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“My what?”
“Your affairs. Your papers, your last will and testament.” I sprayed myself with insect repellent, and then I did it again. “Because if the lightning don’t get ya, the crocs probably will. Or the mozzies.” I stopped and looked at him then. “Had a malaria shot? Have you heard of Ross River Fever?”
He scowled at me; his piercing eyes looked like blue fire. “If you’re trying to dissuade me, it won’t work. It will just make me more determined to go. So if you won’t join me, perhaps I can take your vehicle and drive myself.”
I tossed the can of insect spray to him. “Oh great. So then I’d have to walk outta here to get you some help. Stellar idea, genius. Just out of curiosity, where would you like your body shipped to? If they find your body, that is. Usually a croc will just take ya into deeper waters and pummel you a bit, leave you stuffed under a log or something, till you’re nice and tender. Bodies are rarely recovered. They just find finger marks dug into the riverbank and they stop looking. Call off the search parties right then and there.”
He was staring at me now. “Are you finished?”
“Not even close.” I sniffed. “Now, mangroves in particular have high concentrations of lightning strikes—”
He sighed loud enough to stop me. “Which is why I’m going. So, you can either come with me or I can go in alone.”
I glared at him.
He glared right back at me.
And for the longest moment, neither one of us blinked. I caved first, snarling at him for good measure. “Did you major in stubbornness at university?”
“I have a doctorate.”
“In stubbornness.”
“Actually—”
“Instubbornness.”
Then he sighed and I felt like we were on a seesaw, where neither one of us would ever get the advantage.
He glowered. I huffed.
He mumbled under his breath while he packed up his own shit, I lowered the walls and closed the place up. We would likely be back, but it wasn’t guaranteed, so I treated it like we were leaving for good.
We drove the Jeep out in silence.
* * *
“Are you driving recklessly on purpose?”he asked. The track was bad, and he was holding onto the oh-shit bar, giving me the stink eye every chance he got.
“Yes, I designed this track to have more craters than the moon, and I’m choosing to hit every single hole in hopes that I break the suspension so we get stranded out here because, honestly, getting taken by a croc and enduring one of the most painful deaths ever is preferable to whatever your fuckin’ problem is.”
He glowered at me even harder as we bounced through another bad part of the track. “And you think I’m stubborn.”
“No, I think you’re stupid. Incredibly intelligent, and really fuckin’ stupid.”
Aaaaand that earned me some more silence.
And then I felt bad.
But thiswasstupid. And he knew the risks and he still wanted to go. And I was stupid enough to be going with him.
Did that make me stupider?
Goddammit.
After a long stretch of silence and a lot of bumpy kilometres under the tyres, I knew I had to break the silence. “I’ll need you to navigate,” I said. “Can you see if you can get any signal for a map on your iPad?”
“Do you not know where we’re going?”
