A safe place.
A place without monsters like Matias, Maximus Angelo, and the corrupt men who pay to abuse helpless women.
As a child, I knew the world could be a dangerous place, but those dangers were in the forest with poisonous plants, stinging insects, deadly vipers, and the boars and panthers who ravaged the forest floor. Danger didn’t come in the form of men.
My mother and father worked hard to provide for their five children, eking out a pitiful living on a small plot of land, but five kids are challenging to feed, clothe, and provide equally for all.
I lead Hayes through the canopy, loving how my body remembers how to climb the trees and jump from branch to branch. It feels like I am a kid again and never left the jungle. If it weren’t for the threat of armed men intending me harm, this would be so much fun, but the ever-present threat of discovery mutes the joy of memory.
I scamper from one broad limb to a crossing limb. Trees in the rainforest are massive, with powerful limbs reaching toward the sun. There’s a risk to climbing. Close to the top of the canopy, the several-foot-wide branches thin out, becoming spindly and weak. Not to mention the limbs of the trees never actually intersect.
I’ve only ever reached the top of the canopy once in my life. A surreal experience, I did it by climbing the main trunk of a tree itself. None of the branches that high could support my weight, but I climbed with a sense of adventure, pushing me to see what few people have seen.
It was spellbinding.
Unstoppable, Hayes keeps pace with me. He’s not as adept in the branches as me, but the man doesn’t tire. His strength never fails. He pushes me to continue, trusting me to find the way.
His faith in my sense of direction comes as a surprise. Men like him take charge and refuse to let go of the lead. Not to mention he’s here to rescue me. Shouldn’t that mean he should take the lead?
After some time, fatigue pulls at me strong enough I can no longer fight it off with memories of my youth. Hayes’s comment about taking a break makes sense. I need to avoid mistakes from this height.
I balance on a sturdy branch with nothing but open space below and look for a good place to cross over to the next tree. Something in the twilight darkness caught my eye.
“What’s wrong?” Hayes joins me, stabilizing himself by gripping a hanging vine overhead.
“We need to cross to that tree.” Eyes squinting, I trace out a path to the hollow I spotted. Not really a hollow, it’s more of a broader place where three branches come off a trunk at the same place. Forming a small concavity, it’s the perfect place to stop and rest.
It requires a leap over a gap in the branches to get there. We’re high enough now that crossing limbs are few and far between.
Normally, such a thing isn’t a problem. If I force my mind to ignore the dizzying drop below me, I can easily leap across the gap, but I’m not sure about Hayes. Not that he can’t span the short distance. With legs as long as his, he can probably straddle the gap easily. I worry about the swaying of the trees when we are higher up.
“Not many good ways to get there. How about we head over there?” He points down the length of the limb we stand on, but that part of the limb turns downward, meaning its strength decreases. I’m very careful about the branches I venture out on. Last thing we need is one to break beneath us.
“I don’t like how this branch thins.” I’m skinny, weighing half what Hayes must. The branch can support me, but I’m not sure about him.
“Then we cross here.” He points at the gap.
So far, I’ve kept all our crossings confined to where branches physically intersect. This will be the first measurable gap.
Another option is to climb down fifteen feet and try at that level. The limbs are bigger there, stronger, and there’s more overlapping between the trees.
“I’m worried about the gap.” Nibbling on my lower lip, I consider the wisdom of my choice.
“Don’t be.” With no hesitation, Hayes straddles the two branches. “Come on.”
I should’ve realized it would be nothing for him. It’s hard to remember how much taller he is than me, stronger, and fearless. Hayes holds out a hand to help steady me as I take a tiny leap to cross the distance.
“Where to now?” He waits for me to lead.
“I figured we could hunker down over there and get some rest.” I point to the tiny hollow formed by the three massive limbs jutting out from this new tree. “Those men passed us by, and they probably won’t be coming back soon.”
“Not with Brady and Booker chomping at their heels. You need to rest?”
“Do you think it’s safe?” Rather than admit my fatigue, I rub my hands over my upper arms as tiny goosebumps sprout where a chill sets in.
The humidity is high in the jungle. It thickens the air, but while perspiration beads on my brow, it’s not the ambient temperature that causes that shiver. It’s the strange man beside me and the crazy way we’ve been forced into very close proximity.
A yawn slips out, and I blink to clear my eyes.
“You’re crashing.” Hayes rubs his thumb over the back of my hand. “I think a quick break sounds perfect.” Turning his wrist, he grimaces when he sees the time.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“That expression doesn’t look like nothing.”
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Bad news first.”
“I like your style.”
I swear there is a smirk on his face.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“We’re nowhere close to making the original extraction point, which means it’s time to get creative.” He taps on his ear while I stare at him. “Bravo-Four to Command.”
While he checks in with his team, I survey the canopy. Initially, I brought us high into the trees to evade the men chasing us. With the canopy soaring well over a hundred feet overhead, it doesn’t take much before a person disappears in the dense vegetation. However, the higher we climb, the smaller, narrower, and weaker the branches become, like the one I rejected a second ago.
We’re still at a height where most of the limbs we traverse are well over two feet in diameter. It helps to ease that queasy sensation that comes from being this high above the ground. Not that I’m afraid of heights—I’m not—but a fall from this height is deadly. That makes me more cautious, which is exactly the wrong thing when navigating in the trees.
Caution makes my stomach flutter. That flutter makes my legs shake. That tiny shake is enough to turn stable footing into an unsteady and nervous walk.
“Fuck!” Hayes is a man with one of the more expressive vocabularies I’ve encountered. That word is a noun, a verb, an adjective, a colorful modifier, and an expletive filled with intense emotion, all rolled into one.
“What’s wrong?”
“Comm’s fucking busted.” He pulls something out of his ear, looks at it, then shoves it back in his ear. “Bravo-Four to Command.”
From the look on his face, there’s no response.
“How bad is it that you can’t talk to them?”
“Bad.” His lips twist. “We’re cut off from my team.”
“That doesn’t sound good, but it’s not exactly a surprise.” Actually, I’m kind of surprised he’s surprised.