AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I flushed. Where had that come from?
By mid-afternoon, we were all getting tired, walking on autopilot as we followed the person ahead. Suddenly, we stopped. Cal, who was out in front, had put up his hand.
The team all readied their guns. JD crept down the line and sidled up to Cal. “What is it?”
Cal reminded me of a dog that’s alerted: he’d frozen in place, only his head moving as he looked back and forth across the trees in front of us. “Someone’s here.”
JD stared at the forest. “Where?” he asked after a moment.
Cal shook his head, his brow creased with frustration. “I don’t know.”
JD gave a hand signal and the team spread out in a circle with me and the other doctors in the center. My chest contracted in fear. They’ve found us.
Gabriel muttered to me over his shoulder, “When the shooting starts, hit the ground and stay there.”
I nodded.
Danny suddenly raised his gun and gestured towards the trees on his side. Everyone swung their guns that way. Danny crept forward silently…
Suddenly, he stopped. “Shit!” he hissed. “JD?” he asked uncertainly.
There was a man in the trees, but he wasn’t cartel. He was stripped to the waist and he was holding a long, slender pole in one hand. I had to stare at the arrow-shaped tip of the pole for several seconds before my brain accepted the image. Yes, that really is a spear. I suddenly remembered what Dr. Guzman had told me about the indigenous people around here, the Shuar.
“Two more,” said Colton, behind me, his voice tight. I looked over my shoulder. Colton had his gun half up, unsure whether to raise it. The men on his side were carrying machetes.
“Another behind us,” said Bradan. Then, “More. Another three.”
“Two more in front,” said Cal. “Got a rifle and a shotgun here,”
“Guns down,” said Gabriel.
JD glanced at him. “We’re outnumbered,” he growled. “We put our guns down, they could rush us.”
“They won’t hurt us if we don’t hurt them,” said Gabriel. “This is their land, they just want to be left alone.” He took a deep breath and slung his gun on his back, then raised his hands in peace.
I could see JD debating. I’d picked up on the fact that the two men didn’t like each other. But Gabriel knew people, he could read them. Listen to him, I mentally begged.
“Guns down,” JD said at last.
Everyone put their guns away and we all held our breath. The Shuar stayed where they were.
“Very slowly,” said Gabriel, “start walking.”
We moved off, with Gabriel bringing up the rear. I could feel sweat trickling down the back of my neck and my shoulders ached with tension…but nothing happened. A few moments later, when we checked behind us, the Shuar had melted back into the trees. Everyone let out long sighs of relief and I saw JD look at Gabriel with a newfound respect.
We moved on and thanks to Cal’s skill in threading a path through the jungle, we made good time. Just as the sun was setting, we pushed through some trees and—
I stopped, blinking.
We’d emerged on one side of a deep valley. After nearly a week deep in the forest, never seeing more than thirty feet in front of me, suddenly I could see for miles, right across to the other side. Above was an enormous, pink and gold sky decorated with long trails of cotton-candy clouds. I drew in a deep lungful of air. I’d felt the claustrophobia of the jungle for so long, I’d forgotten what it felt like to feel space. And there was a breeze! I could feel it toying with my hair: I’d forgotten what that felt like, too.
Gabriel pointed down. The jungle continued down the sides of the valley, but there was one spot at the bottom that had been cleared. I could see grass and a blocky white building. “That’s the extraction point,” he told me.
We’d made it. Tomorrow, we’d be going home.
18
GABRIEL
As we descended into the valley, my eyes never left Olivia for a second. This was the last time I’d be close to her. The last time I’d see her lips twitch into a smile, the last time I’d stare at all that tightly pulled back dark hair and dream of freeing it, the last time I’d run my eyes over those gorgeous curves. I tried to burn her into my memory: the shape of her jaw, the color of her eyes.
It wasn’t like I could kid myself that this wasn’t goodbye, that maybe we’d run into each other again someday. Running off with the gold would put me on a Most Wanted list for life. There were plenty of countries where I could enjoy my riches, but the one place I’d never be able to go back to was the United States. Olivia would be lost to me forever.
