Sophie, Mason, and I all slowly turned to face the men who had just emerged out of the forest. They stood, staring at us from the opposite rocky shore of the stream. The first four men were dressed in all black with bulletproof vests and they were carrying rifle-type guns. Beside them were two other men wearing fatigues and bulletproof vests. Mason stepped to stand in front of Sophie and me like a shield. The men moved towards us and I waited for them to lift their guns and take aim. The one guy who was in fatigues was bald and so huge his vest looked like a postage stamp on his chest. The men moved quickly towards us. I let go of Mason’s arm and stepped around him. My throat closed up and I had to force air in past the big lump that formed. My eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t even see through the watery mess as I slid down on my butt off the rock.
I tried to run, but I fell to my knees and the heels of my hands scraped across the dirt. A bolt of pain shot through the fractured bone. I didn’t care. I scrambled back to my feet and basically launched myself down the bank of the stream. I scrambled towards the men without even thinking. Although my vision was blurry from my tears, I could see the dark-haired one wearing fatigues sprint full speed at me. I hadn’t even taken two steps into the water before his left arm clamped around my body. It caused excruciating pain where the bullet was lodged in me, but I bit my lip to prevent a scream from escaping. It didn’t work. I screamed. The fingers of his right hand dug into my cheek and held my face so he could look directly into my eyes. I was trembling and my breath stuttered. I blinked away the tears and stared into his silvery-grey eyes. “Please tell me I’m not dreaming,” I stammered between sobs.
“You’re not dreaming,” Trevor breathed into my ear. “I told you I would always find you, no matter where you were.”
I hugged him with every ounce of strength I had left. It felt as if everything that was familiar and safe was with me. All the worry and stress that had been stored tightly in my muscles floated off my skin like a million tiny little bubbles. He leaned back to cradle my face with both his hands. We stared at each other for a long time before he smiled, which made me smile and cry at the same time. I hugged him again and rested my ear on his chest so I could hear his heart beat. “You promised you wouldn’t go on any rescues until I got home. You’re in big trouble, mister.”
“Are sure you want to bring up the topic of trouble? If I wasn’t so relieved to see you, I’d be yelling at you.”
“I know. Sorry.” I tilted my head back and kissed his lips softly.
He raised his eyebrow and ran his finger under my necklace pendant. “Nice necklace.”
“You would notice that and not the fact that I was shot.”
“What?”
I turned a little so he could see my shoulder.
“Jesus. Murph! She was shot.”
I looked over towards the cave, where Murphy was already set up on the flat rock with his first-aid gear, checking Mason’s bullet wound. Mason acted as if he was trying not to look at Trevor and me, but he glanced over briefly.
“Bring her over here. I’ll take a look at it,” Murphy hollered.
“Mason was shot too,” I told Trevor.
Trevor clenched his jaw and shook his head in an angry way.
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“Yeah, it was.”
I dug my fingers into his bicep to make him face me. “Trevor, please, we’ve all been through a lot. Promise you won’t blame him.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Please.”
“I can’t. He nearly got you killed.”
“I’m fine and he already blames himself more than he should. Promise.”
Trevor looked at me suspiciously, then reached down to lift my hand up. He turned it to check if I was wearing my ring. He saw it and let my hand drop again. “I can’t,” he said and turned his head until he wasn’t looking at my face.
“You can, and you will,” I warned him.
“I’ll try. I’m not making any promises.”
“Seriously? We’ve been lost in the Mexican wilderness, shot by kidnappers, starving for days, and you want to pick a fight?”
He inhaled heavily and cracked his neck to the side, as if he was trying to get rid of his urge to go after Mason. He closed his eyes for a second, then looked directly into mine. “I’ll try.”
