Page 34 of Duty Devoted
Another engine rumbled past, closer this time. Logan pressed even deeper into the foliage, pulling me with him. The offhanded way he moved told me this wasn’t his first time hiding from people who wanted him dead.
“For now, let’s just stay right here. We’ll wait for full dark,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll move through the village outskirts, find what we need, and get out.”
He kept watch, but I slid numbly to the ground. Every sound made me jump, even ones I should be used to—birds calling, branches creaking, the distant hum of vehicles. The shock of watching Carlos die kept replaying in my mind like a broken record. I kept seeing Diego Silva’s cold eyes, hearing the gunshot, seeing Carlos crumple to the ground, the pooling blood.
My hands started shaking worse, and I had to clench them into fists to make it stop.
“Hey.” Logan’s voice was soft. “Stay with me. Focus on breathing.”
I barely heard him. The walls I’d built to function through the crisis were crumbling, and everything was flooding back at once. Six months of building relationships, helping people, making a difference—and now I was hiding in the jungle like a criminal. People were dying because of me.
By the time darkness fell, I felt like I was holding myself together with willpower alone. And doing a piss-poor job.
Logan led us through the jungle in a wide arc around the village, moving with silent precision while I stumbled behind him, crashing through undergrowth like a wounded animal. Every step seemed too loud, every breath too harsh. Thankfully, no one was nearby.
As we reached the village outskirts, voices drifted through the humid air. People were still awake, still talking about the day’s events.
“The doctors all left,” an elderly woman was saying in Spanish. “The helicopter took them away after those men came.”
“Good,” a man replied. “Better they’re safe. The Silva cartel has been getting worse.”
“Dr. Lauren was supposed to check on my Mario tomorrow,” another voice said sadly. “The baby’s been fussy, and I wanted her to listen to his chest.”
That was Carmen Vasquez. Her three-month-old son had been showing signs of a respiratory infection when I’d seen him last week.
“She helped deliver my grandson,” an older man’s voice added. “Stayed up all night when the cord was wrapped around his neck. Saved both their lives.”
The words landed like punches. They were worried about me. Grieving. And I was skulking through their village, planning to steal from them. The gap between their compassion and my betrayal fractured something deep inside me.
Logan must have seen something in my expression because he steered us away from the voices, toward the darker edges of the settlement.
“There,” I whispered, pointing to a small hut that sat apart from the others. “Old Tomás used to live there, but he died last year. His family moved to the city. No one’s claimed it.”
The structure was little more than four walls and a tin roof, smaller than most village homes. Weeds had grown up around it, and one window was boarded over with scrap wood.
Logan approached carefully, checking for signs of recent habitation before gesturing me inside. The door hung open on rusted hinges.
The interior smelled of dust and abandonment. A single room with a dirt floor, a broken table, and a narrow cot that had seen better days. It wasn’t much, but after the day we’d had, it felt like sanctuary.
“Rest here,” Logan said, setting down his pack. “I’m going to scout for supplies. Stay quiet, stay hidden.”
“I should come with you?—”
“No.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “You’re exhausted and in shock. You’ll make noise, attract attention. Let me handle this.”
Before I could argue, he was gone, melting into the darkness with that unnerving silence I was learning to associate with his military training.
And then I was alone.
The silence pressed in around me, interrupted only by the distant sounds of the village settling down for the night. I sat on the edge of the broken cot, staring at nothing, and felt something inside me finally crack completely.
The tears came without warning—great, gasping sobs that I’d been holding back all day. Carlos was dead. I was trapped inhostile territory. Everything I’d built here was gone, destroyed in a single afternoon by a madman’s nonchalant violence.
I thought about Miguel, probably wondering why I hadn’t checked on his surgical site today. About Mrs. Rivera, who needed her insulin levels monitored. About Lucia’s baby, who should be nursing peacefully while her mother recovered.
All the people I was supposed to help, protect, heal—and I’d abandoned them all.
I didn’t know how long I cried. Time seemed to stretch and compress unpredictably. One moment, I was aware of every sound from the village; the next, I was completely lost in my own spiraling thoughts.
