The Dysfunctional Honeymoon

Hadena James

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

Copyright © Hadena James 2013

Cover Photo Copyright © Anton Gvozdikov

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 10: 1484163060

ISBN 13: 978-1484163061

The Dysfunctional Honeymoon

Hadena James

Copyright 2013 by Hadena James

Smashwords Edition

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Other Books in The Dysfunctional Chronicles:

The Life & Dysfunction of Nadine Daniels’

The Dysfunctional Valentine

Books in the Brenna Strachan Urban Fantasy Series:

Dark Cotillion

Dark Illumination

Dark Resurrections (Releases May 2013)

Books in the Dreams & Reality Thriller Series:

Tortured Dreams

Elysium Dreams (Releases July 2013)

Acknowledgments and Dedications

This book was specifically written for my mother, Mollie, and my mother-in-law, Kris… Both of whom gave me a hard time for another cliffhanger ending. The two are not only family, but huge fans of the hapless Nadine.

I need to thank Beth. Her dedication to reading and offering opinions on what would and would not work, are essential to this series. I specifically dedicate the armadillos in this book to her.

I also want to thank Jason for putting up with my writing passion and my nephews, Michael and Andrew, who recommend my books to anyone that can read. And of course, my father, Jim, who foists my books onto anyone and everyone he knows.

Finally, my fans, without whom, I probably never would have considered writing The Dysfunctional Valentine, let alone a second novella.

Prologue

Three days ago, I was married. I kept waiting for the Russian Mob to firebomb the church or for a freak tornado to hit. Nothing did. There was a moment when I thought “my intended” would pass out, but Zeke stood his ground and even managed to kiss me without being struck by lightning.

Turns out, it was because Fate was waiting for our honeymoon.

Monday

Thirty minutes after stepping off the plane, I was bitten by a mosquito. That was yesterday. We had come straight to the hotel. Zeke spent the night playing nurse.

This morning, he had gone out to get me allergy medicine. He had come back without the medicine and acting like a lunatic. Currently, he was shoving all the stuff we had unpacked into the suitcases.

“We have got to go, Nadine,” he told me for the twelfth time.

“Yeah, I hear you, I just don’t understand. Are the hives worse?” I had hoped to enjoy my trip to Belize, but it was looking less and less likely.

“Finish packing this, I’ll call the airline and get us tickets on the next flight out,” Zeke handed me something that turned out to be the pearls that didn’t go around the neck. Zeke had explained them and promised I’d be modeling them later. We’d been in first class, no seat mates thankfully, as he gave the explanation. However, that didn’t stop the flight attendant from overhearing. As she walked past, she had quietly slipped me a piece of paper that said “Couldn’t help but hear, the front bathroom is pretty big.” Zeke had grinned and explained “The Mile High Club” at that point. Of course, I didn’t live under a rock completely and knew what the “The Mile High Club” was, but I blushed anyway.

As he talked on the phone, I put stuff into the suitcases. My goal was to be more organized than him. Our clothes were getting mixed together and he had wadded them up into balls ensuring that they didn’t all seem to fit anymore. Worse, all the crap my mother and his mother had packed was strung about the place as Zeke had been taking things out to make room.

I was fine with leaving behind some of the things our mothers had packed. All those stupid batteries had set off red flags the first time we had gone through the airport. I didn’t think they had packed any unmentionables in my carry-on luggage. I had been mortified when the TSA Agent had started pulling them out. Zeke had deftly explained it was our honeymoon. They had wished us well and continued to go through my bags while I blushed to the point I had to sit down or faint.

“Faster,” Zeke made a weird motion with his hand. I rolled my eyes at him and continued to pack at my own pace. There was a skill to this and obviously, he lacked it.

“Ok, taxi will be here in twenty minutes, flight leaves in three hours,” he said, coming back over to me.

“What is the deal?” I asked, shoving a pair of his bikini underwear into the bottom of a duffle bag.

“You know all that stuff I can’t tell you about that I used to do?” He asked.

“Sure,” I nodded.

“It’s here,” he handed me the cell phone and shoved more stuff into the bag. The waiting screen was back on, meaning the call had ended, so I hit the button and stuck it into my pocket.

“Here? What?” I stopped, feeling slow and confused.

“Yeah, someone that shouldn’t be here, let alone alive, is in town.”

“Maybe he just looks like someone who shouldn’t be here, let alone alive,” I offered.

“Nadine, trust me on this, it’s him.”

“Well did he see you?” I asked still looking for a way to salvage some dignity. I had no desire to sit in an airport lobby covered in hives.

“If he didn’t, we might live long enough to get back to the States. Pack faster,” Zeke ran into the bathroom. I gave up on organized packing and sat on the duffle bag. When I was sure all the air was pretty well squashed from it, I shoved a whole bunch of clothes in it and forced it to zip.

Zeke came out with toothbrushes, a hair brush, toothpaste, and other toiletries. He looked at the bags and dropped them into the trashcan.

“That’s my favorite hairbrush!” I told him, walking over to reclaim it.

“I’ll buy you a new one, with diamonds or something. We don’t have room for it,” he checked his watch, “and we need to go.”

He hoisted the bags onto his shoulders. I grabbed our two small carry-on bags and followed him out of the hotel room.

“Yes, we need to go, her doctor is afraid without medical treatment there will be severe scarring,” Zeke was telling the front desk clerk. Suddenly, he was calm and suave again, the Zeke I was used to seeing.

“Oh, Mrs. LaRouche, I am so sorry to hear about your allergic reaction,” the desk clerk said when he saw me. He had a slight British accent. “Try some of this to make the ride home more comfortable.”

The desk clerk handed me a pill and a bottle of goo. The goo looked like calamine lotion, the pill looked like a Benadryl. These were exactly the things I had hoped Zeke would bring back. I started to open the bottle.

“Not now Nadine, you can apply in the airport, we’re going to miss our flight,” Zeke gave me a look.

“But it itches now,” I gave him a look right back.

“I’ll help you, but we need to load the taxi and get to the airport,” he seemed to put emphasis on the entire sentence. I huffed and put away the stuff the desk clerk had given me.

“Thank you so much,” I smiled at the desk clerk. He finished running Zeke’s credit card.

A hotel person grabbed the bags around Zeke’s feet. We all trudged out to the taxi. Zeke and the concierge loaded the luggage while I took one last look at the beautiful beach. The waters I would never swim in. The bikinis my mother had forced on me wouldn’t be used. I didn’t mind that so much.

“Nadine,” Zeke said my name.

“What?” I looked at him.

“You want to give us those last two bags?”

I was still holding the carry-on bags. I handed them to Zeke, who jerked them without me letting go. The zipper busted and stuff flew everywhere, including a piece of glassware that wasn’t for cooking, the pearls that didn’t go around the neck and things that took batteries. I blushed, realized it would probably make the hives look even worse, and hid my face. I couldn’t believe how much of that stuff he had shoved into the carry-on bag.

“Nadine,” Zeke’s voice was almost pleading. I followed the pearls down the driveway while he went the other direction. The concierge was even gathering stuff. The taxi driver got out to help.

“I got it!” I squealed triumphantly just before the taxi blew up.

My feet left the ground as the impact hit me. I landed quite hard on a small shrub. The branches snapped under my weight. Little needle-like splinters of wood were digging into my back. I touched my face. It was warm, most likely from the hives, but I couldn’t be sure. I also couldn’t hear anything.

For several minutes I refused to move. I was sure I was bleeding from somewhere. I had no proof of this, it was just a feeling I had.

“Nadine?” Zeke’s voice was very muffled, but his face swam into view above me and that helped.

I frowned at him.

“Are you okay?”

“Not in the least,” I answered, my own voice sounding very loud inside my head.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you stand?”

I wiggled out of the shrub and found I could stand. No blood seemed to be oozing from anywhere. Things were looking up.

“Ok, so he saw you and it probably isn’t a doppelganger,” I told Zeke.

“And he knows we are here and called for a taxi,” Zeke told me.

“How do you know it wasn’t a random taxi bombing?” I asked.

“With you, that makes sense,” he frowned at me.

“I know and just think, you said ‘until death do us part.’ That might happen faster than expected. Have you updated your life insurance yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Then don’t die,” I sat down on the curb.

The desk clerk was standing near me. He gave me a sympathetic look, like this happened all the time. I was betting it didn’t, but he was well trained.

“An ambulance is on the way,” he told me.

“Thank you,” I answered.

“It seems that the bomb might have helped…” he leaned in and let out a scream. Blood exploded from his shoulder. Zeke crashed into me, we both rolled to the ground. A barrage of plinking noises were echoing in my ears.

“Sniper,” he hissed.

“Why is there a sniper?” I hissed back.

“I’d say this guy would like me dead,” Zeke gave me a look that said I had just asked a really stupid question. I was betting I had a lot of questions for him if we survived this. I hadn’t intended to marry someone that was the same disaster magnet as me.

