Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
We were simply too fucked in the head, too exhausted, too hungry, too sleepy, and in too much pain to involve the others right now. This goddamn ache…was already getting on my last nerve.
The first thing we did when we entered our suite was to close the curtains. The sun hadn’t set yet, and our headaches demanded darkness.
I dropped the plastic bag with our pocket belongings on the floor.
“Food, shower, painkillers, sleep?” I proposed.
“Perfect order.” He nodded once and sat down on the couch.
It was so tempting to take one of the queen beds, but if I lay down now, I’d never get up again. Instead, I peered into the bathroom and decided right then and there to switch my shower for a bath. Best part of upgrading hotel rooms was the occasional surprise of seeing a hot tub in the bathroom.
On the way back, I grabbed us Cokes from the minibar and opened them before I sat down next to Jake on the couch.
He turned on the TV. “I don’t think we lost too much footage, to be honest.”
I didn’t either.
I yawned and extended one of the sodas. “If we get our gear back tomorrow, we could book an extra night or two here, go through all the footage, and then decide if we need more time on the cutter.”
“That’s a good idea.”
We wasted a few minutes on an old rerun of some ’90s sitcom, which suited my overworked brain just fine. I wasn’t sure I could think anymore today. Well, there was one thing bothering me. I might as well get that out of the way.
“Can you tell me what exactly happened before the fire?” I asked. “What did you and Juarez see?”
Jake yawned. “When they apprehended the smugglers and brought them to the follow-up boat, I wondered idly if two of the men sat too close to each other. So one guy couldn’t grab anything on his own person, but he could potentially reach for something on the guy sitting right behind him.”
And that was what had happened?
“Right as they announced three positive tests for cocaine, I saw something in the corner of my eye that registered a second too late,” he went on. “He grabbed a lighter from his friend’s boot and lit it. That’s when I caught up, and I turned to Juarez right after and noticed he’d seen it too. And then—” He shrugged.
Yeah. And then.
It hit me that the Coast Guard might need more from us than our statements. Maybe they’d want access to everything we’d caught on film. It seemed likely. Jake—and my brother Francis, for that matter—had been right. Shit could always go wrong. These were high-risk operations, and you sort of learned by doing. Constantly improving and making changes as they went along.
We’d known from the get that fire was one of those risks, because destroying evidence was the top priority once the smugglers realized they couldn’t get away. They threw crap overboard more often than not, like phones and GPS and whatnot. And every now and then, if the opportunity presented itself, they blew up the boat.
They were called non-compliant boardings for a reason.
Juarez and Joel had told us about some of the evidence they’d found on smuggle boats in the past, like rags drenched in fuel, one or two fuel cans without a cap on, stuff like that.
They didn’t mess around.
Two knocks on the door brought me out of my thoughts, and I got up from the couch with a wince. My lower back was hurting too. A hot bath was sounding better by the second. I felt all stiff.
I opened the door, and my stomach tightened with hunger. “Hey. Over by the coffee table, please.”
We fucking filled that table. The pizza looked amazing, and the fries were perfectly crunchy. I thanked the delivery guy, and then Jake and I were alone with all this food.
He didn’t waste a second.
I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth.
We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, not counting shitty coffee and a candy bar at the hospital, so there’d be no leftovers.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” he groaned around his burger.
I wasn’t in a smiling mood for some reason. I bit into a slice of pizza and couldn’t shake the what-ifs piling up within me. Because what if Jake hadn’t made it? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I’d been the one who had pushed for riding with the TACLET operators. Hell, what if Jake and Juarez hadn’t seen the smuggler throwing the lighter? We all could’ve died. But the guilt was worse. Knowing that Jake had wanted the safer option and I hadn’t.
I would never forget the dread when I’d seen Jake’s blood coating my fingertips. Starting CPR! Come on, Denver. How badly the black smoke had stung, seeing a wave of fire welling up above the surface while I’d been under, feeling Jake’s motionless body, realizing he wasn’t conscious, the taste of the salt water, the gagging and coughing, the fucking currents pulling us toward the boat.