Page 22 of All The Way Under

CHAPTER ELEVEN

saylor

He’s fucking beautiful. He distracts me from the most important job I’ve possibly ever had, which has a time limit.

Thirty minutes. We need to find Collin and Turner and get to the west dock before the top of the hour.

Right now, all I can think about is how much I missed Brody when I wasn’t next to him.

I considered if this chemistry and attraction was some twisted kind of trauma response, but looking at him now, feeling my heart pound against my chest at the sight of him, I confirm this is real.

I pull him to me and kiss him, slowly so I can taste him, and relive making love to him at our waterfall.

Looking into his deep eyes, I keep my mouth against his, weary to pull away. “I’m getting us out of here.”

Pulling a ball cap I found out of the back of my pants, I try to tuck my hair into it so I’m less conspicuous.

He has the gun and secures it. He hasn’t said as much, but I can tell he’s comfortable with the gun.

He holds it like my dad does. Like he’s unloaded millions of rounds with precise accuracy.

It’s something you can’t hide. At least he can’t hide it from me.

I know there’s more than meets the eye with Brody, but now isn’t the time for anything other than the matter at hand.

“Unless you have a better idea? The fishing boat leaves in thirty minutes, and we have to go get Collin and Turner.”

He stares at me, mouth a little ajar, gaze questioning, and he shakes his head, but then he follows me out of our cage into the cool, wet, dusky morning.

We run, me setting the pace with my short legs, him staying so close that his arm bumps mine with every stride. We both know exactly where we’re going, even though no one has outright told us where the other bunker cell is.

Turner and Collin are asleep when Brody snarls at them—and it is an actual snarl too.

“Get the fuck up,” he growls as I fumble with the ring of keys that caused my black eye.

We have a finite amount of time before the guards wake up from the darts I peppered into them while they slept.

Nery grabbed my wrist and slammed me into a wall because he was last, but he wasn’t quick enough.

I darted him three times to make sure he’d be out for a while.

Ravelo is the only one not accounted for, but I’ll take my chances with a gun against him.

Collin and Turner are the definition of shellshocked as we pull them out of the cage and tell them we’re heading to the west dock.

We rest in a copse of dense palm trees on a sandy path.

The brothers are behind us, stooping down, hands on their knees.

This is more exercise than they’ve gotten since they’ve been here.

“Ravelo wasn’t darted,” I explain to Brody. “The rest are down and will stay down for a while.”

Brody glares at me, mouth open.

“You darted all the guards at the same time? How?”

Giving them a taste of their own medicine, which I learned how to concoct in my free time after noticing what herbs they pulled to make it.

I lift and lower one shoulder. “Like it’s hard?”

“Saylor, this wasn’t planned out. How can you be this careless? What happens when the fishing boat captain shoots us between the eyes?”

I wipe the sweat from my brow.

“My parents paid him off. Don’t ask me how, because the only words I have for you are Bianca Wyndham.”

There’s no sense hiding my last name at this point. It’s why we’re getting out of here.

“The captain was in the main building last night, taking orders for what he needed to bring back this morning, and he got me alone.” I exhale and inhale deeply, still tired from running.

“He told me to meet him at the boat this morning, and he’d take me to Maputo, where my parents are waiting.

Evidently, my mom got sick of trying to negotiate with the government.

They were taking too long for some reason. ”

Brody looks away, shaking his head. I must admit he seems far more flustered than I thought he’d be for getting the hell out of here.

“She found out this captain’s name, I don’t know how, then she paid him a lump sum at the dock, like a damn mobster or something, and he gets the other half when I’m delivered unharmed.”

“And us?” Brody asks, waving a big, lumbering arm to the brothers who seem to be fighting over something. “I didn’t hear anything about us in that story. What’s this captain going to do when he realizes you’re arriving there with a troop of us?”

I shake my head as I watch Brody move his thumb over his wrist, up and down like he has a cramp.

“The fact that this worked out up until this point is kind of crazy. The captain said he was going to leave me a key by the cage last night if I couldn’t get out.”

The brothers’ argument is heated now, their voices picking up in the wind.

Brody hushes them violently, and they shut up.

“What is this captain’s name?” Brody is asking weird questions about things I didn’t expect him to care about.

