“Good enough,” Mendoza says. “Just hurry up . . . do it. Losing too much blood.” His words are slurred through the belt, and there’s a sleepy droop to his eyes that tells me he’s going to pass out soon. I need to get my shit together.
I nod and grab the knife out of the fire. Immediately, I realize that’s a mistake—the handle is red hot and I hiss back a yelp of pain and drop it back into the coals. I can feel my fingers immediately blistering up, but there’s no time to think about that. Dumb, Ava. Dumb. Blinking back tears of pain, I wrap my hand in my shirt and grab the knife again.
“Here I come,” I tell him, and then feel stupid again. “Not that anyone else would be coming after you with a hot knife. Then again, you seem to have as many enemies as I do, so hey.” He doesn’t chuckle, but talking makes me feel better, so I keep babbling as I pull his blood-soaked shirt away from his back. “I don’t know how to break this to you, Mr. Mendoza, but I think Darwinism is trying to vote you out of the gene pool.”
The cut looks awful. It’s deep and bleeding a slow trickle of thick, dark blood. It doesn’t look like it’s anywhere vital, but I’m not a doctor. I’m a freaking hand model. Even as I gape at the wound, a fly buzzes nearby.
Right. Cauterizing time.
I suck in a deep breath and don’t even bother with a count of three. I push the flat of the red-hot blade against his wound. The sizzle of skin, like a frying egg, hits the air, and then the smell of burning flesh. I gag, and press the blade harder, because I don’t know how this shit works. I don’t know how long I need to leave it, or if I even did this right.
Mendoza’s gone limp. He didn’t even scream, which is pretty badass of him. I pull the knife away and study the wound. There’s a big, blistering mark where I pressed the knife, but the wound is ragged on one side and the knife I have is tiny.
“I think I’m going to have to cauterize it twice. I’m so sorry. It’s the knife. It’s so small.”
He doesn’t answer me.
Panic hammers my heart, and I shove the tiny knife back into the coals of the fire and then bend over Mendoza. “Rafe?”
He’s still breathing. Passed out, then, either from blood loss or pain. Or both. Well, that makes this easier for him. I finish heating the knife and press it to his wound again, wincing only a little this time as it cauterizes his flesh. The skin is blistered and purpled, but it’s sealed. With that, I take my shirt off, wet a clean corner, and bathe away the dirt and blood from the rest of his skin. Once his back is cleaned, I roll him onto his side and examine his eye, peeling back the bandages. It looks awful, worse than before, and that worries me. We don’t have antibiotics, but we have water purifiers now, at least, so I can at least bathe it with clean water.
Over the next few hours, while Rafe sleeps, I keep myself busy around camp. It’s either that or go crazy with worry. I keep the fire going, hauling in more wood every time I venture out. If the wood’s wet, I create a pile on the other side of the fire, hoping that the heat will eventually dry it out more. I get more water, use the tablets, and wash Rafe’s eye and rebandage it. I wash his other wounds, too, since he’s covered in scrapes and scratches. I clean up the cave, get fresh leaves for a bed, and gather things that look useful. I find a sturdy vine hanging from a tree, and after I make sure it’s not a snake, I bring it back with me. Since it’s not long enough, I get more vines, and then spend a good hour or two braiding my finds together to make a makeshift rope.
I also find wood that will make a decent spear, and make a few more of those. You can never have too many weapons in the jungle, and I keep seeing wild animals. Night is coming on, and the fire won’t keep a determined predator away.
Which means I need to get rid of the body.
That takes up a good chunk of the afternoon. I keep Afonso facedown so I don’t have to see what happened. Rafe said it wasn’t good, and I trust him. I tie the rope around his arm and loop it around my torso like a harness so I can drag him through the jungle, but he’s heavy, so I don’t make it as far as I want. I have to settle for letting the body slide off of a rocky precipice and into jungle vines below. Good enough. I give the body a salute. “Not gonna miss you, Afonso.”