There was another plink and bits of the wall above us exploded. Zeke looked at me. I frowned back.

“You aren’t a very cheerful person,” he said, “you’re always frowning.”

“Someone is trying to kill us and you are concerned with my frowning?”

“Have I ever let you die in the past? Besides, when you get old, you’ll have more frown lines than smile lines at this rate,” he flashed me a quick grin. I couldn’t argue with that, he’d saved my butt a few times.

“True, but we are so not consummating this marriage until I am convinced that I don’t want an annulment and right now, it’s not looking so good for you,” I retorted.

“We’ll worry about consummating later, right now, we need to head for the jungle, that’s our best option.”

“With the mosquitoes,” I gave him another look.

“Well, I admit, you aren’t that attractive with hives and no eyebrows and I don’t want it to get worse, but a bullet in the skull is much worse than hives.”

“What do you mean no eyebrows?”

“They burnt off, Nadine, they’ll grow back,” he took hold of my hand.

Carefully, he got up and took cover behind a car that hadn’t exploded. He pulled me up next to it. More people were running to the scene. More plinking could be heard.

He made some hand signals that indicated I was to stay where I was and stay low. I had worked with him enough to understand them. Quickly, he grabbed the last carry-on bag and ducked back behind the car with me.

“Ok, now we head for the jungle,” he motioned with his head to the back side of the hotel.

“We go through the hotel or around it?” I needed clarification.

“Through,” he shook his head.

“I’ve never dodged snipers in Belize, how was I supposed to know?”

“Not now,” he shook his head again, took hold of my hand and set off running.

I would have bet money that playing with the dogs every day kept me in shape. This didn’t seem to be the case. Zeke was out-running me and dragging me along. I jerked my hand from his and found I could go a little faster without the umbilical cord stringing us together.

We exploded out the back doors, down an alley and past some very surprised spectators that seemed interested in watching the smoke over the hotel. We also passed a few vendors that seemed far less surprised or interested, they kept peddling their wares. Maybe the car bomb wasn’t that unusual in Belize.

Zeke found another cab and tossed me and the bag into it. He gave instructions to the driver. The driver responded by flooring the car. I was forced back into the seat. The driver took a corner and I felt my head slam the side of the car door. The window didn’t break, but it felt like my skull had.

Gingerly I touched it. No blood was a good sign. I figured I already looked like a hell, a few new bumps on my head wouldn’t be noticed.

“Call Anthony,” Zeke told me as the driver took a corner on two wheels.

I dug for the cell phone and speed dialed Anthony.

“No phone calls, you’re on your honeymoon,” Anthony answered.

“And we were almost killed by an exploding taxi and someone was shooting at us,” I responded back, trying not to sound hysterical.

“What?” Anthony roared into the phone. There had been a time when Anthony had been hired to protect me from men with money and guns and very little brains. He had helped me start my business as a result.

Zeke took the phone from me.

“I did a job about ten years ago in Colombia. The guy was a cocaine baron. Guess who I ran into on the streets of Belize today?” Zeke said into the phone.

There was silence for a few seconds. The driver took another corner on two wheels. I let out a squeal.

“Yeah, get your ass down here, because I don’t think we can get out.”

More silence except the car. It screeched to a halt and catapulted me into the seat in front of me. My nose hurt, but again, no blood was a good sign. There was nothing around. I looked at Zeke who was already opening the door. He gave the driver a couple of hundreds and yanked the bag from the car. I followed.

“No, we have our passports, but he’s going to be watching the airport. It took him less than an hour to rig a taxi with a bomb and set a sniper on a roof. He’s determined.”

I have never been in a jungle. Probably with good reason. I found it creepy. Even on the border of civilization, the trees almost instantly began to block out the full effects of the sun. The ground was littered with dangerous undergrowth that threatened to send me sprawling. There were noises that I hadn’t heard in the city, noises that belonged to animals and I didn’t know how many of them were predators, but I was guessing there were at least a few.

There would also be snakes, poisonous vipers that were hidden in the trees and camouflaged into the undergrowth. I had read about a few of the indigenous species while on the plane and they could all kill you quickly and painfully with a single bite. And of course, at night, there would jaguars.

None of this eased my mind as we hovered just inside the trees. Zeke was finishing up his conversation with Anthony. When he did, he handed me my phone and took off, leading me deeper into the jungle. In here, everything seemed alien. There were noises I couldn’t identify made by animals I couldn’t see. Branches above us rustled and danced as the unseen creatures moved above us. The sound of the city was lost.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, Anthony, Sebastian and Alex are on their way down here. I’m not sure why Anthony is bringing Sebastian and Alex unless he is using them as cover,” Zeke told me.

“And?”

“And it will probably be tomorrow or the next day. Until then, we need to stay alive and away from the city. We will hike through the jungle to the next village and see about finding a place to stay.”

“Hike through the jungle?” I asked skeptically.

“Yes, through it. We can’t go around it, someone will see us. Better to look like lost tourists than Americans on the run.”

“You aren’t an American.”

“I’m half American. My father was an American.”

“I didn’t know that,” I told him.

“Once we get into the jungle a good ways, we’ll stop and take inventory of what we saved.”

Six hours later, my stomach was growling, my feet hurt, I was sweaty and I was reconsidering every one of my life choices. I couldn’t decide which fork all those years ago had lead to me hiding in the jungle, but I knew one of them was responsible. I’m pretty sure it also involved Anthony and my mother.

Zeke finally stopped. He leaned against a tree and stretched. I found a log. I stared at the log for several minutes. There was something else I was afraid of in this jungle and it would probably be living inside the rotten piece of timber. It took me a minute to find a large enough stick to beat the log. The sound of the stick hitting the log echoed against the trees and stirred more creatures in the treetops above us. I waited to see what came out.

Ants suddenly poured forth. This was not the thing I feared, but it would be a banquet for it. I stood motionless.

“Those are bullet ants, they are going to hurt like hell if they bite you,” Zeke gave me a strange look.

“Are they likely to attract armadillos?” I looked at the leaf-strewn ground, searching for movement.

“Maybe, I think armadillos will eat them. Why?”

“I don’t really like armadillos. They are odd looking and…” And I couldn’t think of another reason to dislike them or be afraid of them. But a phobia is a phobia, they aren’t supposed to be rational. I found another spot to sit, away from the ants and any hungry armadillos and pulled out the bottle of calamine lotion.

“You’re afraid of armadillos?” Zeke smirked.

“We all have moments when we are irrational. This would be one of mine,” I answered him and began to open the bottle.

“I don’t see you being savaged by an armadillo, but you might watch for snakes,” he told me as he snatched the bottle out of my hands. The calamine lotion flew through the air, as if in slow motion, and coated Zeke. He growled.

“Serves you right. Why did you take that away? Are snakes edible?” My stomach growled again.

“Don’t you know better than to take things, even calamine lotion, from strangers?” He wiped at the stuff, but it was already starting to dry and flake under his movements.

“He seemed nice. Where are we sleeping tonight?”

“You’re not really a camper, are you?” He peeled at the lotion.

“I cannot for one reason figure out why I would go camping when hotels provide me with everything I could possibly need,” I answered.

“Except safety from deranged drug lords who are hiding out in Belize and want you dead.”

“Ok, except that and I’m not sure they want me dead. I think this time, it’s you.”

“That’s true, you are just collateral damage at this point, but since we were seen together…” Zeke let his sentence trail off. I hadn’t really dealt with drug lords in the past, but I was guessing they were no different than the Russian Mob. They had wanted me dead at one point and had been willing to kill anyone necessary to get there. Something told me the same principle applied to this situation.

I opened the carry-on bag. It contained two pairs of underwear, mine; two pairs of socks, his; a pair of his jeans, a t-shirt that belonged to me, handcuffs, a baby-doll nighty, some other unmentionables, some batteries for said unmentionables, and a bikini. I had seen the movie with the bikini clad girls in Central America. They had died. I wasn’t about to put it on.

This meant I had a t-shirt, two pairs of panties and my canvas tennis shoes that my mother had insisted went with a dress. I hadn’t believed her, tennis shoes whether canvas or not did not go with dresses, but I was glad I also hated sandals and bought the canvas shoes on instead.

At the very bottom of the bag was a package of peanuts and an empty Mountain Dew bottle. I pulled out the peanuts and ate them greedily. Zeke smiled at me while I did it. When they were gone, I was very thirsty.

“Those didn’t really help, did they?” He asked, still smiling.

“Go give yourself a swirly,” I muttered at him.

“I hear water, I’ll see what I can do,” he took the Mountain Dew bottle and left me.

Dark was starting to descend. The undergrowth was growing bleaker by the second. Soon, I would be plunged into complete darkness. This didn’t make me feel very good. I kept trying to spot movement in the jungle. A jaguar would be just my type of luck.

Zeke came back with the Mountain Dew bottle. He handed it to me. I reluctantly tasted the water. It wasn’t bad. I drank enough to cleanse my palate of salt and thirst and handed him the bottle. The last thing I needed was dysentery.

