Page 19 of Final Approach

“I need to know what happened to him.” Tears fell in fat droplets onto her dirty skin. “Jamie. I need to go in there, but I’m terrified.”

My scrunched eyebrows pressed against my glasses’ broken frame. “What do you mean? Weren’t you in there with him?”

Abrupt wracking sobs shook her body and she covered her mouth with both hands to stifle the noise. Dropping our supplies into the adjacent seat, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her tight into my chest, absorbing her vibrations.

“I don’t remember, Nikki.” She hiccupped into my shoulder. “I don’t remember anything other than waking up in that seat there.” She raised a shaking hand and pointed to seat 1A, the seat that now held our first aid supplies. “The last thing I remember is driving to the airport. But what if …”

She cut off, dissolving into another gamut of violent tears. I ran a palm through her hair, down her back, in calm, soothing motions, stalling my response until she could hear it. When the tears subsided, much more quickly than I’d anticipated, she straightened and lightly pushed on my chest. I let go immediately and mourned the loss of her at once.

“Marley, I don’t have answers for you.” I caught her gaze once again, willing my words to penetrate those captivating eyes. “But I know who you are, and I don’t believe for one minute you abandoned this plane for your own gain.” I broke our moment to dip my head toward the door. “We’ll go in together. Face it together. Okay?”

I got a hesitant nod through an aggressive batch of sniffles, and that was good enough for me. She turned on her heel, drew a breath, and pushed open the door.

Light flooded through the doorway in spite of the growing black smoke. The cramped cockpit was in pure shambles, a nest of wires dropping from the ceiling amid all of the turn dials and knobs. But most shocking of all was the absence of a corpse.

Captain Jameson Adams wasn’t there.

Present Day – Day 1

Breathe, Ambrose. Just mother-fucking breathe. In, out. In, out.

I could fucking scream. Panic and pain were fighting a shitty battle inside of me, and no amount of deep breathing was going to fix it. My chest ached with every inhale, like the convict across the beach had shoved a knife into my solar plexus. I wasn’t a doctor, but I was pretty sure I’d cracked a rib. More like ribs.

Fuck.

I’d been conscious for most of the descent. After I pulled on my oxygen mask, I’d followed the emergency procedure protocol the British flight attendant walked us through, and held my chest to my knees. Every mistake and humiliation flashed before my eyes like a movie montage of shame. When I couldn’t take the punishment any more, I’d lifted my head for the slightest second, and saw the captain slide into the aisle a seat ahead of mine and strap herself in. The plane bounced hard as I lowered back down and then—dark.

Was it possible to crack a rib off your own knee? Maybe it had been the armrest because the seats in this plane economy were far from roomy. I wouldn’t have broken a rib in a proper first class seat. Anger flared hot at the base of my spine, flushing all the way to my cheekbones. I shouldn’t have been on this plane at all.

The anger churned in my gut and left bile at the back of my throat, competing with the already bitter ashy flavor.

This was her fault. Captain Marley West was the reason we were stuck in the jungle.

I closed my eyes and drew in another deep lungful, cringing at the burst of pain and violent flash of white behind my eyelids. Vicious disappointment replaced the discomfort when I opened them only to see this wasn’t a dream—we were still stranded, somewhere in the Amazon—on what appeared to be a dried up riverbed, surrounded by a thick network of trees on all sides. The canopy was so dense, I could barely see the gray sky overhead.

That view was infinitely better than the reality down here. My gaze settled on the death trap that should have been our death sentence.

The small plane had landed on its belly. The hull lay across the riverbed like a dam. The metal was scorched black on the side we could see, the Aileron logo had melted into colorful drips that bled across it like some tragic painting I’d had to study from one of my bullshit electives in undergrad. The wing was torn apart, as if it had exploded from the inside out.

How in the fuck had we survived?

Well—some of us had made it.

Not even half of the passengers remained. Seven on the ground, all dumbly standing at varying points along the riverbed—some crying, most in numb shock—while the captain and her attendant tried to coax the last living passenger off the plane. I didn’t see the point. If she wanted to stay, she had a right to stay. I didn’t have the luxury of choices for most of my life. I wouldn’t be taking it from someone else. But it wasn’t my call, and I wasn’t volunteering to be a leader. I’d help where I could, if it meant we could get out of this hellhole and I could get home.

I was grateful for the distraction. The task kept the panic from consuming me, even if it was a temporary reprieve. Even if it came from the woman I didn’t trust one bit.

The hole we’d escaped through was only five feet off the ground, and looked like it had been carved open by an errant propeller. The razor-sharp metal had ripped open my shirt-sleeve when I was the last one to climb out, but I was nowhere near as roughed up as Danny, who’d taken a brutal slice through his thigh on his way down.

Torres, the convict, had done surprisingly well given his size. As far as I could see, he didn’t even have a nick in his clothing. It was too bad the detective didn’t suffer his own bleeding wound, but looking at him now, standing across the dry rocks and scowling, he looked far more inconvenienced than suffering.

That guy really rubbed me the wrong way. He had the energy of a man who kicked puppies for fun. Small dick energy prick.

“You’re putting those cuffs back on, Torres,” he growled, his voice echoing along the riverbed like a gunshot. “I don’t care where we are, you are still a prisoner under my care.”

Torres, to his credit, didn’t look bothered in the least. He stood at the edge where mud met jungle, his beefy tatted arms spread wide with his face to the sky, the grin plastered from ear to ear like this was the best day of his life. Hell, I had no idea how inmates were treated in South American prisons. Maybe a plane crash was a field trip.

When Torres ignored him, the detective moved closer, too close in my opinion for a man who wanted to keep all his limbs. I didn’t need to know what Torres was in prison for to know he could fuck me up. He was bigger than most of the steroid meatheads at my gym, and so covered in tattoos and scars he looked like he’d won a battle with a caged tiger ten times over.