by Molly E. Lee
The bigger this place grew, the more I thought about how useful it’d be to have Sadie by my side. Not just because I wanted her there in every way a man could want a woman, but because she was better than me. She could get inside this structure with no problems and quite possibly uncover paths and chambers that I may overlook. She’d take one look at this lost city and melt. Hell, she’d be ready to bend over backward to assure it was preserved, along with any indigenous life that had taken up residency within it.
Another sharp tug grounded me in the present. I had plenty of slack in my hand, at least another good thirty feet of line. “Wade?” I asked. When he didn’t instantly respond, I bolted in the direction in which I’d left him. “Wade?” I prompted again.
“What’s going on?” Easton asked.
“Wade isn’t responding. But there was a jerk on the line.” I scissored my legs through the water, cutting it as fast as I could.
“Do you have eyes on him?”
“Almost.” I rounded my arms over my head, using the force of my muscles to propel me farther, faster. Images of Wade entering the structure on his own and getting stuck or lost or panicking filled my head. Cocky as he was, I didn’t believe he’d do that. So that left two options. He was fucking with me. Or something happened. Though I knew I’d filet him, I silently prayed he was fucking with me. Some kind of joke to time how fast I could swim.
My heart jolted in my chest when Wade came into my vision. He had dropped the line and his arms and legs splayed out around him like he’d fallen asleep.
“Fuck, Easton. Somethings wrong,” I shouted, scanning the area as I got my hands on Wade. “He’s unconscious,” I said after I’d confirmed he had a pulse, which was hard as shit to get through the suit. His eyes were closed, and for once the guy didn’t look like the intimidating jokester he was.
“Is it his tank?” Easton’s voice was eerily calm.
“No. First thing I checked.” I gathered one of his arms around my shoulder. “No visible injuries.”
“Did something fall on him? Knock him out?”
I darted my eyes around the area, unable to see anything that could’ve caused this. “No, I don’t think—” All the air in my lungs froze. My muscles locked up, stopping the progression I’d gained with Wade in tow.
“Connell? Do you copy? Connell!”
My brain told me to push the talk button, to tell Easton I was all right. But I was fucking petrified. Swimming—no, slithering—through the water not ten feet from us was one of those thick, fat, dark-greenish vines I had seen earlier. Only this one had eyes. And flaps of skin that swayed back and forth as it took a snakelike trip through the water. But this wasn’t a fucking snake, and I couldn’t decide if I was happy about that fact or not. Because I knew an electric eel when I saw one. I just normally wasn’t so damned close, and they normally weren’t so big. This one was easily the length of my body.
Controlling my breathing, I slowly moved to push the talk button on the shoulder that wasn’t supporting Wade’s body. “Eel.” It’s the only word I could say, because how the hell did I know if the thing would hear me, take offense, and come shock the shit out of me, too.
Damn. Poor fucking Wade. I supported his weight, hoping he’d been clipped and not forcefully attacked. A small touch could easily knock him out, but a repeated strike could send him into cardiac arrest. We had to go. Now.
“Get out of there.” Easton put voice to my no shit thoughts.
I unsheathed my diver’s knife with my free hand and swam. The eel didn’t seem interested in our progression, thank God, because if I was forced to tango with it, I’d need both hands to kill it. And dropping Wade wasn’t something I actually wanted to do in his condition. Pushing as hard as I could with just my legs and one arm, I returned to the bank in more time than it would’ve usually taken me. I was sure to pause before we broke surface, watching Wade’s breathing for the perfect moment to bring him up.
Once we cleared the water, I dragged him up onto the bank near our tents and ripped off our masks.
Rain, Easton, and Dash were ready and waiting.
Dash quickly pushed me out of the way, not in an asshole way but in a way that clearly showed he knew what to do. “His breathing is stable,” he said, taking Wade’s pulse. Dash looked like a paramedic as he worked around him. “He’s knocked out, but his heartrate isn’t indicating duress.”
