Page 36 of Final Approach

“Maddox, toss her as far as you can to your left,” Nikki commanded from my right side.

For a moment, I’d forgotten he was there, that I had Clube de Morte here for assistance. Nikki’s directions calmed me. The chameleon would become my new right hand in this jungle. I could continue fighting the incensed cat and hope she would lose steam, or I could trust his direction.

He’d defended my life. I would let him protect mine.

With a final burst of energy, I crouched and thrust upwards, pushing the cat off me into the darkness. A thick claw scraped across my shoulder through my leather jacket on her descent, and the hot barb was more vicious than the knife Silva had once run through my calf.

A crack whistled through the air, dissolving my swallowed curse of pain. A sharp, shrill whimper followed the shot.

The fiercest predator loped away, a deep hole bleeding down her thick right quad. Nikki held the handgun between both palms in front of his body, not moving a muscle until the cat limped into the jungle beyond the nose of the plane.

This chameleon also had claws. I would not forget it.

Diaz’s gun and a man who knew how to use it saved my life, but Ambrose was still as death just beyond my feet. He was Clube de Morte. Clube de Morte did not die. We served death on a platter.

He had leaped to save her when I could not, just as he’d stood and fought for me on the plane.

A man did not become an animal until he was chained, when intelligence dissolved into instinct. Some men only stayed for a time, revealing their primal masters only when necessary for survival. Some stayed trapped, rabid and feral, until their humanity rotted away, leaving nothing but the animal behind.

Mad Dog was not a cute gang nickname in the trenches of fetid prisons and toxic wastelands. I had earned it.

I would not let him die.

Nikki shoved the gun in his pocket and sprinted to my captain’s side.

“I’m okay, Nik,” she responded weakly. She’d scuffled on her knees to Ambrose, nestling his head in her lap. “We need to help him. Those cuts are deep.”

Her green eyes settled on me, full of trust and urgency. My ángel could ask me whatever she wanted, and I would do it. She was mine to protect. I was hers to command.

“There’s another first-aid kit in the cockpit on the left-hand side beneath the seat, but the door’s jammed.” Her ponytail flicked toward the door behind her that had been smashed in and dented. “You’ll have to go around the other side and through the opening.”

Ambrose wheezed and his eyelids fluttered open. He trapped a grim moan of pain between his lips, which came through his nose in an agonized grunt instead. There was no time to waste.

I eyed the torch still wedged into the ground next to the fire. Picking it up, I held it out to Nikki in trade.

“I’ll get it, but I will need the gun.” I motioned to his pocket. “We do not all need to be cat food tonight.”

Would he trust the prisoner with a loaded weapon? The man who’d nicknamed me Madman with a smile—I knew he would.

Nikki pulled out the weapon and thrust it into my waiting palm, trading it for the torch. The warm metal hit my skin just as a small vodka bottle fell into the dry dirt. It shook in his hand as he quickly picked it up.

The chameleon held it up for us to see. “Brought it as a just in case. Lucky I did.” He waved me away. “Go, we’ll sterilize the wounds with this while you grab the gauze and bandages.”

He hid it well, the haunted face of a man desperate for his poison.

Picking up the brick of cocaine, I tossed it toward him. “Here. Spread a dusting on the wound once it is clean. Cocaine will stop the bleeding and will numb the pain.”

“How do you even know that?” Marley mumbled while she bent forward over Ambrose's body, her ample breasts in his face while she carefully ripped his T-shirt in two pieces down the chest. She sucked in a tight breath when Ambrose bucked upward. The cotton had caught on his ripped skin.

“Prisons do not have medical supplies in the same way they have drugs.” I shrugged. “We used what we had to survive.

“Only a tiny portion, though,” I warned the chameleon. “We do not need to create an addict.” It was hard to hold a man’s gaze when he stared at you through broken lenses, but I trapped him long enough to relay the message: We do not need to create another addict.

Nikki swallowed hard and pursed his lips, but he nodded before breaking our standoff. He fisted his hands to stop the shaking and turned his attention back to Ambrose.

I took off toward the plane at a jog, the sting in my shoulder a fiery blade with each jostle, and bypassed the metal tail into the darkness of night. Years in a nearly black cell had honed my vision—I did not need the light to guide my way.

This trip was much quicker than the trek forward, when curiosity had bade me follow them. My first night out of handcuffs didn’t carry the same freedom I’d felt in the daylight. I’d struggled to sleep—too many ghosts in the night had tried to kill me in prison—and I was being haunted by a live one with an agenda.