“No worries, Cap.”
“Your hands are free?”
“Better than that, I’ve got my knife. Now hold still so I don’t cut you.” I snip the bit off and catch it before it falls. “Keep a hold of this so we can pretend to be cuffed.”
Dante’s already got his hands where I can reach them. “What the hell were you winking about, Dante?” I hand him his cuff back.
“Half the crew speaks Indonesian and the other Tagalog. Half of their radio communications are them saying What and huh in broken French. But what I did get is the guy in charge wants us alive. Something about they won’t get paid unless they have the four guys.”
“Four?” Sam says.
“Yeah, four.”
“Whoever’s paying them doesn’t know about you,” I say to Sam.
“And that’s going to be to our advantage,” Sam replies.
Chapter 40
Double knotted
Haley
“We could go over the top of the mountain, down to the village instead of the cave.”
“That’s a long way. I don’t want to get stuck out in the open.” I don’t want to get stuck anywhere. “Penny and I can stay in the cave, and you can go back and help them.”
“No, I’m staying with you,” Calvin grunts.
“But the others need help,” I say.
“Going over to the village would be better. They’d never suspect that we could go that far.”
“Exactly, because we can’t. Not in a day. Adrenaline was the only thing that got me over and back when we were searching for you.” I’m scrambling up the rocks, pulling myself. Calvin puts Penny next to me and gives my dangling foot a boost.
“You’ve got adrenaline now. And there was a while that I was going over every day and back before anyone noticed I was missing. You can do this, Chiefie. You’re fast.”
Arguing with Calvin on a good day doesn’t go well. “Leave me in the cave and go back for them. Please.” It’s a dirty thing to do.I know how he feels about me saying please. All the guys—it’s their Achilles’ heel.
“We have to get up to the caves first.”
My heart races. I look back over my shoulder. Penny copies me.
“Stop, Haley. Just focus. Climb up. Let me hand Penny to you.”
I pull myself up onto a large boulder and turn around. Penny has her front paws on the edge near my toes. Calvin boosts her up. This section of the mountain is the steepest, but then Calvin just steps up like it’s a normal staircase. I suppose it wasn’t that hard for him to go back and forth, but back then we didn’t even have a shovel.
It goes on like that for a good twenty minutes before Calvin says, “Let’s take a break. There’s a larger ledge over there, so we can press ourselves into the mountain and maybe they won’t be able to see us.”
“Yes,” I respond.
He pulls a water bottle out of the pack, opens it, and hands it to me.
“You first,” I say.
He shakes his head, and we both stare at the bottle hovering between us.
“Fine. Thank you.” I take a quick sip and hand it back to him. He takes a sip and then pours a little into his hand and offers it to the dog.
