Climbing down a tree with no light is far from easy, and I tumble at least a third of the way to the ground. But then I’m up again, pulling on Luke’s arm as soon as his boots hit the jungle floor. “Leave the hammock. We’ll come back for it.”
“Maddie . . .”
“We’re so close, Luke.” To Genesis. To my insulin. To Ryan’s murderer. “But if you want to stay . . .” He’ll be safer here in the tree.
Luke groans. “Come on.”
We head west along the beach, and a few steps later, we hear another bang. I pull Luke to a halt in the sand, with the sharp metallic impact still ringing in my ears. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” he whispers. “But it sounded close. Maybe just around that bend.”
We stare at the moonlit curve in the coast, where a thick patch of jungle hugs the shore. The banging, like a hammer hitting metal, echoes toward us again. “Come on.”
We pick our way through the brush as carefully and quietly as we can in the dark, and I pray that we don’t run into a snake or a caiman. Within minutes, we hear voices shouting orders, then I see a flash of light through the foliage.
I put a hand on Luke’s arm, and he stops, squinting, as he follows my gaze. “I can’t tell what they’re doing,” he whispers. “We have to get closer.”
The noise covers the sound of our approach, but my heart still hammers in my throat as we walk, hunched over, toward the edge of the jungle.
At the tree line, Luke pulls me back from a sudden two-foot drop into stagnant water, lit by a bright battery-powered utility light hung from a tree.
There is no beach here. There is only a scraggly stretch of marshy inlets, fingers of water reaching into the jungle.
Overhead, vines stretch from tree to tree creating a dark nest of shadows cast by that one bright light.
“Duck!” Luke whispers as he pulls me down behind a thick fern at the edge of the marsh.
Several men in jungle camo stand on top of what looks like an upside-down boat floating in the murky water. One shouts directions at the others while they work with hammers and what look like blowtorches.
I study the long floating object, and finally I realize that the inverted boat is being welded to another, larger boat, which is nearly submerged. “They’re making some kind of submarine.” And while some men are welding it together, others are loading it with . . .
“Is that cocaine?” I squint at the square packages, but I can’t tell much in the dark.
“Some if it.” Luke points at a man emerging from the jungle with an armload of smaller square bricks. “But that is plastic explosive.”
“Whoa, what?” Why would they load drugs and explosives onto the same boat?
“¡Venga! ¡Apurate!” a man in camo shouts from the shore, and my throat suddenly feels tight.
“That’s one of Silvana’s men,” I whisper to Luke, pointing him out. “If he’s here, we must be close to their base camp.” I turn to stare south, through the jungle, and adrenaline fires through me. “Genesis is around here somewhere.”
And so is Julian.
GENESIS
“. . . and it has to be soon!” Holden leans around Penelope to whisper fiercely to Domenica.
He jumps, startled, when I lower myself onto the mat next to him, careful not to bump the bomb tucked into my waistband. My biggest fear in the world at the moment is accidentally pressing a button on the trigger phone.
“Get scared and change your mind?” Holden demands softly.
Indiana drops onto a pile of dried palm leaves on my right, turning our cluster into a tight circle, and Holden puffs up like a dog with his hackles raised.
“Actually, I’m here to propose an alternative to your heroic tuck-tail-and-run maneuver. Indiana and I know how to stop them.” I toss a glance at the guard on patrol as he rounds the green tent headed our way. “But we need some help.”
“You need psychological help. Domenica told us you snuck into the bomb tent,” Penelope says, and I’m glad I haven’t told anyone but Indiana about the plastic explosive beneath my shirt. Holden slides his hand into her grip, and she sits straighter. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“I was doing recon. They have about a dozen small C-4 bombs in the tent—wired to our phones—but there must be more on the beach, because what they have here wouldn’t knock down a house of cards.”
“And you want to what?” Domenica whispers. “Cut the wires?”
