“Hostel Travesura!” the van driver announced a couple of hours later. I’d been in and out of sleep, dozing and dreaming, rousing just barely each time we stopped to drop off other weary backpackers. I hadn’t even been paying attention to where we were, or that we’d made it back to Cusco, so when I heard the name of our hostel, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Dude, this isn’t our hostel,” Derrick said, leaning forward and resting his hand on the driver’s arm. “We’re at the top of the hill.”

The driver just shook his head and pointed to the door. Derrick looked at the other transportation coordinator sitting in the front seat. “We’re not getting out here. You can take us to our hostel, just like you’ve taken everyone else to their hostel.”

“No, no, you walk. Only twenty minutes. We are running out of gas and do not have enough to go all the way back up to the top.”

Derrick’s eyes turned saucer size. “Then why the hell didn’t you drop us off sooner, when we were already at the top? We’ll wait for you to get gas, we’re not walking in the rain and dark.” He was trying to remain as calm and as pleasant as possible, but there was a minor edge and mild, almost indiscernible threat to his tone.

Both men in the front shook their heads. “No,” the driver said. “You get out now.”

“Come on, mate,” an Aussie from the back yawned. “Just get out. We’re all tired. We all just want to shower and get to bed. Just do as he says.”

I spun around and gave a venomous stare to the man who decided to provide us with his two cents. I recognized him from Machu Picchu and Aguas Calientes. He was a Class-A douche, patronizing the locals and acting like a horse’s ass any chance he got.

He bobbed his eyebrows at me in challenge. “Turn that pretty head back around, sweetheart, and lose the scowl. I’m only saying what the rest of us are thinking.”

“No, you’re being a selfish prick,” I snapped back. “We paid the same amount as you for this tour package, and we’re not going to be bullied into getting out before the agreement has been reached. We’re to be dropped off at our hostel.”

I didn’t want to say anything, but after the week we’d had, being accosted in stores and in the street, I would fight kicking and screaming to stay in the van and not have to walk up the hill in the freezing rain in the middle of the night to the hostel. The men after us had already proven that they’d be willing to either follow me or hire out in Cusco to get what they wanted. Who’s to say they weren’t waiting for us or following us now? Who’s to say they weren’t in cahoots with our driver? I’d become suspicious of everyone, and until proven otherwise I considered every person we met guilty of trying to rob me.

A hand landed on my shoulder, and I jumped at first, but when I realized it was Derrick, I settled down. “It’s okay, Piper. I’ve got this.” And then he leaned over and tucked his head between the two men in the front seat, the three of them whispering back and forth.

I strained to listen, but then realized that I wouldn’t understand what they were saying anyway, so instead I just spun back around and glared at the Aussie douche-nugget. He returned my vitriolic stare, while the rest of the passengers seemed either bored with the confrontation or scared straight.

The van’s engine roared to life, and the driver pulled out into the street. Derrick leaned back and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close and kissing my temple. It was such a simple gesture, but it’d become our thing, and I loved it.

“What’d you say to them?” I whispered, slouching against him while putting my bag on the empty seat beside me. The van was only about half-full now, and we no longer had to hug our belongings to our chest.

He turned his mouth to my ear. “I bribed them. Plus, I pulled a page out of your playbook and told them you were pregnant.” I gaped at him, but he was all smiles, shrugging and pulling my head back down to his shoulder. “They were very apologetic, but I looked at the gas tank, and it’s pretty much on “Empty,” so it might be a little while before we get back to the hostel, as they have to stop and get gas.”

I snuggled in tight to him and sighed. “I don’t care. We’re dry in here; we’d be wet out there. As long as I’m with you, it doesn’t matter where we are.” And then, my eyes went wide, and I stilled; had I just said that out loud? I’d been thinking that, dear God, it’d been all I’d been thinking about for the last several hours as we quietly sat side-by-side, groggy and huddled up under his big alpaca blanket. Even though the van reeked and I was tired and cold, none of it mattered because I was with Derrick, and when I was with him, I was happy.

