Don't Look Back (32 page)

The moon streaked in and out of view overhead. They slowed to a limp, coming around a thicket of sugarcane. Eve collided into something huge and warmly soft. She yelled. It torqued its wide head and grunted, spraying her face. She felt not disgust but a flood of relief. Their burro. She rested a hand on Ruffian, calming him and herself.

Claire came up beside her. She tried to sling a leg up and over but failed, so Eve shoved her up. The burro immediately started moving at a fast clip back toward the lodge, picking up the trail and navigating in reverse the detour paths they’d forged on their way here.

Eve clicked the backlight on Claire’s watch, checking the time. Four hours till dawn. If they held the course, they’d make it. From atop the burro, Claire looked down curiously at her watch on Eve’s wrist. Eve didn’t want to give it back, and Claire didn’t ask.

The relative safety allowed Eve’s body the chance to register its complaints. Insect bites burned on the backs of her arms, her nape, and she dug at them with her nails. The blisters on her heels felt torn open. Her left-side ribs stung with every breath, an effect, she guessed, of the fall from the zip line.

Claire
tick-tocked
in the saddle, her silhouette dark even against the darkness. “The Jeep,” she said faintly. “It’s waiting for us.”

“Yes. We just need to make it back.”

“Just need to make it back,” she repeated. Her head swung over in Eve’s direction, but the empty gaze seemed to move right through her.

From her screams across the river to her collapse on the jungle floor, she no longer seemed to be the same Claire. She seemed diminished
.
During Eve’s freshman year of college, her roommate had been date-raped in the back of a pickup at a beach party. Eve had driven her to the ER and held her hand through the ensuing pokes and prods and interviews. Many of the details were a blur, but to this day Eve remembered perfectly her friend’s face during those awful hours. Claire now wore a similar expression of rubbed-raw blankness, that hollow non-glow that takes hold when it is impressed upon you that your body is not yours to control and protect.

“Claire. Claire?”

The head turned again, the eyes fastening on nothing.

“I’m sorry for what I said. That I didn’t care what you went through.”

“I killed him,” Claire said flatly.

The burro plodded along, and Eve plodded beside it. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I fell, and I— The trip wire when I— My goddamned legs, they— I killed him. Fortunato came to save me, and I … and I…” The tension drained from Claire’s body, her spine buckling, and she slid right off Ruffian as if poured from the saddle. Eve caught her limp form. Claire’s legs held no weight. Her arms stayed slung loosely up over Eve’s shoulders, her face buried in her neck, and she was sobbing so violently that Eve worried she might choke.

Claire finally found the earth with one heel and stabilized them both, but she stayed pressed to the side of Eve’s neck, sobbing for longer than Eve had ever heard anyone sob. At a loss, Eve reached for instinct, and the first one there, waiting and ready, was the maternal urge, burned into the cells themselves. She shushed Claire and swayed, trying to rock her, but staggering a bit under her weight. Claire calmed by degrees until she finally pushed up out of Eve’s arms.

“All right,” Claire said, wiping angrily at her face. “All right.”

She climbed up onto the burro herself this time.

The path stretched before them endlessly, an ever-replenishing corridor of brown and green. They couldn’t get to the end; it kept telescoping away from them. Every crest brought another rise, every turn another curve. The pain swelled to a crescendo in Eve’s bones and then faded, a survivalist version of runner’s high. Ruffian’s breathing grew more labored, and Eve understood that the animal had been run too hard for too long.

When the edge of a bamboo walkway appeared, poking out of the side of the trail, Eve feared it was a mirage. But no—they reached it, and the slats did not dissipate; they remained solid underfoot, all but glowing beneath the moonlight.

They had made it.

The lodge came up, the huts and stable nothing more than shadowy blocks. As Claire rolled stiffly off the burro, Eve tied the reins onto the rail before Sue and Harry’s adobe hut. Claire reached for Eve, and Eve shouldered under her arm. With excitement they hobbled up to the door, knocked twice.

“Don’t worry, it’s us,” Eve called through. “We’re back.”

They pushed inside.

Will lay on the bed, alone, gripping the turned-off flashlight, his leg propped up on a pillow. His wan, sweat-shiny face lifted from the mattress. His left eye was bruised, the upper lid hooded.

