“Come on,” Camden said, gently grabbing my wrist for a moment before walking over to the other tree, the one furthest from Javier. He sat down, his back to it, and motioned for me to come sit between his legs.
I could feel Javier’s eyes on me as I walked across the tarp and sat down, Camden’s knees on either side of me. He wrapped his arm around my chest and pulled me close to him, the small of my back pressed against his crotch, the back of my head against his chest, hot, sweaty, breathing steadily. All man, all this very protective man. The warmth and strength of his arms encasing made me feel like I was being wrapped in a cocoon, a security blanket for the night.
“Good night,” he whispered softly into my ear, his lips brushing against my lobe.
I squeezed his forearm in response, so grateful for him, so damn grateful.
“Sleep well, lovebirds,” Javier said, his cynical voice echoing into the night.
I woke up to my arm being tickled.
I opened my eyes and in the grey dimness of the morning light, saw a giant black spider crawling slowly up my arm. I immediately cried out and jumped back, brushing the spider off of me, feeling waves of revulsion and a million little spider legs cover me from head to toe, my body turning it into something more than it was. Like a panic attack, the feeling was impossible to stop and I shook my body vigorously, swatting at nothing.
It was only then that I realized I was completely alone.
The tarps were all gone. Everyone was gone.
Even Camden.
Holy fuck.
The jungle started spinning around me and I saw nothing but madness in the never-ending trees, faces made out of foliage, darkness in the limbs.
What the hell happened?
“Camden?” I cried out. “Camden!”
No, no, no. He couldn’t have left me alone.
I started running around where we had slept until I found my backpack, the contents strewn across the leaf-covered forest floor. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes, as I knelt down and frantically sorted through everything. My other gun was still there, my fake IDs, my passports, everything I didn’t want to leave behind in the Escalade. Whoever raided my stuff had left me everything. Why?
I needed to think. I screamed for Camden again and again, then tried everyone else’s names. I screamed until my throat was sore and I realized that I needed to shut up. If something had happened to everyone, if I was let go or missed for some reason, I was only making things worse, only calling attention to myself.
I branched out in a small radius from our sleeping area, going around the trees and then around the next ring of trees, always keeping my backpack, which I had placed in the middle of the trees, in my sight. Eventually, a yard or two out, I found the tarp. Shredded into bits. Blood on it.
Shit, oh fucking shit.
I dropped to my knees, feeling absolutely powerless. I was alone in the middle of the Honduran jungle, halfway between nowhere and Travis’s compound. I had nobody. Something had happened to them and more than that, Camden, my beautiful Camden, was gone. The last thing I remembered was his arms around me as I fell asleep. How could I have gone from that to this?
I wanted to cry. I wanted to crawl up against the hollow of a tree and close my eyes and let the animals take me away into the night. After so much, after so long, I wanted to give up.
But Gus was still out there. My mother too. There were people facing a much worse fate than this. I was able. I was willing. I would get them.
I took in a deep breath and dropped the bloody tarp from my hands and walked over to my backpack. I took a swig of water from the Camelback that was inside, shoved a tasteless portion of an energy bar in my mouth, then put the pack on my shoulders. I brought out the compass that Este had given everyone and started walking in the direction that we were originally headed. I wasn’t the best at reading trails but I would do the best I could, to find out where they went and if they were going to the place I both hoped and feared they were.
I made it about three minutes before I heard a bunch of macaw parrots squawk above me and fly across the canopy. Then the jungle went eerily silent.
Soon, I was running before I even knew what was happening.
I kept going, leaping over tree roots, maneuvering around rocks, keeping my legs and arms pumping as fast as I could. Breathe in, breathe out, keep going.
I ran until I collided into what I thought was a tree.
It wasn’t.
Hands dug into my upper arms.
I screamed.
“Ellie!” Camden exclaimed.
I stopped trying to fight him, to get away and looked up at the man who held me there, in the middle of the forest floor. It was Camden. His head was bleeding from a gash in the middle of his forehead, running red into his eyes, but it was him.
“Oh thank god!” I cried out and immediately wrapped my arms around his middle, holding him to me. “Camden, Camden, what happened?”