NINE

As it turned out, Acadia had pitched the tent less than a mile from a settlement. Unfortunately, it took her the better part of a terrifying day to stumble across the small Yanomami village, and that was by accident, not design. No one spoke English, and her rudimentary Spanish wasn’t enough for easy conversation.

Still, through gestures and the very real threat of hyperventilation, she managed to instill a sense of urgency in the locals and got four men to follow her back to where she’d left Zak. It took only an hour to return, as the four men weren’t slowed down by the wildlife, indecision, hunger, or thirst. True, the men did exchange some comments that she suspected weren’t entirely complimentary, when it became obvious that she’d gone in circles at least twice, but they knew how to cut through her vague directions, and that was what mattered.

She was so damned happy to see the tent—to know she’d made it back—that she would’ve cried if she’d had any moisture left in her body. Unzipping the front flap, she crawled halfway inside.

“Zak? Zak! I brought back help. You’re going to be—Oh, my God.” Heat sizzled from his feverish skin, elevating the already stifling temperature inside the tent. He was unconscious and still as death.

Conveying the situation was easy. Her frantic gestures and facial expressions might have been convoluted, but Zak’s physical state required no translation. She mimed what she wanted them to do, and within minutes she’d broken down the tent and gathered their meager supplies. The village men quickly formed a stretcher out of the tent fabric and poles they chopped down with their machetes and loaded Zak carefully on top, using one of the tie lines to keep him in place.

Acadia, so exhausted she was tempted to just toss what was left of her emergency rations into the woods, put everything back in its proper spot. The extra few pounds felt like cement bricks.

Zak lay ominously still in the curve of the stretcher. Acadia walked alongside when she could and dropped back when she couldn’t, never letting him out of her sight. His cheeks were wildly flushed, but he wasn’t sweating. Fever and dehydration: just as deadly as an infected wound in the jungle.

The men cut through the vegetation with ease, long machetes slicing through tangled vines and knotted plants much faster than she and Zak had managed. But instead of taking her back to their village, which she presumed was near a river, they went in the opposite direction.

“No. Wait! Espera—” She dashed ahead to the two men in the lead, reached out to grab a naked, oiled arm, thought better of it, and dropped her hand. “Don’t we … ¿no debemos—?” Crap, she needed a translator. “Are you taking us to a hospital? Hos-pi-tal?” They looked at her, faces blank and without any recognition for the word, despite her saying it loudly and as slowly as she could.

She felt like an idiot as they continued walking without breaking stride. Wherever they were taking Zak, they were taking him there quickly, and without any interruption from her. Giving up, she returned to her position beside him and took his hot, dry hand in hers.

She didn’t know exactly how long they traveled, but eventually they emerged from the trees. This new village was a little bigger than the one where she’d found the men, but not by much. And the buildings were mud brick with corrugated iron roofs, not thatched huts.

“Doctor? ¿Un médico?” she asked hopefully as they emerged from the trees onto a dirt track. It wasn’t a paved road, but at least it indicated civilization.

“Padre Araujo,” one of the men told her firmly.

Zak didn’t need a priest. She didn’t want to even consider that he’d need a priest. What he needed was a doctor. Maybe the priest knew where to find a doctor.

Jungle encroached on the rural village from all sides, pressing in like a living wall. If they were near the river, Acadia couldn’t see or hear any indication of it. And she didn’t see any vehicles of any sort.

She didn’t like not knowing exactly where she was, and she was so exhausted, she felt as though she’d been lost in the jungle her entire life. Right then, she would’ve given just about anything to be able to click her heels and get back to Kansas. Even glancing at the little GPS didn’t help her. It was now working sporadically, which gave her hope they were near civilization, but without a map, it was just a bunch of numbers; you are here. The middle of nowhere. Big help.

She already knew that.

A handful of men watched their progress. Zak’s bearers didn’t acknowledge them, and the locals didn’t call out a greeting. It was kind of creepy, as if they were in a somber, invisible bubble.

Acadia rubbed her upper arms, chilled even though the sun was shining. The savory smell of meat and onions cooking made her salivate, and her stomach rumbled. Counting back, she realized she hadn’t had more than a few mints and a protein bar in days. Once Zak was in good hands, maybe she could barter something she had left in her pockets for food.

She’d need enough for two. The alternative was … unacceptable.

