Savage Hearts

by Lili Valente

  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—an
d 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.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sam

  “At the moment of commitment

  the entire universe conspires to assist you.”

  -Goethe

  * * *

  Danny and I sit on the beach, watching the sunset, the story he’s just finished hovering in the air around us.

  I feel it settling on my skin, sinking into my bones, washing away the last of my doubt. Finally, my conscience relaxes back into the shadowy corners it has inhabited for the past year with a wave of its hand, giving its blessing to murder.

  “We need to decide how to do it,” I say, stretching my legs out on the warm, powdery sand. “His suite is on the edge of the property. There’s a chance no one would hear a gunshot.”

  “But there’s a chance they would,” Danny says. “What about poison? I could make sure he’s alone and bribe a maid to deliver a bottle laced with something to his room.”

  “What if he calls for help?”

  “I force my way into the suite after the maid is gone and make sure he doesn’t,” he says. “I don’t mind sitting on his chest and making sure he stays put until he’s dead.”

  I shiver though the wind is warmer tonight than last night. “I know this is right, but…it’s still hard. Hearing you talk like that.”

  He takes my hand, curling his fingers around mine. “You know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?”

  “What?” I ask, leaning my head on his shoulder.

  “Destiny. Fate. Whatever you want to call it. Things that are meant to be.” He pauses, stretching his legs out beside mine, the coarse hairs on his calves brushing against my smooth ones. “But I think destiny is just the word people give to a decision that couldn’t be made any other way. You know, those moments when the choice you’re making feels so big, so true, that it’s almost like it’s coming from outside of you.

  “But it’s not. It’s just you. Making the right choice, the only choice. So you never have to regret what happens next, no matter how things shake out.”

  I squeeze his hand. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he says. “And as long as we’re acting from that place, I choose to believe that everything is going to be okay.”

  I tilt my chin, glancing up to see him glowing in the setting sun, his long lashes and the hint of stubble on his chin shining white gold, making him look more like an angel come to spread the good news than a man who’s planning a murder. But that’s because he’s telling the truth, we are acting from a place of love.

  Love for each other and for people whose goodness and innocence make them easy targets for the predators of the world.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” I whisper, still soaking in the beauty of him, wanting to remember the way he looks right now for the rest of my life.

  “What?” His gaze is still fixed on the horizon, where the day is rapidly slipping away. The sun is running toward the other side of the world where other people are sitting on other beaches waiting for it to rise, waiting for that eternal sign that there is light at the end of the darkness.

  “Maybe we’re all monsters.” I turn my gaze back to the sea. “But we can choose what kind of monster we want to be. The kind that tears other people apart or the kind that fights to protect the things we love.”

  He grunts. “I don’t think we’re all monsters. Only the best and the worst of us. The rest are too lazy to care this much.”

  I smile. “You’re pretty smart for a guy who graduated with a C average.”

  “I do my best,” he says with a soft laugh. “Have to at least try to keep up with you.”

  “You do more than keep up with me. You make me better.”

  “Ditto.” He brings our joined hands to his mouth, pressing his lips to the back of my hand.

  We sit in silence as the wavy red yolk of the sun slithers into the sea. The sand begins to cool and the pink light fades to a moody blue, but still we sit side by side, saying goodbye to who we were.

  But it’s not a sad goodbye.

  The past is full of beautiful ghosts, but it’s haunted by uglier things, too. I’m ready to move forward, to make this choice and never look back.

  * * *

  Danny

  * * *

  On Sunday, we finalize our plans, gather materials and get everything in place for Tuesday night. On Monday, we hike into the jungle with the rest of the guides and the friends they’ve brought along as guinea pigs for their last training exercise, an overnight trip we’ll spend camping on a sheer rock face.

  Tonight was the night I’d planned to take care of the Sigma Beta Epsilon brothers when I thought I would be taking on all four of them alone. Instead, I’m here with Sam, and in roughly thirty-six hours we’ll be back on track to the life we almost lost.

  We reach the entrance to the canyon by noon and by two o’clock we’ve reached the base of the three hundred meter cliff where we’ll be spending the night. Paola and the other guides take point on getting their friends ready for the climb. I shadow them, making sure they remember everything we worked on and then head back to Sam, who greets me with that new, serene smile of hers.

  As I check her harness, making sure to cop a feel while I do, she laughs and swats me on the ass.

  Ever since our talk on the beach, we’ve both been strangely calm.

  Or maybe not so strangely.

  Sometimes, the build up to a hard decision is the worst part. Once you’ve made up your mind, the stress fades away. I’m sure it will return tomorrow night when our decisions become actions, but for now, we’re at peace.

  The climb is intense, but amazing, granting ever more magnificent views as we creep above the tree line and the jungle stretches out beneath us. By five o’clock, we’re two hundred meters in the air, setting up our ledges and tents and preparing to cook the stew we brought over tiny propane stoves.

  Sam and I set up the tent we’ll share on my ledge, but we leave hers bare. After our dinner is warmed, we sit on the edge of the clear platform with our legs hanging over the vast emptiness, watching the birds darting in and out of the canopy below like dolphins jumping out of ocean waves.

  From our right and left come the soft conversations of friends, Ram and his brother arguing over what kind of meat is in the stew, Paola and her girlfriend laughing about their last camping trip and the monkeys who stole their breakfast, forcing them to hike home hungry the next day.

  When we’re finished with our stew, I toss around the bag of chocolate covered coffee beans I b
rought as a treat. We laugh as we chuck the paper bag from platform to platform, cussing Ram’s brother when he nearly drops it over the edge. While the chocolate melts on our tongues, we talk about all the places we’ve worked, where we’d like to go next, and our adventure bucket lists. Paola wants to go to Iceland, Ram has a ticket to Fiji and will be leaving next August, and Sam tells them we’re on our way to Thailand for a non-working vacation before we head home.

  It’s a beautiful night shared with good people and when Sam and I crawl into our tent not long after nightfall, I feel grateful. If, God forbid, something goes horribly wrong tomorrow, we couldn’t have asked for a better last night of freedom.

  We tie back the flaps to the tent so we can see the stars from our sleeping bag and hold hands in the dark, listening to the getting-ready-for-sleep sounds coming from the other tents. And when the teeth brushing is finished and the call of nature answered—a discreet whizz over the edge of the ledge for the men and bottles filled in the tent and dumped over the side for the women—and everyone else is finally asleep, it’s so quiet it feels like there’s no one else alive in the world.

  No one but Sam and me, happily marooned on this tent pitched at the edge of nowhere.

  “Where is home now, do you think?” she whispers, her voice husky in the darkness.

  “Wherever we are. Together.” I swear I can hear her smile.

  “Where are we going to be together? I haven’t wanted to think about it until this was finished, but after hearing everyone’s plans I started wondering where we’ll end up. And what I’ll do when we get there.”

  “I could hire you on as my business manager in Croatia.” I curl my arm around her waist. “I can’t pay much, but benefits include housing, food, and unlimited oral sex privileges.”

  She laughs softly. “Giving or receiving?”