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No nickname and no handshake? Come on, man. I get it. You’re wondering, what the fuck? But she didn’t kill a Fed. Give me a little credit.
Charley lowered her hand, acknowledging he wasn’t “there yet” in believing her innocence.
“So.” Jesse strapped his pistol to his side holster, buckled it, then looked around. Always the operator. “The cameraman from your team reported what happened, and Camila let us know they’re deciding on whether to cancel the show. They’ve sent a search party to find you all. I don’t know if that’s to keep up with pretenses, so they don’t look complicit in what happened or not, though.”
“We should talk in private,” Gray cut to it a beat later, still observing me like he was calculating how much therapy I’d need after this op. My best friend had seen me at my worst, then a few levels below that. And sure, I’d been one moody motherfucker in the few weeks since Cape Town, but Charley was back and . . . I didn’t even know where to go with the rest of that thought.
“I’d like to hear whatever you have to say,” Charley said, a touch of grit to her tone.
“I’m thinking it’s me who needs to hear what you have to say, actually,” Gray remarked. Jesse motioned with two fingers he was heading in, likely grateful to escape our awkward situation. “But before we get into your version of what happened eleven years ago,” Gray went on once Jesse was inside, “and if that’s why these men are hunting you down, we’ll—”
“Wait, they’re hunting her?” I blinked a few times, trying to absorb Gray’s statement. The monkey above us made a little gasp-like sound. Yeah, you and me both, buddy.
“Hunting me?” Charley whispered when Gray took a moment to stew in silence as I got my shit together.
Gray rested the heel of his hand on his rifle, which was hanging on the sling across his body. His clothes were painted in more blood than Charley’s tank top had been earlier.
Weirdly—but also, thank God—in all the chaos throughout the day, not a single shot had made its way toward Charley or Lucy. I wasn’t sure if the bad guys were trying to keep the women alive for a different kind of trafficking (the kind that made me want to puke) or if— “They want her alive,” I said at the realization. How had I missed that? Right, my head was off big-time.
Gray dipped his hand into a pocket of his cargo pants, produced a crumpled image and handed it over. “We searched the men after we killed them, and I found this on one guy.”
Charley peered at the picture of her standing beside her sister during the kissing icebreaker on night one. The camera had zoomed in on just the two of them.
“I translated the message on the back,” Gray added, and I flipped it over to see Portuguese there. “Capture, not kill orders. One-million-dollar bounty.”
“A million dollars for us?” Charley murmured, her tone less shocked and more full of fear as she backed up a step.
I looked over at her while handing the photo to Gray, trying to wrap my head around why in the hell someone had placed a million-dollar bounty on their heads. “Too bad you didn’t leave anyone alive to question,” I said to him, still focused on Charley. If the color didn’t return to her face soon, I wanted to be close enough to catch her. “So, the kidnapper isn’t changing his MO, right? This is, uh, about something else?” Apparently, today was about her after all. And we’d be needing Charley to clue us in now. No more waiting.
“It’s not the kidnapper after me, it’s him,” Charley whispered, her hand moving to her throat, and she gripped it as if feeling the squeeze of someone else’s hand there. “I don’t know how he found me here, but it must’ve been a trap.”
“What trap? Who is this ‘him’?” Gray asked, shoving the photo into his pocket.
Charley had given me hints about “him” during our conversation in the treehouse, but she’d deflected, successfully stopped me from following the trail of crumbs she’d inadvertently left for me.
“I guess you do need to hear what I have to say,” she murmured, swiping her hand up to her cheek in a bit of a daze. “But if he’s behind this, we can’t stay here. He may not want Lucy and me dead yet, but he won’t hesitate to kill you all to get to us.”
No argument there. Today was all the proof I needed of that. “Does this mean we have two problems? The kidnapper and the man after her? Or are they somehow one and the same?” Was that even possible? It didn’t really add up, but I wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
Gray motioned toward the house, signaling for us to join the others. We could all hear her story at once, so we didn’t need to play the game of telephone later with our teammates.
“I, um . . . Are the Feds after me, too? Do they know I’m here? Carter said—”
“If they don’t know yet, they’ll know soon.” Gray frowned. “Word will get out that these assholes are on a killing spree searching for two Americans, one wanted for killing a federal agent.” His tone was cold and icy, and I reminded myself he still believed she was responsible for that man’s death. He didn’t know the truth yet.
Hell, I don’t know the truth. “So, we have three problems. The kidnapper, Feds, and the cartel being hired to come after them.”
“I just can’t figure out how he found me. Lucy’s TikTok account? But no way is he back at the lodge. I would’ve felt him there, I just know it. And does that mean someone at the show is working with him? Sending images and footage his way?” she quickly asked, making my head spin a bit.
“There could be an insider there, and our kidnapper is elsewhere, and they’re being sent videos.” Gray lowered his arm, realizing she was too lost to her thoughts to notice his suggestion to go in. “It’d make it a lot easier to answer your questions if we knew the name of the guy after you.” He let go of a gruff breath of frustration, then pinned me with a hard look, a request to encourage her to get a move on.
“Fine,” she said before I had to nudge her the right way. “But promise we leave after?” She looked at him, wringing her fingers together. “Like you said, more men will be coming.”
Gray lifted his chin, not answering her, only silently requesting for her to head inside.
“I’ll be right in,” I told her, assuming Gray would want a word alone before we all reconvened. Her eyes met mine, softening a bit, and she pushed the loose strands from her bun away from her face, then went inside.
Once the door shut, I turned to find Gray on one knee with his rucksack on the ground. “You seem to be missing a shirt, man.” He tossed me a black tee, a smirk on his face.