The ever prepared Zeke, pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and handed it to me as he drank from the bottle. I flipped it on. It was just a small LED flashlight, but at this point, I was out of my league and clinging to anything I could find that reminded me of civilization. Guns I could deal with, but we didn’t even have those. I had unmentionables and a tiny flashlight.

He pulled out a second one and turned it on. He also pulled out a compass and a map. I wasn’t sure where these things had been stored, but I was grateful for both.

“We’ll camp here tonight, no point going any further, we’ll just get stuck in the darkness. Tomorrow, we continue west until we hit this town,” he pointed his light at a spot on the map.

“Camp?” I frowned at him.

“Camp. As in sleep under the stars.”

“What about jaguars? I’ve seen big cats up close and personal, I know what they can do to a human body.”

“Oh, I hadn’t considered your phobia of them.”

“It’s not a phobia, it’s a justifiable fear. I’ve been attacked once; I would prefer not to be attacked again.”

“Traveling through the jungle at night on an empty stomach isn’t very smart,” Zeke stood up and began doing things in the dark.

It took an hour, but he had a semi-shelter built over me and a small fire burning. Next, he went outside the scope of the fire and came back with what appeared to be a large lizard. It was obviously having a similar day to my own. Zeke stuck something through it and began holding it over the small fire.

“Won’t the fire and the smell of roasting lizard be noticed?” I asked.

“As long as we don’t keep it burning all night, it should be fine. Locals don’t go into the jungle at night, too many things to keep you from coming out.”

“And the drug dealer?”

“Also unlikely to come out into the jungle at night. Remember, just because I can make you feel safe doesn’t mean we are safe. Jaguars are not the only predators in these trees.”

“Worse than jaguars?” I looked around.

“Bullet ants, poison dart frogs, palm vipers, Tommy Goffs, several types of spiders and there are scorpions that can be fatal. The bullet ants won’t kill you, but they hurt like hell. It will make you scream and cry.”

“What is a Tommy Goff? Is it a ghost?” I asked.

“No, it’s a type of snake, a viper. Don’t get bit, it carries hemotoxin that will rot off your body parts before it kills you.”

“Great.”

“There are also reports of pumas and caiman here, both are nocturnal.”

“Shut up.”

“Want some lizard?”

“My brain says no and my stomach says yes.”

“Just close your eyes and pretend it’s chicken,” Zeke cut off a chunk of meat and handed it to me. I closed my eyes and ate it. It did not taste like chicken. If I had to describe it, I would say it tasted like chicken, if the chicken had been slathered in pork lard, then roasted with beef stock and finally blended with badly cooked raccoon that retained its gamy taste. But it had been lean and it hadn’t tasted like beets.

The lizard eaten, my stomach felt better or at least it felt full. Zeke rummaged around in the carry-on and found a hoodie. He took it out and covered me up with it. He also took the t-shirt and made a pillow out of it.

“It’s no use trying to be nice now,” I told him, attempting to fluff the t-shirt into a shape that would hold my head.

“I’m being helpful, you still have hives,” he answered.

“Thanks,” I looked at him. “Well, at least I can cross off ‘jungle tour’ from our honeymoon to-do list.”

“You wanted exotic,” he smiled at me. “You got it. What could be more exotic than being trapped in the jungle with your new husband and a couple hundred predators while hoping you don’t get caught by a crazed drug lord?”

“Were you supposed to assassinate said drug lord?”

“No, I was in charge of destroying his operation. Someone else was supposed to assassinate him,” Zeke stared into the fire for a long time, not talking. I could tell it weighed heavily on his mind.

“It was like this,” Zeke started after a long silence that had almost put me to sleep. “Myself and four others broke into the compound. We were to find the cocaine fields and kill the drug lord. I was in charge of finding the fields, I took two guys with me. We scoured the compound, found the plans and went off to do what we were sent to do. Two others stayed behind, they were in charge of killing the drug lord and his lieutenants. My team found the fields and set them on fire using a combination of incendiary devices and flammable liquids. We were setting up the last field to blow, when we discovered our target was at the field. We didn’t let this stop us, but it did mean we had to change how we did things. Most of the workers would run from us, they weren’t armed and the supervisors were easy to take out. But the last one, the drug lord being there, well that made things more difficult. He was heavily armed and guarded. We had to be very careful. We weren’t careful enough and all of us ended up prisoners. He made a mistake by taking us back to the compound to interrogate us. The other two men were still there, cleaning up when we arrived. Gunfire erupted, we thought the cartel leader went down in a blaze of glory, so to speak. I was injured, along with one of the other men from the unit, but we managed to get the hell out of there. We got back and the mission was proclaimed a success. Obviously, it wasn’t. By then though, a new cartel leader was coming into power. Since it is hard to have multiple cartels working in the same area, my guess is this one disappeared, went into hiding. Until I saw him today, I would have bet he was dead. If not by us, then by the new cartel.”

“And he remembers you,” I thought that was impressive.

“Wouldn’t you remember the man who practically ruined you? The scar on my chest is from him,” Zeke said thoughtfully.

“So you were CIA?” I asked.

“Not really, it was black ops, but not CIA sponsored. There is more to the government than the public ever really sees. “

Tuesday

Zeke shook me awake as dawn was approaching. I could just begin to see the sky starting to lighten. I figured I had gotten about four hours of sleep. In my world, this is unacceptable, but since we were on the run, I didn’t bitch about it. Besides, if I did bitch, it was possible that Zeke would feed me to a jaguar.

The sun was up when we stopped. Zeke stood. I sat down on a fallen tree. These shoes were not made for walking, at least not for long periods of time.

“Do you have a plan?” I asked.

“Yes, you rendezvous with Alex and the two of you get the hell out of Belize. The three of us disable the threat.”

“You’re going to kill him.”

“I think we are going to blow him up, payback for the taxi. Does that bother you?”

“Nope, but half of my family still deals with mob death threats and I’m pretty sure they don’t all get restraining orders. Look at my great aunt,” I was referring to my Great Aunt Olga of course, who carried some sort of supergun from the former Soviet Union’s weird cache of firearms.

I scratched at the Brazilian Waxed area that my mother had insisted I get. It itched like mad and seemed covered in bumps that I was sure wasn’t supposed to be there. I had seen it yesterday morning when I showered.

“Stop scratching, you’ll just irritate it more,” Zeke smiled at me.

“It itches, I don’t know how women do this all the time,” I admitted.

“So, I’m betting that I will have to get used to some hair down there.”

“I trim, it isn’t like digging through prairie grass,” I said defensively.

“No doubt,” Zeke started laughing at me.

“Hush or I’ll sic my brothers on you.”

“I’d be more afraid of the dogs.”

“True, but I don’t think the dogs would attack you. You feed them bacon.”

On that note, we got up and started trekking through the jungle some more. When one is stuck in the jungle, marching along, with no conversation, trying not to think about what drug dealers do to hostages, one has a lot of time to think. Currently, I was thinking about jungle rot. I had overheard conversations about jungle rot from my former military security personnel. I didn’t know what it was, but it seemed to be something you caught in the jungle.

“Am I going to get jungle rot?” I asked after walking for what seemed ages. I was going to have to start exercising more. Zeke was a foot taller than me with long legs, I was having to speed walk to keep up with him.

“No,” he said, obviously smiling.

“What is jungle rot?” I huffed a little, Zeke slowed down his pace.

“Maybe you should focus on walking quieter,” Zeke answered.

“Am I loud?”

“You sound like a dinosaur crashing through the jungle, so yeah, I’d say you are loud.”

I stopped talking and focused on walking quieter. Zeke was right, he moved with not just speed but stealth. In comparison to him, I really did sound like a dinosaur crashing through the undergrowth. More time to think about jungle rot. I made a mental note to look it up when I got back to civilization. I didn’t have a clue what it was, but I was sure it would be important when my foot began to rot.

Another hour had gone when the jungle suddenly gave way to a backyard. I look up and found a large building with manicured grass and trees that were more manageable.

“Oh thank god,” I said.

“I told you I’d bring you through,” Zeke turned and flashed me a grin.

“I need a phone charger.”

“You need a bath.”

“Ok, I need a bath and a phone charger.”

“At least the hives are going down,” Zeke took my hand as we walked out onto the street.

Surprisingly, almost no one turned to stare at us. I guess tourists getting lost in the jungle was standard operating procedure around here. We were in a smaller town. However, there was still plenty of tourist claptrap around us. There were also plenty of tourists to go with it. I heard a man hawking a tour to a ruined temple somewhere down the road and felt a tinge of disappointment. I was supposed to going to Mayan ruins and exploring stepped pyramids.

It was a strange transition. One minute jungle, the next a busy thoroughfare, in a busy town. I stopped at a stall selling T-Shirts with pictures of beaches and screaming “Belize” in odd lettering.