Rafe wakes up at sunset, when I’ve stoked up the fire and put another damp, hissing log onto the flames. He groans and cusses in Spanish.
I immediately go to his side, bringing the bottle of water with me. “How are you feeling?” I want to kiss him all over his banged-up face for rejoining the land of the living, because I don’t know what I’d do if he went to sleep and just never woke up again.
“Like hell,” he says, and tries to sit up.
“Stay off it if you can,” I tell him, pushing a hand against his shoulder. “Give it time to heal. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”
He nods and lies back on his side again, then touches the bandages on his face. “Eye feels like hell, too.”
“I cleaned it while you were out,” I tell him. “Sorry if I made it worse.”
“Is it bad?”
“Let’s just say you’re not going to win any beauty contests with that look.”
He nods.
I pass him the water bottle.
He takes a small sip, then tries to pass it back to me.
“Drink the whole thing,” I tell him. “You need to replace the blood you’ve lost and I’ve been drinking water all afternoon.” River water, but hey. Today it didn’t rain too much, and that means the wood was drier than usual, so I’ll take it.
“I should get up and get rid of the body—”
“Taken care of,” I tell him, and I feel a little bit of pride at the surprise on his face. “I’m not totally helpless you know.”
“I think you’re pretty great, actually. How’s the wrist?”
I stupidly preen under those words and take the water bottle back from him when he finishes drinking, then offer him a fruit. “It actually doesn’t hurt as much.” He grunts in what I presume to be happiness. “I’m not sure if we should save the snake or eat it. How much longer do you think we’ll be . . . out here?”
He props up on an elbow. “We should eat the meat before it goes bad. And as for us, we’ll go up the river tomorrow. See if we can find anyone else.”
I nod and break the cooked snake in half and offer him part. We both choke it down, and then it gets quiet again. I’m guessing Mendoza’s not in a talky mood, what with passing out and cauterized wounds and all, but I desperately need conversation after a day of being in my own head.
“So,” I say brightly. “Do you want to play another round of our game?”
He scrubs a hand down his face, then crooks his elbow to act as a pillow. “I guess.” He sounds tired.
“All right, I’ll start.” I stir the fire, contemplating what to talk about. Nothing sexual, because the last thing we need is more tension in camp. We’re too exhausted and Mendoza’s lost too much blood. I study my awful, awful-looking hands. They’re upraised with welts from bugs. The blisters are puffy and dark on three of my fingertips, and one burst earlier, which means an ugly scab. There’s scratches, my nails are ragged, and my one pinky is bloated and terrible. My hand modeling days are over, at least for the next year or two. Even the smallest imperfections can cost jobs. I once lost a job because they didn’t like the way my nail beds looked.
Thinking about hand modeling makes me think about Rose. That’s an easy subject, then. I curl my legs under me and move closer to the fire. “When I was in third grade, I moved to a new school,” I tell Mendoza. “Back then, my hair wasn’t this weird brown, but blond. I was very blond, and very pale. I moved to California, and I didn’t know anyone. And kids are mean to people that are different, you know? Anyhow, back then, my eyes—the heterochromia—really stood out. The kids picked on me, called me names, you name it.”
“Kids are shitty.”
I dug my toes in the dirt of the cave. “Kids are kids. A week or two passed, and I started making up illnesses to avoid class. I’d spend
half the day lying down in the nurse’s office just to avoid people. And one day, while at the nurse’s office, in walks the prettiest girl with blond hair and the same pink shirt I was wearing. Her name was Rose, and she had to go to the nurse’s office daily to get her insulin pump monitored.” I smile at the memory. “She sits next to me, and asks why my eyes are so weird. I tell her that I was born that way. Then she shows me her insulin pump, and says she was born different, too. She then declares that I’m going to be her new best friend. And after that, people weren’t shitty to me, because they loved Rose. And if Rose liked someone, then she was okay.” My eyes fill with tears. “Rose is the one that got me into hand modeling, you know. She told them they had to have some sort of work for me, and no one’s ever able to tell Rose no. Turned out someone had a cancellation, and I filled in. The rest was history.”
