glances at the terrorists gathered around a radio blaring static across the clearing. “We should really try to get on the same page.”

  I scoop tuna from a foil packet with one of my last crackers. “What page would that be?”

  “We need to face the reality of the situation.” He lowers his voice and makes very direct eye contact, as if he’s speaking in some code I should understand. I almost expect him to wink, or signal for me to steal third base. “They’ve already killed everyone we left at the base camp. Unless there’s another gang of murderers roaming northern Colombia—and I admit that’s a possibility—these are probably the same guys who burned that couple in their car the other day. We have no reason to believe they’re going to let us go, even if your dad gives them what they want.”

  He won’t. My dad can’t just let Silvana and her psychotic band of brothers kill hundreds—thousands?—of people.

  But if he doesn’t . . .

  Holden’s right. They’ll probably kill us.

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I’m seventeen years old. I’m supposed to have the next eighty-five years or so to extend my youth with every designer cream and elective procedure money can buy. I’m supposed to change the world and look great doing it, then die in my sleep when I’m one hundred and four, surrounded by humanitarian plaques, design awards, and people who can’t bear to think of the world without me in it.

  The world will hate me if I let terrorists bomb the United States. I’ll hate me.

  But I’m not ready to die.

  “We have to escape,” Holden whispers. “And we all have to work together to do it, or someone will be left behind.”

  I crunch into my cracker and chew slowly. Letting him stew.

  “I need you with me on this, Genesis. People listen to you.”

  He’s right again. “That’s why we have to stay.” I lean closer to whisper, well aware of how intimate our conversation must look. “I can talk Sebastián out of whatever they’re planning.” I have to. “He needs to make a statement, but I don’t think he really wants to hurt anyone. He’ll listen to me, once he knows he can trust me.”

  Holden’s eyes narrow. “He’s a terrorist. We are everything he and his friends hate about the world, and they will kill every one of us just to make a point.”

  “So you’re going to run away and let them kill hundreds of innocent people?” I whisper fiercely, careful to keep my expression as neutral as I can, in case our captors are watching.

  “Those people are not our responsibility. There’s nothing you can do for them without putting our lives at risk. We’re the people you should care about. We’ve had your back from the very beginning!”

  “You’ve . . . ?” I fight to stay calm as anger explodes deep inside me. “You and Penelope have my back? You’re the people I should care about?”

  Holden rolls his eyes. “Fine. You’re right about me and Pen. But we were just messing around.”

  “You were just messing around. With my best friend.” It’s like he doesn’t even hear himself.

  “It meant nothing. It never does. You know that.”

  “Does she?” I glance pointedly at Penelope, who’s sitting cross-legged in a patch of moss, watching us with her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that she’s at risk of breaking her own fingers.

  “I don’t know what she knows,” Holden snaps. “Are you really willing to let us die out here in the mud because of a few stupid drunken hookups?”

  “A few?”

  “Gen, you’re missing the point.”

  “No, you’re missing the point.” I lean in until I’m practically spitting in his ear, to disguise our argument. “Your life is worth no more than anyone else’s.” Saying that feels so good. “Neither is Pen’s. Neither is mine. This isn’t like court-ordered community service. This is real, Holden. Real life. Real death. Real responsibility. We have a chance to prevent something terrible.

  “I am not going to let Silvana use my dad’s company to slaughter innocent people. You need to man up and get on board with that reality, because if your escape attempt gets someone killed, that blood is on your hands. Not mine.”

  34
.5 HOURS EARLIER

  MADDIE

  “. . . but this would probably be a sandbox game, considering we can go wherever we want to out here. Or maybe not. We do kind of have to stick to the trail, to find your cousin. But it sure would be nice if we could lower the difficulty level, so we wouldn’t have to eat to regain strength or energy. Or so we could gain XP faster—that’s experience points—and learn how to, like, catch and skin rabbits for food. Like in Red Dead Redemption. Or—”

  “Luke!” I spin to face him on the trail. “Do you have to fill every moment with the sound of your own voice?”

