Ocho makes a loud gurgling sound, stabbing a finger toward the forest, twisting his left hand around in a series of strange gestures that my dead sister seems to understand. “I know, I know,” she hisses. “But he’s completely out of it. Look at him.”
Ocho does look down at me, and he doesn’t seem too impressed. More gurgling, and more hand gestures follow. His headphones are looped around his neck, silenced, and I realize that this bizarre, out of body hallucination I’m having is the first time I’ve ever seen the man try to communicate with anyone. He makes a growling sound, pretending to gnash his teeth together. My sister shakes her head, sighing. “They’re not going to attack us,” she says. “Not when there are so many people out there to pick off.”
Ocho grimaces, rolling his eyes. He glances down at me again, nudging me with the toe of his boot, then makes a gesture that I do understand; he extends his index finger and stabs it repeatedly toward the sky.
Up.
And not just up.
Get the fuck up. Now.
He digs his boot into my ribs again, and a blast of pain shoots through me, ricocheting around the inside of my head like a pinball. I try to sit up, but the ground beneath me pitches sideways, threatening to tip me right off the very surface of the earth.
“Wait, damn it. Give him a second to figure out what the fuck is going on,” Laura whispers. She touches her hand to the side of my head, grimacing when her fingers come away bloody, and suddenly I’m not breathing. Not blinking. Not moving. Not able to make my brain function in any way whatsoever. My sister? My sister in front of me, dressed in a dirty black shirt and dirty black jeans, giving me the same look she always used to give me when we were fighting as children? What the fuck?
My lungs are screaming. I need to take a breath, but I’m too goddamn scared. If I move a single muscle, take my eyes off her for even a second, I fear she’ll disappear. How is this happening? How the hell on earth can this possibly be real?
A weak, sad smile slowly spreads across Laura’s face. She looks older than I remember. Tired. Different, in so many ways, and yet still…her. She takes hold of my hand and squeezes tightly.
“Hey, brother of mine.”
I couldn’t make a sound, even if I wanted to. I just stare at her, aware of how real and solid her hand feels in mine.
“I assume you came here for me,” she asks, “and not because you wanted to attend one of Fernando Villalobos’s top secret parties?”
“I—fuck, this can’t be happening,” I rasp. Reaching up with my free hand, I move my fingertips over her face, scanning her features, searching for some dissimilarity between this woman and my sister, trying to prove to myself that it can’t possibly be her. But it is. It fucking is. “Natalia told me you were dead,” I whisper. “I thought you were gone.”
Laura’s eyes are full of hurt. She looks like she’s trying her best not to cry and doing a horrific job. She always did find it hard to hide her tears, even as an adult. “She couldn’t know,” she says. “She had to believe I was dead. Everyone had to. Ocho helped me escape.”
I turn my head to look at the short, aging Ecuadorian man, immediately regretting the movement when my vision begins to swim. “You? How could you…?” Ocho is Fernando’s right-hand man. He’s been watching me since I showed up in Orellana, always there, loitering in the background, observing everything with those dark, unfathomable eyes of his. How can he have helped Laura escape?
Laura smiles up at the old man like he’s an old friend. “Ocho’s been hiding me in the forest for a long time, Cade. I told him about you, of course. When you showed up here, he brought me to the outskirts of the estate to show you to me. He said you were here to buy drugs, but I knew the truth. I’ve been waiting for you to leave the estate so I could come to you, but you’ve never been alone. Always with Natalia, or with Fernando.”
I screw my eyes shut, trying to process all of this, but it feels like an uphill climb that I’m not cut out for just now.
“You think you can get to your feet?” she asks. “We have to move. It’s only a matter of time before the wolves are finished with the guests. Once they’re in a frenzy like this, they don’t stop killing when their stomachs are full. They only stop once everyone is dead.”
“I can’t leave. I have to go back. Natalia’s still inside.”
“I know, but we’re out of time. If we don’t get down the mountain before Fernando has a chance to rally his men, then we’re all dead.”