Rafe’s silent.
I sniff and give a shaky laugh. “You pass out on me again?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“About what you’re going to tell me? What terrible secrets?” I tease. “You want to tell me about your childhood?”
“Not really,” he says. “My mother hated me and the man she was married to wasn’t my father.”
Well, that’s a mood killer. So much for my game. “How about you tell me a fun fact about you, instead?”
He yawns sleepily. “I’ll try to think of something.”
We’re both quiet for the next while, and I put on a big log so it can burn all night. Then, I lie down by the fire. I figure Mendoza’s asleep again, and my thoughts fill of Rose. Beautiful, headstrong Rose who thinks she can always get her way with a smile and a flirty laugh. Rose with her insulin pump. Are they taking care of her? I wonder. Can we even be friends after this? Will I be able to look her in the eye and not resent what her choice in men has put me through? I don’t have answers to this, so I close my eyes and try to sleep.
Just when I’m about to drift off, Mendoza speaks. His voice is soft with exhaustion. “I thought of something, Ava. A fun fact.”
“What’s that?”
“I have an island.”
This strikes me as . . . absurd. “Uh-huh.”
“I bought it,” he says, voice dazed with exhaustion. “Had a place in a favela in Rio called Tears of God. Got too dangerous, so I bought an island. Moved a bunch of people there. To keep them safe.”
“Go to sleep, Rafe,” I tell him softly. I hope he’s not hallucinating. I don’t know what I’ll do if he gets sick and dies. Ava of the Jungle has just about hit her limits.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RAFAEL
The next morning I spend a long time watching Ava wake up. I imagine her on the island, in my bed. My room faces the east because I like to see the sunrise. I’m usually the first one up. It occurs to me that the other men that join me for a run along the beach are almost all single, which makes sense because if you have an Ava in bed with you, why in the hell would you be running at dawn when you could be spreading her legs and feasting on her juicy pussy?
I run my tongue across my lower lip. I haven’t tasted her. Am afraid to, really. I’m the rabid dog at the end of a weak leash wearing a frayed collar. Tasting her will snap the last threads of my control.
Deliberately, one by one, I force my fingers to relax from their clenched position and reach over to wake Ava.
“Rise and shine.” I shake the bladder of water. It’ll be another couple of hours before we can drink it since that’s how long it takes for the purification tablets to do their job, but it holds three liters of water, which will keep us plenty hydrated.
“It’s too early, Rose,” she mumbles.
It’s pathetic that I’m happy that it’s her friend’s name she mutters in her sleep, not some asshole boyfriend’s. I rub some nonexistent sleep out of my eye and shake her again.
“Rise and shine. Time to find civilization.”
She stretches and the motion thrusts her breasts in the air, and the blanket slips down around her thighs. There’s a tantalizing stretch of skin exposed between the waistband of her yoga pants and the bottom of her ragged shirt, which pulls up when her arms go over her head. My mouth waters at the sight. I take a swig of the water hoping the stale taste will wake me out of my lust-induced fugue, but then she shifts again and her shirt rides up even farther until the round curve of her breast is almost revealed. Not even the tightness and pain in my back when I move breaks my concentration as I try to will the fabric to go even higher.
I can’t pull myself together until she sits up and rubs her eyes like a toddler. That forces me to shake myself awake.
She blinks and glances around. “What time is it?”
“Seven or so.” The sun has been up for a couple of hours. I start packing our supplies into the nylon knapsack.
“Hey. Don’t we need that?” she protests as I stamp out the fire. “Aren’t we looking for more stuff from the plane today?”
“No.” I don’t look up from the ashes I’m creating. I can’t spend another night in a cave with Ava and not take her. We’re too isolated and the need in my body is overriding every other thought. “We need to get out of the jungle.”
“Oh, because of your injuries?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Because of those.”
