100 Hours

Page 62

 
Luke pulls himself up into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.
“No!” I shout, but I can hardly hear my own voice.
“Go!” Genesis shouts again.
Silvana swings the pistol at her head. My cousin collapses on the sand.
“Genesis!”
“There’s nothing we can do for her,” Luke yells over the engine. Then he guns it. The boat shoots forward into the dark. Momentum throws me into the seat at my back.
Wind pummels my face through the cracked windshield, stealing my tears before they can fall. Ripping my screams from my throat. Indiana is bleeding onto the floor at my feet. I can’t think. I can’t see anything but flames on the water. I can’t hear anything but the motor and the wind.
Then, it all stops.
The boat slows to a glide, and Luke kneels to take Indiana’s pulse. He’s holding a flare gun he must’ve found under one of the seats. “Maddie.”
“We have to go back.” I can still see the torches lit up on the beach, but they’re as small as fireflies, and they flicker in the wind. I turn back to him, but I can’t focus on his face through my tears, even with the moonlight. “I can’t lose her, Luke.” I sob, and my throat burns, but I can’t stop crying. “I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t.”
Pieces of the cruise ship float on the water. Some of them are still on fire.
He takes my hands. “If we go back, you’ll lose me too. And Indiana. If we go back, we all lose.” His words sound thick, as if he’s holding back tears. “That’s not what Genesis wants.”
He lets go of my left hand to swipe at his own eyes. Overhead, a helicopter beats the air, its searchlight probing the water. “She told me to get you out of here. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
Luke squeezes my hand. Then he stands and fires the flare into the sky.
 
 
LATER

GENESIS
I hear voices, but opening my eyes is a staggering effort. My eyelids are so heavy I wonder if they’re taped shut. Light floods my vision. Pain shoots through my skull.
I lift my hand to my temple, and the whole world spins around me. My temple feels oddly lumpy and damp. Sticky. My hand comes away bloody. My head feels like someone tried to scoop my brain out one tablespoon at a time.
I groan. The whole world is pain.
I sit up and feel something slick beneath me. I blink, and the surface finally comes into focus. I am on a sleeping bag, on a rough wooden floor. The walls around me are made of shoddily pieced-together boards. Daylight peeks in through the cracks.
A cabin.
From outside comes the devastatingly familiar chorus of birds, frogs, crickets, and . . . monkeys. I’m in the jungle. Still.
I never left. I may never leave.
My mouth is dry. My tongue feels swollen and clumsy. My throat aches. With every beat of my heart, a hammer seems to pound my head in echo.
“She’s waking up,” a voice says from another room, and I freeze. Sebastián. I remember him. But I can’t remember how I got here. How I got hurt.
A shadow falls over me. My heart races, and the pounding in my skull matches its rhythm.
“Genesis?” The voice is older.
No. This makes no sense.
“Genesis, niña, do you remember what happened?”
My head spins.
“Uncle David?” He kneels next to me, and he looks amazing, for a dead man. I shake my head. The room tilts around me.
Who the hell did we bury?
“You’ve blown up half of my arsenal.” He sounds impressed.
“I . . .” What? “Your . . . ?” The warheads. I blew up the warheads.
Oh, God. I blew up a cruise ship.
“Why—” My voice cracks. I lick my lips and start over. “Why were there warheads on a cruise ship?”
“Because smuggling is a creative endeavor, Genesis. Any cargo ship traveling from Colombia to the US is under suspicion, but the cruise liner . . . that was an experimental purchase, and the last one the DEA would think to check. There were two thousand people on that ship.”
I’m breathing too fast. I’m going to pass out.
“Only half of them died.” Uncle David shakes his head. “A humanitarian tragedy. But it says something about the culture of excess, does it not? All those rich people partying in the middle of the night. You really made a statement.”
“No. I didn’t know . . .”
He takes my chin, and his grip is hard. His brown eyes are not friendly or kind. This is not the uncle I remember. “All you had to do was sit still and wait to be rescued.” A strand of graying hair falls over his forehead. “You could be at your grandmother’s house right now, instead of bleeding on my floor.”
Uncle David steps back and waves someone closer. Sebastián kneels next to me, holding a syringe. I flinch away, but he grabs my arm. His touch makes me sick.
He has two black eyes and a broken nose. Uncle David’s knuckles are skinned and swollen.
“This wasn’t the plan, Genesis,” my uncle says. “Ryan . . .” His fists clench, and he turns away.
Ryan wasn’t supposed to die. Maddie wasn’t supposed to run away. I wasn’t supposed to fight back.
Because Uncle David is el jefe. He’s been the boss all along.
Sebastián slides the needle into my arm, but I hardly feel the prick. My eye hurts. My head is in agony. But the real pain is deep, deep in my soul.
I am still in the jungle.
I am still a captive.