hesitate to point this out,” she said, “but all the guidebooks say it’s not wise to be in the jungle after dark.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Yet here we are.”
He aimed his flashlight toward her and in the reflected light, she saw his mouth lifted into a half smile. “You have any better suggestion? Maybe a float plane stashed somewhere I don’t know about?”
“Of course not.”
“Neither do I. We could kayak around the peninsula, but that would take much longer and would be far more dangerous in the dark. Rafferty’s got a power yacht that can move a whole hell of a lot faster than I can paddle. He can patrol the whole coast looking for us and there’s nowhere to hide out on the open water. So unless you can come up with some other option, as far as I can tell, we don’t have any other choice but to keep walking.”
Apparently, Ren Galvez wasn’t of the curl-upright-here-and-die school of thought. She sighed and kept walking.
She never knew it was possible to hate someone with such a fierce, all-consuming passion.
She had been angry with Bradley for his gross betrayal, devastated by her father’s complete lack of filial support, hurt at her friends and coworkers for whispering about her behind her back, for acting as if she were the crazy one to get so bent out of shape over a little infidelity before any vows had been spoken.
But she never knew what it meant to loathe someone until just this moment. She decided she despised Lorenzo Galvez, with every aching, exhausted, itchy cell of her being.
She hated him. She hated this. She was tired, she was hungry, her feet ached from boots that were too tight and her thighs burned from hiking uphill through the mud.
After perhaps an hour—or two or three or ten, she was too numb to really know for sure—he stopped abruptly. She was so focused on plodding forward, lost in her trance of misery, that she wasn’t aware he had planted his feet on the trail until she plowed into him.
He turned and steadied her to keep her from toppling over. “Easy there, sweetheart. Need a drink?”
The air was so humid she felt as if she could swallow it every time she opened her mouth, but at his words, she became aware of a fierce thirst. She had to admit, a big, icy piña colada would be delicious right about now. Instead, she apparently had to settle for the water bottle he pulled out of his pack.
She had a sudden violent urge to bash him over the head with it. Instead, she inhaled a deep, calming yoga breath—the only thing that had sustained her thus far on this hellish journey—and grabbed the bottle from him.
She wanted nothing more than to slump against the nearest tree and collapse, but fear of scorpions or fire ants or any of the other creepy crawlies she’d read about in the guidebooks kept her upright.
Hydrating her system helped allay the worst of her homicidal urges. She still didn’t feel exactly favorable toward the man, but at least the impulse to see if she could gouge his eyes out with the mouth of the water bottle seemed to fade.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” he said after only a moment or two.
She drew in a shaky breath, pouring all her energy into keeping her sobs at bay. Just the thought of trying to lift her muck-laden shoes another step felt over whelming, impossible.
“I can’t,” she moaned.
“You have to. Just another mile and then we can take a rest, Mrs. Lambert.”
She ground her teeth, absurdly infuriated by the address, as if that were the least of his offenses toward her. “Olivia,” she snapped.
“Olivia.”
He stepped closer, and in the darkness, he seemed like some terrifying, nebulous creature. Still, she could feel the heat emanating from his skin, the energy that surrounded him.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered.
“Why?” she asked warily.
“Bug juice. Time for a refresher.”
She complied, wishing she could keep her eyes closed and just block this entire ordeal out. She felt vulnerable, exposed, as he moved around her with the deet. She was oddly aware of him, her subconscious registering his location in space every second, even with her eyes closed.
How was it possible for her to be so physically aware of him and yet to fear and despise him at the same time?
She had to be sick and twisted, in addition to this amazingly violent streak she was only just discovering.
“You’ve been great so far. Twenty more minutes, okay?”
One or both of them would be dead by then, she was fairly certain. If the miserable conditions and the myriad dangers out here didn’t kill them, she would do the job herself.
He started off down the trail, just expecting her to blindly follow along, but somehow she couldn’t make her legs cooperate. She stood helplessly watching after him as the light disappeared.
The light was back in just a few seconds, with Ren looking disgruntled and frustrated at the end of it. “I know you’re worn out, but I’m afraid it’s going to rain again soon and we can’t stay out here without any kind of shelter. You’ve got to press forward a little farther. I don’t think I can carry both you and the pack for a mile.”
Okay, she really loathed him now. Yeah, maybe she’d had an extra roll or two for lunch. But where would she be now without those extra few carbs?
“I’m coming,” she snapped.
He gave her an encouraging smile that made her want to deck him and then he took off again up the trail.
As she slogged along behind him, she entertained herself with the various revenge scenarios she would enjoy enacting when this was all over. Something involving fire ants and a gallon of honey topped the list, though covering him with truffles and staking him in the middle of a rampaging herd of peccaries came in a close second.
She didn’t understand any of this and he didn’t seem in a big hurry to explain but somehow as time ticked on, she became less and less convinced he would hurt her.
Whether she was going to hurt him was another question entirely, but he seemed genuinely concerned for her safety.
She was certain it was longer than a mile—it had to be three or four, at the least—but he finally stopped.
“Here we go. We can rest here for a few hours, catch some sleep, get something to eat.”
She looked around, wondering just how well-camouflaged the shelter must be. She couldn’t see anything but trees and understory, even with his high-powered flashlight. It looked no different from the acres of forest they had already trudged around.
“Where?” she asked.
He pointed his flashlight up and for the first time she saw small handholds in the massive trunk of a giant tree, extending farther than the reach of the flashlight beam.
She hitched in a breath as cold fear washed over her like an arctic tide. She had survived having a machete held to her back, being a midnight snack for every insect for miles around and walking through the terrifying jungle. But this was beyond her.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“It’s not hard, I swear. Okay, a little trickier at night than it would be in the daylight, but we’ll be tethered together and I’ll be right behind you the whole way. You’ll be just fine.”
“I know. I’ll be just fine down here on solid ground because I am not climbing up there. You can’t make me.”
She didn’t care how childish she sounded. Climbing a gigantic tree was not in the tour description here.
“Did I