“Are we becoming friends?” I tease.
“Obviously not,” he says. “I wantallmy clients to be happy. They tend to make more money that way.”
“Liar. You like me.”
“You’ll never get me to admit to it, so you needn’t bother. Now, are you absolutely sure there is no way I can talk you out of this?”
“I’m positive. Sometimes, a man’s got to do the right thing, Dwight, even if it hurts,” I say, dodging an out-of-control toddler riding one of those suitcases that’s shaped like a dinosaur.
“Yes, but in this case, certainly the right thing is to make as much cash as possible so you can buy her a twelve-carat ring and get her away from her suffocating family.”
“A ring is useless without a finger to put it on.” I reach my gate, then glance at the clock, realizing I’ve got another two hours before my flight boards. The seats are jam-packed here, so I turn back the other way.
“Clearly, I can’t talk you out of this, so make up fast and hightail it back here as fast as humanly possible. I’ll book you some promotional gigs.”
“I thought they were small potatoes.”
“Not anymore.”
Ouch.
I hang up and walk into The Travel Shop. Apparently, I’m in the mood to torture myself with something I’m never going to have. The backpacks are on display near the front, and I stop in front of them and stare. A man comes to stand beside me, taking one off the hook and examining it.
“Don’t bother,” I tell him. “I lugged that exact one around the jungle for ten days, and I can tell you that after a few minutes, you’ll feel it. A good pack should be nearly indestructible and yet undetectable on your back.”
He gives me a strange look, then says, “I don’t know how they would ever make one much lighter than this.” He flicks the tag over, then adds, “At this price, you’d be a fool not to buy one.”
He takes the pack and walks over to the till while I turn my attention back to the display.
What a dumb logo. Why would he spell Bears with a ‘z?’ I mean, seriously, do they think that’s super trendy or something?
“Stupid heavy backpack,” I mutter before picking it up. Huh. That’s actually surprisingly light.
In fact, this is extremely light. How did the one I had in the jungle seem so much heavier when it was empty? I take off my own backpack and slide this one on. And then it hits me all at once. Tingles run up my spine as everything becomes clear to me.
“Those bastards,” I say, far too loudly.
Glancing around, I see the man I was just talking to and the woman behind the till giving me strange looks.
“Sorry,” I say.
Five minutes later, I’m standing in front of the ticket counter for Avonian Air. “I need to exchange this ticket for your next flight to Valcourt.”
* * *
I’m crammed into the middle seat on my way from Thailand to Valcourt via Qatar and Belgium (with a nine-hour layover in Qatar). That was the only available last-minute flight I could get. The entire trip will take a little over thirty-six hours, which will have me in Valcourt by Monday morning. I can only hope it won’t be too late because if it is, Arabella’s life is about to be ruined. Her family’s too.
The longer I sit and think about what really happened out in that jungle, the more horrified I become. For those in the back row, Dylan must have had audio recording equipment sewn into the backpacks (which accounts for their weight, obviously). The audio probably ran the entire time unless we’re really freaking lucky and somehow it lost power at some point. But I doubt it, because even small recorders running on regular batteries could keep going for days.
So, not only do they probably have a whole lot of audio of us having loud, jungle sex, they also have us confessing our deepest, darkest secrets, the worst of which being Arabella’s mum’s suicide.
Yeah, let that sink in for a minute.
An unbelievably painful family secret—one they’ve managed to contain for nearly three decades—is about to be spilled on reality television. The more I think about it, the more my entire body courses with rage—not just at the producers and network, but at myself as well. How could I not have seen that coming? I mean, seriously?
How could I allow myself to be a part of this utter trash? I’m not a reality TV guy. I’m a nature documentarian. I’m a professional adventurer. Or at least Iwas. Now, I’ve been reduced to a Kardashian in hiking boots. And they’re going to reduce Arabella and her family to nothing more than a cheap scandal, not to mention forever tarnishing her mother’s memory.
And I know what you’re thinking – that I should tell Arabella what’s going on, but I can’t. Not when she’s doing work that she’s so passionate about for the first time in her entire life. The Equal Everywhere Conference isso much more importantthan what I’m doing (or ever have done, really), so the last thing she needs is another crisis to handle right now. Especially not since I left her to deal with the first one (which happens to be related to this one but is about to getso much worseif I can’t stop it).
