Last Hope Read online

  My eyes widen and I go very still.

  A heavy rain begins to fall, spattering me from above. I don’t move. My gaze is on that jungle cat as it sniffs through things. If it notices us, I don’t know what we’ll do. Mendoza is unconscious and if I try to move him, we might both fall out of the tree . . . and land right in front of the cat.

  The situation hits me and I start to cry. I’m alone. I’m really fucking alone. I’ve never camped a day in my life, much less been in a jungle. I look down at my hands. They’re my livelihood. My way to earn a living. My income depends on them being soft and perfect, my nails elegant ovals.

  I have a long gouge down the back of one hand, and my pinky is bruised and swollen. My wrist looks like an elephant’s leg, if elephants were black and blue. Not gonna be hand modeling for a long while after I get out of here.

  If I get out of here.

  I’m sorry, Rose. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. I shudder back a sob as the cat slinks into the underbrush, something dangling and arm-sized in its mouth. I’m in the jungle with a busted hand and a stranger that just wants the information I’m carrying . . .

  And I don’t even have the information anymore. The purse is gone. I sniff hard, trying to fight back another sob that’s threatening to break free.

  “Don’t cry,” a voice says softly.

  I turn and look at Mendoza. His shirt is sticking to his big body, wet raindrops splatting down his face. He looks at me and smiles crookedly, and lifts a hand to try to touch my face. “Don’t cry.”

  I’m so relieved to see another person that I fling my arms around him and start weeping again. It sends a shockwave of pain up my arm, but I ignore it. Mendoza is awake and I’m not in the jungle alone.

  “You’re alive,” I wail at him.

  “Easy, easy,” he says, prying my arms off his neck. Our movements cause our perch in the trees to shake again, and we both go still. My body’s pressed against his with rain pouring down. Neither of us moves a muscle. Then, Mendoza looks up at my face, his inches from mine. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” I tell him. I hurt like fuck all over, but that’ll wait for another time. “We’re in the tree. I think it cushioned our fall. We’re in the jungle. I don’t know where everyone else is. There’s a jaguar down there, though. And I’m missing the purse and the folders.” The words tumble out of me in a rush. It’s like I want to get all the bad news out of the way before he has time to process it.

  His fingers push a damp lock of hair off my forehead and he studies my face with his good eye. The other is swollen shut and crusted with blood. “But you are all right?”

  Was he hit on the head harder than I thought? I contemplate reminding him that I’ve lost the purse, but maybe that isn’t the smartest idea. “I’m all right,” I say again. I touch his forehead gently. “You’ve got a huge bruise, though. Are you okay?”

  “Well enough,” he agrees, and tries to shift in his seat. As he does, the entire chunk of plane groans and shifts a few inches.

  “We should get down from here,” I tell him, still clinging to his shirt. It’s kind of helpless and overly girly of me, but I am just so stinking glad that I’m not here alone. “But there’s jaguars down below.”

  “They won’t bother us as long as we don’t seem too weak. They’re opportunistic predators,” he tells me, and glances down at my body.

  “Oh,” I say. Should I try to seem less wimpy? I look and I’m still clinging to Mendoza’s front, and my breasts are pushed against his chest. And he’s looking, too. Right. I sit up slowly and glance around. “Afonso had a gun. Think we can find it?”

  “If we can find Afonso,” Mendoza agrees. “Or what’s left of him.”

  That sounds pretty grim. I feel bad, too, because I prefer the “what’s left of him” part of the scenario. I shouldn’t wish it on anyone, but life will be so much easier for me if Afonso is dead.

  But then what happens to Rose?

  I squelch the terrible thought and examine the tree. There’s a limb not too far below us. “Shall we get down and assess our surroundings?”

  Little by little, we manage to get out of the wreckage and the tree. It involves a lot of crawling downward, testing branches, and clinging to tree bark. Mendoza’s steps seem to miss a lot, and I realize he’s misjudging distance because he can’t see out of his bad eye. There’s also a deep cut on my leg that I didn’t see before, and I wonder how many other “surprise” injuries we’re going to find.

