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I didn’t know how long I’d been in the river, only that I’d spent most of the time near the bottom with only a few quick chances to pull in a breath as the current took me briefly up to the surface. I couldn’t see, either: the river was moving so fast, it had torn tons of soil from the banks and they’d turned the water cloudy and brown. All I could do was hold my breath and pray for it to end.
Just as I was running out of air again, I felt the current slowing. I tentatively unwrapped my arms from my head, dreading that any second, I’d feel cold stone smack into my head. I began to claw at the water, hauling myself up, and at last, I surfaced.
I heaved in air, then dissolved into rib-shaking coughs. I was still spinning around like I was on a fairground ride, and my eyes were full of water and grit so I couldn’t see, but I was alive.
When I could finally breathe again and my eyes had cleared, I looked around. The river had widened…a lot. That’s why the current had slowed. The nearest bank was at least a couple of football fields away. I struck out for the bank and that’s when I realized how banged up I was: my body felt like one big bruise and I was scraped raw in several places.
At first, the bank didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Ninety percent of my effort was spent fighting the current that was dragging me downstream. But I kept mechanically dragging myself through the water and after what felt like hours, my hand hit dirt. I didn’t so much climb out as slither up onto the shore, and then I collapsed face down with my feet still in the water, too exhausted to go any further. The medical bag was still tangled around my body, the strap half-strangling me, and I shrugged my way out of it and dumped it on the ground.
I was absolutely broken. Bruised and bleeding, lungs sore and chest aching from coughing, soaked and more tired than I’d ever been in my life. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I’d been carried downstream a long way, far from Gabriel and the others. I was alone in the jungle, with no supplies and no training.
But worse than any of that, they were gone. The whole team captured. Even now, they were probably being interrogated, and once the soldiers had found out what they knew, they’d kill them. The other two doctors, Colton, Danny, Cal, Bradan, JD…and Gabriel.
I started to sob. I was too tired, too broken to curl up, or put my hands to my face. I just lay there, my cheek pressed into the cold mud, and cried and cried, my chest heaving against the ground.
He was gone.
Happiness, real happiness, for both of us had been within touching distance and it had been snatched away.
Tears coursed down my cheeks, the cold ground swallowing their warmth. Gabriel Kain. Rogue. Scoundrel. Charismatic master thief. He’d survived all those heists, all those gun battles and knife fights, picked up all those scars. And now he was going to die because for once, he’d tried to do something right. Because of me.
I couldn’t understand why fate, or destiny, or God, had done this. Someone had screwed up! They’d taken someone incredible and brave and cunning and left me: normal and boring and too serious for her own good. What really hurt was that if the situation was reversed, if I’d been the one captured and he’d been the one still free, I knew he’d come up with some clever plan to save me.
That thought sent me into wracking sobs, my body twitching against the ground. It went around and around in my mind: he’s going to die because I’m not more like him.
Until, eventually, the thought flipped inside out.
He’s going to die unless I’m more like him.
My mind rebelled against it. That’s crazy. I wasn’t Gabriel. I wasn’t even a soldier. I had no idea what I was doing or even where I was.
But I was all he had.
My tears slowed and stopped. I gave a long, shuddering sniff. And then I lifted my face out of the mud and started pushing myself up. My arms were like rubber, all their strength used up by the swim. My legs ached and my ribs, elbows, and hips were covered in purple bruises from banging into rocks. But eventually, I got myself up to standing and looked around.
I was on a narrow riverbank of red-brown soil. The river was behind me, and in front of me, the jungle stretched on for mile after mile.
What would Gabriel do?
He’d try to find me. I looked around. I had no map, not even a compass. But I knew the current had carried me downstream. Gabriel and the rest of the team were somewhere back upriver.