“I woke up, and Harry was trying to take the keys,” he said. “I grabbed for them. He hit me with the lamp. They just took the Jeep and drove off.” His laugh sounded like something dying. “He really loves that bitch.”

Chapter 42

Eve’s arm went loose around Claire’s side, and Claire fell away from her, half sitting, half collapsing on the floor. Grimacing, Will reached for the bedpost so he could pull himself up to face them more fully. Eve was incapable of moving, her feet spiked to the planks. The words were still settling in, working their way into meaning.

“Before I drifted off, Sue was getting really bad, really weak.” Will made a helpless gesture at his leg. “And then … I couldn’t stop them.” Only now did it register that his voice was hoarse from yelling.

“That fucking dick,” Claire said.

“How … how long ago?” Eve had no idea why the time frame mattered, but somehow it did.

“Two, three hours ago.”

They’d been on the riverbank then, laboring along, rushing through the pain to beat sunrise. The Jeep had already been gone.

“How did you do it?” Will asked.

Eve swept the question aside with her hand. Any explanation felt exhausting; the weight of her disappointment had left her barely lucid.

“Well,” Will said. “Thank God you’re both here.” Then: “Where’s Fortunato?”

“Dead in the river.” It surprised Eve how little of the emotion she felt made it into her voice.

Will’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He worked his lower lip between his teeth. “And al-Gilani?” A hopeful note ticked up the question at the end.

“Trapped on his side of the river. For now.”

Will gave a nod. He propped his chin on the flashlight, and it occurred to Eve that it had become a sort of security blanket for him. “We’d better figure something out,” he said. “And soon.”

Eve looked from him to Claire and felt something inside her snap. “God
damn it.
” She was spitting out words without thought. “I can’t protect you. Either of you. We don’t have numbers anymore. You two are sitting ducks. I
can’t
protect you. You’re useless here. Worse than useless. You’re a
danger
. I can’t … I can’t…” She lowered her head, her hair sweeping forward like curtains, blocking her face, blocking the room. She breathed, the blond bangs fluttering. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She reached a hand to the side, and Claire took it. She moved her other hand to Will’s good shin. They stayed like that for a time in the darkness, touching.

“Look at the bright side,” Will finally said. “At least we’re spared listening to Sue talk about the Omaha Women’s Loyal Order of Water Buffalos for eighteen hours down the mountain.”

“This is dead serious.”

“I know, Eve. But I don’t think that water level’s gonna drop for them to get the Jeep across. I don’t think they can make it.”

“You think you’ve got better odds here, injured, with us.”

“Yes.”

“But I’m the only one, Will. The only one who can walk. The only one left who can do
anything.
” The anger had left Eve’s voice; she was pleading, but she didn’t know to whom or for what.

“I know.”

He stared at her, the skin beneath his eye twitching slightly, his foot indenting the pillow. Claire made a sound of exasperation that came out like a choked laugh.

Eve took a breath and then another. “How’s the ankle?”

“Displeased. But Harry and Sue left me a few of these to ease the pain.” Will lifted a miniature spirit bottle from a fold in the sheets, the arty label proclaiming
DÍAS FELICES ECOLODGE
™. “Food, too. A bunch of protein bars. They threw ’em at me on their way out the door. Oh, yeah, they were real humane.” He took a slug of mezcal.

“Don’t drink that.”

“It’s fortifying.”

“It’s dehydrating. Drink water. We should keep the mezcal in case we need to start a fire. What else do you have?”

“The almost-out-of-juice phone and a hunk of Oaxaca cheese.” He blinked back his distress. “Good times.”

“You try for a signal?”

“Twice, real quick. Forget it till the cloud cover blows over. I figure when the charge goes, I could use a battery from the flashlight, wire up a basic circuit.”

“Junior-high physics,” Eve said.

He nodded. “Junior-high physics.”

Eve took the flashlight from him, shone it on the nightstand. It held a sad little collection of survival supplies that Harry and Sue had presumably left there within his reach—a few books of matches, a clean folded undershirt, several canteens and water bottles. Woefully inadequate.

“Drink some water,” she told him.