“Do you have your wallet?” I turned to Zeke.

“Yes,” he sighed and walked over to me. He handed me some money. I took it and bought one of the crappy t-shirts. Since I didn’t really have much in the way of wardrobe, I’d have to settle for what I could get.

T-shirt in hand, I walked the few feet back to Zeke. He was scanning the crowd. I’d seen him do it before, he was looking for anyone that seemed out of place. In a town full of tourists and locals, I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“What now?” I asked after a few minutes. My feet were killing me. I was sure jungle rot was setting in.

“Now we find a small hotel with lots of tourists and call Anthony,” Zeke took hold of my hand.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the hotel. There were two bottles of water in a small fridge. I guzzled both, found a bottle of sparkling water and drank that too. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I’d been until I had seen the water. Thirst now quenched, I made a mental note to call the front desk for more water and headed to the shower. The water was only lukewarm, but it beat the hell out of being in the jungle. I let the water beat down on my skin and wash away the dirt and grime. I put on the hotel bathrobe and examined the hives. They were going down.

There was “jungle-tainted” jeans next to the bed, but they were the only pants I had at the moment and the “Belize” T-shirt. The jeans smelled. I could smell them from here. I really didn’t want to put them back on. Zeke had gone out to buy a few necessities. I wasn’t sure what defined necessities in this situation, I was hoping pants were included.

I grabbed the phone and dialed Alex.

“Oh my god, are you ok?” She asked, instead of saying hello when she answered the phone.

“Well, I’m clean,” I answered.

“Zeke said to pack some clothes, so I have an extra bag for you. Our plane leaves in about thirty minutes.”

“Zeke says we are safe here for the time being. He is out getting some things, but I don’t know what they are. What is jungle rot?”

“I don’t know,” Alex answered.

“I think I have it. I also have hives and a rash from the day at the spa. I have lost almost everything I brought with me except the stupid pearls that don’t go around the neck, one pair of jeans, a shirt and a bikini. And I endured the torture of having my eyebrows plucked only to have them burned off.”

“Are you going to cry?”

“I’m too tired to cry at the moment. Maybe later. I ate lizard last night for dinner. My stomach is growling but I’m afraid to upset the lizard.”

“Nadine?” Alex said my name with hesitation.

“I’m fine. I’m just tired. I’ll be very glad when you get here and we can fly back home.”

“Worse than being chased by the mob?”

“I haven’t gotten to do anything I planned on this honeymoon. We, as in you and me and maybe Kenzie, will have to come back to Belize so I can explore Mayan ruins and swim in the Caribbean.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Alex assured me.

“Ok, I’m going to order room service and then sleep until you arrive. Bye.” I hung up.

Talking to Alex hadn’t made me feel any better. I called down to the front desk and seemed to get the only person in the hotel who did not speak English. Part of the appeal of coming to Belize had been the high level of English-speaking natives. It had once been a part of the British Empire, they had called it British Honduras. This meant English was still a dominating language. Except now, and it was complicated by the fact that I didn’t speak Spanish.

“Food,” I finally shouted into the phone in Russian.

A different voice came over the line. He spoke English fluently. I told him what I wanted and he assured me that my order would arrive shortly. I pulled out the pearls from my pocket and looked at them. Even if I hadn’t been consummating my marriage, I was supposed to be climbing up ruined pyramids and sitting on the beach reading a book. I wasn’t supposed to be participating in DIY tours of the jungle or eating lizards.

The food arrived. I ate, left some for Zeke and crawled into bed. That’s when the tears came. I was sure tears during the honeymoon were bad luck for the marriage.

“Please stop crying,” I heard Zeke’s voice. I hadn’t heard him enter the room.

“I’m trying,” I sniffled.

“I’ll take you to Egypt, we can look at the pyramids there. You can ride camels and watch crocodiles on the bank of the Nile.”

“Have you ever done a mission in the Middle East?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but…”

“Then no, I’m not going to Egypt with you. We’ll be hunted down by terrorists or something.”

“I got you a shirt that doesn’t say ‘Belize’ on it and a pretty wrap skirt and different shoes.”

“You should get to know me better now that we are married.”

“I know, you don’t care about clothes, but I’m doing what I can here. In seventeen hours, you’ll be home with the dogs, enjoying civilization.”

“I think this is an omen that our marriage is doomed. I’m going to be the only person on the planet who is divorced after an arranged marriage.”

“If something hadn’t gone wrong, I would consider it an omen. The fact that something did, just proves that this is our life together. You are not going to be divorced.”

“Our honeymoon sucks.” I managed to gain control of the tears. I wiped my nose on a tissue next to the bed.

“But we got through the wedding without a firebomb, I’d consider that damn good luck,” Zeke stood. “Where’s all the water?”

“Oh, uh, I drank it. I was thirsty,” I blushed.

“Good thing I bought more bottles while I was out,” he pointed to a bag on the bed, “I’m going to go shower, then I’m going to eat your leftovers and then I’m napping.”

“Funny, I wasn’t planning on leaving you leftovers, I was hungrier than I thought. I can order down, if you want.”

“The guy at the desk said you shouted at him in Russian. I don’t think you should.”

“He didn’t understand English, I tried something else.”

“I told you to brush up on some Spanish.”

“When did I have time?” I frowned at him.

“You could have locked yourself in your house for the week before the wedding instead of attracting drug dealers. That would have given you time to learn some Spanish. And you’re frowning again, you’re going to need botox at this rate.”

“That was my mom’s fault,” I protested.

“Yes, I didn’t realize that being disaster-prone was hereditary until I met you and Melina.”

“Comments like that will ensure that you never see me in these pearls.”

“If those pearls survive this trip, it will be nothing short of miraculous and I think they should get a special place on honor. Maybe a light box where we can display them. They can be our souvenir from this trip. Something like ‘I took pearls to Belize and despite the car bombing, they still exist!’”

“No, it would need to say ‘I Honeymooned in Belize and got blown up, but I still have these pearls that don’t go around the neck!’”

“I got it!” Zeke gave me a big grin, “I Left My Eyebrows in Belize but I still have my Pearls.”

“Wow, I thought I was the pessimist. I’m not sure I can spend the rest of my life with someone more pessimistic than me.”

“That was my optimistic view. If it had been pessimistic, I would have pointed out that if we survive this trip it will be a miracle.”

With that, Zeke stalked towards the shower. I unmade the bed and curled up under the sheet. My mind began to drift as the rhythmic beating of the shower soothed some of the stress from me.

“You know,” Zeke’s voice was very close to me. I opened my eyes. “We have about six hours before they get here. We could work on this consummating thing now.”

“Obviously, you have not seen the rash in that area.”

“It can’t be that bad,” he grinned.

I yawned, stretched and stood up. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and then dropped my jeans.

“Oh my god,” Zeke exclaimed then clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Oh yeah, it’s that bad. The guess on Saturday while I was getting ready for the wedding was that I had not only had an allergic reaction of some sort to the wax, but that it had become extremely irritated. The heat isn’t doing it any good either.”

“Yeah, we’ll just wait until we’re home. Until then, we’ll just cuddle. You might want to see a doctor about that.”

“If I can make time in my life to go to a doctor, I will,” I crawled back into bed, my jeans firmly re-secured.

“I can tell now that there is never going to be a dull moment in our life,” Zeke smiled and pulled me into him.

“Probably not,” I agreed.

There are lots of forms of intimacy and while I still had serious reservations about Zeke and I being married, we had already fallen into a bond. I curled into him and easily fell asleep.

When I woke, the room was dark and Zeke was gone. I fought my way out of the sheet and fumbled for a light switch. Flipping it on, I blinked into the suddenly brightened room. Nothing seemed out of place except the missing husband.

The panes of glass reflected lights from the city. It wasn’t like an American city or even a European city. There was no flashing neons, no aggressive sodium arc lights to slice through the dark. Instead, incandescent bulbs filled the few street lights and light spilled from windows and doorways. There was a small bar across from the hotel. The door was open and light spilled out into the street. Lively music kept a steady beat that rocked the bodies of dancers as they passed in front of the windows and doors. I took a deep breath and inhaled the smells of foreign foods, exotic spices and something that called to my primeval side.

There was no note, meaning Zeke didn’t expect me to wake before he returned. My stomach growled lightly. The clock told me it was just after ten pm. I had slept for almost nine hours. Our motley bunch of saviors and conspirators should be here by now. We had managed to get a flight with only an hour layover, meaning we arrived in Belize in four and a half hours. It took another hour or so to drive to our beach front hotel. Since I didn’t know where we were now, I didn’t know if it was closer or further from the airport. I also didn’t know how long of a lay-over they had.

Zeke pushed open the door. He held food in his hands. The smells were instantly intoxicating.

“Yum, I was just thinking about you and dinner,” I said.

“Have you been awake long?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“Well, we had to make do with sloppy take-out. I got there just before they closed the kitchen.”

