CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Danny
All the way up to the first platform, I’m replaying every word and fighting the wave of sickness that sends my breakfast gurgling back up my throat.
I can’t believe I spoke to him. I can’t believe I smiled at the man who raped my girlfriend.
The jungle blurs and in my mind I see his hands on her, keep imagining that smug smile on his face while he filmed his friends taking turns. It’s all I can do not to rush him, tackle him to the ground, and beat him until he’s nothing but a bloody stain on the forest floor.
It shouldn’t have to be this way. I shouldn’t have to hide my rage and hate. I should be able to throw my knowledge of what he’s done in his face and challenge him to a fight to the death. Right here, right now.
Civilization has gone too far. Yes, we should feed the hungry and heal the sick. Yes, we should have equal rights and equal pay and an end to discrimination for the color of your skin or who you choose to love. But we should bring back the duel. I should be able to call Todd out and fight him with swords or guns or fists.
I should be able to kill him for what he’s done.
It is my right as someone who loves the person he nearly destroyed.
We coast down the first zip line and press higher into the mountains. The sun is shining brightly, but a cool breeze stirs the canopy, keeping the humidity at bay. It’s the nicest day since I arrived in Costa Rica, but I might as well be in hell.
As I follow the three men who attacked Sam deeper into the jungle, I slowly start to lose my shit. I try to smile and joke with the other guys as I strap them in and pretend this is just another tour, like the hundreds of others I’ve led for my company in Croatia and others across Europe, but inside I’m dying. I can feel my temperature spiking and my stomach churning like I just chugged a bottle full of acid instead of vitamin water.
The stress of keeping everything I’m feeling locked inside is making me physically ill. Sweat pours down my face and my hands shake as I double check the shorter German woman’s harness, which she said felt loose on the last ride. She smiles and thanks me after, but shoots me a look that makes it clear I look as shitty as I feel.
As she walks away, taking her place in the lineup for the third zip line, Paola—who is about to climb the platform—pauses and reverses direction, coming to stand beside me.
“You don’t look so good, Danny. Are you okay?” She tries to lay the back of her hand on my forehead, but I step away.
“You don’t want to touch me, P,” I say, with a shaky laugh. “I’m sweating like a pig.”
She frowns. “I can see. Michael said there’s something going around from the cruise ship that landed a few days ago. A nasty virus or something. Maybe you’ve caught it. Do we need to turn around?”
I shake my head.
’m not turning around. I don’t want to give the brothers any more reason to remember me and I still need to figure out if Todd’s playing games or if he thinks I’m just a tour guide. “Nah, I’ll be fine. I think it’s something I ate last night. I’ll push through.”
“All right, but why don’t you take a few minutes to yourself once we get the last of them on the line,” she says. “I’m going to take the group up to the waterfall for a rest and posing for pictures. You can rejoin us on the trail on the way down. That will spare you a mile of hiking.”
“Thanks,” I say, knowing I need the time to pull myself together, but hating to leave Paola alone with this crew. “Don’t take any shit from the jocks, okay? And radio if you need help. I can be there in five minutes.”
Her dark eyes flash as she smiles. “Don’t worry about me, hero. I can handle myself.”
She pats me affectionately on the back and starts toward the platform, having no idea she’s out in the middle of nowhere with three men who would be in prison right now if justice had been served.
I mop the sweat from my face with the bottom of my shirt, force a smile, and somehow manage to get all twenty-five people sent down the zip line without tossing any of the SBE brothers off the edge of the platform.
If an “accident” happens, it’s going to have to be when Todd and I are alone, and we haven’t reached the highest lines yet. This platform is only a hundred feet off the ground. That’s potentially survivable, and if I send the guy flying, I want to make sure he’s never going to be getting up after he hits the ground.
Once I’m alone, I sit down in the shade and close my eyes, centering myself, pushing away all the emotions tying my body in knots.
There is a time and a place for passion, but this isn’t it. I need to be calm, calculating, in control. If Sam can hold it together while she’s in the same space with these guys, I can, too. They’ve ripped my world apart, but they’ve never laid hands on me, and if they did, I’m strong enough to take on all three of them and come out on top. No matter how far women have come in the past century, it’s still far safer to be a man.
It makes me hope Sam and I have boys just so I don’t have to feel so damned scared for my kids all the time.
Just a few days ago, I was sure the dream of a family with Sam was dead and buried. But now, I can see a glimmer of hope in the future. Someday, when all this is over and Sam and I have both had time to heal, we’ll be settled and happy together. And eventually that happiness will get so big we’ll be ready to share it with someone else, someone who’s half her and half me and who we’ll love enough to make up for all the horrible things in the world.
We just have to make it to Wednesday morning and get on that plane and all things will be possible.
