Page 22 of Last Destination

“What happened?” My tongue felt chalky against the roof of my mouth as I forced out the mumbled words.

“You passed out.” He shifted in his seat again without jostling me. He held me with a grace that belied my actual weight, as if I were easy to hold. “I caught you. You are sleeping with me.”

A snort snuck through my nose, then I winced when burning pain shot up into my forehead and down through my ribs. For a convict clearly more intelligent than most people I knew, he was still so cryptic. I had to respect it as much as I begrudged it. Maddox Torres was not a boastful man.

“Thank you,” I whispered, my lips brushing his chest with the acknowledgment. “For saving me, I mean. I don’t think I said it before.”

I should feel uncomfortable in his arms — the pain of my day was present, the mottling bruises over every inch of my torso a constant, dull ache that pushed all the way into my bones — but the positioning, the beat of his breaths, his scent. I’d never felt safer.

His chin hit the top of my head in a gentle nudge. “It is my pleasure to protect you, my captain. I won’t be leaving my post again.”

My pulse ran a racetrack of rocky gravel as he punctuated the words like a vow into the breeze, as if the words meant nothing and everything. Just when I thought he was the simplest to understand, he knocked me completely speechless.

“I’m glad to hear that.” I raised my fingers tentatively up his stomach, dancing them over the hard ridges of his abs barely softened by his T-shirt, to the molded pec where my cheek rested. Soft drops of water I couldn’t afford to waste filled the base of my eyelids. “I would have died without you.”

“Ambrose and Nikki would have found a way. They are also your protectors. I cannot discount the value of Clube de Morte.”

What? What did his gang have to do with this?

Realization dawned as I considered previous conversations. We were Clube de Morte.

“We’re — they’re — part of your gang now? How? Doesn’t that come with some sort of initiation?”

His hand reached up to mine, gently brushing calloused fingers over my own. Short circuits of electricity buzzed through every part he touched. The motion was somehow criminally more intimate than when he’d had his face buried in my pussy.

“Initiation was passed when you protected a criminal from an agent. That is when you became mine.”

A zing shot up my spine, forcing an outward shiver against the madman’s hold. Mine.

I wasn’t anyone’s. The protector but never the protected, the proverbial lost and never found. Even Charlie hadn’t been my twin in a long time — not really. In a city metropolis of 23 million people, I’d never felt so alone. Yet in the most isolated parcel on the planet, three men continued to show up for me in ways no one else ever had.

The zing transitioned into a fizzling pain across my chest. It was hard to admit the truth: these feelings — trauma-induced or not — felt as real as everything else in this jungle. My heart didn’t know what to do with that information. My head couldn’t handle anything above basic needs.

Ambrose had turned his sour into sweet — well, sweet for him — but he’d admitted my survival training — my survival trauma, more like — was what he needed to get out of here. Nikki’s confessions were heartfelt and true, but I’d known who he was before the crash. Was this some sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome situation, where the saved falls in love with the saver? Madman had a path to freedom, but then came back. Were those the actions of a man who called me his?

Black and white images of Bonnie and Clyde flickered in front of me like a vision. Out of all the people on the planet, I was the least prepared to be a gang-banger’s lady. Old lady? I didn’t even know what they were called.

A lightbulb flared to life and broke through the vision of street robbers. This encounter — the snuggling into Brazil’s Most Wanted, the kind words — I was dreaming. Of course, I was. I wasn’t making any sense.

“I’m having the weirdest dream,” I yawned into his shirt. “Let’s talk when I wake up.”

The faintest press of lips against my forehead and a snug tightening of his biceps was my only response before my mind fell blank.

Nikki’s grip on my hand hadn’t loosened once since we’d started our trek north this morning. He lagged one foot length behind me while I followed Madman’s determined trail. He and Tessa led the pack. Ambrose and Jamie were on our heels. The six of us stayed as close to each other as we could manage in the dense ferns and viscous muck. There was a renewed energy today. We had all eaten a full meal and had clean water to drink. The cloud above our heads felt less somber.

When I awoke in Madman’s arms, he informed me Nikki plied me with water and sacrificed one of our last ibuprofen to relieve some of the swelling across my abdomen. I’d popped my head up to express my gratitude only to find him and Ambrose huddled close together in sleep, though not quite touching. Their relaxed faces were almost boyish in the dim morning light.

It had taken all of three minutes for us to pack up our things. I capped the water bottle filters and tucked them tightly into Ambrose’s backpack. His dead laptop remained tucked safely away in his bomb-proof case.

We all chewed on chunga palm leaves as we hiked, the earthy plant cleaning our teeth and freshening the terrible taste of digested snake breath. Every time I picked up the thick, green palm, my heart twinged, the reminder of Brooks and their sacrifice still so poignant.

Charlie was at the front, a floating poltergeist through the trees, but she’d been silent since I woke up, her presence more of a comfort than a distraction. I called out directions whenever we veered too far east, with my watch capturing our longitude and latitude at every point. We’d already made up four kilometers in distance over the last several hours, but the closer we got to potential gang territory, the more anxious I became.

We were well past the point where Jamie had run into would-be traffickers. There was a high possibility of running into actual humans today, which meant I’d have to steal the one thing they had that could allow their escape. Stomach acid sloshed in my belly like the sea, and nausea hit me every few steps as my muscles tried to protect the remaining intact skin.

“You scared the shit out of me, baby girl.”

Nikki had said that at least four times now, and as endearing as his dedication was, my hackles raised every time he repeated the sentiment. My calm, collected friend — lover? — had been on edge since we woke up, his body practically vibrating with tension, and each declaration had a renewed manic edge to it. That, and the stifling, oppressive humidity that seemed to fill my lungs with water instead of air, was making me cranky.