“Luke!” I spin to face him on the trail. “Do you have to fill every moment with the sound of your own voice?”

He stares at the ground, and I want to kick myself for hurting his feelings. I’ve put up with an hour and a half of endless chatter about which snakes are poisonous, which frogs are safe to eat, and which plant leaves should not be used as toilet paper, but I draw the line at debating the difficulty rating an “adventure” like this would have on some video game I’ve never heard of.

“Sorry. I just . . .” Luke adjusts his cap over his sweaty curls. “At my grandmother’s wake, everyone was really quiet, and that made it impossible to think about anything else.” He shrugs. “So I thought talking might distract you from . . . Ryan.”

I am the world’s biggest asshole.

I push stringy strands of hair back from my face and exhale slowly. “I’m sorry. That’s very thoughtful.”

We continue down the trail. For several minutes, I hear nothing from him but the shuffle of his boots on the path. Luke is right. Silence is a lot less peaceful and a lot more awkward than I thought it’d be, so I clear my throat and press the reset button.

“Hey, Luke. What were you saying earlier about some kind of limbless amphibian?”

“Oh! A few years ago, they discovered a new species in Brazil that grows up to thirty-two inches long, and resembles—”

Luke’s voice cuts off so suddenly that I turn to make sure he hasn’t been eaten by something. His face is flushed the color of a cayenne pepper, and suddenly I truly am curious.

“Resembles what? Don’t leave me hanging.”

“It resembles . . . um . . . a certain male reproductive organ.”

“Oh.” I face forward and hike as if my feet are on fire, and I don’t slow until I hear rushing water. A minute later, we reach the cliff, and I catch my breath, just like I did the first time. The setting sun paints ripples of fire across the surface.

“Holy shit!” Luke breathes as he peeks carefully over the edge.

“That is where I lost my supplies.”

His eyes seem to take up half of his face. “You jumped?”

“From about two feet to your left.” I could have died. I should have died.

Luke scoots back from the edge, sweat beading on his forehead. “How did you avoid the boulders?”

“Ryan says God keeps a close eye on those without the mental capacity to take care of themselves. My survival seems to prove his point.” Thinking about my brother sends a fresh bolt of pain through my chest and I close my eyes, determined not to cry again.

This is the time for revenge.

“Let’s go. It’s getting dark.” I take two steps, but Luke doesn’t move.

“You’re fearless,” he whispers.

“I’m scared right now.” What if Genesis is already dead? What if we never make it out of the jungle?

What if my brother’s killers get away?

“Okay, but you use fear like a superpower. You harness it for good, or whatever.” His focus drops to the ground, and I can see that he wants to take the whole thing back. Not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he thinks it sounds stupid.

“You really think so?”

“You jumped off a cliff to help your brother. Stupid? Yes. But very brave.” Luke’s gaze holds mine with a bold confidence I’ve rarely seen from him, and something flutters deep in my belly.

“You’re giving me way too much credit. Come on.”

As we continue down the path, I stare at the ground, hyperaware that every decision I make from this point on could take us in the wrong direction.

I’m no longer retracing my steps. This is where the jungle gets real.

GENESIS

“¡Vamos!” Silvana calls from up ahead, and I assume she’s talking to one of the hostages until I see that we’ve come to a small clearing centered around a semipermanent fire pit, where Julian has taken a seat.

“Queremos café y tenemos que hacer pis,” he insists, and I have to stifle a laugh.

“What did he say?” Indiana asks.

“He told her that they want coffee and they need to pee.”

“I’m with him on both counts,” Indiana says.

I haven’t had enough water in the two hours since our last rest to need a bathroom break.

Silvana curses in Spanish, but when Álvaro sits with Julian, she relents. “Don’t get comfortable, princesa,” she says when I set my bag on the ground. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

Penelope groans. “The sun is setting. I thought she was finally going to show us a little mercy.”

I sit on a patch of grass, and Pen takes my silence as an invitation to join me. “Holden and I didn’t mean to hurt you, Genesis.” She steels her spine and takes a deep breath. “It just happened.”

“Nothing ‘just happens’ with Holden.” I shrug and dig in my bag, as if this conversation means nothing to me. As if I’m not losing my best friend, when I’ve already lost everything else in the world today. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.”

“But it was me.”

I look up and hold her gaze. “And you think that makes you special? That you’re different from his other hookups?”

The raw vulnerability in her eyes answers for her.

“I know you’re socially stunted, from spending most of your adolescence on the uneven bars, so let me give you the SparkNotes version of Hookups for Dummies: if you start out as someone’s dirty little secret, that’s all you will ever be.” I look right into her eyes and am pleased to see them watering. “You clearly have no respect for me, but you should at least try to respect yourself.”

“Genesis, you hook up with guys all the time!”

“But I don’t sleep with them!” I hiss, too low for anyone else to hear. “And I would never have hooked up with my best friend’s boyfriend.” I pause for a second, then drive the blade home. “I hope it was worth what it cost you.”

Penelope flinches.

I swallow my guilt, pick up my bag, and leave her staring after me, so she can’t see the moisture I blink from my eyes.

Most of our captors have gathered around a pot sitting over a fire someone has built in the pit. They hold camp mugs, and Óscar is distributing scoops of instant coffee from a canister.