I was petrified stiff and so embarrassed of my proclamation that I didn’t dare sneak a peek at him. I just focused straight ahead on the clock on the front dash, it said seven-thirty. Was it only seven-thirty? It felt so much later; it felt closer to midnight. An embarrassed heat wormed its way up my chest and into my face. He still hadn’t said anything. Was he going to ignore it? Was that better or worse? I couldn’t decide.

“Me, too,” he finally said, kissing the top of my head. “I’m happy wherever you are, too.”

It was nearly another hour before we arrived at Hostel Travesura, having dropped off every other van occupant, including the whiny Aussie in the back, gone into town to get gas, and then ventured back up to the top of the hill to our hostel.

We thanked the drivers, even though we didn’t have to, not after the way they’d treated us. We gave them an extra twenty dollars or whatever the equivalent was in sols, grabbed our bags and left. But not before they both offered me their heartfelt congratulations on our “bebé.” I thanked them again, and just for good measure, gave my belly an affectionate rub before we lifted our wrists to the security camera and were welcomed back inside the fortress.

We checked back in and were given the key to our new room. A different one than before, but thankfully it was also farther away from the main hall where all the parties were, and by the sounds of it, a rip-roaring one was taking place that night.

I bent down to grab my big backpack from the storage room when a bunch of stuff started to spill out as I lifted it onto my shoulder. I put it down, and that’s when I noticed a giant slash through the side, as if someone had taken a knife or a machete to it. I looked around, and a couple of other backpacks, all the same color and style as mine, perhaps slightly varying in size or brand, had their sides also slashed open. What the hell?

I marched out into the lobby, where Derrick started talking with the man at the front desk. The two had somehow developed a friendly relationship, chatting and laughing whenever we’d come and go.

“Um… what happened here?” I asked, not wanting to experience a repeat of The Inca Treasure where they called the cops on me because I’d lost my cool.

The man’s face went beet red. “Uh…”

Derrick followed me into the storage room, and the terrified Peruvian man followed him. “What happened?”

“My bag and a bunch of other blue ones like it have all been slashed open. Look, there is stuff everywhere.” I turned back to the front desk guy, finally catching a glimpse of his name tag, it said Joe. “What happened here, Joe?”

He swallowed and licked his lips. “Last night, two men came here. They said they were here to fix a broken toilet, as one of the toilets in the dorm stopped working. But they were not maintenance men, and one held Luisa at gunpoint while the other went through the bags. We have an emergency button, and Luisa pressed it, and the police were called. But the men ran away when they heard the sirens.” His eyes darted back and forth between Derrick and I. “I am very sorry. But I do not think they took something…I mean, anything. They were looking for something very…particular I think. Do you know?”

Derrick’s eyes found mine, and we spoke without speaking. He turned back to Joe and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s no biggie, dude. As long as no one was hurt. Is Luisa okay?”

Joe nodded, the tension in his shoulders dissolving as he realized we weren’t upset. “She is okay, very…shaken up, but not hurt.”

Derrick asked Joe if they had any duct tape or something to secure my bag, because otherwise it was going to be useless, and I’d have to board the plane tomorrow with garbage bags. Joe nodded, and the two took off back to the front desk while I busied myself collecting all my things that were strewn about, muttering and cursing in frustration under my breath.

“What are they looking for?” I shrieked and threw things like a maniacal banshee once we were safely away in our own room. My fingers trembled as I ripped everything out of my backpack for the umpteenth time. “I’ve shredded this bag and can’t find anything out of the ordinary. And now they’ve literally shredded my bag and didn’t find anything. What the fuck?”

Derrick just stared at me and shook his head. “Do you want to cut it up? I can go and ask for a knife or scissors. We can get you a new backpack tomorrow. Our flight doesn’t leave until the late afternoon.”

Now it was my turn to shake my head. “No. How could someone have cut and then sewn up a hole in my bag in the three minutes I was gone to the bathroom? If that was even when it happened. Stupid Eduardo.” I clenched my jaw until it ached. “And if Robert wasn’t able to find anything, with his super spy ninja training, then there’s not anything in here.”

