Page 26 of Final Approach

His returning grin could have stopped my heart. “As you wish.”

As he followed my instructions, I prepared to step in if he needed help. Fire safety was one of the cardinal rules of survival. Our passengers couldn’t take any more death-defying maneuvers today. My gaze flickered to the others gathering by the fire for the night.

Brooks sat on a bed of palm fronds, their backpack at the edge of the leafy blanket like a pillow. I worried about them. They, and the travel influencers, Vanessa, had said little since we’d made it off the plane. Their blank faces and empty eyes belied their shock. Tessa was working hard to connect with both of them, but aside from getting them to drink some water and eat a cereal bar, they’d each curled in on themselves as soon as we’d established our campsite.

“Numb dumb,” my papa had called it. “Most people will go numb, and some will go dumb. Only the clear head will live. You must always have a clear head, Amelia.”

Brooks and Vanessa were numb. The dumb one was the detective. Of that, I was certain.

Danny was also quiet, but the depth of his pain was clear when he collapsed on his palm frond bed with wracking sobs. We’d sterilized and bandaged up his leg, and given him ibuprofen for the swelling, but I was pretty sure the metal that sliced through his muscle had made it down to the tendon. Our first-aid kit didn’t have sutures, and nothing in our survival pile could have worked as a sewing kit.

I’d done the best I could for him and had to hope it was enough.

Ambrose, Nikki, and Madman were conscious, coherent, and listened well to instruction. It was a decent ratio to combat the “numb dumb.” The strong would take care of the weak until rescue.

Five days, Marley. We can make it five days if we have to.

Darkness fell like a heavy curtain, but the fire roared to life under Madman’ coaxing. Taking the small pile of fronds Nikki had left for me, I hatched them in a small crisscross pattern before sitting on them, ruing my ridiculous outfit. My shirt had a massive gash in it, exposing my whole chest, and the completely impractical pencil skirt had ripped up the rear seam, exposing the backs of my thighs like a pair of short shorts. I’d taken the tie off long ago and thrown it in our pile—maybe it could be repurposed as a short rope.

Redressing hadn’t been a priority, but under the cover of darkness, it was time to put on my only change of clothes. Thankfully I’d grabbed my small travel bag after we’d discovered the empty cockpit.

The empty cockpit because Jamie was missing.

There’d been no time to consider why, but the image of his empty seat had stained the back of my eyelids this entire day. Had he panicked and left the plane in shock? Was I truly concussed, and he was actually a bloody corpse in the plane, and I hallucinated his absence to block out the trauma?

I had no clue.

Jamie was a good man, someone I trusted with my life and my secrets. He knew about the ELT, the protocols. If he was still alive, I couldn’t leave him to die out here. Could I forgive myself if rescue came and he was left to die in this jungle alone?

No. If I failed him like I failed Papa …

I would go back to the plane at first light to look for clues.

With that determined thought, I rolled to my side to push off the ground like an awkward flopping fish waiting to die—pencil skirts, really?—and unzipped my bag to grab my clothes.

Standing, I shuffled several feet away from the fire into what would have been a shallow cove when the river was high. I threw on the T-shirt over my blouse and tore the ripped fabric from beneath the cotton to pull it off completely. Tempted to rip my bra off with it, I dismissed the idea as soon as it had come. Size G girls weren’t able to go braless with a group of strangers in a jungle.

Not bothering with modesty for the skirt already practically in two pieces, I unzipped the back and shoved it down my thick thighs, thankful and irate I’d chosen not to wear tights today. I pulled the cotton shorts over my knees. The thigh chafe had been brutal, making the inside of my legs tender.

Blindly wrapping my hair up in a ponytail with the one hair tie I always had around my wrist, my gaze caught on the clunky relic that could be our saving grace. The glow-in-the-dark hands looked as bright as moonlight against the inky backdrop. If we were in the Darién, we were two hours behind Brazil time, which meant it was 7:30. The sun set early here. We’d have to make use of our short daylight hours tomorrow.

Turning to return to my spot by the fire, my heart leaped into my throat when the dark shadow of Maddox Torres stared back at me from ten feet away. Backlit by the raging fire, his outline rose a demon from the flames.

“What the hell!?” I whisper-shouted as horses thundered in the cavity where my heart should be. “Maddox!”

I hadn’t heard a sound, not a rustling of leaves, or a scattering of dirt. Nothing. This monster-sized version of a man could have crept up behind me and snapped my neck within a second, and I wouldn’t have seen it coming.

But he hadn’t. Instead, he casually folded his arms across his chest, another lollipop candy stuck into the side of his cheek.

“You were alone,” he stated plainly. “I will not let you be alone, Captain.” He dipped his head toward the people seated by the fire. “You are responsible for them. I am responsible for you.”

I—what?

This man confused the hell out of me.

“You are not responsible for me, Maddo- Madman,” I corrected, not wanting to call the possible murderer by the name he clearly hated. “And this is totally inappropriate. Were there women in your prison? You can’t just stalk them into dark corners.”

“I wasn’t peeking, even if I was tempted.” He pulled the lollipop out of his mouth and his brows furrowed in a serious stare, as if imploring me to believe him. “You are beautiful, ángel, but I want to see your face when I memorize your body.”