I sighed. Fuck. Thought I’d almost lost another brother. Whoa, that escalated quickly. “You a medic or something?” I asked instead of voicing my relief.
“First responder training,” he said, snapping his fingers over Wade’s face. “My entire crew has to take the course every year. We come across tons of damage after chases, and unfortunately sometimes that means we find injured people before the paramedics do.”
I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest. I couldn’t take my eyes off Wade, the air in my lungs aching despite Dash saying the dude would be all right. I don’t know when I’d gotten attached to him, but letting him dive with me should’ve been my first clue. Maybe it’s because we’d both lost brothers. Maybe it was because I liked the bullshit he spun. Either way, I wanted him to wake up. Now.
Wade coughed, like the motherfucker could hear me. Dash set his hand behind Wade’s head, lifting him slightly. “Wade?” he asked.
Wade slowly blinked open his eyes. They widened when he saw Dash. “Did we just make out?”
Dash snorted, and there was a collective sigh among us.
“What the fuck, man?” I asked, dropping to my knees behind him.
“No, you what the fuck,” he groaned. “One second I was floating around like a pretty little butterfly fish and the next second something sneaks up behind me and tases my ass. Your idea of a joke?” He cocked a strained eyebrow at me. “Because it was a bad one.”
“No, dick. That’d be the giant-ass electric eel I saved you from.”
His mouth popped open as he looked around the group before his gaze returned to me. “Did you kill that, too?”
I shook my head. “Not this time.”
Dash helped Wade to a sitting position and Rain handed him a bottle of water. Easton raked his hands across his hair before putting his hat back on. After the third time Dash had taken Wade’s pulse, he shoved him off. “I’m okay, bro.”
I smacked his shoulder. “You really didn’t see it?”
He shook his head, taking a large gulp of water. “Nope. Shit, I felt it, though. I’ve been tased before.” Easton tilted his head at him and he shrugged. “What? Cop movie. Anyway, it was worse than that. I felt like my balls were in my throat and my muscles were on acid.”
We all hissed.
“You’re lucky,” Easton said, and Wade nearly spit the water out. “I mean, that it didn’t hit you more than once.”
A shudder ran through Wade and he glared at each of us. “Why is it always me?”
I laughed along with the rest of the team and rubbed my palms over my face. At least his sense of humor was intact.
“THOSE FANCY GADGETS telling you anything?” Rain asked as I adjusted the portable Doppler I’d demanded when the studio was stocking the chopper.
I glanced up from my crouched positon, squinting as I raised one hand to cover my eyes to see her better. The sun seemed brighter here, or maybe it was because it was so damned hot despite being just after daybreak. Wiping my hands on my shorts, I pushed off the ground and stood. “I’ve just started collecting data from this bad boy, but . . .” I glanced at the sky, which was scattered with clouds, the beaming sun breaking up a few of them. “It’s definitely going to rain today.”
She slung her large camera around her neck. “Forgive me, but isn’t that a bit obvious? Rainforest and all.”
“Sure, sure.” I nodded. “But I can tell you it’ll happen within two hours.”
“Really?” She tilted her head toward the sky before returning her blue eyes back to me, looking surprisingly impressed. “Good to know.” She pointed to the D
oppler. “So, what is that?”
“This is an MRR—a micro rain radar. It’ll collect data throughout our stay. I can use it to help predict, but I’m more excited to take the collection of results back to our lab in the States. Help me study the patterns of weather out here. Not something I get a chance to do in the Midwest.”
She gathered her long blond hair up into a ponytail, fanning the back of her neck. “I admire you and Blake,” she said. “She tried to show me a weather map and station model on her phone. May as well have been Greek to me.”
I grinned. “We all have our areas of expertise.” Her mentioning Blake had my chest aching. I hadn’t been away from her this long since we’d been married—we’d spent so much time having to take breaks before we finally took our vows that I’d sworn never to leave her side for long again. This expedition had shot that to hell, but I had high hopes I’d be able to bring her along on the second trip, the one that would be on a larger scale once Easton found the evidence he needed that this was his lost city.