  He stares at the ground, and I want to kick myself for hurting his feelings. I’ve put up with an hour and a half of endless chatter about which snakes are poisonous, which frogs are safe to eat, and which plant leaves should not be used as toilet paper, but I draw the line at debating the difficulty rating an “adventure” like this would have on some video game I’ve never heard of.

  “Sorry. I just . . .” Luke adjusts his cap over his sweaty curls. “At my grandmother’s wake, everyone was really quiet, and that made it impossible to think about anything else.” He shrugs. “So I thought talking might distract you from . . . Ryan.”

  I am the world’s biggest asshole.

  I push stringy strands of hair back from my face and exhale slowly. “I’m sorry. That’s very thoughtful.”

  We continue down the trail. For several minutes, I hear nothing from him but the shuffle of his boots on the path. Luke is right. Silence is a lot less peaceful and a lot more awkward than I thought it’d be, so I clear my throat and press the reset button.

  “Hey, Luke. What were you saying earlier about some kind of limbless amphibian?”

  “Oh! A few years ago, they discovered a new species in Brazil that grows up to thirty-two inches long, and resembles—”

  Luke’s voice cuts off so suddenly that I turn to make sure he hasn’t been eaten by something. His face is flushed the color of a cayenne pepper, and suddenly I truly am curious.

  “Resembles what? Don’t leave me hanging.”

  “It resembles . . . um . . . a certain male reproductive organ.”

  “Oh.” I face forward and hike as if my feet are on fire, and I don’t slow until I hear rushing water. A minute later, we reach the cliff, and I catch my breath, just like I did the first time. The setting sun paints ripples of fire across the surface.

  “Holy shit!” Luke breathes as he peeks carefully over the edge.

  “That is where I lost my supplies.”

  His eyes seem to take up half of his face. “You jumped?”

  “From about two feet to your left.” I could have died. I should have died.

  Luke scoots back from the edge, sweat beading on his forehead. “How did you avoid the boulders?”

  “Ryan says God keeps a close eye on those without the mental capacity to take care of themselves. My survival seems to prove his point.” Thinking about my brother sends a fresh bolt of pain through my chest and I close my eyes, determined not to cry again.

  This is the time for revenge.

  “Let’s go. It’s getting dark.” I take two steps, but Luke doesn’t move.

  “You’re fearless,” he whispers.

  “I’m scared right now.” What if Genesis is already dead? What if we never make it out of the jungle?

  What if my brother’s killers get away?

  “Okay, but you use fear like a superpower. You harness it for good, or whatever.” His focus drops to the ground, and I can see that he wants to take the whole thing back. Not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he thinks it sounds stupid.

  “You really think so?”

  “You jumped off a cliff to help your brother. Stupid? Yes. But very brave.” Luke’s gaze holds mine with a bold confidence I’ve rarely seen from him, and something flutters deep in my belly.

  “You’re giving me way too much credit. Come on.”

  As we continue down the path, I stare at the ground, hyperaware that every decision I make from this point on could take us in the wrong direction.

  I’m no longer retracing my steps. This is where the jungle gets real.

  GENESIS

  “¡Vamos!” Silvana calls from up ahead, and I assume she’s talking to one of the hostages until I see that we’ve come to a small clearing centered around a semipermanent fire pit, where Julian has taken a seat.

  “Queremos café y tenemos que hacer pis,” he insists, and I have to stifle a laugh.

  “What did he say?” Indiana asks.

  “He told her that they want coffee and they need to pee.”

  “I’m with him on both counts,” Indiana says.

  I haven’t had enough water in the two hours since our last rest to need a bathroom break.

  Silvana curses in Spanish, but when Álvaro sits with Julian, she relents. “Don’t get comfortable, princesa,” she says when I set my bag on the ground. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

  Penelope groans. “The sun is setting. I thought she was finally going to show us a little mercy.”

  I sit on a patch of grass, and Pen takes my silence as an invitation to join me. “Holden and I didn’t mean to hurt you, Genesis.” She steels her spine and takes a deep breath. “It just happened.”

  “Nothing ‘just happens’ with Holden.” I shrug and dig in my bag, as if this conversation means nothing to me. As if I’m not losing my best friend, when I’ve already lost everything else in the world today. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.”

