Page 43 of Final Approach

Nikki leapt up and clapped his hands, making no effort to hide his amusement, genuine this time. “I feel good under your care, Captain.” He flashed a mega-watt smile and motioned to the detective. “Come on, Diaz. Let’s play the heroes today, yeah?”

Shaking my head, I held up my wrist and pointed to the watch. “I’ll keep track of the time. Let’s see what we can get done in the next two hours, okay?”

Everyone dispersed and for the first time since we’d crashed, I felt the smallest sense of peace.

I emptied my travel suitcase onto the sand and pulled it behind me, strolling along the riverbed’s edge toward the copse of trees I’d seen yesterday. Ambrose silently shuffled by my side. Cloud cover moved in quickly, offering a reprieve from the scorching sun.

Picking up errant branches, dead leaves, and anything that looked flammable, I deposited each piece of jungle fuel into the suitcase and zipped it closed to bounce on the uneven ground behind me. Ambrose wordlessly handed me any material he could grab from the higher soil banks without having to crouch, and within minutes, the carry-on bag was full.

And battered to shit. Airline baggage took a beating, but not like this.

“Okay”—I pointed to the trees just beyond the small ridge of the riverbank to our right—“if you wait here, I can cut through some of this overgrowth.”

His brows furrowed into thin slices of judgment. “For fuck’s sake, Marley, I can come with you.”

My mouth popped open as I stared at the man with a chunk out of his chest, who could barely stand up straight, yet still copped an attitude.

“You can come with me? Ambrose, you can barely fucking move right now. Stop being a meathead and – ”

“Meathead?” The soft lines of his mouth curled up into a smirk. “Did you learn your insults in kindergarten?” He struggled to step up to the mound of soft earth at the very edge of the riverbed where the thick jungle overgrowth took over. “Let me help you.”

He stumbled on a fossilized tree root, and couldn’t stop the groan of pain from escaping his clamped lips. I turned away, giving him the chance to pull himself together, before I pushed the very obvious point.

Stubborn, insufferable meathead.

That wasn’t fair. Ambrose was obviously smart, and while his muscles were defined in a “I’d strip you naked just to get a view” kind of way, he wasn’t an overly muscled ‘roid head.

“Just let me help, Marley.”

The words were soft, uttered toward the trees instead of to me, but at once I understood. He needed to contribute. He didn’t know how. The quiet admission was a plea for purpose.

Sighing, I blew out my lips in a raspberry, like the kindergartner I apparently was.

“Tell you what,” I said slowly, placing the suitcase down on the ground beside me. “See those trees over there?” He straightened as I pointed to the few fruit trees I’d seen, about fifteen feet away. “How’s your eyesight? Could you direct me to where the best fruit is from here?”

Ambrose squinted at the area. Shrugging one shoulder and immediately wincing—okay, maybe he was as dumb as a meathead—he nodded. “I’m from California, I can find a ripe avocado.”

“Great!” I peeled back the foliage of the large fern on my way into the dense jungle and took my first step into the trees.

Curse these stupid shoes and impractical shorts. My legs were already getting scratched to shit by some unseen thorny thing on the underside of the leaves, and my heels dug into the inclined ground like miniature spikes.

My gaze should have stayed on the fruit trees in front of me, but I stayed focused on the ground cover, wary of slithering crawlers. I had little experience with snakes before moving to South America, and I didn’t want any. Indiana Jones and I were twins in that regard.

Something skittered in the dried leaves. Fuck, it was a snake, I was sure of it. Scrambling to get away from the creature, the thick exposed tree roots tripped me up faster than running from a jaguar. Stumbling, I blindly caught myself on the rough bark of another tree, and jumped back as if it had burned me.

“To your left, Marley,” Ambrose called with an irritated huff. “You’re not going to find any fruit on the ground.”

Biting my tongue so hard I could taste the iron, I rolled my eyes to the top of the several meter tall trees, remembering snakes, like Kaa in the Jungle Book, loved to climb trees.

“Thanks, great tip!” I called back, inching slower toward the fruit trees, dropping my gaze to what was directly in front of me to stifle the perfectly rational fear.

I’d survived a plane crash and a jaguar attack—surely Mother Nature wouldn’t take me out with a serpent just for fun? When death finally called my name, hang me by my thumbs, bleed me by my fingernails—anything but that.

Cold sweat dripped down my spine into Madman’s T-shirt. Surviving the wilderness hadn’t included snakes.

A rustle at my feet made me leap out of my skin. I swallowed the high-pitched scream in my throat as every muscle in my body tensed to the point of pain, only to see a large, speckled rodent come out from behind the fern.

Something warm brushed against my back. I whirled around, ready to defend what was left of my life, only to see Ambrose’s wide eyes staring back at me. He dropped the hand that had just touched me and clenched it into a fist at his side.