“That would only be a temporary fix.” Indiana’s grin isn’t so much excited as committed, and I want to kiss him again, right there.
“Oh shit.” Pen covers her mouth with one hand, then speaks from behind it. “You want to detonate them.”
The worst part about breaking up with Penelope is that one friendship-ending blowout can’t suddenly make us strangers. She still knows me better than Holden ever did.
“There are several detonators in that tent. If we can get ahold of a few, we can use them to blow up whatever they’ve already taken to the beach.”
“Genesis, that’s insane,” Holden snaps softly. “You’ll just get everyone blown up!”
The guard on patrol eyes us as he marches past carrying his rifle, and I pick up Domenica’s deck of cards.
“You’re not going to die, because you’re not going to be here,” I whisper as I shuffle the deck. “You’re going to get to run. All I’m asking is that you wait until I blow up whatever’s down on the beach, and use that as your distraction. But I need you all to help me get down there without getting caught.”
“Help you how?” Holden demands. “By drawing the attention of a bunch of armed terrorists?”
I roll my eyes at him. “You can’t even hear your own hypocrisy, can you? You were perfectly willing to let me draw attention so you could enact your plan.”
“My plan wasn’t to blow up the jungle and everyone in it!” he hisses at a volume just below the crackle of the fire.
“I’m not—”
“Stop it!” Domenica snaps. “You sound like spoiled toddlers fighting for attention.”
“She’s right,” Indiana says. “Everyone just calm down and let Genesis explain the plan.”
“You mean the plan where she uses us to deflect notice while she—” Penelope turns on me, anger burning in her eyes. “How can we even be sure you’ll go to the beach? For all we know, you’ll take off into the jungle to save yourself and leave us here to die!”
“I would never leave you behind to pay for something I did!”
Penelope snorts and scoots closer to Holden. “Like you didn’t leave me in Miami, to lie to your dad about this trip? Like you never left me dancing with Holden in some club, so he wouldn’t walk in on one of your hookups?”
“Who the hell are you to talk about hiding a hookup?” I snap.
“Oh, so it’s fine when you do it, but when I do it, it’s unforgivable. Genesis does whatever Genesis wants, everyone else be damned. But not this time.” Pen’s angry gaze burns into me. “You can stay and blow yourself up if you want—”
“I’m not blowing up anything but the bombs.” Unless something goes terribly, terribly wrong. But if Silvana and her men catch me, I might wish I’d blown myself up.
“—but we’re leaving the first chance we get. So why don’t you take your latest disposable boyfriend and go break him in on a patch of poison oak.”
I can only stare at her, reeling from the unexpected blow.
“Damn, that was hot.” Holden pulls her in for a kiss that’s probably more for my benefit than hers. Not that I can tell for sure anymore.
I have to try one more time, even if she’s still sucking on my ex’s face. “Pen, if you guys run without a really good distraction, they’ll shoot you. Or hack you to pieces. Holden’s plan will get you killed.”
She won’t even stop making out with him long enough to look at me.
“Come on, G.” Indiana takes my hand and we stand. “Those two don’t have a handful of guts bet
ween them.”
Holden finally pulls away from Penelope, looking disgustingly smug. “Sometimes being stupid looks like being brave.”
“Maybe,” Indiana concedes. “But cowardice always looks like what it is.”
5 HOURS EARLIER
MADDIE
“If they’re getting supply shipments from a boat there has to be a path leading to their base camp around here somewhere,” Luke whispers as we fight our way along the edge of the jungle as quietly as we can in the dark.
“There it is!”
“The path?”
“No, the boat!” I grab Luke’s arm and point north toward the beach. “We were right! It’s small, though. It may hold six,” I murmur, squinting at the small speedboat through the foliage. “But there are eight of us.”
I hope.
Luke follows my line of sight to a dinged-up speedboat perched in the sand to the west of the homemade submarine, where a series of torches casts overlapping pools of light. Beyond the boat is a muddy, square blue tent, big enough to host a prom after-party. “There could be another one in there.”