Zeke put the food on the dresser. There was no table in our small room. Just a bed, a dresser, a pair of night stands and a chair. I took the bed and a container. I didn’t know what it was, but I had eaten lizard, it had to be better than that.

“They’ve landed and should be here soon,” Zeke said after we had both eaten.

“What’s the plan?”

“We’re all going to hunker down tonight. You and Alex are driving back to Belmopan late morning. Your flight is scheduled to depart at five tomorrow evening. However, there is a lay-over in Mexico City for six and a half hours. It was the only flight I could get you on. You’ll have to change planes and then you go straight home. When you get home, you call me. I won’t expect to hear from you until Thursday morning sometime.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Finish the job, better late than never.”

“I’m thinking our next trip, we should go to Tahiti. I’m sure your mom would love that and the chances of the mob following us or you running into Cocaine Barons that you were supposed to kill years ago are slim.”

“You’ve spent time with my mother, do you really want to do that again soon?”

“She’s not much different than my own. We could bring Melina and Alex and Sebastian. Force them to elope while they are there. Telisa and Melina could be the necessary witnesses.”

“How very spiteful of you,” Zeke gave me wide grin.

“Payback sucks,” I grinned back. “How long ago did they call?”

“Forty minutes or so. They woke me up, so I went to get food.”

“Are we closer or further from Belmopan?”

“You haven’t a clue where we are, do you?”

“Not in the least.”

“Do you remember where we were?”

“Dangriga.”

“We went west from there through the jungle.”

“And?” I frowned at him.

“We are now in Pomona.”

“Didn’t we drive through there on our way to Dangriga?”

“Yes, yes we did.”

“We went twenty miles west over night?” I remembered it hadn’t taken long to get to Dangriga after going through Pomona.

“Too many rivers to go any other direction. Besides the city is large enough for us to blend in and almost disappear.” There was a knock at the door.

Zeke drew a gun that I knew he hadn’t packed and stepped to it. He looked through the tiny hole. He hid the gun and opened the door. I stood as well, but for a different reason. The mild dehydration that had resulted in me breaking down and drinking even sparkling water seemed to be past. It had descended upon me like a monsoon, the very thought of water made me feel like I would explode.

Before, I could make my way to the little girl’s room; Alex literally threw herself into the room and onto the bed. Her arms wrapped around me, sending my mostly empty food container to the floor where it turned upside down. She hugged me until I thought water would begin pouring from my ears.

“I have to pee,” I whispered, struggling to breathe.

“Alex, I think you are cutting off her oxygen supply,” Sebastian said.

“Good, then drug lords can’t kill her,” Alex snapped at him. She let go.

“Someone has jet lag,” Anthony dropped a bag onto the floor. “Extra clothes for both of you.”

I opened the bag and took out underwear and clean jeans. I also grabbed a pair of socks and headed for the bathroom, taking the pearls that don’t go around the neck out of my pocket and putting them on the dresser.

I changed and walked back out. I picked the pearls back up and put them back into my pocket. Then realized everyone was staring at me.

“Why are you carrying those around?” Alex asked.

“I think they might be lucky, I haven’t died since I got them,” I responded.

“You didn’t die in the thirty years before you had them.”

“That’s true, but if the pearls hadn’t gotten free and rolled down the drive, I would have been standing next to the taxi when it exploded. I certainly wouldn’t have chased down anything battery operated.”

“Have they gotten you laid yet?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then they aren’t that lucky,” Alex smirked.

“I think when you examine my life; they are more likely to become a weapon of opportunity than a bedroom aid.”

“Done?” Anthony asked.

“Sure, we can discuss pearls later,” I flopped back down on the bed next to Alex.

“We took the rooms next door to yours, so we’ll hear anything that happens during the night. We have two rental cars. One in Alex’s name, she is going to take it back with her and Nadine. The other is in an alias that I happened to have handy, so if it blows up or something else happens to it, it can’t be linked to us. I had time to get Zeke a new passport but not Nadine. Although, since no one knows who she is, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“We were seen together,” Zeke said.

“I imagine you were, but they will be searching for someone with your last name and they never heard hers mentioned,” Anthony replied.

I hadn’t taken Zeke’s name. It would be weird on the building for starters. Plus, there was enough snickering at the office. Everyone knew our predicament, all thought it was funny. I did not need the constant reminder of it by changing my last name. Or at least it sounded good. The truth was, I didn’t want to fill out the paperwork or pay the name change fees or try to get everything set up with a new identity. I knew that married people did it all the time, but I wasn’t one to bother with such hassles.

“She will just have to avoid being seen by them,” Sebastian added.

“Avoid being seen by drug lords and henchmen that I’ve never seen, check.”

“I think that’s it until morning,” Anthony looked at me.

“Great, I think you boys will be very happy bunked up together,” Alex replied.

“They're on their honeymoon,” Anthony said.

“They aren’t having sex, I can guarantee it. On their wedding day, it looked like someone had taken a weed wacker and a blow torch to her crotch. I don’t imagine sweating to death in the jungle helped it much. If Zeke sees it, he’ll run away,” Alex said.

“I’m so glad you are discussing my unmentionable areas with my employees,” I scowled at her.

“They are both practically family and I’m sure Zeke would tell them if he knew,” Alex stated flatly.

“Oh I saw it and I think that description was an understatement,” Zeke grinned.

“Can we shut up about it?” I huffed.

“Well seeing her naked is a step in the right direction,” Alex said.

“Just the lower half,” Zeke said.

“I am so winning the pool at work,” Anthony grinned at me.

“What pool?” I narrowed my eyes.

“I put money that it would take more than a year for you to consummate the marriage. It was a safe bet to begin with, but that little nugget of information just catapulted my confidence that it will indeed take that long,” Anthony was still grinning.

“I can’t believe you are running a pool on this,” I sighed in frustration and resignation.

“Hey, I put my money on three months,” Sebastian said defensively.

“I was with Anthony,” Alex told me.

“If we survive this, I’m firing all of you,” I said.

“I don’t work for you,” Alex grinned.

“I’m firing you as my friend and cousin.”

“I don’t think you can do that,” Alex hopped up from the bed. “They only booked two rooms Zeke, none with double beds. You’ll have to decide with whom you are sleeping tonight because I’m sleeping in here.”

“I’ll take the floor,” Zeke replied.

“Well if that’s sorted, we’re off to bed,” Sebastian told us.

“Are you sure you don’t want to replace Alex with Zeke?” I asked him.

“Oh yeah, he snores almost as loud as she does. I voted for three rooms when we booked in. Anthony said you wouldn’t let us write off the third since Alex didn’t technically work for you and it turns out everyone is too cheap to shell out for the other room.”

“I do not snore,” Alex threw something at Sebastian, he caught it.

“Yes you do, it’s like sleeping with a dinosaur.” With that, Sebastian and Anthony left the room.

“Then you both snore,” Zeke said, taking a pillow and the comforter from the bed to make himself a pallet on the floor.

“Yes,” I said.

“We all inherited bad sinuses and overly large uvulas,” Alex added. “Some of us have snored so loud we have woken ourselves up on an occasion or two. Sebastian can’t stand it. He sleeps with ear plugs in when we stay together.”

“However, we seem to be immune to the snoring of others,” I said. “Once Alex and I both start sleeping, we won‘t notice the other one snoring.”

“Kenzie is also a snorer and immune,” Alex said. MacKenzie Reynolds was the third girl in our group. None of us had many girlfriends, so we clung to each other. The fact that I was related to both didn’t seem to matter. Alex was my cousin on my mom’s side. Kenzie was a cousin on my dad’s side. Kenzie and Alex were also friends, but we admitted that if we hadn’t been cousins first, we probably never would have become friends. However, we were all cut from the same mold, so to speak, so we clicked.

“Zeke snores,” I told Alex. “Not like us, but he does snore. It’s strange sounding.”

“Really?” Alex looked over the bed at him on the floor. “Are you immune?”

“No, Nadine can wake me up with her snoring,” Zeke answered.

“All right, good night,” Alex so abruptly ended the conversation, I gave her a look as she got up and flipped out the lights. I’m sure it was lost to the dark.

Wednesday

Surprisingly, I had slept like the dead. It didn’t seem to matter that I had nine hours of sleep earlier that day. Alex had given me some Benadryl for the hives and I had gone out like the light. This morning the hives were gone and my arms didn’t feel bloated and heavy. The insect bite that had caused the allergic reaction also looked much better. It didn’t even itch.

We had brunch in the hotel restaurant or rather, on the veranda of the hotel restaurant. There were no beaches to stare at, just a city thriving on tourism and small businesses. I hadn’t gotten to see much of Belize, but what I did see, I liked. If life hadn’t gotten in the way, I would have gone home with artisan made goods for myself and everyone else that I knew. I would have bought souvenirs and trinkets and spent hours shopping in the small little store fronts.

