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As much as her heart wanted to protest, logic had to take over at some point. Stopping herself before she touched the hot stove again was a survival tactic.
“What’s next?” she asked Knox. “Are we heading out?”
“I assume you both ate breakfast already,” he said as he moved to his pack, closed off the top, and then shouldered it.
“Yes,” Amy responded at the same time as Lorna.
Amy, for one, was relieved Donnie had taken off on his own. He’d been nothing but a pain in the backside once they reunited. He’d abandoned her in the first place, she hadn’t forgotten that move. And he did little more than keep Lorna confused and frustrated. The man was a waste of time and energy.
“What else can we do?” she asked.
“Get yourselves ready to head back out,” he stated.
Amy cocked an eyebrow.
“Going back in can play a number on your mind,” he explained.
“I’m good,” Amy said, pretty sure that was true. She turned to Lorna. “How are you holding up?”
“Home sounds pretty great to me right now,” Lorna said.
“Truer words have never been spoken,” Amy agreed. Only home had started to feel a lot like Knox. Silly her and her schoolgirl crush that had her thinking they could have something lasting. The renewed attraction was probably nothing more than muscle memory. If that was a thing. “If all goes well, when might that be a reality?”
“At this point, I’m making no promises,” hecountered with a hand in the air. “My hope is to make it to the extraction point by nightfall. That will happen only if we don’t have any detours or complications, which I think we all know by now would be considered optimistic.”
“Who will pick us up?” she asked. “Is someone waiting there?”
He shook his head. “Once we get to the extraction point, I’ll signal for a pickup.”
“Then how long will it take?” she pressed, the thought of leaving the relative safety of the village to go back into the jungle where she’d nearly died starting to play with her imagination.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “There’s no village there with folks to take care of us or feed us. My guy could have been called out on another mission or he could be hanging out in a bar in Peru, waiting for the signal. These pilots are in demand and you don’t usually find them sitting around. But we might get lucky.”
“What if he can’t come?” Amy asked.
“He will,” Knox reassured.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because we’re part of a group that has each other’s backs,” he said, shouldering his pack. “If he can’t make it personally, he’ll send someone.”
“So basically, if I understand this correctly, we’re heading out to some kind of clearing where thereisn’t anyone waiting, but you’ll signal once we get there.Ifwe get there alive. And then, at some point, but we don’t know when, someone will pick us up if we aren’t killed in the meantime.” She frowned. “What are the odds of survival?”
“For soldiers?” he asked, his expression serious. “They’re high.” He walked past her toward the opening of the hut. “For civilians? Maybe you’ll be the first to make it out alive.”
He turned around at the door with a big smile plastered across his face. “Maybe you’ll defy the odds.”
And then he laughed. The turkey.
“Okay, fine,” she said, joining him at the entrance and forcing Lorna to come along.
“It’s safe here,” Lorna whined. “Nothing inside me wants to go back into that jungle when there’s food and shelter here.”
“Yeah,” Knox said casually, “but once I leave, they’ll eat you.”
Lorna’s eyes momentarily widened with shock. Then, it dawned on her that he wasn’t serious. “Cannibals?” She rolled her eyes.
Knox laughed. He was having fun with them. Normally, Amy wouldn’t hesitate to jump right in. Lowering her guard around Knox wasn’t happening again.