As he lifted the canteen, blocking his face, she swung the flashlight beam quickly to his foot. In the absence of ice, the swelling had crept to midcalf, the bruising more black now than blue. She touched his toes. They felt cold and hard, the circulation failing. She pinched, hard.

He did not react. At all.

He lowered the canteen and saw her face. Then his eyes dropped to her fingers, only now noticing them squeezing his toes. He said, “Shit.”

The beam wavered, and she knocked the flashlight near the lens to get it back strong. The batteries just starting to weaken. She pushed away her dread at that and refocused on his leg.

The shin puncture looked clean, the edges neat, but the skin around felt doughy and smelled like rank meat.

“The swelling,” he said. “It’s bad?”

“It’ll compress the artery even more, decrease venous return so blood can’t get out of the foot. Veins are low-pressure, so they’re more susceptible to—” She caught herself. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s bad.”

“What do we do?”

“See if I can manipulate the bone in there again, get it off the artery. If it stops compressing the artery, the swelling will go down.”

He blanched. “You sure I can’t drink that mezcal?”

“I’m sure.”

“Got a leather belt I can bite down on?” He didn’t smile. Eve didn’t either.

From the floor Claire said, “I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry I got taken.”

“And I’m sorry I wedged myself under a boulder. And Eve’s sorry she picked up Theresa Hamilton’s camera. We’re all sorry. It’s not us. It’s him. It’s just him.” He bared his teeth. “Now let’s get this over with.”

Eve cupped his heel and raised his foot gently off the pillow, and he screamed. From there it got worse. The noises coming from him were barely human. Eve tried and tried again until it was apparent there was nothing to be done. She lowered his foot at last, but Will kept growling with each breath, his fists knotted in the sheets. Then he dropped his head back onto the pillow and stared straight up at the ceiling, seemingly trying not to move any muscle in his body.

“We’re just gonna have to wrap it as tightly as possible and get moving,” Eve said.

Claire: “Get
moving
? Are you kidding?”

“That river’s too fast to cross in the dark. But come morning al-Gilani’ll figure out a way across. And the first place he’ll come is here.”

“So what then?” Will said. “You want to take to the jungle like Robinson Crusoe?”

“Robinson Crusoe lived on an island,” Eve said.

“If we go,” Will said, “we’ll slow you down. You won’t have a prayer with us.”

“You’re right,” she said.

“We’ll never make it out,” Claire said. “We’ll die out there.”

“I know.”

Will said, “Then what’s your plan, Eve?”

—stay alive to push him on the swings and tie his shoes and pack him lunch on field-trip days—

“First thing?” Eve said. “We have to hide you two.”

TUESDAY

Chapter 43

Eve couldn’t remember ever awaiting dawn with such dread. A spot of gold glowed through the leaves to the east as she led Ruffian off the trail and down an embankment. Claire rode in the front, Will behind her, and bundled on the very back of the animal were the deflated raft and the waterproof dry bag, stuffed with gear. The overloaded burro had begun to drag his hooves, and the sound of his wheezing did not bode well.

Back at the lodge, they’d rationed out some of the cheese, which Eve had devoured voraciously. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the first bite hit her stomach. The protein bar had disappeared with a few huge swallows, and she’d drunk water until it dribbled from the canteen down her chin. Afterward they’d packed up quickly and headed out in the darkness, hoping to get miles between themselves and the lodge before daybreak.

Guiding the burro down the embankment, Eve hoped she had her geography squared away. Sure enough the slope started to flatten out, ending in the relatively calm tributary to the river that she remembered from their Sunday excursion. Given the storm, the water moved more briskly than before, but the current hardly compared to the Sangre del Sol, and they’d be bailing out well before the point of convergence.

On the open bank, rain spit at them. Aside from a five-minute torrent they’d sat out beneath a sheltering plant with broad fronds, their early-morning progress had been made beneath a slight dusting shower. After the torrential downpour of the storm, it had taken a while for Eve to notice that it was raining at all.

Claire and Will gingerly climbed off the burro, and Eve slid free the balled-up raft. Will hopped twice on his good leg and swung himself down to sit. Ruffian shuddered and staggered. Eve slipped off his saddle and reins and led him to a puddle so he would drink. After, he dropped on bent front legs and panted, no longer any use. She stroked his nose. “Good boy. You can rest now.”