  By the time we make it out of the tree, my wrist is throbbing painfully and the rain has stopped. Mendoza stands next to me, and then wobbles on his feet. I grab a handful of his shirt just as he totters. “Whoa!”

  He catches himself, and gives his head a little shake, as if to wake up. “I think I need to sit down.”

  “You sit,” I tell him, pointing at the base of the tree. “I’m going to see if I can find the snack cart from the plane. We need to clean and bandage that eye of yours. It looks pretty bad.”

  “I can help you look,” he says, ignoring my order to sit.

  “No, you can’t,” I say, and tap his chest with my index finger. “If you topple over and hurt yourself, I can’t pick you up. Sit down and I’ll check the area. I won’t go far.”

  Again, his mouth curves in a half smile. “You’re very bossy.”

  I snort. “It’s because you’re a terrible listener. Now sit.” I wait, a stern look on my face until he throws his hands up and sits down, heavily, at the base of the tree. I point at it, then him. “If I come back and you’ve moved from this spot, I’m going to give you hell.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says, and rubs his head. I can hear the tease in his voice, though.

  Once I’m satisfied that Mendoza won’t try to hurt himself further by “helping” me, I start picking through all the fallen debris. There are bits of unidentifiable parts everywhere, but I do manage to find a bag with some Hawaiian shirts. Under a nearby fern, there’s a battered water bottle, its contents intact. The drink cart might be somewhere around here. That’s good news, since I have no desire to venture into the jungle.

  I take my findings and limp back over to Mendoza. He’s got his head tilted back against the tree, and manages a smile for me when I sit down on the ground next to him. “I saw your wrist,” he says. “It looks bad.”

  “It’s not good,” I agree. “But I’m more worried about your eye.” I hold up the water bottle and give it a little shake. “This is the cleanest water for miles around, I’m thinking. We should use it to wash out your eye and bandage it.”

  “It’s only swollen; it’ll be fine tomorrow. Are you thirsty?” he asks. “Maybe you should drink it.”

  He’s watching me with that curiously intense gaze I remember from the lunch together. It makes me want to blush under his scrutiny, but now’s not the time to be prissy. I’m thirsty, too, but I’m also practical. I have no idea how to survive in the jungle. If Mendoza knows even rudimentary camping shit, he’s leagues ahead of me. He’s my ticket out of here, and so he’s going to get the clean water for his eye. “Wounds first,” I tell him. “Then we’ll see what we have left over.”

  “I was right,” he says with a chuckle. “You are bossy.”

  “No,” I tease back. “You’re just a bad listener. Now tilt your head back and let me look at your eye.”

  After a few minutes of examining, I have come to a single medical conclusion about Mendoza’s eye: it’s gross. I dribble clean water into it to try to flush out some of the crusty stuff, but I’m not sure what else to do other than bandage it and keep it clean. So that’s what we do. With the clothing from the bag, I pack a clean white undershirt against his eye and then hold it in place with strips of the Hawaiian shirt. It might be the only extra clothing we find in the jungle, and it might be a bad idea to destroy it, but to me, losing an eye seems worse.

  I tie the knot behind Mendoza’s head and try to ignore that my movements are pushing my breasts into his face and
he’s probably getting an eyeful of tit meat. “There,” I tell him. “That should at least keep bugs and things out of it until we get out of here.”

  “Thank you, Ava,” he says in that low, soft voice. It sounds like a caress when he says my name.

  “You didn’t tell me how you know my name,” I point out.

  “I’m Rafael,” he tells me. “Before when we spoke, I gave you my real name.”

  “And you totally just avoided my question,” I reply pertly. “So unless you want to lose that other eye, you should answer me.”

