Page 47 of Colombian Chemistry

He walked over to a closet and opened it up, then a moment later, pulled out a skirt and a blouse and tossed them at me. I thanked him, but when he didn’t look away, I hurried to pull them on over Marcus’s shirt. To hell if I was getting undressed in front of him. And even though the white t-shirt was now smeared with dirt, I didn’t want to take it off. It still had Marcus’s scent on it, and I felt safer with a little piece of him still wrapped around me.

The guard sneered and walked out of the room, and I heard the click of the lock, meaning I was trapped inside. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I remembered Marcus’s survival advice he’d given me our first day walking in the jungle. The rule of threes.

Three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. If he was here, he would tell me to drink and eat while I could and rest my weary body so it would be ready when it was time to fight. I walked over to the table and downed half of the water, then snacked on the fruits, bread, and cheese. My nervous stomach wanted nothing to do with the food, but I forbade it from tossing them back up. I needed strength now for whatever was coming, and being fed and hydrated would help.

I walked to the window again and looked out it, wondering what city I was in. Several tall buildings broke up my eye line to the mountains just on the outskirts. I hadn’t the foggiest where it was, though, and no way to get out. Trying to heed the advice in my head I figured Marcus would say to me, I walked over to the bed to lie down. I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, but resting would at least help me be ready for the things to come... whatever they were.

Or until Marcus came to save me. I knew he wouldn’t have turned himself in without a plan, and deep down, I knew he’d never leave me to my fate. At least I clung to that piece of hope as I closed my eyes and waited.

After an hour of lying in bed watching the rattan fan on the ceiling spin round, I got up and finished the rest of the water. While I was chugging the last of it down, a strange noise outside of my door caught my attention.

Thump.

I furrowed my brow. Maybe it was nothing.

Crash.

Okay, that was something.

Several more thuds and crashes sent me scurrying to hide behind the pillars of the bed, and then one large crash sent the door to my room flying open. It was a whirlwind of movement, flesh on flesh. The two bodies collided together and spilled onto the floor. I gasped as I clung to the wooden post, holding my breath until the tousling stopped. When it did, Marcus rose from the floor, stopping to spit on the guard who lay dead at his feet.

“Marcus!”

He lifted his lips into that cocky smile I hadn’t known if I’d ever see again. “Hey, Sweetcheeks. Miss me?”

I raced from behind the bed and launched myself into his arms. He wrapped me tight into a warm embrace and held me against his still shirtless body.

His fingers wound into my hair as he held me. “You’re okay, Irene. I’ve got you.”

“You came for me,” I whispered into his neck.

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and squeezed me tighter. “Of course I came for you. You have my favorite t-shirt.”

I laughed and shook my head against his hard pecs, then looked up into his eyes. No longer did the cold, dark eyes I’d first seen stare back at me. These eyes that met mine flickered with something else... something softer. Something I couldn’t identify.

“As much as I don’t mind standing here with you, Sweetcheeks, we’ve got a couple dozen of the Jungle Kings scouring this compound for me, and they are gonna be here any second. We need to move.”

“Whatever you say. Just get me the heck out of here.”

Marcus released his grip from me and took me by the hand. He picked up the gun from the dead man on the floor and handed it to me.

“I don’t know how to use a gun!”

“I’ll teach you more later, but this end points at the man you want to shoot. This thing here is the trigger. Point, pull, dead. Safety’s off, so don’t shoot me.”

I’d never held a gun before, and it scared me more than the dead body on the floor. But I didn’t argue. Instead, I just held Marcus’s hand with one of mine and the gun in my other.

He stopped at the door, leading with his gun, then peeking his head out to look both ways. I glanced over his shoulder, and my eyes bulged at the sight of three more bodies dead in the hallway. The sound of shouts and footsteps drumming up the stairwell echoed down the hallway. Marcus pushed me backward and slammed the door.

“Now what?” I asked as I tried not to look at the lifeless man on the floor.

He raced over and got behind a heavy dresser and pushed. It scraped across the tile floor, making a sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. When it stopped, he’d placed it directly in front of the door. Marcus raced over to the window and looked down. “There’s no way we’re going out the way I came in. We’re gonna have to climb down.”

“What?” I gasped. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’ll be fine. There’s a porch on the floor below us. We’ll drop to that first, then we can hop down to the roof beside it and drop onto the back of that van.”

“Marcus! I can’t! We’ll—”