I knew I wasn’t going to get a better promise than that and I was too weak to argue, so I let it go. We walked over to where everyone else was hanging out near the cave. The four guys in all black, who were obviously private security, had rested their guns on a log and were talking. Murphy examined Mason’s arm. Murphy had obviously given Sophie his Search and Rescue t-shirt because she looked like she was wearing a full-length nightgown as she sat and unwrapped a protein bar.
Murphy focused on Mason, whose arm had started bleeding again. “It’s not that deep. It shouldn’t be bleeding like this. Do you have any medical conditions?” Murphy asked him.
Mason glanced at me before mumbling, “Not that I know of.”
“Are you taking any medications?”
“No. Just two painkillers today.”
I walked over and spoke softly into Murphy’s ear as I hugged him, “Mason wasn’t feeling well, even before this happened. He had lab work done.”
“What were the results?”
“They weren’t back yet,” Mason murmured and shook his head at me.
Murphy finished dressing the wound with layers of gauze, then made him take some anti-inflammatory pills for his knee. He also burst two ice packs and held them in place on Mason’s leg with a tensor bandage. When he was finished, he turned to me. “All right, Deri. Take a seat. Let’s have a look at the damage.”
I sat next to Mason on the flat rock. He didn’t even look at me before he got up and hopped over to sit on the log with the guys in all black. They gave him a protein bar and Gatorade.
Murphy made a face when he looked at my shoulder. “You’re lucky the bleeding stopped. This could have been really bad.”
Trevor glared at me and his jaw tensed before he glanced over at Mason.
“Trevor,” I warned. “I’m fine. Oh, except my wrist is broken too,” I informed Murphy. “But that was from horseback riding, not from being chased by murdering drug dealers.”
Murphy shook his head in a way that made it clear he didn’t think my humour was appropriate.
He was right. It really wasn’t appropriate given the seriousness of the situation. “I have a brace somewhere.”
“Why aren’t you wearing it? You’ve probably made it worse by now.”
“It feels gross when it’s wet.”
“You’re such a wuss.”
“I took a bullet,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, I guess I can give you a little credit.” He shoulder-checked to see if Trevor was far enough away to not hear us. He was talking to Sophie. Murphy looked at me with dead seriousness and said in a low voice, “He’s not going to let it go.”
“It wasn’t Mason’s fault.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It was my fault. I have a big mouth and I’m the reason they even found out who Mason is. I put us all in danger. He didn’t do anything wrong.” I stood. “I’m the one who almost got us all killed. I’m the one who Trevor should be mad at. I’m the idiot!” I didn’t realize until I saw everyone staring at me that I’d been yelling. “Ugh,” I growled. I was so frustrated and whatever Murphy put on my wound was making it sting. I covered my face with my hands for a few seconds.
When I looked up, they were all still studying me as if they thought I was losing it, which apparently I was. I turned, took a couple of strides, slid on my bum off the rock, and walked into the forest to calm down. I pressed my back against a tree trunk only a few metres away and sat cross-legged in the dirt. I sat there until I heard Murphy yell in his booming voice, “Hey, hey, easy.”
I stood up too fast and got dizzy, so propped my hands on my knees and let my head hang down until the light-headedness passed, then I rushed back to the group. Everyone was standing near the cave. Trevor was in front of Mason and I could tell by Mason’s defensive posture that Trevor had either said or done something threatening.
“I wouldn’t have brought them here if I thought it wasn’t safe,” Mason said.
“You knew it wasn’t safe,” Trevor shouted. “You had a bodyguard for a reason. You used an alias for a reason. You didn’t care about their safety. You just cared about trying to get laid.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No? What was it like?”
“We have thirty-five volunteers and I’ve been down her for four months without one single problem. I wouldn’t have brought them here if I didn’t believe it was completely safe.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t answer the question. Why did you ask her to go to the camp?”
Mason didn’t answer, but whatever the look on his face was, it must have triggered Trevor because Murphy stepped in to hold Trevor back.
I climbed back up onto the rock and shouted, “Stop it. Please.”