“True,” Rain said, glancing at the radio clipped to the pocket of my shorts when it crackled.
“Dash how’s it looking out there?” Easton’s voice rang clear after a few seconds.
I unclipped the radio and clicked down the talk button. “You’ve got about two hours. It’s going to come down hard. A real tropical storm with the chance of duration for over an hour. I’m about to take precautions to secure camp. Then I suggest we all hunker down in your tent.”
Rain raised an eyebrow at me.
“Why mine?” Easton posed the question Rain’s face had given me. They were even in sync when in two different places.
“Besides it being the biggest? You set it up to hug the mountain while me and the guys are out in the open along the bank. Safer and more stable in yours.”
“Copy that,” he said. “Wade. Connell. Did you get that?”
“Yeah,” Connell said once Easton had finished. “We have a half hour of tank time left. We’ll start to head back that way in a bit and help Dash tie the shit down.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Good,” Easton said. “Dash, is Rain by you?”
She snatched the radio out of my hand. “Why? You want eyes on me?”
Easton’s laughter came over the line, but I could see the attitude in Rain’s eyes. Blake got like that when I was overprotective of her as well—which was often. “No,” he finally said. “I wanted to tell you I found another interior chamber. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, Raindrop. The details, the artistry in the carvings. This culture put the definition behind lavish.”
Rain’s eyes softened as Easton continued, his voice reaching schoolgirl levels of giddy.
“I don’t have anything definitive, yet,” he said. “But I can feel it. This is Paititi. I just know it.”
I grinned. The dude’s optimism was infectious and I couldn’t believe I was somehow apart of something this huge. How had a storm chaser wound up being in the presence of the lost City of Gold? I shook my head, wiping the trickling sweat from my brow.
Luck. Blake. Our show. Our life. Any could be blamed for the part of history I was taking in, and I couldn’t wait to share it with Blake. I was tempted to ask Easton more than once already if I could use his satellite phone to call her, but I knew it was for emergencies and we couldn’t waste its juice. Didn’t make missing her any easier.
“That’s incredible, Compass,” Rain said. “I’m sure you’ll find a seal or an insignia any minute now.”
“Why don’t you come up here and help me look?” he asked. “Whoever finds it first wins a—”
“Dash is standing right here,” Rain cut him off quickly.
I pressed my palms together and mouthed a silent thank you. Lord knows I didn’t need to hear whatever it is they normally wagered. I sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone privy to the spankings I was so fond of giving Blake whenever she had a slip in her overuse of the word sorry. Just the thought of playfully smacking her perfect ass had my hand itching to do so, and other areas clenching to get back to her. I took another deep breath—there would be thousands of deep breaths on this trip to calm the painful ache I had to touch Blake again—and tried to laugh off the situation.
“Besides,” Rain continued, “I just finished up taking shots of a gorgeous Black Caiman—”
“Fucking hell,” Connell’s voice broke over the line. “Was it in the water?”
I raised my eyebrows, suddenly fearing another incident like we’d had with Wade yesterday. A Caiman would do way more damage than I had knowledge to fix. First responder training only went so far.
“No,” she said, her voice calm and even like Connell’s outburst was no more than a toddler fearing the boogieman. “He was on land, about two hundred feet in the jungle just to the west of camp.”
“Next time,” Connell said. “Lead with that.”
“Sorry about that, Aquaman.”
“Oh, hell. Not you, too.”
Poor Connell. That one had stuck.
“You did that on your own?” Easton snapped.
Rain huffed. “Yes.”
“What have I told you about that, Raindrop?”
“Not to do it.”
“Exactly. This isn’t a place to be taking strolls.”
“I was just a couple hundred feet away,” she said and sighed. “Have you forgotten all the time I’ve spent in the African Bush by myself?”
“No. But this isn’t Africa. And you don’t know the jungle like I do.”
“No one here does, Compass.”
