Page 11

ELEVEN

EMILY

I should have done more cardio. I also should have never left Ohio, but as Ryder and I sprint through the woods, leaping over rocks and bushes in a desperate attempt to escape Killian’s men, the burning ache in my chest and thighs makes me regret every single day I ever skipped the gym.

So, just ninety percent of my adult life.

“Zigzag formation, Edwards!” Ryder shouts, weaving a nonlinear path through the trees that leaves me dizzy and struggling to keep up. “ZIGZAG!”

I’m pretty sure no one has ever screamed the word zigzag with such intensity in all of human history, but it’s not like I have a better tactic, and so I duck and weave through the trees, too, doing my best to keep pace with my tour guide.

“East! They’re headed east!” one of Killian’s guys calls out behind us, the sound of his voice growing fainter as we get deeper and deeper into the woods.

“Are we?” I ask Ryder, gasping for air as we scramble over a car-sized rock. “Going east?”

“Hell if I know,” he grunts, gripping my hand to pull me along behind him. “Just run!”

So run we do. We run and we run and we zig and we zag, and just when I think my legs are going to call it a day and melt off my body, Ryder stops suddenly, sending me crashing into his back with a dramatic thud.

“Oof,” I sputter, feeling like I just collided with a cement wall. “Can I get a warning next time?”

“Shh,” he whispers, crouching to his feet and motioning for me to do the same. It’s a difficult feat, considering that my calves are on fire, but I hurry to mimic him.

Under there , Ryder mouths, pointing to a fallen tree just in front of him. Its cigar-brown bark is splintered and charred, and whatever lightning bolt struck it left the trunk just high enough off the ground to let a desperate someone—or two desperate someones—seek shelter underneath its rotting branches.

It looks like a poison ivy paradise, but beggars can’t be choosers, and so I duck underneath the tree quickly, crouching beneath its boughs. Ryder squeezes in after me, cursing when he hits his head on the trunk, and we lie there for a moment, both trying to catch our breath and make sense of what the hell just happened.

“Good call with running in a zigzag formation,” I whisper finally, my breathing still ragged. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“ Grand Theft Auto ,” he says simply, wiping sweat off his brow. “And elementary school dodgeball.”

It says a lot about my distaste for sports that even now, when I just witnessed a murder and had to run for my life, the mere thought of gym class still manages to fill me with dread.

“Huh,” I say. “I hated dodgeball. I was slow and uncoordinated, and nobody ever wanted me on their team.”

Ryder pokes the trunk above us gingerly, testing its sturdiness. “Yeah, well, it’s your lucky day, Edwards. I was always picked first.”

Confident that the tree isn’t going to collapse with us underneath it, he quickly reties a lace on his boot and studies me like he’s waiting for something.

“So,” he whispers, “what’s your plan?”

“My plan?” I ask, my eyes widening in disbelief. “I don’t have a plan. I thought you did. You were the one telling me where to go and screaming about zigzags.”

“That wasn’t a plan, that was a Hail Mary,” he whispers tightly.

“Well, we need a plan, Ryder!” I whisper-screech, the shock of Sharp’s death robbing me of the ability to think of one myself. “We can’t escape Killian’s henchmen and get off this island without a plan!”

“I know we need a plan! But I’m struggling to come up with one, considering I had no idea that henchmen existed outside of Indiana Jones movies!”

I don’t have an argument for that, and so I close my eyes and try to come up with a strategy of my own. Unfortunately, my mind is overrun with the memory of Sharp’s desperate, wheezy gaps, and I find myself wishing, now more than ever before, that Dad was here with me. He’d know what to do. And if he didn’t, well, he’d help me believe that we could figure it out together.

“Hey,” Ryder whispers, drawing me out of my reverie. “Are you okay? Are you cold?” He motions toward my hands, which are trembling so badly they couldn’t hold a scalpel.

“No,” I say, realizing that I’m still wearing the bloodstained gloves I used for Dr.Sharp. I stare at the crimson-splattered latex, trying not to remember the sight of him falling to the ground. “I mean, yes. I mean…”

I will my fingers to stop shaking, to become useful again, but it’s no use.

“I should take these gloves off,” I say, uncertain if I’m talking to Ryder or myself. “We should save them as evidence.”

My voice sounds hollow, distant, and I’m trying to tell myself that they’re just gloves, it’s just blood, when Ryder reaches into my pack, puts on a fresh pair himself, and uses them to peel the gloves off my hands. Then, after storing them in a zippered compartment of his own pack, he slides his gloves off and wraps his hands around mine. The warmth and pressure of his touch relax my clenched fingers, and I take a deep breath as the trembling eases.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Ryder nods, and if he thinks it’s weird that I’m clutching his hands like my life depends on it, he doesn’t show it.

“Sorry for snapping about the henchmen thing,” he says, his voice low. “I think I’m still in shock from seeing a man’s insides on his outsides.”

I see people’s insides on their outsides more often than I’d like to in my line of work, but I’ve never watched someone get shot before, so I can certainly understand his shock.

“You’re not the only one,” I whisper. “I still can’t believe Killian tried to shoot us. And I can’t believe I kissed a murderer .”

My voice catches on the last note, and Ryder grips my hands a little tighter.

“It could have happened to anyone.”

“Uh, really?” I ask dryly. “To anyone? Have you ever kissed someone who turned out to be a bloodthirsty psychopath hellbent on stealing a diamond for his own selfish profit?”

Ryder blinks at me. “No. But I did date a woman who dunked her Oreos in water.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and so I settle for both, clasping a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound.

“What the hell are we supposed to do?” I ask, dropping my hands into my lap. “Killian has guns and a whole team of minions at his disposal. We’ve got no guns, no sense of direction, and no wilderness skills.”