Eventually, the men slowed in front of a cluster of structures that had seen much better days. They stopped before a building with boarded-up windows covered with mold-stained plywood. If the walls had ever been painted, the color had faded and flaked away long ago. A rusting corrugated roof sagged on one end, and was supported on the other by several old fifty-gallon fuel barrels piled one on top of the other.

An elderly woman with snow-white hair clipped close to her scalp appeared on the narrow covered porch almost before they got to the front door. She was dressed in knee-length khaki shorts and a luridly floral short-sleeved shirt, her darkly tanned skin weathered and tough. Waving them all inside, she spoke rapidly to the men, leading them down a dim hallway to the back of what appeared to be her home, but as they passed beds in each room, Acadia realized it seemed to be a clinic of some sort.

She could have kissed the men on the lips in sheer gratitude.

The woman instructed them to place Zak on one of four iron-framed beds in an otherwise empty room that smelled of disinfectant and cheap cigar smoke. She shooed at them impatiently and they melted away before Acadia could thank them.

A loud riiip brought her quickly to the other side of Zak’s bed as the woman—a nun, Acadia guessed from the rosary hanging about her neck—used both hands to tear his shirt off him. Buttons pinged across the tiled floor. With her head tilted like a curious capuchin monkey’s, the woman ran her gaze over Zak’s chest, taking in the dried blood and the glint of the silver chain from Acadia’s St. Christopher medal.

The woman made the sign of the cross, closed her eyes, mumbled something Acadia couldn’t hear, then picked up the cross at the end of her rosary and gave it a quick kiss. “Hmm.” She glanced over her shoulder with sharp black eyes that belied the white hair. “¿Su esposo, no?” The dialect was unfamiliar, but Acadia got the gist. What if she admitted she wasn’t Zak’s wife? Would he not get treatment? Would the sister insist someone with authority give permission?

Probably neither of the above, but Acadia wasn’t taking any chances. She lied without a blink. “Sí.”

“This. Tiene una herida de bala.” A gunshot wound. It wasn’t a question, of course. The sister wasn’t into listening, apparently. She was like a tiny steamroller in her pink Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and sporty, green plaid high-top tennis shoes with the toes cut off for ventilation.

Too tired to think beyond the here and now, Acadia nodded, her attention on Zak. “We were kidnapped,” she said in English. The whole kidnapping saga was beyond her grasp to tell in Spanish, and the sister wasn’t paying her any attention anyway.

“We were held—Oh!” She flinched, even though Zak was too far gone to do it himself. His breathing, labored and shallow as it was, didn’t even hitch as the nun tore the bandage away. “Shouldn’t you have maybe soaked that first?”

The bleeding on Zak’s shoulder started again. The wound smelled—Oh, God. It smelled putrid.

“This infection,” the tiny nun said in English. “Here. Here.” She pointed, but it was obvious even to Acadia’s untrained eye that the swollen red skin around the entry wound was infected. The question was, was this woman equipped to deal with it? And if not, then who would be? “Will take out bullet,” the nun informed Acadia as she walked over to an old-fashioned buzzer on the wall, jabbing a blunt nail against it several times. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? No. I’m not leaving him … my husband,” she clarified, just in case there was any doubt. “Are you a doctor?” She took a moment, translated it in her head first, and said stiltedly, “Ah—¿Es usted médico? ¿Mi esposo necesita una cirugía?”

The woman gave her a sharp look. “Yo soy mejor que un médico.”

She winced. “Not to be rude, and I’m sure you are better than a doctor, but I think we need a real doctor here.”

There followed an exchange Acadia couldn’t hope to win. From the bits and pieces she could pluck out of the lightning-fast rejoinders, Acadia learned that Sister Clemencia was in charge of the mission clinic while Father Vicente Araujo was in Caracas. And since the good father wouldn’t be back for a week, the sister was going to dig the bullet out of Zak herself, whether Acadia liked it or not.

She had no time for fluttering wives, and suggested—ordered—that Acadia leave, get food, rest, and come back tomorrow.

Acadia stepped out of the way.

Two men appeared and took charge of the patient while she stood helplessly against the wall. No matter how uncertain she was about putting Zak in the hands of the unusual nun, he looked frighteningly bad. And she was out of options.