  Instead of being threatened by my cruel words, he just grins at me like he’s proud.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RAFAEL

  The ricochet of the bullet has swollen my eye shut. I might be slightly concussed from the free fall from six thousand feet into the jungle. I’ve no clue where we are and we have no supplies, but I’ve never been happier than when Ava stuck her tits in my face. Those babies felt like the softest pillows ever created and I would’ve been happy to suffocate in the damp valley of cleavage. Maybe I’d even get the chance to lick her sweat away.

  I might have groaned and pretended my injury was worse to lengthen the moment. Her delicate hands smoothed over my forehead and, it may have been my imagination, but it seemed liked she might’ve lingered over my hair. Dig in, I want to grunt.

  “What the heck is that sound?” Ava clutches me to her.

  If I don’t answer, does that mean I can stay in this position forever? Because I want to. Actually, no, I’d like to move over and suck one fat tit into my mouth until it’s hard as a diamond. Then I’d like to slide down until my mouth is level with her pussy and see how salty sweet she tastes between her legs. The beast between my legs roars to life and it’s a good thing that the monkeys above us scream again, causing her to jump and strike my good eye with her elbow. The pain serves as a reminder of where we are, who I am, and what the fuck I should be paying attention to.

  “It’s the howler monkey. They sound like humans screaming or sometimes like the jaguar. They’re kind of dumb and if we found Afonso’s gun, we’d be able to kill one and have meat every night for a week.”

  She shudders. “I don’t want to eat monkey.”

  The jungle is hot and wet during the day and cold at night. If the mosquitos don’t eat you alive, the jaguars and anacondas might. Not very many people can crash-land into the middle of the Amazon and make it out alive, but I’m upping our odds from around 20 percent to 50 percent based on Ava’s positive attitude. Unless my eye heals up, I’m not giving us more than that. If we could find the Boy Scout bag, though, we could bring our odds up significantly.

  “There’s plenty of food in the Amazon from plantains to fish, so if you don’t like monkey, we won’t eat it.”

  She shudders again. “Thank you.”

  “You a vegetarian?”

  No, that couldn’t be right. Didn’t she eat some prosciutto at the café? But I want to hear it from her. I want to know everything about her.

  “No, but for some reason eating something that screams like a human freaks me out.”

  “Monkey is off the menu,” I say, making no attempt to move away from her rack. “I have a knife in my belt.”

  “Do you have anything else besides the knife?” she asks. Her tone is accusatory like I’m holding out on her.

  “No,” I say slowly. “Just the knife.”

  She narrows her eyes and then reaches out with her good hand and pokes my waistline. “What about that?”

  “My pants? I don’t think that they’d fit you or they’d be a good weapon. Besides, I’d rather my legs didn’t get eaten by mosquitos.”

  “Look, if you just plan on leaving me behind, then do it now. Don’t string me along.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Just my luck to perv on a crazy woman.

  “That!” she spits out, and this time her finger jabs lower, right into the meat of my dick. I flinch back. “I can tell you’re packing something. What’s that thing in your pocket?”

  “None of your fucking business,” I growl out, my happy feeling sucked away. I can feel the heat rising in my face that has nothing to do with the humidity. I will my erection to subside but as she stares at it, it does nothing but grow.

  “Oh my god. Is that a . . . that’s not a gun, is it?” Her lips part in shock.

  “No.” The erection isn’t going to go down anytime soon. Not with her eyes wide with wonder. She raises her gaze to me and then drops back down again, and hell if she doesn’t lick her fucking lips. I turn away, unzip, and then pull the shaft straight up behind the waistband of my cargo pants. I fasten the zipper, carefully, and then pull my T-shirt down over the top. It hides most of the problem. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbles.

  I surge to my feet, catching her off guard. She stumbles back and thankfully stops staring at my junk. “Enough,” I growl more roughly than I intend. “We have important things to concentrate on, like where are we going to sleep for the night.”

  She looks stricken and nods in agreement. “Sorry, I just was taken by surprise. You don’t have to tell me what’s in your pocket if you don’t want to. But I need to remind you that we’re in this together.”