“I wouldn’t say I have no wilderness skills,” Ryder counters. “I read, like, three books on outdoor survival for this trip. And one of them had an acronym for the steps you should take if you get lost or stranded during a hike.”

“Great,” I say with newfound optimism. “What’s the acronym?”

The blank look that crosses his face does not inspire confidence. “Um, SURVIVE, I think. Or was it SURVIVAL? Or maybe—”

“Seriously?” I grumble, my hope evaporating. “If you can’t even remember the acronym, how are you going to remember what it stands for?”

“I’ll remember,” he insists, rubbing his temples like he can massage the answer out. “There was definitely an S. Which was for ‘shelter,’ I think. Or maybe ‘stop.’ And the U was for, oh! Undue waste makes haste.” He smiles proudly before frowning. “Or maybe it was undue haste makes waste…”

“Oh my God,” I mutter. “We’re gonna die out here.”

“We are not going to die out here,” Ryder insists. “I might not be Bear Grylls, but I’ll be damned if I let that asshole Sinclair harm a single hair on your head. Or mine.”

It’s dark out, but I can practically see his eyes blazing, and he leans closer to whisper into my ear.

“Believe it or not, I’m going to protect you, Emily Edwards,” he promises, his voice unwavering. “If it’s the very last thing I do.”

And in that moment, with Ryder’s body so near and smelling of sweat and pine and what I can only assume is raw testosterone, I believe him. Because he might not be the adventure expert I was promised, but he cared enough to join me when I ran to help Dr.Sharp. I didn’t ask him to follow me into danger, but he did anyway, and without him and his inexplicably vintage CD player, I might be dead, too.

“Besides,” he adds, leaning back to reach into his pocket, “we have one thing Sinclair doesn’t.”

I watch as he opens his hand to reveal the most stunning jewel I’ve ever seen, and I can’t help but gasp in awe as the Evermore diamond shimmers in the moonlight. The round, golf-ball-sized stone is hypnotizing in its beauty, so deep blue and sparkling that I couldn’t look away if I tried.

“You’re right,” I tell Ryder, blinking at the gem. “Killian will at least want us alive long enough to get the diamond back. So as long as we’ve got it, we’ve got a chance.”

“Exactly,” he says, his voice full of wonder as he cradles the gemstone in his hand. “The Evermore diamond is our ticket off this island alive.”

And then he drops it into the puddle at our feet.

“Fuck,” Ryder says as we each plunge a hand into the puddle at lightning speed. My pulse racing, I feel around with trembling fingers, desperately closing my fist around a couple of large pebbles and then, finally, the diamond.

“Holy shit,” I say, ready to collapse with relief when I pull the Evermore out of the puddle.

Our hands, which brushed against one another as we both searched for the gem, are still touching, and I’m pretty sure I should pull away, but I’m not so certain I want to. Because it feels good to have a physical connection to Ryder, a visceral reminder that I’m not in this alone. And because even though I overheard the unflattering comment he made to Killian about me— I don’t look at Emily any way , he’d told the archaeologist, I look at her the way I look at that tree over there —I can’t help but admit that I’m starting to see him in a very un-treelike manner. After all, a tree doesn’t have touchable biceps and hair silky enough to run my fingers through. A tree didn’t fling a Discman at my attacker to help me escape. A tree isn’t brushing my fingertips with a rough, calloused hand, the same hand he used to peel off the bloody gloves I could barely look at.

A tree didn’t vow to protect me in a voice low and rumbly enough to sound like thunder.

“So,” I say suddenly, forcing myself to pull my hand away from Ryder’s. “How about I hang on to this from now on?”

“Sure, right,” he agrees after a beat, nodding. “You safeguard the diamond, and I’ll safeguard you.”

“Exactly,” I say, hoping he’ll guard me a tad more carefully than he did the jewel. “I know the perfect spot to hide it.”

I unzip my pack and reach to the bottom, past my toiletry bag and mini Jenga blocks until my hands, not quite steady yet but not shaking anymore either, find Dad’s urn.

“You sure you want to do that?” Ryder asks when I remove the urn from my pack.

I nod and uncap the bamboo canister, drop the Evermore inside, and close it quickly.

“If there was one thing Roger Edwards Jr. always dreamed of, it was adventure,” I say, gripping the urn in my hands. “So here we go. Adventure awaits.”

“Adventure awaits,” Ryder agrees, watching as I carefully return the urn to my pack.

“So,” I whisper, almost jumping out of my skin when an acorn falls from a nearby tree and lands on the ground with a plop . “What now?”

He shrugs. “The guidebooks didn’t exactly cover what to do if you get caught in the crosshairs of a diamond heist, but I say we keep moving. The farther away we can get from the Explorer , the better. And it makes sense to move under the cover of darkness.”

He gives me a small smile, looking pleased with himself. “Never thought I’d get to say something that cool. You know, if somebody makes a movie about this someday, that’s what they should call it— Cover of Darkness .”

I stifle a laugh. “More like Two Idiots Walk into a National Park .”

“Don’t quit your day job, Edwards,” Ryder says. “That sounds like a box office bomb.”

He peeks out cautiously from the tree, then stands up and scans the area for any signs of danger.

“All clear,” he says in the authoritative tone of a member of SEAL Team Six. “Ready to move out?”

I reach up and tighten my ponytail, taking a deep breath. I am absolutely not ready and I’m certain Ryder isn’t either, but at least we have each other. And, for now, the cover of darkness.

“Ready,” I tell him.

He pulls me to my feet, my head nearly grazing his chin when I’m fully upright.

“Alright,” he says, rolling his sleeves up to reveal several inches of well-muscled forearms. “Let’s roll.”