Unfortunately, life had gotten in the way. Alex and I were loaded up in the small rental car and took off for Belmopan and our flight. I looked out the window once and watched the men disappear inside the hotel. I was sure they were off to make clandestine plans for surveillance and darker deeds.

“What’s your back-up honeymoon plan?” Alex asked after we had exited Pomona and were surrounded by lush green jungle that smelled of things I would never see.

“I don’t have one,” I told her.

“Really? I figured you’d have another holiday planned.”

“Nope. I think we are going to Tahiti, but it won’t be soon, probably next year.”

“That’ll be fun.”

“I figure with Telisa and Melina around, we won’t be pestered by bad guys.”

“You’re taking your mom?”

“Sure, she has always wanted to go to Tahiti and her and Telisa became good friends while they were around for the wedding. We thought you and Sebastian could come as well.”

“We’ll see,” she gave me a skewed glance that ended the conversation. We drove in silence. There was this feeling pressing down on me. The closer we got to Belmopan, the worse the feeling became. I think Alex was feeling it too. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, turning her knuckles white. Her face became pinched.

“ESP?” I asked as we got within spitting distance of the city.

“I don’t know, I just know I feel like something bad is going to happen.”

“Me too,” I told her.

“I think it has to do with the men,” Alex frowned at me.

“Think we should call in more troops?”

“No, I think that would get them noticed. I just want them to do what they are going to do and get the hell out of here.”

“Agreed,” I said as she pulled into a parking spot. She went inside and returned the rental car as I got our bags out of the trunk. We only had two small overnight bags. I put them on the ground as she returned.

“We have a couple hours yet, do you want to do anything?”

“No, let’s just get insi...” I stopped talking and stared at the figures approaching us. “Tell me you have a gun.”

“No, why?”

“Those unknown henchmen are here,” I whispered.

“How did they find us?”

I frowned at her.

“Oh yeah, good point,” she blushed lightly. “Run for the airport.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I took off running. Alex kept pace with me, our feet sounded loud against the concrete. I could hear footsteps behind us and they were getting closer.

Someone grabbed onto my shirt, the fabric stretched near the breaking point, choking me with the collar. I made a gurgling sound as the fabric caught my throat. Alex turned around. She dashed back to us, catching the man off guard. Both of us were in fight mode.

Alex punched him in the nose and I kicked backwards, catching him in the knee. He swore at us in Spanish. I didn’t have to know the language to know when I was being sworn at. Alex jumped onto his back, together we wrestled him to the ground.

Unfortunately, there were more. A different man grabbed Alex and tossed her to the side. Another took hold of my hair. I wasn’t sure why people always grabbed my hair and jerked me away.

Alex struggled back to her feet. She grabbed hold of me. Together we were dragged to a car and shoved in. The men were talking rapidly. Someone slipped zip-cuffs onto me and pulled a bag from the front seat. It was black with string-ties at the bottom. They looked at the bag and then at Alex as they chattered. One of them took off his shirt, tied the top and slipped it over her head. Then it was my turn. The shirtless henchman put the bag over my head. The world was dark, but not pitch black. I felt someone shove me and suddenly, Alex was practically sitting on top of me. I knew it was her from the bony ass digging into my thigh.

The men continued to chatter in Spanish as Alex tried to adjust her position and get off my lap. She managed, with some wiggling, to move so that only part of her butt was still on my leg. I was sure that neither of us was very comfortable. I was also looking forward to pointing out to Alex, when time allowed, that she had managed to be accidentally kidnapped.

There is something about having a hood put over your head that causes disorientation. I felt vertigo sweep over me as the car jolted me to one side. In the darkened space, it was warm and it smelled oddly. It was also a good way to lose track of time. I wasn’t Liam Neeson and couldn’t hear my watch ticking off the seconds, mainly because I didn’t wear a watch.

The car came to an abrupt halt. I was tossed forward and only Alex still partly on my lap, kept me from hitting whatever lay beyond the oblivion of the hood. We were roughly jerked from the car and forced to walk. I stumbled on a step and someone caught my arm.

Once we were in the building, my hood was yanked off my head. I watched them do the same to Alex. She looked like she was ready to strike out again, but the look faded as she glanced around us.

It was not what I expected. I had expected something more like what was on TV. A well dressed man sitting on opulent furniture and surrounded by more extravagance. Instead, I saw a man in need of shave and a shower and maybe some new clothes sitting on a couch that looked like it belonged in a garbage dump and the building appeared to have gone through a fire or a flood. Most of the windows were missing, replaced with iron bars. The doorways were empty, a few molding pieces and frame work left but no doors.

The men spoke at each other in Spanish. The drug lord didn’t say anything to us. He just spoke to the men. They dragged us upstairs and shoved us into a room that did have a door. Alex went in first; I had about a second to check out the door. There was no molding or frame work; even most of the plaster was gone around the frame. I could see the studs holding the door in place. And attached to the wood was a weird metal brace like thing. They pushed me into the room and I heard the lock click behind me.

“Do you want to start with the door or the zip-cuffs?” I asked.

“I imagine we should get out of the zip-cuffs first.”

“How do you suggest we do that?”

“I don’t know yet, can you wiggle your wrists at all?”

“Nope,” I wiggled my wrists, “wait, maybe a little. Can you dislocate your thumb?”

“No, I can’t dislocate my thumb.”

“I could do it for you.”

“You are not dislocating my thumb. How would you like it if I dislocated your thumb?”

“I’ve dealt with worse,” I shrugged as best I could. “But at some point, I’m going to need my thumb and it won’t work if it’s dislocated.”

“Oh and I won’t need my thumb?” Alex asked.

“I find it unlikely. We could dislocate your thumb, get out of the cuffs, and then put it back into joint.”

“Who died and made you a doctor?”

“No one that I know of,” I told her.

“Then why don’t we do that to your thumb?”

“Because I doubt your capabilities of dislocating it without breaking it.”

“And I should trust yours?”

“I wouldn’t but you tolerate pain better than me, so it seemed like doing your thumb would be the better solution.”

Alex made a sound deep in her throat. It was guttural and not made of any words. I was used to the sound, it was her exasperated noise.

“Look, there’s a bit of broken plaster over there, get that,” Alex pointed.

“I don’t think wall plaster is going to cut through the cuffs.”

“No, but we might be able to use the dust to smooth the process of pulling them off.”

“Whatever you say,” I went and got the plaster. I crumbled it over Alex’s hands and wrists. It didn’t help. The cuffs stayed firmly in place.

“How much wiggle room do you have?” She asked.

“Not enough to get out of them.”

“Damn, even if I help?”

“That would be correct.”

“Damn,” Alex slid down the wall and took a seat.

“Who do you think used zip-ties for restraining people first; the bad guys or the good guys?”

“Probably the bad guys. But who cares?”

“I suppose no one does except me.” I mimicked her movements with less grace and sort of fell, ass first, onto the floor.

“That looked painful.”

“Well, I admit, it could have been done with more grace and less pain.”

“How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“Awhile, I’m hoping they remember to feed us.”

“We’ve been kidnapped by a drug lord who wants to kill your husband and you are worried about whether they are going to feed us or not?”

“If they feed us, they will have to remove the zip-cuffs,” I pointed out to her.

“Oh, so it wasn’t just your stomach talking.”

“That would be correct. Just think, if we hadn’t been kidnapped, we’d probably be sitting in an airport waiting for our connecting flight.”

“Thanks for cheering me up,” Alex said glumly.

“You are most welcome,” I responded cheerily. There was a moment of struggling. The blade was actually sewn into my jeans pocket so that I wouldn’t stab myself with it. As the loosely sewn thread broke, I shoved the blade into the tip of my middle finger. I swore loudly. I would have sucked on it, but I still couldn’t get my fingers to my mouth. Worse, it wasn’t even a full razor blade; it was one of those shaped ones used to cut leather and other things with precision. It had been hidden in the back pocket of my jeans. Finally, I pulled my hands in front of me.

“How did you get out?” Alex stared at me, astonishment showing on her face.

“They didn’t frisk us, don’t you ever watch NCIS?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, one of Gibbs’s rules is never go anywhere without a knife.”

“You have a knife?”

“That word might be an exaggeration,” I pulled showed her the itty-bitty razor blade.

“I’m glad you’re a TV junky.”

“Thanks,” I said as I cut her wrists free of the zip-cuffs. She rubbed her wrists when they became available to be rubbed. I slipped the little razor blade back into the hidden pocket in the back pocket of my jeans.

“We might need that again.”

“I find it unlikely. It will get through zip-cuffs if you give it enough elbow grease and good, old fashioned hard work, but the only other thing I’ve found it good for is cutting through clothes.”

“Have you used it much to do that?” Alex raised an eyebrow.

“Only my own jeans, a couple of washes and the razor blade tears a hole. Then a few more washes and they rust out. Luckily, I had just replaced most of them so we got a good one.”

“Why do you keep razor blades in your pocket?”

