“Why do Americans always assume everyone else wants what they have?” Álvaro demands.
“Because they’re spoiled and egotistical,” Julian answers.
“We’re not smuggling people into the States. We’re going to use your dad’s ‘resources’ to teach you and the rest of your privileged, arrogant countrymen a lesson in humility.”
Chills wash over me as Silvana’s gleefully cruel smiledrives her point home. My dad’s resources can deliver anything to anywhere in the world, in a matter of hours, but I doubt she plans to teach us a lesson with reams of paper and pallets of lip gloss.
She’ll use Genesis Shipping to smuggle weapons. Or explosives.
Bombs.
Silvana and her men aren’t just kidnappers. They’reterrorists.
Fear freezes my tongue to the roof of my mouth, but I hold her gaze to disguise my horror.
If my dad cooperates to save my life, he’ll be helping them kill who knows how many hundreds of innocent people.
MADDIE
I kick Moisés again. Then again. And again. With each blow, he cries out, cursing me in Spanish.
My next kick splits his lip, and blood pours from his mouth.
“Maddie!” Luke shouts, but I hardly hear him over Moisés’s grunts and the roar of my own raging pulse.
My boot splits open Moisés’s cheek. I pull my foot back for another blow, but Luke wraps his arms around me and drags me away from my target.
“Let me go!” I thrash and kick, trying to break his grip, but he’s stronger than he looks.
“Maddie. Killing him won’t bring Ryan back.” He has to say it right into my ear to be heard over Moisés’s shouting. I reallydidhurt the bastard.
“I know.” I stop struggling and he lets me go. “Let’s shut him up before he brings every gunman in the jungle running.”
“I got it.” Luke heads for the line of tents, then comes back with a scrap of white cloth and a roll of duct tape so quickly that he could only have gotten them from his own stuff.
He shoves the material into Moisés’s mouth, then tapes over it with a strip of duct tape. A striped bit of elastic sticks out above the tape. “Is that ... underwear?”
Luke shrugs. “It’s clean. It’s the only thing I had that was small enough to fit into his mouth. Not that my underwear is small.” His face turns bright red. “Not that it’s big either. I mean ...” Finally he gives up with a sigh. “Stop talking while you’re ahead, Luke,” he mumbles.
“I’m not sure you were actually ahead.”
I kneel at my brother’s side and carefully unclasp his medallion. It’s all I have left of him and of my father, so I fasten it around my own neck and tuck it inside my shirt.
Luke clears his throat as he backs toward the bunkhouse, obviously reluctant to intrude on my private moment. “Um ... I’ll go get the shovel. I put it in the utility shed.”
“You ... ?” I blink at him in sudden understanding. “Youburied him?”
Luke shrugs. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Thank you.” I stand and pull him into another hug, and my tears fall on his shoulder. “You ... Thank you.”
When I let him go, he gives me a self-conscious nod, then scruffs his hat over his curls and heads toward the bunkhouse.
While Luke is gone, I position Ryan’s arms over his chest, then I start pushing the dirt over him again. Moisés has stopped yelling behind his gag, and the ambient wildlife sounds have faded into the background—for a moment, itfeels like the entire jungle is honoring my brother with a moment of quiet.
Fresh tears blur my vision as I work, and I am sniffling again when Luke’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Let me do it.”