  “But it was me.”

  I look up and hold her gaze. “And you think that makes you special? That you’re different from his other hookups?”

  The raw vulnerability in her eyes answers for her.

  “I know you’re socially stunted, from spending most of your adolescence on the uneven bars, so let me give you the SparkNotes version of Hookups for Dummies: if you start out as someone’s dirty little secret, that’s all you will ever be.” I look right into her eyes and am pleased to see them watering. “You clearly have no respect for me, but you should at least try to respect yourself.”

  “Genesis, you hook up with guys all the time!”

  “But I don’t sleep with them!” I hiss, too low for anyone else to hear. “And I would never have hooked up with my best friend’s boyfriend.” I pause for a second, then drive the blade home. “I hope it was worth what it cost you.”

  Penelope flinches.

  I swallow my guilt, pick up my bag, and leave her staring after me, so she can’t see the moisture I blink from my eyes.

  Most of our captors have gathered around a pot sitting over a fire someone has built in the pit. They hold camp mugs, and Óscar is distributing scoops of instant coffee from a canister.

  Sebastián sits a few feet away, holding an empty cup and watching the flames. This feels like a good opportunity to make a personal connection. To convince him that the kidnappers can make their point without taking any more lives.

  Suddenly I’m horrifyingly aware of how awful I must look, wearing almost as much sweat and mud as clothing. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet today. But I’m not going to get a better shot, so I dig a breath mint from my pack and sit next to Sebastián.

  He looks up, surprised, and I point at Óscar’s instant coffee. “If Colombia produces the best beans in the world, why is everyone drinking instant?”

  Sebastián laughs, and heads turn our way. I can practically feel everyone watching us. “We export the best beans,” he says in his thick but comprehensible accent.

  “All of them?” It doesn’t seem fair that those who produce the best coffee don’t get to drink it.

  Rog chuckles as he passes behind us. “Colombian farmers are too smart to drink their own cash crop, when they can sell it to Americans foolish enough to pay more in a month for coffee than on their cell phone bills.”

  Metal clinks, and I turn to see Óscar pouring hot water into cups held out by his fellow captors. He
heads our way when Sebastián holds his mug up.

  I’ve never needed coffee worse in my life.

  When Óscar moves on, I make a show of sniffing the air and enjoying the aroma. “Smells good.”

  Sebastián looks amused as he holds out his metal cup so I can see several small green leaves steeping in yellowish water. The scent of coffee is not coming from his mug. “Té de coca,” he says. “Want some?”

  Do I want cocaine tea?

  “There’s no actual cocaine in it,” Rog says, and I turn to see him sitting with his back to a tree, pulling his longish, frizzy hair into a low man bun. “A sip won’t hurt.”

  So I accept the cup from Sebastián. He watches while I take a sip. I make a face. The tea is bitter and herbal-tasting.

  He laughs again.

  “Gracias.” I give the cup back and watch him sip from it while I consider an approach that will drive the wedge between Silvana and Sebastián deeper, while letting him know he can trust me. “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble with Silvana.” I look straight into his eyes to convey honesty. “Over my dad’s ‘resources.’”

  Sebastián scowls. “I don’t answer to Silvana.”

  “Oh.” I fake surprise. “That’s good. She’s kind of . . . horrible.”

  “They don’t pay her to be sweet.”

  “Well, if ‘they’ intended to hire a homicidal maniac, I’d say they got their money’s worth. Who else would want to smuggle bombs into the US on a cargo plane?” It doesn’t matter whether my guess is right or wrong. What matters is his reaction to it.

  Sebastián leans closer and lowers his voice. “We don’t want a plane.”

  I’m not sure I believe him. A plane would be the fastest, most direct way to get a bomb into the country, and he didn’t deny that they’d be smuggling bombs.

  “You know everything that comes through customs is inspected, right?” I whisper as I study his reaction. “It’s not as simple as just unloading a bomb at the airport and driving off with—”

  Horror sends a wave of chills over me. Maybe they won’t be driving off with the bomb. What if they’re planning to blow up an airport?