Page 22 of Her Faithful Protector

Don’t cry. Crying never helps anything.

“What’s happening? Tell me what precisely is going on. I want exact details.”

When Camilla laughed, she coughed blood. Yep, her mother was still the same uptight physics professor.

She spat on the ground so she could speak clearly. “Precisely, I’m inth the Mexican jungle, with a bunch of students. We’ve beenth kidnapped. Some of the students have died. You need to tell this man you can raise at least a million dollars, otherwise, I will end up worse than dead, do you understand me?”

Thank God he had let Camilla talk to her mother to prep her. Her mother might be an unfeeling robot, but she was smart. She knew how to read between the lines of any situation.

“How do I get them the money?” Enid Ross finally asked.

Camilla flinched as El Jefe landed beside her. Once again he yanked the phone out of her hands.

“Hello, Mommy. In two days I will give you wiring instructions. You better answer the phone. Your daughter was telling the truth; there are things worse than death.”

“I understand.”

He broke the connection and shoved the phone into one of the many pockets on his cargo pants.

“Who else wants to ask for special consideration?” El Jefe yelled out to the students. Nobody said a word. He gripped Camilla beneath her armpits and jerked her into a standing position. She screamed in pain.

“Ahhh, poor girl, do you hurt?”

Camilla refused to answer. He pressed down on her injured shoulder and she screamed again.

“Answer me, do you hurt?”

“Yes,” she bit out. At least the blood seemed to have stopped.

“That’s good. Maybe you’ll remember who is in charge.”

He looked up, scanned the crowd of students, and pointed. “You, come here.”

Camilla looked up and saw Travis Driver jogging toward her. He looked anguished. “Yes, sir?”

“Make sure she can keep up.” He shoved Camilla into Travis’ arms.

* * *

Shit. Three shot and two dead due to injuries from the bus crash. No identification. By the looks of the clothes, one looked to be one of the kidnappers. The other four were American students who were in the bus. The dead kidnapper was already missing some body parts, likely due to a jaguar since he’d been outside of the bus.

“Par for the course, the kidnappers gathered all of their belongings so they could figure out who they had and make ransom demands,” Kane said.

“Any luck on a passenger manifest?” Nic asked. He thought about some of the younger kids he knew before graduating who might have gone to William and Mary College. Were they on this bus?

Kane looked down at his tablet. “Not yet. The ETA is an hour. Not that it really matters, we just need to get to them before any more end up dead.”

“Wrong,” Max inserted. “If we could get the backgrounds of some of these kids, maybe we could find out if some of them have any hope of helping themselves or helping us. So far, the only one who seemed to be on their game was the tour guide.”

“Point taken,” Kane nodded.

Nic still wanted to know who was on the bus. He didn’t recognize the two women or the one man who was shot in the chest. The second man, there was no hope of recognizing him, since half of his head was missing.

“What’s wrong?” Raiden asked as he sidled up to Nic.

Nic stared at the girl at the back of the bus, her neck clearly broken.

“She looks so young.”