The nun removed the St. Christopher medal and handed it to Acadia as the men stripped Zak and covered him with an old but clean-looking sheet, then swiftly wheeled him out. Sister Clemencia followed them down the hall, giving orders as she went, leaving Acadia alone in the room.

She stared blankly at the chipped, stained, age-yellowed walls and the rusted metal bed frames. The exchange with Sister Clemencia had been so quick, so fraught with language barriers, so freaking one-sided, that Acadia felt unsure if the nun was even qualified to perform surgery. Acadia was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t. She didn’t know if Zak would have been worse off in the tent or down the hall, at the sister’s mercy. She looked up at the wooden crosses on the walls and wondered if praying would help.

Maybe. But she doubted it. Shaking her head, she told herself that she should be grateful that she wasn’t still lost in the jungle, looking for anything even remotely like help.

She wandered over to look out of the window while she waited. There was just the one main street running between buildings that looked as though they’d been there a hundred years, with only a dozen or so still more or less intact.

The clinic was the biggest building in town. Across the narrow street, three men sat on straight-backed chairs outside what looked like a bar, dozing in the early evening sunshine. A chicken and a mangy black dog wandered between their feet, ignored.

She didn’t want to leave Zak here unprotected. But Sister Clemencia had made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t going to let Acadia anywhere near Zak until she was done taking out that bullet, and Acadia couldn’t just stand there for the duration.

They’d need transportation to Caracas. They’d need money. She needed a phone. Food was at the top of the list. She walked outside into the humidity and white sunlight to look up and down the street.

The smell of frying onions was stronger now, and Acadia could almost taste the steak underneath a heaped pile of golden-brown fried onions. A big baked potato. Heavy on the butter and sour cream. A tall glass of ice-cold Diet Coke.

She sighed, her stomach cramping uncomfortably. As Staff Sergeant Dad had always said, it was good to want things.

And God, she suddenly missed him. The dad she’d known as a kid. Funny, stern, resourceful, and—there. Always present for whatever she needed him to be there for. He’d baked cookies for school; he’d gone with her to buy her first bra, and sat patiently while she tried on dozens of potential prom dresses.

It was after that that he started to stop being the dad she knew, no longer consistently present. And then one day, he’d been there, but not present at all.

He’d watched her from puzzled gray eyes so like her own and not known who she was. A couple of times he’d called her by her mother’s name, Sylvia. And for the last five years of his life, he hadn’t called her anything at all.

But she knew what he’d have said in this situation.

Acadia straightened her shoulders and told her rumbling tummy to shut up. It was good to want things. Meant she was still alive, and eager enough to want.

Didn’t mean one got what one wanted.

The scrawny mutt trotted across the dirt road, all bony ribs and floppy ears, long tail wagging, and met her halfway.

“Hi, boy.” He was probably full of fleas, but she bent to give him a scratch behind one droopy ear anyway. He pushed his wet nose against her hand as she asked the three men if there was someone she could report a crime to.

One old guy laughed, which was gross, because his dentures smiled at her from the arm of his chair, while his own smile was full of blackened gums. He thumbed over his shoulder. “¿Policía? José Fejos …” He said more, but the dialect was hard enough to understand without the added impediment of no teeth. Stepping back out of range as he literally spat out the words, Acadia hastily thanked him and pushed open the door, the dog a shadow at her heels.

The good news was, they had someone who passed for law in town.

The bad news was that the law in Venezuela was so corrupt that police and criminals here were practically one and the same. In her research, she’d read that more than twenty percent of the crimes committed in the country were committed by police officers. She had a feeling the bar wasn’t the police station, and had an even sicker feeling about finding the policía in a bar, but she went in anyway.

The place was dimly lit. Not for ambience, but because the only light came through a shuttered window at the far end, where three men sat playing cards. A bar made of the same oil drums that held up the roof of the mission, topped by several stained sheets of plywood, held a few dirty glasses, an empty bottle, and a broken broom handle. An old-fashioned paddle fan missing one blade made a weird sighing thrup-thrup-thump as it turned lazily overhead. Small as it was, the cantina smelled like a lot of booze, and was also the origin of the tantalizing aroma of grilled onions. Her mouth watered. Maybe she was in time for dinner.

Clearly not that interested in a stranger in their town, the card players only glanced up when she walked in. None of them said anything, so her booted footsteps sounded very loud on the cracked tile floor as she walked up the narrow room to the back. The only clean spots on the floor were where things had spilled, and her boots made sticky noises with each step.

