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“Well, maybe being cut isn’t such a bad thing. I don’t want Lucy here any longer than she needs to be.” It was the truth, but it felt so selfish. Women were missing and another woman at the lodge could be next. “If we lose, then your chances of finding . . .” I let my words trail off when I realized our designated cameraman was now lurking nearby.
“We have someone else on the inside,” he whispered the reminder once the cameraman moved on to another part of the patio, and Jack set his eyes back on me.
And people on the outside. Was that enough to complete his mission? Was that what he was trying to suggest? Was he giving me a way out? “But?” I felt that word hanging in the air between us even though he’d yet to utter it.
“Carter won’t leave without her, and I’m on the same page as him. Camila’s like family to him.”
“Camila?” It was the first time he’d shared her name, and my stomach flipped. Wait. It couldn’t be . . . “Mila.”
“Mila?” he echoed back, arms falling to his sides as our eyes met.
“Your friend, is she from Texas, but she’s living in South America where her mom’s from?” There went my world again. Spinning off its axis as I connected the dots. “Mila was my friend who canceled on me at the bar last month. She was in Cape Town for work. Is she your friend who canceled, too?”
Jack blinked a few times. “You know her,” he said under his breath. “Fuck.” He cursed again, then backed up a step. “You’re not just some random . . .”
I had no clue Mila worked in private security, or that she had “visions.” But then again, hadn’t she been the one to suggest I move when we’d been neighbors years ago? It was like she knew I needed to get out of there but never directly told me, only planted the seed. And it grew with my paranoia, and Lucy and I took off two days later.
Now the question was, did I still trust her? If she was working with Jack, what if they were both playing me?
No, in my heart I refused to believe that. There’d been plenty of chances over the years for Camila to turn me over if that was the case. And Jack, well, yeah, I trusted that man. I didn’t even know how not to at this point.
“We need to go,” Carter said, breaking through what was about to become a complex what-if game in my head. “We are going, right?” He looked back and forth between us, and I turned my attention to Jack.
I closed my eyes. Just for one second. And I felt it. The decision I had to make.
“Yeah, we’re going, and we need to make it back,” I said while opening my eyes, making my choice.
“She knows Camila,” Jack said to Carter.
The way he shared the news, the grit and decisiveness in his tone, it was as if he was letting him know a hell of a lot more than just that fact.
Carter’s brows snapped together before he studied me. His broad chest inflated with a deep inhalation, then he let it go and simply walked away.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s something else you’re not telling me?” I murmured just before our cameraman approached and pointed toward the jungle, our signal to get started.
Jack frowned and whispered back as we began walking side by side, “Because there is.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHARLOTTE
“Will you talk to me?” We’d been hiking for four or five hours, dodging nature’s obstacles, and Jack hadn’t uttered a word to me unless it was related to the game. But with our camera guy, a six-foot-four dude who looked better suited for a football field, finally up ahead of us, it was a good time for him to spill whatever Carter told him.
When Jack ignored me, I stopped walking and waited for him to turn. And maybe I was also exhausted. Leave it to me to be the stubborn one who’d refused a snack on our last break. So, a quick rest was needed.
He wordlessly dropped the backpack he’d taken over carrying and removed one of the canteens before facing me. The impending offer of water was appreciated. The continued silent treatment, not so much.
If I mimicked one of my sister’s best pouts, would that work on him? Would he open up and share what was bothering him? I swiped back the stray hairs from my messy bun clinging to my damp skin as I waited for him to eat up the distance between us. “What’d Carter tell you earlier?”
More silence was all that greeted me as Jack pushed the canteen my way.
“I’m fine.” A straight up lie. I was a bit lightheaded, to be honest.
I folded my arms, but the man didn’t back down. He nudged my arm with the bottle and finally made eye contact.
Bad idea. I may have sucked at pouting, but I could stare a man down like I was Angelina Jolie in an action flick. The problem was, Jack had that skill as well, and he double downed and hit me hard with his own look. His intensity would have been chilling had it not also ignited my need to win.
“You realize I can do this all day, right?” At least he broke the silence, but the menacing tone from him wasn’t doing wonders for my spine. I wilted a touch, and a chill chased up along the curve of my body.