Focusing on the future, on that not-too-distant time when Todd will cease to exist for me and Sam, helps me ground myself. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead or just somewhere far, far away, he’ll only be a problem for three more days and I can do anything for three days. If I made it an entire year without knowing if I’d ever see Sam again—or if she were even alive—I can do this with one eye closed and my arms tied behind my back.
I pound a handful of almonds from my backpack, willing my stomach to settle, and wash them down with another swig of water.
By the time I hitch myself to the zip line, I’m nearly back to normal.
I take the ride, managing to enjoy the rush of the wind cooling my skin and the vibrant, wild, alive smell of the jungle rising up around me. At the end of the line, I trot down the steps and start up the trail toward the waterfall, knowing I’ll have time to catch them before they leave. I don’t feel like I need a rest anymore. I want to keep moving, keep my blood pumping and my body ready to respond at a moment’s notice. I’m not going to think, I’m going to act and trust that my gut will lead me in the right direction.
Halfway up the trail, I hear soft voices coming from off the trail ahead and slow down. It’s a male voice and a female voice, but too quiet for me to place who’s speaking. I’m guessing that maybe it’s the husband and wife from the group, taking a private moment, but when I get a visual through the leaves, I see Todd and the blond girl.
I freeze, my boots making a scratching noise in the underbrush as I stop, but neither of them seems to notice.
The girl is leaning back against a wide tree trunk, looking up at Todd with a mixture of horror and disbelief as he says something I can’t make out. His back is to me and he has one arm braced on the tree above the girl’s head. But it’s his other hand that attracts my attention.
I watch as he reaches up, pinching the girl’s nipple through her tank top and twisting with a roughness that makes her cry out and cringe away from him. But he holds tight, whispering beneath his breath until her cry becomes an almost inaudible whimper.
I don’t know what he’s said to her, but whatever it was, it convinces her to stand still and silent while he reaches a hand up her shirt and pinches her again, this time, skin on skin. She grimaces and squeezes her eyes shut, but doesn’t fight him. I don’t know why she doesn’t fight—there are people close enough to hear her call out and come to help her—but she’s so young and Todd is an experienced monster. Making a victim of an innocent kid is no doubt easy for him. He probably didn’t even have to try.
If I’d seen something like this even fifteen minutes ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from running to help the girl. But I’m colder now, working from a place of thought, not feeling.
And so I watch as Todd shoves her shirt up, baring her small breasts and the faint bruises already forming on her nipples. I watch as he pulls his dick out and jerks himself off to the sound of the girl’s whimpers, all while inflicting more pain with his free hand. Near the end, he twists her sensitive flesh so hard that she falls to the ground with a guttural sound of pain.
The moment her knees hit the earth, he comes, splashing the sticky fluid onto one of her tear-streaked cheeks.
Everything is quiet for a moment after, like the forest is holding its breath in silent disapproval of what’s happened, and then Todd laughs.
He laughs and tosses a napkin from his pocket onto the ground in front of the girl as he takes a step back.
“Clean up and come join the group,” he says. “But give me a head start. We don’t want to be seen together, do we? Then your dad might figure out what a slut you are.”
I barely have time to crouch down, hiding beneath the wide, green leaves of one of the giant ferns growing beside the trail, before Todd turns and starts toward me. He emerges onto the trail, not five feet from where I’m squatting, but he turns the other way, strolling back up toward the waterfall like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
But then, he probably doesn’t.
He doesn’t have any regrets, he doesn’t have a conscience, and the world will be a more dangerous place as long as he’s in it.
As I watch the girl stumble after him a few minutes later, swiping the tears from her cheeks and tightening her ponytail with trembling hands, I silently tell her I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had to see what just happened to know what needed to be done, but I did. And now there is no more doubt in my mind.
But I’m not going to do it here.
I was wrong about being on Todd’s radar—it was the girl he was focused on—and he deserves worse than a swift, relatively painless death. He deserves to know exactly why he’s being put down, to have time to dread what’s coming next, and then to die knowing he’s not the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the jungle and that his life is over and nothing he did was worth a shit.
I’m going to get through this tour, tell Sam what happened, and let her know I no longer have any choice about what to do with Todd. I’m going to kill him. For Sam, for that kid who was lured into the woods by a good-looking older guy and ended up meeting a wolf instead of a prince, and for all the women Todd won’t live to hurt. He is a disease that infects everything he touches and he has to be stopped.
I haven’t felt called to do many things in my life—aside from loving Sam and taking care of my crazy family—but I feel called to do this. The sense that destiny is on my side for once floods through me, drawing me even more firmly to my center, focusing my thoughts on what needs to be done.
I backtrack down the trail and take the shortcut, meeting Paola and the rest of the group as they come around the loop and start toward the next zip line.
“You look better,” she says, chucking me on the arm.
“I feel better.” I smile as Todd walks by on her other side, surrounded by his brothers, all of them laughing as they give one of the guys shit for pissing on his shoes when he went into the jungle near the waterfall.
And I do feel better.
Because I know he won’t be laughing for long.