  I feel like an ass. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that she thinks my dick is fake. That’s a new one. Most chicks scream in terror. Time for a change in subject, because even her laughing mention of the man downstairs is making it excited. My loose-fitting pants are never loose enough when the beast is roused, and since I laid eyes on Ava, I’ve been thinking about little else but her, a flat surface, and mind-blowing orgasms.

  I change topics. “If we find water, we’ll follow it downstream until we find a village. Problem solved. We’re saved.” Why that makes me disappointed, I don’t think I should examine.

  But before we reach civilization, I need an explanation from Ava about the stuff she was carrying in the purse. It’s important enough that Afonso tried to take it, but it’d be nice to know exactly what I’m dealing with.

  I survey the scene. The seats that saved us are sitting in the canopy above. Around us are bits of metal and plastic, but the foliage is like a dense wall. We’ll need to go into the foliage to see if there’s anything we can salvage.

  “How do you know my name?” she repeats.

  “Because I’ve been watching you for several days. You’re passing out information to potential buyers for Louis Duval. His brother Redoine Fouquet is your keeper, and although he didn’t rape you, he did hit you.” I reach up and lightly trace over the bruise on her upper cheek. Ironically, that was the result of Fouquet’s fist, not the plane crash.

  She jerks her face away from my touch and I fist my fingers into my hand. Of course she doesn’t want me to touch her. Why would she? A pretty woman like Ava has men at her feet constantly. It is her beauty combined with her unusual eyes that made Fouquet fear her. The devil wears many faces, including my own.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to know what was in the purse. What were you selling?”

  “I don’t know,” she cries. “And if we don’t find it and get it back to Duval, my best friend is going to get killed!”

  “Who’s that? Rose Waverly? She’s a model like you, right?”

  “Not like me. Rose Waverly is a runway model—a famous one.”

  I shrug at this meaningless factoid. “But you’re a model, too, right?” At least that’s what we concluded based on Bennito’s research.

  “A hand model!” She shoves her injured hand toward me. “That’s all I’ve ever done, but I may not be able to get another job now.”

  “Huh, I guess that’s why we never found pictures of your face.” It also explains why her hands feel petal soft.

  “Who’s we? And how much did you investigate? Who are you working for? Who are you?” She places a hand on her hips and looks like she’s not moving until I give a full debriefing.

  “I’
m a mercenary. I take jobs from different people for different things, and one of those things happens to deal with Duval.”

  “That answers nothing.”

  That’s all I’m giving out. I reach up to rub my skull, and all my muscles in my shoulder scream in protest. We’re both going to feel like a piece of crap tomorrow. “I’d love to stand and talk all day, but we need to move. There are only a few hours of daylight left, and we need shelter before the sun goes down.”

  “I’m not moving an inch until you give me more answers.”

  I stare at her, and after a few heartbeats of silence, she throws up her good hand. “Oh, what am I even talking about? I may not even get out of this place alive.”

  “Yeah we will.” I look around for a stick. Bamboo would be good. “We’re going to look for some weapons—anything that could be made into a spear, like a shard of metal we can wrap to the end of a stick. There’s a black nylon pack with reflective tape on the bottom. It’s indestructible and if we find it, it has everything we need—tent, sleep blanket, mosquito repellant, water purification tablets, flint, lighters.”

  “It’s like a survival bag?”

  “It’s not like. It is,” I say smugly.

  “All right. I don’t trust you, though, and I’m keeping my eyes on you.”

  As if that bothers me. I pick up the half-empty water bottle. There must be more where these came from, although water is the least of our worries. With a leaf and a little sand, we can collect dew and rainwater. We need dry clothes and shelter.

  It’s hard to see the sun because of the dense canopy of leaves, but the moss on the tree indicates we are standing north.

  “You camp before, Ava?”

  “No. Never.” She claps her hand to her neck where a mosquito had just settled.