“Don’t worry,” Rog says as the only other female kidnapper searches his bag. “When they get what they want, they’ll let us go.”
Penelope shudders and wraps her arms around herself. “What if what they want is us, dead?”
“They’re not going to kill us,” I say as I watch Domenica’s and Indiana’s bags being searched. “They’re going to march us deeper into the jungle.”
“How do you know?” Pen asks.
“They need us alive.” For now.
43 HOURS EARLIER
MADDIE
A shadow falls into my tent. “Maddie.” Genesis puts one hand on my shoulder and I flinch.
“They shot Ryan.” It’s not what I meant to say. But all I can hear is the echo of gunfire. All I can see is my brother, covered in blood.
“I know.” Genesis dumps my backpack and starts sorting through my things. “We have to pack.”
“I’m not going.” I’ve already lost my dad. I can’t lose Ryan too.
She rolls up one of my clean shirts and shoves it into my bag. “If you don’t, they’ll shoot you.”
“If I go, they’ll let Ryan die.”
“There’s nothing we can do for him.” Her voice cracks, and for just a second, I can see her pain.
Rage crackles like fire inside me. I rip my bag from her hands. She hasno rightto that kind of pain. She wasn’t there when we got the call about my dad. She didn’t visit Ryan in rehab. Letting him party with her friends made him worse,not better, and she doesn’t have any right to—
Genesis holds my gaze, as if she can read my thoughts. “I love him too, Maddie.”
I can’t think.
My cousin tugs the bag from my grip and starts shoving things into it.
“We can’t leave him,” I whisper.
She sets the bag aside and starts rolling up my sleeping bag. “Staying here won’t help Ryan, but it will get us killed.”
She’s right. I need a better plan. “Did you bring a satellite phone?”
“No. The whole point was to be out of reach for a while.” She buckles my sleeping bag to the bottom of my pack, then picks up a small glass vial that was hidden beneath it. My missing vial of insulin. “Do you need this?”
My eyes fill with tears again as I stare at the vial. “I lost it.”
Genesis slides the vial into a pocket on the side of her hiking shorts and zips the pocket closed. “We can’t let that happen again.”
“He wouldn’t have been shot if I hadn’t lost it.” I can’t stop my nose from running.
Genesis sets my repacked bag in front of me. “Julian pulled the trigger. Not you.”
“So we’re just supposed toleaveRyan here?” My words sound half choked. Fresh tears blur the inside of my tent.
She lowers her voice until I’m practically reading her lips. “They’ll pay for this, Maddie. Iswear. But until then,you need to keep your mouth closed and your head down.”
My tears won’t stop coming. “But he’lldieif we leave him.”
“We’lldie if we don’t.” She exhales slowly. “And what good would we do him then?” I can practically see her shoving pain and fear back from the surface of her thoughts. Turning it all off like she did when her mom died.