“Remember when I was kidnapped a while ago on the Reed thing? Zeke decided if I had a razorblade in my possession, I would have gotten out quicker. So he took all my jeans and had them tailored to fit the razorblade. Then he bought me a huge box of them.”

“He’s pretty handy.”

“That he is,” I said.

“How long have we been here?”

“Counting the drive?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“Without counting the drive?”

“I still don’t know,” I shrugged at her. “I just thought it would sound better if I asked for you to differentiate.”

“For a kidnap victim, you are extremely cheerful.”

“I’m a terrible kidnap victim.”

“Does he know that?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure we’ll get to that point,” I said.

“I would prefer not to be tortured.”

“Oddly, me too,” I grinned at her. “I wonder what Zeke will do when I don’t check in with him on Thursday?”

“Don’t you have your cell phone on you?”

“I did, but it fell out when we were struggling. Where’s yours?”

“In my purse, which I lost when we were struggling with the first henchman.”

“Pity you didn’t bring my shoes.”

“Why?”

“They all have tracking devices in them. These canvas ones though, do not.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Alex sighed. “So where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know but Zeke is planning to blow the guy up.”

“Blow him up? In the building?”

“He mentioned a car bomb to get back at him for blowing up the taxi. But Anthony is just as well trained, together with Sebastian’s help, I’m sure they will come up with something interesting that says ‘fuck you’ in neon flashing letters.”

The door rattled and opened. For some odd reason, it swung outward into the hall. I had seen very few doors that opened into a hall. A pan of food was slid through the door by someone’s foot. The man looked at us, grunted and left. Since he had a knife but didn’t use it, I was betting the grunt was about the zip-cuffs not being in place. The pan held a couple slices of cheese and a couple slices of bread. There was also a bottle of orange Fanta. I had never drank Fanta before. It would be a new experience for me. I thought about telling Alex this, but figured she wouldn’t appreciate my Fanta experience.

“What do you think? Slide bolts or door lock?” Alex asked making a cheese sandwich.

“There is only one and I imagine it is not a going to be that easy.”

She handed me the sandwich, I took a bite. It wasn’t bad considering it was a cheese sandwich. Alex made herself one.

“If there is only one, it should give pretty easy,” she took a bite and made a face.

“You forget, this is my life, not yours,” I answered.

“Meaning?”

“It won’t be simple,” I told her.

After eating our cheese sandwiches and sharing our Fanta soda, we took a run at the door. The wood splintered in the main frame, but we bounced back into the room. My shoulder hurt. Since Alex was rubbing her shoulder, I was guessing she had the same feeling in hers as I did mine.

“Told ya,” I said to her.

“It’s a bloody wooden door, it shouldn’t make us recoil in pain like that.”

“That’s true, but the wood splintered and I think there is a cage door behind it. That’s what those iron bar thingies were when they led us into the room. We don’t hear this door locking, we hear that door locking.”

“You mean I can reach out and open this door?”

“I think so,” I answered.

“Did you think that before we did this?”

“I had a suspicion. I thought the bars were over a window, but I’ve been known to be wrong before.”

“And you still ran at the door with me?”

“I didn’t want you to writhe in pain alone.”

Alex made that guttural noise again and stood up. She walked over to the door and tried to open it. It opened outwards. She pushed and it gave a few inches. Her hand snaked out through the crack and she groaned again. I joined her. Through the small crack, we could just see that the metal brace was actually framing for the iron bar door frame. This was locked. Alex rattled it anyway.

“If they are planning to blow the building, we have to find a way through these iron bars,” Alex said.

“Well, if I was MacGyver, I’d use a bobby pin, a piece of chewing gum, a shoelace and gunpowder out of a bullet and make a bomb.  Unfortunately for you, all I have is a string of pearls that don’t go around the neck.  They might make a guy explode, but they aren’t going to do much to that door.  On the other hand, if you scrounge up a sling-shot, I got ammo.” 

“You have a razor blade but no sling shot?”

“Where would I sew a slingshot into my jeans? Aren’t you wearing a thong or something?” I countered.

“No, I am not wearing a thong or something,” Alex huffed at me.

“Going commando?”

“Something like that. What about the iron bars?”

“I’m not sure why you would even think to ask me what to do about them. My suggestion would be to pounce when they bring us food and then creep our way out of here.”

“You’re right, that isn’t a very good plan.”

“What do you think?”

“Are you wearing a thong?” Alex asked.

“Nope, underwear irritates the waxed area. I don’t even own a thong when I’m not having issues with waxed areas.”

“You should buy some thongs, men like them.”

“Yes but I don’t.”

“It isn’t always about you when you’re married.”

“Yeah, like you’d know,” I smirked at her.

“Me? No. But Kenzie? Yes.” That brought a smirk to her face. Kenzie had been married and divorced five times. She fell in love like I fell in pot holes.

“Ok, back to the problem at hand, we have an iron door that’s locked. What would Kenzie do?” I giggled.

“Not giggle,” Alex was trying to stifle her own giggle.

“She’d fall in love with the drug lord.”

“I’m so telling her you said that!” Alex giggled again.

“Go ahead, she’ll agree.”

This caused us to have a giggle fit. It lasted only a few minutes as the situation was indeed dire. However, you know you are with your best friend when you’ve been kidnapped and can still giggle like the Hatter.

“Seriously now, we have to get out of here,” Alex said, adjusting her posture to try to prove that she was becoming serious.

“Ok. Locked iron bars. Iron bars over the windows. No C4 or chewing gum or thongs. I’m out of ideas.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with C4 if we had it.”

“That’s true, but I’m sure we could figure it out. Bill Murray did in Caddyshack.”

“He blew up the golf course.”

“Proving that he could use it.”

“It was a movie,” Alex shook her head. “Why do I keep getting sucked into these arguments with you?”

“It’s the stress of the situation. It’s hard to think clearly so your mind latches onto little details. I have discovered I become a trivia master when I am stressed out.”

“That really isn’t helpful,” Alex shook her head again.

“Well, I’m out of helpful.”

Alex looked around the room. Her eyes fell on a pile of blankets. She raised an eyebrow.

“Yep, I think those are our beds,” I commented catching her stare.

“It’s almost dark.”

“So?”

“So if we are going to escape, night would be the best time to do it.”

“And we are going to go where, exactly?”

“Anywhere but here,” Alex responded. “Give me your razorblade.”

I handed her the tiny blade. She took it and began scraping at the window. The plaster began to chip and sliver away from the window.

“Who sets iron bars in a plaster wall?” I asked incredulously.

“The person that built this building,” Alex said. “It seems like most of it was retrofitted or just plain cobbled together. People do not build buildings like this. The few doors that exist, seem to open the wrong direction. The iron bars are meant to deter wildlife, vagrants and the casual criminal. It wasn’t meant to be a prison. I’m guessing this room has been used to hold something like a prisoner before, but…” She stopped talking.

She scraped at the window for a while longer. The sun had set when it finally broke off in her fingers. She let out a yelp and swore as she tossed the blade remains to the floor.

“Here, try this,” I handed her a set of keys.

“You’ve had these the entire time?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Sometimes,” she shook her head. The plaster chipped away in larger chunks and pieces. In almost no time, Alex had made a large hole revealing the studs and window frame. I smiled at her progress.

Then I frowned. Outside the window was jungle. I didn’t have a compass or the ability to navigate without one. I was positive Alex didn’t either. And with us not knowing where we were, it was a crap shoot at best.

“You’re frowning. You are starting to get frown lines, your mother is going to force you to get botox if you continue,” Alex said as she pulled at a piece of wood.

“I was just wondering how good you were at catching and cooking lizard,” I told her.

“I don’t...” She shook her head at me again. “Come help me pull.”

“Sure,” I joined her on the two by four.

Together we tugged and when the joist gave, it crashed down loud enough that it would have woken the dead. I expected zombies to come out of the jungle. Instead, men came in the doorway and they had guns.

“Obviously, you two need to be separated,” one of the henchmen said with a thick accent and broken, mispronounced English. Two men grabbed me, two more grabbed Alex, and we were hoisted to our feet and carried from the room. I was shoved into a slightly smaller room that was a bathroom at one time. The door slammed and locked behind me.

The toilet had been removed, but the bathtub was still there. Along with several years worth of dirt and calcium build up around the plumbing fixtures. I certainly wasn’t crawling into that thing. And now my skills would really be put to the test, Alex and I were separated. I couldn’t leave without her.

Thursday

At some point, I fell asleep. I know because I woke up on the floor of the destroyed bathroom with light coming through the small bathroom window. As I looked at it for the first time, I realized there were no bars, just glass on the window.

The window was a set of panes that opened like French doors. I peeked over the edge of the window. I was on the second floor, but there appeared to be a balcony under the window. For the first time, I wondered if I was in the ruins of a hotel or motel.

Unfortunately, the window was set a little high for me to do much more than stick my head out of it. The bathroom didn’t really hold anything that I could stand on. I backed up and ran at the window. The first time, I jumped too late and hit the wall instead. I lay on the floor for a second.