“And that is why I’ve stressed to everyone the necessity of keeping a partner with them at all times.”
Rain’s lips molded into a line while she clearly bit her tongue.
“Who is spotting you right now, bro?” Wade chimed in for the first time and I hissed. Fuck that guy had balls.
The line was silent for longer than was comfortable.
“I’m heading this expedition. I’m the exception.” After a beat of silence, the line crackled again. “I can see how that is some hypocritical bullshit,” he said, and Rain nodded like she’d been waiting for him to say that, “so, next time, I’ll bring someone up here with me. Now, let’s clear the line and make the most out of the hour or so we have left. Dash, let us know if anything changes.”
“Copy that,” I said after Rain handed me back the radio. “You sure you don’t want to go up there and help him?” I asked her after I had slipped the radio back in my pocket. “There really is enough time.”
She grinned, gazing behind me at the incredible structure that peeked above the water. “Of course I do,” she said, but shook her head. “He wouldn’t be as focused.”
“How do you mean?” I tilted my head, taking a swig of precious water from one of the bottles I had handy.
“Same as I wouldn’t be as sharp if he had been tracking that Black Caiman with me.” She shrugged. “We work incredibly well together, but we’re also hyper-aware of each other’s presence. If I went up there right now, only half his mind would be searching for a marker that proved this is Paititi. Like if he’d been with me, I’d only snap half the shots I would if he wasn’t there.” She glanced behind her, to the portion of the jungle she’d just come from before turning back to me. “Do you ever get that way with Blake?”
I chewed on my bottom lip, remembering the one time Blake had gone off and chased an F-4 without me. She’d been injured and unconscious by the time I’d reached her and I’d been forced to carry her limp body to safety. The memory haunted me. And it had proven once and for all that we were better together, stronger even. “Blake and I have to chase together.” I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face. Just the thought of her had me in a puddle. “It’s not like she needs me to be there, or that I need to protect her . . .” Rain raised an eyebrow at me and I relented. “Okay, sure I am overprotective, but we are a better team than we are a solo mission. Her skills outshine mine, but mine compliment
hers. Together, we track faster, interpret sharper, and catch more storms.”
Rain nodded. “That’s kind of beautiful.” She grinned. “You really are a white knight.”
I smacked my forehead. “Fuck, how much did you girls talk that night?” They’d had one dinner. How much ground could they have covered?
“Enough to know you probably were worried about me almost as much as Easton when I was off photographing Nox.” She pointed to the jungle.
I furrowed my brow, crossing my arms to try to play dumb. I’d hated that Rain went off on her own—especially after all the stressing Easton had gone on about that exact thing—but she wasn’t mine to protect. I knew that. I also knew that she was better equipped to handle this expedition than I was, and I had absolutely no room to tell her otherwise. “Would I have been more comfortable if you’d asked me or Easton to tag along while you hunted for dangerous reptiles? Sure. But I would say the same thing about Wade or Connell. I don’t know this area at all, so naturally I’m on edge every second we’re here.” I tilted my head. “Wait, did you name the Black Caiman, Nox?”
She smiled and smacked my shoulder. “You’re all right, Dash. And yes, I did. It’s kind of a habit to name the creatures I catch shots of.”
We stood there for a few moments longer, my mind back in the States with Blake. I wished she was here, experiencing this with me, but then again, I’d be worried about her nonstop, so I could understand what Rain had been saying about her and Easton earlier. “Did Sadie give you any embarrassing deets about Connell I could use? You know, like Blake did with the whole knight joke?” I suddenly wanted my own dirt on the guys if my “nobility” became a running gag.
She smirked. “Maybe.”
“You women are evil.”
“Please,” she said. “We’ve just become friends. Wait till we get back to the studio and I get them alone for an entire week.” She waggled her eyebrows, and a cold sweat broke over my brow. Damn, these girls had enough firepower to swap and ruin us. Well, two could play that game.
“Perfect,” I said. “I’ll take the boys for our own trip. We talk too, you know?”