“It was something with a Z,” I say. “The names here are hard to remember because they’re so different from back home. You know that! We had a conversation about it.”

“Zafy?” Brody barks, both brows raised. “Captain Zafy?”

I nod, pressing my lips together.

“Like Daffy Duck. That’s right. Yes. That’s him. How did you know his name?”

Brody’s body stiffens. His shoulders are rigid with tension.

“Because he’s one of the leaders here, Saylor.”

He paces, only a few steps each way, putting a finger to my lips when I try to talk.

“I must figure out which angle to play. Maybe he wants the ransom all to himself, and he’s willing to part with you at the sake of his community suffering.”

He shakes his head. “No good leader would do that. It doesn’t make sense.”

He messes with his wrist again, and when he paces back toward me, I grab him, holding him to the spot with my gaze.

“You have the gun. Kill him if you must, but get us to Maputo.” I grab his shirt. “We all know how to drive a boat. We can get away from here and back into the real world and give this escape a real shot.”

His lips twitch as his lashes drop, and his gaze lingers on my lips. I shake my head. “It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

Brody kisses me, and it may be the worst time for the most perfect kiss the world has ever seen, but that’s what makes it memorable. There was defeat in his eyes as he leaned down to take possession of my mouth. He leans away from me.

“We’re going to have some help here in a minute or two, and I need you to know I didn’t tell you because I needed to keep you safe.”

I narrow my eyes and tilt my head to the side.

“I am the slow military government that’s been taking too long to get you out of here.”

I widen my eyes, though it’s not shock. It’s something akin to puzzling the pieces together.

“Almost everything I’ve told you is true.

I’m a Navy SEAL, and not only am I to bring you back alive and well, but I also needed to gather intel and take this faction down.

” He shakes his head. “I can’t kill Zafy, so that complicates this.

My Team—Actually,” he says, pausing to look at the sky, craning his neck to the side.

“More than my Team are heading to the east base and far fields right now to take over this compound. We need to do this my way, Sweet Pea.”

He fiddles with his wrist again.

“I have an implant under my skin that called them here.”

I stutter, but try to compose myself. He’s a Navy SEAL, and he’s kept me here for over a month. He has inside information. That name could have only come from my dad. What is going on here?

“You could have pressed your little button and gotten us out of here the day you arrived and didn’t?” The anger simmers, right at the surface, waiting to lash, but as my dad would say, the past is past. Focus on the future.

He looks away, ashamed. “This is why I couldn’t tell you. I needed to make sure I had all the information before we left, and then, well…” he whispers.

“Well, what?” I retort.

He looks at me. “Then I figured out who you were to me and what that meant.”

“Stop dancing around it. What did you figure out about me, and what did it mean?”

“Admittedly, I just found out the last connection I needed to ensure we’re able to close this kidnapping-for-ransom ring down for good. It’s only been a few days of stalling because I enjoy spending time with you.”

I press my lips together and plant my hands on my hips. The helicopters are in the distance. They’re chopping the air at a breakneck pace that echoes in the humid jungle air. The animals chirp and scream as the foreign noise breaks their usual stillness.

“Spending time with me is really vague, Brody.”

He looks away and up, clenching his jaw, then turns back to me. The time for talking is dwindling. Neither of us knows what comes next.

“What do you want me to say? That I fell for you? My target? Someone I’m meant to protect at all costs? Am I supposed to just put it all out there so you can destroy me the second you realize I’m a military employee who doesn’t have an endless bank account and connections all over the world?”

“That is not me, and you know it,” I snarl, aiming a finger at his chest. “I don’t care what you do or how much money you have.

I care about your heart and the truth.” I tear my gaze from his.

“And right now, it sounds like I only have your heart, seeing as we don’t have time for the truth. Where should we go?”

Brody picks me up with one arm, and he slams me against the tree forcefully. Then he lifts me. My cap falls off from the force, but he catches it with his free hand smoothly and slips it backward on his head.

Shit. My stomach flips and flutters.

“Now that that’s out of my way,” he growls against my ear. Without any care for the fact that we’re in danger, Collin and Turner are watching, or the helicopters chopping the air, he presses his lips against mine.