I’ve had worse than a knife in my back and a gouge in my eye but then again, I haven’t had to take care of a model at the same time. I shoulder the knapsack, ignoring the pain in my back. I lift the knife so I can take a look at my eye in the blade’s reflection.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Ava says and stomps over to me. She knocks my hand away and lifts up the bandage. At the first touch of her hand on my temple, I freeze and all my good intentions fade, too. “Your eye looks good. No oozing puss or grossness. Should I smell it or something? I saw someone do that in a television show.”
“Maybe check it again?” I ask not because I doubt her word but because I want her to stand there all day and look over every part of my body. I can actually see a little out of my bad eye, which means the swelling is starting to go down. I’ll be fine. And the scar on my back is nothing. I have a scar on my chest from a wound I received nine years ago—the first time I was sent to do wet work. Guy knifed me before I could terminate him. She should check that out. Hell, I have scars all over my body including—I jerk away.
“Did I hurt you?” She sounds unhappy or worried.
“No.” And then to soften the harshness of my response, I add gruffly, “Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Well, you are my ticket home.” She gives me a wan smile.
“Right. Let’s get moving.”
I heft the foot-long blade in my hand, the one Afonso tried to gore me with, and lead the way out of the cave. It would do me good to remember that her touches and concern all have to do with getting out of the jungle. Of course she’s going to be nice to me. I’m the only one around who can save her pretty ass.
“Stay close and walk in my footsteps.”
“Sure.” She answers just as abruptly.
We make our way to the bank of the river where we mud up. The mosquito repellent that was in the Boy Scout bag must have fallen out along with other things. Once done, we start walking downstream.
There are no paths in this part of the jungle, not even overgrown ones, and that means there’s no village nearby. We walk silently for a long time. I can feel her eyes burning through my back. She has questions she is dying to ask.
Around midmorning she breaks. “Do you know why I play the game?”
“The one-question game?” I want to make sure I understand her.
“Yes. I play it because then I can pretend we aren’t in the jungle and that we’re on stage two of getting to know each other.”
“What was stage one?” I ask against my better judgment.
“Stage one was when you took me to the café and bought me food. Granted, now I know that you were doing that as part of your mission or whatever, but at the time, it was fla
ttering.”
“Seems to me you get to stage one plenty of times.”
“Not me. Rose. Her other friends, maybe, but I haven’t been to stage one for a while.” Is that wistfulness I hear?
I stop and turn abruptly. “You have to be kidding me? How’s a girl like you not getting chatted up nonstop? You must be having stage one dates all the fucking time.”
She grins then a true, happy smile stretches across her face. It’s a good thing my boots are planted shoulder-width apart, because that sort of beauty knocks a man on his ass if he’s not prepared. “Have you seen Rose? She’s a model. A real runway model. I’ve got pretty hands.” She holds up her hands and we both look at them. One is covered in mud and the other is still swollen and purple. Her hands are not pretty anymore. They are soft, but right now, the only modeling she’d be doing would be in a survivalist magazine. I see the moment that realization hits, because her grin fades away and the light in her eyes dies out. “Okay, maybe not right now, but I did have pretty hands.”
Suddenly nothing seems more important to me than for Ava to know how fucking beautiful she is. I cup her neck and tilt her head back and for once when I look at her, I don’t try to hide a thing. “I don’t know who you’ve been hanging around but you’re a knockout. You’ve got the type of body that makes men want to fight for you. Your face is like a goddamn sun; it’s so beautiful that you can’t look directly at it. If you were any more fucking gorgeous, I’d probably die of a heart attack. In fact, I’m going to have to mud up some of your features so that when we do run into natives, they don’t try to keep you as some goddess that they worship.” I run a muddy, sweaty finger over her forehead and then down the bridge of her nose. Her eyes soften and her lids get heavy. Even with my shitty experience with women, I know what that means, and my body strains toward her.
I step back, drop my hand, and turn away. That’s all I can give her now. Reaching down I shift the monster toward my inseam, hoping that the little extra fabric there can give me some breathing room.
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