We pick our way toward the deserted beach carefully, listening for voices and footsteps, then approach the tent from the far side, to reduce the chances of our footprints being seen. The front flaps are tied closed, but the rope is loose, and we’re both small enough to duck under.
Inside, my flashlight beam highlights several long shapes draped by tarps, then settles on what we’re looking for at the far end of the tent: another boat identical to the one on the beach.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Luke squats to examine the hull. “I mean, why else would you keep a boat in a tent?”
“Because it’s a spare? Half my neighbors have beat-up cars they never drive.” I smooth loose strands of damp, frizzy hair back toward my ponytail, then stretch to relieve the strain from carrying a backpack for two days straight. “Maybe we should look for extra gas. Just in case.” I swing the flashlight toward the closest unidentifiable shape and toss back one corner of the tarp.
My heart leaps into my throat. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Oh, shit.” Luke pulls me back from a two-and-a half-foot-long metal cone lying on its side in a special wooden cradle. Next to it, still mostly covered by the tarp, is an identical cone. “Those look like warheads.”
I take a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heart. Trying to think. The small bombs being loaded onto Moreno’s submarines were bad enough, but this . . .
This is . . .
Bad.
“It’s conventional.” Luke leans closer to look at what’s printed on the nearest warhead. “And I think this is Russian writing.”
“Conventional? As opposed to the other, zanier kind of warhead?”
“As opposed to a nuke. Or a chemical warhead. Or a biological one.”
“Why would they need to ship warheads? Can’t they just . . . shoot them?”
“Because the warhead is just the tip. Without the missile, it’s a bomb, but not a projectile.”
“Did you learn that from the Boy Scouts?”
“Nope. Call of Duty.” He circles the tent to the two other tarp-draped lumps and pulls back the material to expose two more warheads in each bundle. “Shit. These look old. Maybe . . . Cold War era? I wonder how they’re planning to detonate them.” Luke sounds almost as interested as he sounds scared. “Without the missiles, they’ll have to have something to provide the initial blast needed to trigger the real explosion.”
Terror burns up from my stomach. “Simple English, Luke. What does that mean?”
“They need a small bomb to set off each of the big bombs.”
“How big is big?” I take a deep breath and release it slowly. Then I look up at Luke. He’s fifteen. If he can deal with this, I can too. “How much damage can these do?”
“Unfortunately, the specifications and explosive potential of Cold War–era Russian missiles don’t fall within my arguably extensive collection of trivial knowledge, Maddie.”
“Acknowledged.”
“But, best guess?” He turns to me in the dark tent, his face shrouded in shadow. “I think there’s enough fire power here to make any decent-sized city look like an active war zone. Think Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan.” The grim set of his jaw confirms the gruesome potential. “This is enough to kill thousands.”
GENESIS
Indiana and I reclaim grass mats on our side of the fire pit, where the blaze itself blocks our view of Holden and Penelope.
Across the clearing, Sebastián and his men are playing poker for cigarettes, while Silvana and the rest of the Moreno henchmen pass around a bottle of aguardiente. They glance our way every few minutes, but the only captors who’ve kept a truly close eye on us since we got to the base camp are the guards on patrol duty, who don’t seem to care what we do, as long as we follow orders and don’t leave the clearing.
Indiana takes my hand as we sit. “Well, it may be just you and me, G.”
“Maybe not.” Rog and Domenica are embroiled in a whispered discussion near the edge of the clearing, and they keep glancing at us, then at Pen and Holden. “They could still side with us.” But they need to decide soon. Now-ish.
If Holden tries to run, the guards will be much more vigilant—maybe even vindictive—and I won’t get a chance to sneak down to the beach.
“We need a plan B.” I rub my temples, fighting a headache brought on by hunger, stress, and exhaustion.
