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“You sure you’re ready to be out here?” I asked.
“Only thing I am sure about,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to make up for.” He drove in silence for a moment. Then he sighed. “You’re right. Stacey would help if I told her. I just don’t want to. I don’t want that stuff near her.”
I understood. A lot of soldiers felt that way. You bottled stuff up because you didn’t want it to hurt the people you loved. But it was also about wanting to keep them clean and untainted, so you had one pure, innocent thing in your life. Thing is, though, you have to let this stuff out to someone, or you go crazy.
“You can talk to me about it,” I said. “If it helps.”
Bradan gave me a long, appraising look…and then nodded. And we drove on into the night.
32
OLIVIA
I was pacing. I’d made Dr. Guzman as comfortable as possible, I’d checked Marcos’s wound again, I’d even helped Cal, as he fashioned a stretcher from lengths of bamboo and one of the sleeping bags. Now there was nothing to do except wait and worry about Gabriel and I found myself pacing, unable to keep still. What if he and Bradan had been caught? What if they’d been killed? What if he was out there somewhere, in need of medical attention, and I didn’t know—
The rumble of a truck engine in the distance. Cal loped off into the jungle, and a few moments later, he came back beaming. “It’s them.”
We grabbed our gear and hurried through the trees, carrying Dr. Guzman on the stretcher. We reached the road just as Bradan and Gabriel pulled up in an army truck. Gabriel jumped down from the cab and I was hugging him even as his boots hit the ground. He clutched me tight, pressing me to him, and as his stubble rasped against my cheek, he gave a sigh of relief in my ear. “Missed you, too,” he whispered.
I unwound myself from him and stepped back. Those hazel eyes were burning, desperate to tell me something…but at that moment, JD walked up. “Good job,” he said with feeling.
“Bradan did all the hard work,” said Gabriel. Bradan looked sweetly embarrassed.
We loaded Dr. Guzman’s stretcher into the back of the truck. Danny climbed into the driver’s seat and patted the steering wheel lovingly: I’d learned he was the team’s driver and it was obvious that he was happiest behind a wheel. JD rode shotgun to navigate and the rest of us all piled into the back. We set off through the night, following the road up through the hills. The truck wasn’t fast but it was much, much faster than walking and we didn’t have to dodge soldiers or stop for breaks.
The only problem was thirst. My head was throbbing and I could feel my heart racing, despite the fact I was just sitting slumped against the canvas wall of the truck. From the look of the others, they weren’t feeling any better.
We made good time, and near dawn, JD announced we were close to the river. We pulled the truck off the road and hid it as best we could, then heaved out Dr. Guzman’s stretcher and headed into the jungle for the final hike to the river.
The air felt different: there was a freshness to it, a breeze that hadn’t been there before. When I looked up, the entire sky was covered with thick clouds that had rolled in while we’d been in the truck. I remembered what Cal had said about the storm. “Oh, please, please,” I begged.
We started marching. Everyone looked up when the first roll of thunder echoed overhead. A few minutes later, there was another one, then another. A cloud of birds rose from the treetops and flew away, squawking.
I raised my cracked lips to the heavens. Please!
There was a long rumble of thunder and then…
Dr. Guzman felt it first: lying in the stretcher: he had more surface area than the rest of us. He yelped as a spot of rain hit his leg. Then Colton got hit on the head. And then it was falling all around us: big, weighty droplets of rain, falling like precious jewels. We put down the stretcher and just stood there, arms up and mouths open, trying to catch even a few drops. But then the rain intensified, becoming a constant, hissing stream and we whooped and threw our heads back, letting it fill our mouths. Nothing in the world had ever felt so good. We let it soak our clothes, washing the days of dirt from our faces. Cal stretched out a tarp and we used it to collect the rainwater and channel it into our water bottles, refilling them one by one.
Only one person wasn’t enjoying the rain. JD was standing apart from the group, a grim statue, head bowed as rain drummed on his shoulders. No one else seemed to have noticed. “JD?” I said gently, but my voice was lost in a roll of thunder.