“Buenas tardes, gentlemen.” The dog sat beside her when she stopped beside the scarred, beat-up oak table.

“¿Quién de ustedes es el oficial policía?”

“I speak English.” The man closest to her slung a beefy arm over the back of his chair and looked at her from beneath the rim of a grimy black-and-orange baseball cap with a roaring tiger emblazoned on the front. A faded black short-sleeved shirt pulled across his large belly, exposing a lot of thick black hair on his barrel chest and the fleshy “smile” where his shirt parted from his pants.

Acadia kept her eyes on his face. Small, close-set, dark eyes. Heavy jowls, black five-o’clock shadow. Honest to God, he looked like every bad cop she’d ever seen in a movie. His accent was very heavy as he said proudly, “I am Police Chief José Fejos.”

Of course he was. “Police Chief, my name is Acadia Stark. My husband is at the mission right now, fighting for his life. He was shot by kidnappers—”

He leaned forward, popping two buttons off the bottom of his shirt in the process. “You are American?”

“Yes, we—”

“You have seen the Bengals?”

She frowned. How had the conversation switched? “Are there tigers here?” Not that she’d ever heard.

“Cincinnati.”

“Cincin—Oh!” The penny dropped. “The Cincinnati Bengals football team. No. I’ve never seen them.”

“Eh. Who shot your husband?” Now he sounded disappointed, and certainly not interested in her shot husband.

She took a deep breath. “We were kidnapped from our hotel room by a woman named Loida Piñero. Have you heard of her?”

“No.” He turned back to the game and picked up his cards. “You have papers, to be in my country?” He didn’t look at her as he asked the question, instead reaching for an unlit, soggy-tipped cigar in an overflowing ashtray beside him.

The dog leaned his thin body against her legs, as if lending her his trembling courage, and she stroked his head. “No,” she told the asshole police chief. “I told you, we were kidnapped. With just the clothes—”

He picked up a pink Bic lighter from beside the ashtray and swiped the cigar a couple of times with the flame until the end glowed red, then gave a couple puffs to get it going.

The choking stench drifted over her face. God, was he smoking manure? Disgusting. The stink obliterated the yummy fragrance of onions, not to mention any desire she’d had to eat.

He turned his Bengals cap her way and blew out a foul cloud. “Por la ley—by law—you must carry your passport and tarjeta de ingreso—your entry card—at all times.”

“Sí,” The guy to his right agreed. Bald as a billiard ball, he wore paint-splattered blue coveralls, was missing both eyeteeth, and had a tattoo of an openmouthed snake crawling up his thick neck. Lovely.

“Por la ley,” Acadia said tightly, glancing back at the portly police chief, “Americans shouldn’t be kidnapped in the dead of night and held for ransom. Sh—stuff happens. No, I don’t have any papers. I would like to report the kidnapping, and then I need your help to get back to Caracas as soon as my husband is well enough to travel. In the meantime, I’d like the use of a phone to call—”

“You have American dollars to pay?” He gestured with his cards for the man to his left to play his hand.

“To pay for what exactly? A new entry card?”

The tall, skinny man on Fejos’s left looked to be a hundred years old. His shoulder-length white hair was as fine as dandelion fluff, and his deeply lined face was baked dark brown by the tropical sun. Seemingly oblivious to the conversation, he tossed in a few coins and kept staring at his cards.

“How will you pay for Sister Clemencia’s”—the chief shot an inquiring glance at the guy seated across from him—“hospitality?”

As with the guerrillas she’d thought she’d left behind, Acadia would not like to bump into any of these men in a dark alley. She’d particularly not like to bump into the last guy, even in broad daylight.

In fact, if she had her way, she’d actively avoid him.

He looked about thirty, fighting fit, with bulging muscles and an attitude that dared anyone to try to knock the chip right off his linebacker shoulder. Probably just to kill the offender stone cold dead.

He looked like a prisoner, a gangster, and a nightmare all rolled into one. His dead black eyes ran over her like a creepy caress, lingering on her mouth before sliding a greasy visual trail to measure her breasts. She restrained herself from shuddering with everything in her body and looked back at the chief and said firmly, “I’ll send her money from Caracas.”

“How much money?” Fejos wanted to know.

