“Water,” Maddie whispers as I lift her shirt to study her insulin pump. I have no idea how it works.
Sebastián frowns. “What did she say?”
“Can you get her some water? She’s probably dehydrated.” He starts to argue, and I turn on him. “Unless you want to ransom a corpse, go get her some damn water!”
Sebastián scowls at me, then grabs the nearest of his men by the arm.“¡Agua! ¡Ahora!”
While he shouts orders, I turn back to my cousin, her insulin vial in hand, and she looks at me. Shereallylooks at me, with total clarity and focus.
Maddie’s not in shock. But she’s one hell of an actress.
“Genesis.” Her voice is hardly a suggestion of sound. “There are six warheads and two boats on the beach. We have to get everybody out of here.”
3 HOURS EARLIER
MADDIE
“Warheads?” Domenica whispers as she pours more water from a plastic jug into a bottle for me. She and Indiana have gathered close enough to listen as Genesis pretends to get me settled into the hostage situation, but Penelope and Holden just stare at me from across the campfire.
Rog seems to be watching everything from his seat beneath a tree on the edge of the clearing.
“Yes. Six of them.” I move slowly as I change my insulin cartridge, clinging to my dehydrated-and-in-shock act to deflect suspicion. “Luke says they’re conventional, so they’re not leaking chemicals or biological hazards, but he thinks that’s enough of a payload—”
“To kill thousands, if they hit the right targets,” Indiana breathes from my cousin’s left.
“Yeah.”
“You found Luke?” Genesis asks as she unscrews the lid of the insulin vial for me. “Where is he?”
“Hiding in the jungle. Watching. Safe, for now.” Iglance over my cousin’s shoulder, and find Silvana watching us from one of the other campfires. “Genesis, they’re making homemade submarines, out in the marsh. We saw them loading bricks of cocaine onto one, but some of the bricks looked different. I think they’re bombs.”
“Wait, I thought they wanted your dad to ship their bombs,” Domenica whispers.
“What?”My hands freeze in the process of uncoiling the tubing for my insulin pump.
“That’s why we’re here, Maddie,” Genesis says as she tucks my used medical waste into a pouch in my backpack. “They’re using us as leverage to make my dad ship the bombs into the States.”
She’s holding something back. Something painful. I can see it in how tightly her lips are pressed together. But she won’t tell me until she’s ready, and I’m not going to waste time trying to make her.
We have to get out of here.
Indiana sits on a mat made of leaves and begins gathering up a scattered deck of cards. “Why load bombs onto submarines, if they think they’re going to get ships?”
“Because a cargo ship can’t deviate from its scheduled route or make unscheduled stops without looking suspicious and risking extra inspections.” Genesis frowns as she thinks out loud. “That’s why Silvana didn’t ask my dad to send a ship here. She asked for coordinates ofwhere it will be. They’re going to send bombs out to the ship in their submarines. And from there, who knows where ...”
“Iknow where. We heard a list of targets, over Moisés’s radio,” I say as I thread the tube through the lid of the vial. “Um ... LA, New York, Chicago, DC, Memphis, and Miami. They’re going to blow upMiami, Genesis.” Our home. I feel sick at the thought of how many people might die. People we know. Mymother. “We have to warn them.”
“We’re going to do better than that.” Genesis lifts her shirt just high enough for me to see that there’s a phone—herphone—tucked into her waistband.
“Where did you—” I squint, resisting the urge to bend for a closer look. Taped to her phone is a slim brick of a claylike material with wires sticking out of that. “Whatisthat?”
“C-4,” she whispers. “They turned our phones into little bombs.”
My cousin is wearing explosives like some kind of designer belt. Before I have a chance to process that realization, another one sinks in.
Thisis what Luke was talking about.
“They’re detonators,” I whisper. “Small bombs to set off the big bombs down on the beach.”