He grabbed his backpack, which was actually a similar make as mine, but red, and started checking it for hidden compartments or flaps. The floor of our room was no longer visible. It was just clothes and towels, books and random backpacker paraphernalia. And then he jammed his hand down, and his eyes flew up to me.

“What?” I was doing the smell test on a sweater I’d forgotten I’d packed and wrinkled my nose… I needed to do laundry.

“Does your backpack have this gap at the back between the hard panel and the canvas? There’s some barely visible, pretty much perfectly hidden Velcro keeping them intact, but you can definitely shove stuff down there. It’d be easy to miss, even for a super spy ninja.” His mouth twisted up into an amused grin, but then he quickly sobered when I gave him a scowl. This was not the time to be funny or cute.

I picked my poor mangled backpack up off the floor and opened it up at the top, pulling at the hard back panel, and suddenly the space was as clear as day. How had we not noticed it before? I rammed my hand down between the panel and the canvas, fishing around. If something was hidden, this had to be where it was; there was nowhere else. My fingers grazed something. A bag. A canvas bag. I heaved it up and out into the light. Holy crap! I flung the package onto the bed, fear tasting bitter on my tongue. I had not packed this, whatever it was. Someone had stashed it in my bag, and now someone else was trying to retrieve it.

“What is it?” Derrick asked.

I picked the package up off the bed, holding it out at arm’s length in case it decided to grow legs and bite me. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Slowly, I started to unwrap the small black bag, and out tumbled a well-wrapped paper and taped package. Using my teeth and then a plastic knife we found among all the stuff on the floor, we cut away the tape. I unfurled the paper and tape. Then, it was a thick and heavy piece of something, like what the dental hygienist drapes over you before they x-ray your mouth. That’s the closest thing I could come to for a comparison. Was it a giant piece of lead? They’d wrapped lead around the package? What on earth had I just smuggled?

I pulled the lead away and tossed it onto the bed. Next, it was foil. I tore at the foil. Whoever it was had gone to rather extreme measures to conceal whatever was in this bag. Once I finally got through the layers of foil, out tumbled a manila envelope. I opened the envelope and came face to face with a giant wad of cash. I pulled the money out. It was in neat rolls. All hundreds and fifty-dollar U.S. bills. Derrick’s eyes went wide as I dumped the contents of the envelope out onto the bed. And last but not least, after around twenty or thirty rolls of bills scattered out, came a small plastic bag. A plastic bag FULL of pills. There had to have been several hundred inside. Drugs had been in my backpack. I’d smuggled drugs, and money, probably drug money or laundered money, across international borders. I could have wound up in a Peruvian prison. I began to shake uncontrollably, and then, the dry heaving started. I could no longer breathe.

Strong, warm hands fell to my back as I hunched over, my hands on my knees, gasping for air, choking on nothing. “We need to call Chase,” he said softly, his hand rubbing rhythmic circles and drawing my hair up and out of my face in case I ended up puking, because at the moment it was not out of the question.

“What are the pills? What the hell did I just smuggle?” I stood up and faced him. “Oh, my God, I’m a drug trafficker!”

His hands moved to my shoulders, the pressure was grounding, and I couldn’t help but feel just a little bit better. “You’re not a drug trafficker.”

“Yes, I am. I just trafficked drugs from one country to another! Does Peru observe capital punishment? Oh, God, could I go to jail? Do they hang people or do firing squad? I think Indonesia still does the firing squad. I read that somewhere recently. So, it does still exist in the twenty-first century.”

He started to shush me. “You were a mule. An innocent mule. One who had no idea she was in possession of an illegal substance or money when she crossed borders.” He rubbed the back of his neck while shaking his head. “Boy, are we lucky they didn’t see those pills on the scanner. I guess that’s what the lead was for.”

I mewled. “Oh, God… I’m a mule. How is that any better? I should have known he was too nice to be trusted. You can’t trust anyone anymore!”