Indiana opens his arms, and I scoot back until my spine is pressed against his chest, his mouth inches from my right ear. “Plan A will still work. I’ll be your distraction.” He runs his hands down my arms, then settles them at my waist—until his fingers brush the C-4 packet, and he recoils. “I almost forgot about that,” he whispers. “G, you’re wearing your plan B. It’s big enough to provide a distraction, but too small to do much damage, if we set it off out in the jungle.”
“That’s brilliant.” I twist in his arms and pull him down for a grateful, almost hopeful kiss. “So, all we have to do is figure out how to get this thing into the jungle before Holden makes his move and ruins our chances.”
“Which means we need to get going.”
“Five more minutes.” I lean my head back against his collarbone and pull his arms tighter around me. “I need a little more of this first.”
Indiana chuckles. “It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? We’re worried that your ex will stop us from blowing ourselves up. Hell of a spring break finale, huh?”
“Well, when you say it like that . . .” I can’t help but laugh at the morbid absurdity. “The only thing better than a memorable entrance is a memorable exit.” But he’s not going to make one. He’s going to slip into the jungle unnoticed, with the rest of the hostages.
I’m going to make sure of that.
I turn to sit facing him, practically in his lap, and we are eye to eye. The position is intimate, but the eye contact is personal. I feel like he can see every thought I have, and for the first time in my life—and maybe the last—I’m willing to let that happen.
When I can’t wait any longer, I lean in and kiss him. Slowly, at first. Gently. But he slides one hand behind my head, deepening the angle, and I give him everything I have. Everything I am.
I might have minutes to live, and I have nothing to lose.
This could be my last kiss.
“You know, we might survive this,” I whisper when I finally pull away.
Indiana leans his forehead against mine. “Then why did that feel more like the end of something than the beginning?”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Domenica says as she drops onto a mat of leaves to my left.
Reluctantly, I start to pull away from Indiana, but he holds on to me until I give in and lay my head on his shoulder, careful to keep space between him and the phone trigger. He’s not ready to let go, and I’m not ready to make him.
“Change your mind about escaping with Holden?” he asks.
“I’m still trying to decide. He doesn’t even know how to get back to the bunkhouse for sure.” Domenica glances over her shoulder at Holden and Penelope, who are now blatantly watching us. “So, what would you need me to do, exactly?”
Indiana lets me go, and I angle myself away from the guards, then lift the tail of my shirt so she can see the explosives tucked into my waistband. Too late, I realize that Pen and Holden can see it too.
Domenica gasps. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Since Pen and Holden won’t help, I’m going to set this off in the jungle, to distract the guards while we blow up the rest of the explosives,” I explain. “There’s another phone in my pocket. I’m going to use it to call the one strapped to C-4.”
“You’re going to blow up those explosives?” She points to the tent. “That’ll kill us all!”
“There’s nothing in there but C-4. No point in blowing that up,” I assure her.
“We figure they’ve made something bigger,” Indiana whispers, “maybe pressure cooker or backpack bombs, and we’re guessing they’re on the beach. But G can’t get into the jungle without a distraction, and I’ve already played the only card I have.” He glances at the pole where Óscar’s guitar no longer hangs.
“So you want me to, what? Make a scene?”
I nod. “Preferably without getting hurt.”
Domenica closes her eyes for a second, as if she’s thinking. Or praying. Then she opens them and nods. “I’m in. When do you want to do this?”
“Yesterday,” Indiana says. “But we’ll have to settle for now.”
MADDIE
The path to some sort of base camp is easy to see from the beach, but we take a route parallel to it, to keep from being seen, stepping carefully in pools of moonlight. About a quarter mile inland, we glimpse torchlight shining through the vegetation.
Luke tugs me behind a tall tangle of underbrush, and I scan the base camp between the branches.
“There she is.” Relief eases part of the tension I’ve been carrying for two days. Genesis sits on a grass mat in front of the nearest fire pit, between Indiana and Domenica, with her back to the trail leading to the beach. To the boats that will get us out of here.