I stormed straight at Trevor. My fingernails dug into his arm as I pulled him and made him walk behind the cave with me.
Once we were alone, I said, “I specifically asked you not to get into it with him. He’s injured and sick and it wasn’t his fault that the kidnappers came after us.”
“He was trying to move in on you. It’s not cool to move in on another guy’s girl.”
“Excuse me. I’m not your property. I thought you trusted me.”
“I do trust you. He’s the problem.”
“You’re acting immature and I find it really unattractive. We have way bigger things to worry about than what Mason’s intentions were when he invited us to the camp, which were innocent, by the way.”
“Really? Are you honestly going to try and tell me that he had no intentions of winning you back?”
I didn’t answer.
“See. He deserves a shit-kicking. He knows it, and you know it.”
“Grow up. He’s been a perfect gentleman the entire time and I didn’t make it easy for him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Did something happen between you two?”
I stared at him for a while, then made a face and bit my lower lip for a second. “Sort of.”
“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?”
“I sort of kissed him.”
Trevor turned and walked away.
“Trev.” I caught up and slid in front of him. “Don’t walk away.”
His eyebrows angled together. “Did you come to Mexico to see him?”
“No. I didn’t know he was here. It was a coincidence.”
“Really? Do you think I’m stupid? You randomly changed your trip from Tofino to Acapulco. Then you just happened to run into him while you just happened to be wearing the jewellery he gave you. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”
“I haven’t even talked to Mason since you and I started dating. Sophie’s dad gave us the tickets to Acapulco. It was a total coincidence. Ask them.”
He inhaled heavily and then paced as he spoke, “When I heard that you and Sophie were with Mason and you were being chased by drug dealers with guns, my world felt like it was crashing down around me. The thought of you being harmed, or worse, was the most devastating thing I have ever experienced and I literally couldn’t get here fast enough to find you.” He paused, took a breath, and scratched the back of his neck. “When we found you and I saw you standing on that rock, it was—I can’t even put it into words—it was seriously the best feeling in the universe. I never stopped thinking about you for even one second. So, to hear that you were not only, not thinking about me, but you were thinking about someone else and kissing someone else, really hurts.”
“I was thinking about you,” I protested. “I dreamed about you and our future together. I prayed for you to find us. I had visions about you constantly. When we had to jump off the top of a fifty-foot waterfall in the dark and I didn’t know what we were going to land on, my dying wish was to kiss you one last time.” I reached forward and pulled at the strap of his bulletproof vest so he would stand closer to me. “When I was delirious, Sophie and Mason told me that you wanted me to drink water and get stronger, so I did, because I thought you wanted me to. They knew you were the only person I would do it for.”
“You kissed him.”
“It’s not exactly as bad as it sounds. I lost a lot of blood and I got a little confused. I thought you had already come to rescue us and I kissed you because I was so glad that you were here with me. Later, when I started to feel better, Sophie told me I had been hallucinating and you weren’t really here. I realized that I must have kissed Mason by mistake. I thought he was you.”
His expression softened. “You thought he was me?”
“Yes.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a borderline cocky smile as he stepped closer to wrap his arms around my waist. “Couldn’t you tell the difference?”
“I was delirious. Give me a break.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and said, “There is nothing else that I want in this world more than to be with you. You’re all I have ever wanted and you’re all I will ever want, but I’m not going to lie to you. I care about Mason as a friend and it’s not his fault that I do. It doesn’t change how I feel about you, though—you’re my everything.” I touched his chest above his heart.
He dropped his head down so our cheeks rested against each other. “I love you,” he whispered.
A twig snapped in the forest a few metres away from us and I peeked over Trevor’s shoulder as a figure slid behind a tree. I grabbed Trevor’s arm and spun around so we could run back towards the security guards. They were already standing in wide stances on the rock above us and aiming their weapons at the spot in the forest where I had seen the figure go behind the tree. I heard movement behind us again and they opened fire above our heads.