Chapter 32
Eddy was asleep, curled up in the passenger seat, knees tucked nearly to her chest, downy lashes soft against her apple dumpling cheeks. She really did look like an elf, or a fairy. Shit! What had he been thinking?
Gabe ground his teeth and faced the road ahead. It was still raining. The roads were deteriorating by the second, which meant they would have to hoof it soon; the fairy was going to have to get wet. Soaked, in fact. Drenched. And maybe killed. Or tortured.
God, he wished he had her gift for silent vomiting.
Seeing a break in the jungle on his left, he goosed the Pinto’s pathetic engine. They bumped off the so-called road and into the vines, but they didn’t make it twenty feet up the mud-slick hill before the engine failed.
Beside him, Edwards woke, dewy-eyed as a bottle-fed lamb as she yanked a hand toward the dash with a gasp.
The world seemed silent after the clatter of the engine. Dusk was just falling, though the dark, low-slung clouds made it seem later.
“What’s going on?” Her voice cracked a little.
“We’ll have to leave the car here.”
She took a second to digest that information. A second longer to absorb the abysmal conditions outside their questionable refuge. “Are we going to try to hide it?”
He gave that some thought. “The jungle might do the job itself. I’ll take the keys and hope we can come back for it. But it’s not registered in our names, so it shouldn’t come back to haunt us.”
On the other hand, she already looked a little haunted. But that wasn’t his concern. She’d signed up for this little slice of perdition of her own volition and she was a big girl.
She glanced over at him as she laced up her boots. “What’s wrong?”
For a big girl, she had seriously tiny feet.
“Nothing,” he said and shoved Noa’s Walther into his pack. If they acquired any more weapons, they’d have to rent a U-Haul.
Edwards pulled her pant legs down over her laces and straightened, lips pursed. Lifting the GPS from the dash, she tapped a couple of buttons and scowled at the screen. “Looks like it’s about ten kilometers to Angels Falls. Just a little farther to the gulch.”
Ten klicks. How far was that on fairy feet?
She shoved the GPS into her pack. “That’ll take what? Four, maybe five hours?”
He was tempted to call the whole thing off, to get back onto the road and return to Bogotá, but the putrid Pinto probably wasn’t going to start, and that dumbass Shepherd was still MIA.
“Durrand?” she said.
He bumped his mind back into gear and took a chug from his camelback. It wouldn’t be long before they had to filter any water they found. They wouldn’t do Shep much good if they were puking up their guts from giardia or whatever creepy little organisms were found in these parts. Of course, Tinkerbelle had already ralphed twice with nary a giardia to be found.
“Depends on the terrain,” he said, happy as hell he could remember what she’d been talking about. “We’ll probably be lucky to get there before dawn.”
“Then we’d better get at it,” she said and stepped out of the car.
He didn’t have much choice but to follow suit.
The rest of the night was like a quaint little version of hell. The rain was nonstop. The footing was horrendous, slick as petroleum jelly with roots and rocks protruding at bone-jarring intervals. It was as dark as pitch inside the bowels of the jungle, but they kept going, creeping forward with nothing but their pale headlamps to light their way.
“Durrand.” Edwards’ voice was raspy and faint. She stopped, bending slightly to catch her breath. They’d been climbing steadily for over an hour. His right thigh pulsed with pain and his latest gunshot wound wasn’t attributing to his comfort. “Do you hear that?”
He held his breath and gripped his sidearm. “What?”
“Water.”
He stared at her and let his hand relax on the butt of his pistol. “It’s raining,” he said.
She might have given him a peeved look, but who the hell could be sure in these damned nightmare conditions. “It sounds like a waterfall. I think we’re getting close.”
He took a moment to concentrate, and maybe…maybe she was right. Then again, maybe it was Guapo Herrera pissing on their boots.
Optimism…it scared the shit out of him. “We’ll set up camp once we reach the other side,” he said.
They trudged on, tripping, gasping, moving at a snail’s pace. But finally they stood at the edge of the falls. The rain had stopped, but the wind had picked up, chilling their damp bodies and chasing the clouds over the moon and beyond.
“Look at that,” she breathed.
“What?” he asked and found his pistol again, but she remained absolutely still for a moment, suggesting they weren’t about to die…at least not in the next few seconds.
He glanced to the left where the cliff arced away. Here, beyond the canopy of the trees, it was brighter. Plump droplets sprayed into the darkness like diamonds on black velvet, and below them, the river wound away like a chain of silver to some unknown destination.
“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Her tone was awed, her back unbowed.
His bitched like a bleeding ulcer.
“Maybe we should pitch the tent here.” She turned toward him. Her eyes were bright, and her shirt was plastered to her body, showing every delicate curve.
He hauled his gaze away. What the hell was the matter with him? It was bad enough he’d dragged her to this godforsaken piece of nowhere without treating her like she was a damned sex object. “No,” he said. It sounded like his throat had been cleaned with battery acid. “We’ll stay on schedule. Cross now. Get a couple hours of sleep and do reconnaissance in the morning.”
She nodded, humped her pack like a good little soldier, and gazed into the fast-flowing stream a few feet in front of them. “It doesn’t look like it’s more than a few inches deep here,” she said and stepped toward the water.
He caught her by a strap. “Me first.”
She glanced back at him.
“We don’t want to risk our gear,” he said and tried not to groan as he dropped his pack on the ground. “You stay here while I check the depth.”
She didn’t argue.
There was no point in trying to cross on the rocks. A single slip could cause disaster. Besides, he was wet anyway. Still, as the water soaked into his boots, he shivered. It was mid-winter cold and probably crawling with creepy things. He didn’t like creepy things. But overall, the news was good. The water never rose above his knees. The stream wasn’t more than thirty feet wide, and no one seemed to be waiting on the far side to shoot them dead. Turning carefully, he returned to Edwards and retrieved his pack.
“There are potholes off to the right,” he said, bouncing a little to settle his straps against the blisters on his shoulders. “But if we inch a little closer to the edge, the bottom’s relatively smooth and the water’s not too deep.”
She nodded.
“Stay behind me,” he added.
The current tugged at his pant legs, but he kept his footing and she followed behind.
“It shouldn’t be more than two—” she began and then there was a splash.
Durrand spun toward her, but she was already falling. Lunging forward, he caught her by the sleeve and dragged her close. She flailed, trying to get her footing. It seemed to take a lifetime for her to rise again, but finally she stood.
“You okay?” His voice was raspy.
Hers sounded atypically subdued. “Yeah,” she said but she looked small and frail in the moonlight. “I’m fine.”
He stared down at her and squelched the despicable desire to lift her into his arms. “Hang on,” he said.
“What?”
“Hang on to my pack.”
He didn’t know if he should be alarmed that she didn’t argue. But he turned away and felt her grip the strap up high near his shoulder. They plodded through the water in unison until they finally stood on the opposite shore. The bank sloped up from the river.
A sliver of relief sliced through him. “All right. Let’s find somewhere fairly level to catch some –” he began but suddenly his feet slid out from under him. He crashed into her. She was down in an instant and gathering speed as she shot toward the falls. For a second, her face was a perfect oval in the moonlight and then she was gone, torpedoing over the edge and into the black void beyond.