He unrolled one of the wads of cash and did a quick count. “There’s a thousand dollars here in this roll.” He lined up all the rolls and counted them. “Twenty-five. There’s twenty-five thousand dollars here.” Wasn’t the limit ten thousand dollars? Unless declared? Holy shit, I’d committed another crime.

He grabbed my phone off the bed and pushed it into my hands. “Call Chase. He’ll know what to do.”

I nodded, and with quivering digits, I found his contact information and hit dial.

“Hart,” came a grisly bark into the receiver.

“Uh…Chase…it’s Piper. Piper Valentine…from Lima…well…uh, Miraflores. You um—”

“Piper! Everything okay?”

I shook my head but then realized he couldn’t see me. “No,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “No, nothing is all right. Everything is not all right. Everything is wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” His tone was softer, almost big-brother-like. “Deep breaths. Slow down. It’s going to be okay. Tell me what happened.”

I inhaled and exhaled a few times, letting the air fill my lungs and clear my head. I nodded again. “We, um…we were attacked again, this time here in Cusco, that was a few days ago. When we got back from Aguas Calientes just a few hours ago, we found out that someone had gotten into the hostel and held the front desk girl up at gunpoint, while their accomplice cut open a bunch of backpacks. We think they were looking for my bag.” I swallowed and used a stray sock, I’m not even sure whose it was, to wipe up my eyes. I hoped it was at least a semi-clean sock. “So Derrick and I tore my bag apart again, and we found a compartment I hadn’t known about before…and…and we found a package of money…lots of money. Twenty-five thousand dollars and…and pills.”

“Fentanyl.”

“I think so. Robert…he said that they’re having issues with that here in Peru right now. Coc—”

Derrick stopped me. The walls in such an antiquated place were paper-thin, and we didn’t want to risk being overheard, so we went into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Who’s Robert?” Chase asked gruffly.

Oh, right, he didn’t know about our other incident. I filled him in on our movie theater escape and on Navy SEALs Robert and Aaron. Chase didn’t say much; he just grunted and said he’d look into it. I heard the quiet and rhythmic tap-tapping of fingers on a keyboard and wondered if he was trying to find something on them that moment. I highly doubted he’d find anything; men like the three of them weren’t found unless they wanted to be.

“We’ve discovered that The Inca Treasure is a hub or a front for distributing this new drug. But they’re using the dark web now for all their communication. Someone must have tipped them off to our bugs and taps, so we’ve had a harder time keeping track of their comings and goings. You’re not the first mule we’ve intercepted, just the first one we can tie to the hostel in Panama and The Inca Treasure.”

I tasted bile when he called me a mule. Derrick pulled me against him and took the phone; my hands had started to shake again.

“H-how’d they find me here, though?”

I heard him exhale. “I don’t know...is there a tracker in with the pills?”

We held up the bag and checked. “No.”

“Okay…how many pills are there?” Chase asked.

“A lot, man,” Derrick said. “Hundreds.”

“When do you leave Cusco?”

“W-we’re set to fly out tomorrow afternoon,” I whispered, not wanting to spend another minute in the same room as the pills. But we couldn’t very well flush them or get rid of them. Could we call the police?

“Stay where you are. Don’t leave the hotel for anything, okay?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” Derrick smiled.

“I’m procuring a charter. I’ll be there tomorrow morning, okay? You’re at Hostel Travesura, Cusco?”

I nodded again.

Derrick gave me a pitying look, while his hand resumed its comforting massage on my back. “Yep.”

“Okay. For now, just hide the pills and the cash. The toilet tank, or under the bed. Don’t act suspicious or weird. Go about your business, but don’t leave the safety of the hostel. And don’t let housekeeping in, either.”

My head just continued to bob. I’d lost the ability to speak.

“Can do, man,” Derrick said.

Chase made a noise in his throat before speaking again. “Okay. And hey, Piper?”

My head snapped up. “Yeah?”

“It’ll be okay, I promise.”

I swallowed, fresh tears stinging my eyes. “Okay.”