“No, no, no.” I pull Ryan up by his shoulders, devastated by the pliant resistance of his weight as I hug him to my chest.
“Ryan ... Ryan!” This can’t be real. He can’t be gone.
A twig snaps to my left, and I look up, still clutching my brother’s body.
Moisés stands fifteen feet away, his rifle aimed at my head. “Well, isn’t that sweet?”
GENESIS
“Why did they only call inherransom?” Domenica asks as we wade into the narrow river.
Penelope picks her way across several small rocks sticking up from the surface. “Her dad owns the world’s largest independent shipping company.”
“Like, UPS?” Domenica frowns. “How big could it be, if I never heard of it before this morning?”
“Genesis Shipping is freight transportation,” Pen explains. “Gen’s dad has a huge fleet of trucks, planes, trains, and cargo ships moving merchandise and materials for companies all over the world. He even has contracts with several governments. Ransoming her is amassivepayday.”
They think I’m too upset to listen.
They don’t know me at all.
“I’m worth more than she is,” Holden insists. But our kidnappers clearly think they can get three ransoms from my dad, as long as he doesn’t know about Maddie and Ryan.
But heshouldknow. My aunt and grandmother should know.
I can’t be the only one who knows what happened. Not again.
“Genesis. Mija. Where is your mother?” My father kneels next to me on the living room carpet. He looks scared.
I’ve never seen my father scared.
“Genesis.”
I see him. I hear him. But I can’t answer. Maybe if I close my eyes, I won’t even be here anymore.
He takes my hands, then drops them and stares in horror at the blood on his palms. At the blood on mine. Then he looks past me. Into the kitchen.
“Genesis.” Indiana takes my hand, and I let him tug me into the shallow water. It’s easy to pretend I’m mired in shock, rather than in thought, and the more the kidnappers underestimate me, the better off I’ll be.
My father wasright there. I wanted to tell him that I’m sorry for bringing us here. For lying to him. For putting us all in danger.
I mentally replay the phone call as I step out of the river onto the opposite bank, but it still makes no sense. My dad knew Silvana’s name. She didn’t bother to set a price because she thinks he already knows what she wants.
Understanding hits me like a knife to the gut. Whatever is happening here is the reason I’ve never been allowed in Colombia. It may even be the reason Uncle David was killed.
My kidnapping and his murder within a year in the same countrycan’tbe a coincidence.
36.75 HOURS EARLIER
MADDIE
Moisés’s lips turn up in an ugly sneer, his brows bunched toward the middle of his forehead. “Get out of the hole.”
“No.” I am covered in dirt from my brother’s grave, holding his still-warm body, yet suddenly a seething storm of anger churns deep in my belly.
“Salga del agujerounless you want me to bury you in it.”
Slowly, I lower my brother back onto the ground. My tears leave wet trails on his cheeks, as if he cried them himself. “You’re not going to shoot me,” I say as I run one hand through the hair at Ryan’s temple, arranging it the way he wore it. “You weren’t supposed to shoot my brother either.” My uncle may not be the man my father was, but he will pay to get me back.