“It depends … Look. If you can’t help me, just say so. But is there anyone in this town who can or will help two Americans get back to Caracas? We’ll pay well.”

“You can use my teléfono cellular,” the chief offered, taking a brandnew iPhone from his breast pocket. She was so tired, Acadia didn’t even blink at the incongruity of seeing it in this setting.

Almost weak with relief, she reached for it. He snatched it back. “Five hundred American dollars.”

“Come on—” She modified the anger in her voice. She was blond, she was relatively attractive. She’d catch more flies with honey. Relaxing her shoulders and smoothing out her crimped features, she dug up a smile. “Help me out here, guys. I don’t want to buy your phone, and honestly, I can’t afford five hundred dollars.” You opportunistic dirtbag.

Fejos grabbed her left hand, and she almost screamed the rusted ceiling down because she a), hadn’t braced herself to be touched, and holy crap b), did not want to be touched by him. “Where is your wedding ring?”

“The kidnappers stole all our jewelry. Everything.” The lie slid effortlessly from her tongue. Zak’s watch was tucked inside one of her pants pockets right beside the St. Christopher medal. “And it was a beautiful—”

“How much money you got?”

“I don’t have—” Lightbulb. It flashed behind her eyes and she said quickly, “I have twenty American dollars. I’ll go get it for you. Then can I make a call?”

He waved his sausage fingers like he was the freaking King of Siam and blew out a cloud of noxious smoke on the word “Go.”

Acadia went. The dog kept up as she jogged across the street, went inside the mission, and returned to the room Zak had been in. With a quick glance around, she unlaced her left boot, tugged it off, and removed the folded twenty she’d tucked inside a century or so ago.

Staff Sergeant Dad had been right. A girl always had to have a little mad money with her.

She and Zak had exactly twenty bucks between them. But with one phone call to her friends, she could have money here—wherever “here” was—within hours. Or at worst, by the next day.

She and the dog returned to the bar.

Acadia held on to the twenty and extended her other hand for the phone. “Thanks, this is so great of you to let me use your phone.”

Fejos plucked the bill out of her hand. Serious misgivings swooped in her stomach like dive-bombing pterodactyls. She didn’t trust him any further than she could throw his lard ass, which would have required a crane, but she needed that phone.

“One phone call.”

“Right.” Fortunately, she remembered the number of the hotel, since she’d confirmed her early reservation. Twice. Her friends would be there. Worried out of their minds, rallying the police. Sending out search parties …

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

The men at the table watched her, and she could almost read their minds. She wished she couldn’t. She half turned her back.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.

The dog growled low in his throat as suddenly the phone was plucked from her fingers mid-ring. Fejos was standing right behind her. “Sólo una llamada telefónica,” he told her roughly, tucking the phone into his pocket, then falling back into his chair. He picked up his cards. “You understand? Only one phone call. My telephone is only for police business.” He waved her off as he tossed her twenty into the pot. “Go back to your husband. Where you belong.”

With an iron ball of dread pitted in her stomach, Acadia left the bar, crossed the narrow street, and reentered the clinic.

With nothing left to do, she curled up in the bed Zak had been placed on what felt like hours before. She leaned against the hard metal headboard, causing it to clank against the wall every time she moved to pet the dog, who was curled up on her feet. “We are well and truly screwed, Dogburt. But I’m resourceful. I got us here, didn’t I?” She glanced at Zak’s watch, now strapped to her wrist. It was way too big, and the face kept sliding under her wrist, but it seemed to be working now. There were scratches and signs of wear all over the cracked face and strap; it reminded her of Zak. Plenty of scars, plenty of stories.

She wondered if she’d ever get to hear any of them. “He’s been in surgery for over an hour,” she told the dog, whose cold, wet nose was pressed against her bare foot. “Why’s it taking so—”

The door to the room crashed against the wall, scaring the dog to his feet on the thin mattress, and Acadia bolted upright. The man, in a terrifying bloodstained apron, his eyes wild, motioned her to come. Quickly. “Señora, señora, dale prisa, su marido está muerto.”

Acadia sprang off the bed. “God—what—”

He gestured wildly. “¡Rápido! Entre por aquí!”

Muerto. As in … Her knees buckled, and she dropped back onto the hard, saggy mattress to stare at him with dull eyes. “Zak is …” Her mouth dried to bitter cotton.

“Dead?”