Something scurried near me. I rolled my head to the side and saw an armadillo come out of something that might have been a linen closet at one time. I don’t know how I managed the second attempt. One minute, I was looking at the armadillo, the next I was sitting safely in the window frame wondering if they could climb walls.

I climbed out the window and onto the balcony. For several seconds, I just stood there, staring at my shoes. They were covered in plaster dust, I was sure it hadn’t been there before I had seen the armadillo.

My heart was still racing. I had to wait for it to stop thundering in my ears before I could start the search for Alex. As it slowed and became softer, I congratulated myself on my escape from the armadillo. He could have easily given me tuberculosis or some other nasty disease. They probably carried jungle rot too.

The balcony ran the entire length of this part of the building and then circled around into an unknown area. It seemed to be intact. I bounced on it a little to test it. It held so I began creeping along. I peeked in the windows I passed, searching for Alex. It took a couple of windows, but I finally found her in a room with iron bars on the window. I frowned at them and called to Alex.

“How did you get out?” She looked at me.

“No bars on my window, just glass. I was in a bathroom. Can you get out of here?”

“This wall seems sturdier. Just go, Nadine.”

“I am so not wandering around the jungle by myself. Who will catch and cook the lizards?”

“You are obsessed with lizards,” Alex sighed. “I wish you would just go.”

“Think about what they will do to you if I escape and you don’t,” I told her.

“There is that.”

“Now, help me come up with a plan to get you out.”

“What are you standing on?”

“A balcony. It wraps this entire side. I think we are in a hotel that went to ruin.”

“That explains all the rooms.”

“I don’t think that matters, I think we need to get out of here first, then we’ll discuss the architecture of the place where we were being held.”

I tugged on the bars, they didn’t budge. Alex did better than me. She lay down on floor and kicked one of the bars. It snapped from its frame, flew past me, and hit the railing. I heard the railing protest, but stay attached. The metal bar flipped over the railing and clatter to the dirt below. Luckily, it wasn’t as noisy as a joist breaking.

“Can you wiggle out?” I asked her.

“Between the bars? Probably not, there are these things called boobs that are going to be in the way.”

“Try it anyway.”

“Nadine, I’m not going to fit. I don’t think you would fit.”

To prove her wrong, I began climbing in through the bars. She was right, I didn’t fit. My body lodged in place, my feet dangling, my breasts caught, effectively trapping me.

“Told you so,” Alex said.

“Push me back out or something.”

“I’ll just kick another bar, with your weight on it, it should snap easier,” she said.

“And when you miss and put your shoe through my skull?”

“I’m not going to miss.”

“I have about as much faith in this as you did about me dislocating your thumb. And it’s the lizard, I’m bloated from it. It and the cheese sandwiches have made me retain water.”

“Well, I don’t think I can push you back out and I didn’t mean to sound like I was commenting on your weight, more like your girth and I don’t believe, even for a second, you are bloated from cheese sandwiches and roasted lizard. More likely, it’s the bottles of water you guzzled yesterday along with the Fanta soda.”

She braced herself on the floor again and kicked. I felt her sneaker tear the skin from my back as it streaked down my body and hit the bar. The bar gave some and it was easier to breath.

“That really fucking hurt,” I said after a minute.

“The bar didn’t snap out.”

“It did get looser, maybe if I wiggle and you push or pull on the bar, it will break.”

“Your back is bleeding.”

“Probably because you scraped all my skin off. I told you that you wouldn’t hit it solidly.”

“But I didn’t kick you in the head.”

“There is that,” I parroted her earlier phrasing.

Together we tried to move the bar. It wasn’t working. It moved, but didn’t give. We both stopped after a while, panting from our efforts.

“If we don’t get blown up, my side is going to have a very serious bruise on it. This stupid iron frame is digging into me.”

“When you don’t call, maybe Zeke will realize we have been kidnapped and send in the cavalry.”

“Or he’ll think I forgot and blow the place up.”

“Or that. What if we tried the other bar?”

“You are not kicking me again.”

“Got any Crisco or butter?”

“Damn fresh out of both. However, until the taxi blew up I had about eighty different types of lubricant. It would seem that glassware you don’t cook with requires its own special concoction.”

“Don’t get snippy, I told you we wouldn’t fit through the bars. You’re the one that decided to prove me wrong.”

“If we get out of this, I’m having breast reduction surgery.”

“Do you think it will be necessary? I mean, it isn’t like you are going to try one of these stunts again.”

“I feel like the kid that slides his head into the railing of the stairwell and gets it stuck.”

“Can you try to leverage yourself out with your feet?”

“My feet no longer reach the balcony.”

“Oh, well,” she grabbed both my arms and started pulling. The bar behind me suddenly broke and we tumbled into the room in a heap. The iron bar came with me, stabbing me in the arm and Alex in the leg. We both swore loudly.

I looked at her leg, “it isn’t bad. More of a flesh wound than anything else.”

“Yours too,” she said examining my arm. “I think you might have dislocated your shoulder though.”

“That would explain why it feels like my arm weighs a ton.”

“Want me to put it back in?”

“You are not a medical doctor and I don’t believe you’ve had much experience with such things. So no,” I told her.

“Good news, I think we can get out the window now.”

“Great, we’re the Abbott and Costello of prison breaks.”

“I get to be Abbott.”

“Another weight joke. You’re going to give me a complex. I swear it’s the lizard.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Alex wriggled through the window. I followed; my feet hit the balcony with a soft thump. The balcony moaned and groaned under our combined weight before pitching to the side. Something snapped below us with a thunderous sound and we were suddenly on the ground, on our backs, gasping for air. Everything hurt, even my singed eyelashes.

“Can you move?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Alex answered. I rolled my head to the side to look at her. She had part of a railing post sticking through her arm.

“You got lucky, a few inches the other way and it would have gone through your body.”

“If I had been lucky, it wouldn’t be in me at all.”

“Does it hurt?”

“I think I’m in shock, because it doesn’t hurt as much as it should.”

As she spoke, men with guns began to surround us. I was getting pretty tired of them. They went to grab me.

“So help me god, if you touch me, I will gouge out your eyes and put a hex on you,” I swore at them. They backed up a little.

“You are injured?” The drug lord asked.

“Injured doesn’t even cover it,” I told him. “For the record, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job at this. You lock us in this escapable death trap. Where we manage to both almost escape and almost die. What kind of sense does that make? Dead hostages are not going to give you information. Neither are escaped hostages.”

“Nadine?” Alex said my name softly.

“Not now Alex,” I turned my attention back to the drug lord. “Furthermore, you give us cheese sandwiches and Fanta for supper. That’s not very civilized and your goon pushed it in with his foot, not very sanitary. I am getting a caffeine headache because I need caffeine. As in soda with caffeine; Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, something like that. Without it, when you go to interrogate me for information, I’m just going to throw up because your voice is going to be like nails pounding into my skull. She’s going to be just as useless as me, because she is also a caffeine addict. You’re just lucky our friend Kenzie isn’t with us, she’s a smoker and a caffeine addict. She’d be extra bitchy. I’m bruised, battered, bleeding and I think I dislocated my hip in the fall. You should have taken precautions, shored up the balcony or something.”

“Nadine!” Alex said my name more urgently. I turned to look at her, “I don’t think he understands you.”

“What?” I looked back at him. He was smiling. She was right, he couldn’t understand anything I was saying.

“Great, I get the Cartel King that can’t speak English,” I sighed and looked at his men. “But some of them understand me.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because when I said I’d gouge out their eyes if they touched me, they didn’t grab me.”

“Good point.”

“I really do think my hip is dislocated,” I told her.

“Yeah, I would agree with that. Does it hurt?”

“I think I’m like you, in shock. It should hurt, but it doesn’t seem to be sending tidal waves of pain in either direction, just a dull ache.”

The drug lord began speaking rapidly in Spanish. The men didn’t move. One of them began speaking back. His words were just as fast, but possibly a little high pitched. They began shouting for someone.

Anthony walked around the corner of the building. He held a machine gun of some sort and a cigarette. He also had a moustache. I looked twice to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. I was sure it was Anthony though.

He spoke Spanish without the accent. Alex gave him a quick glance, closed her mouth and attempted to keep it closed while not staring at him. I understood and tried to do the same.

“Does it hurt?” He finally asked us.

“Um, yeah,” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“They speak English but not well. The word ‘hex’ is what made them back off earlier,” he whisper to me with a wink.

Suddenly, Anthony’s unique skill set came to mind. He had been an assassin in a former life, before joining up with my family. He had been hired once by the Russian Mob to kill me, I had been twelve at the time. It was literally the job that melted his heart. He couldn’t kill a twelve-year-old. Instead he became my body guard, my friend and now my employee. He was what had kept Daniels’ Security together over the years. I was the pretty face, he was the recruiter.

“You’re both pretty busted up, I don’t think we can move you,” he said standing. He spoke to the others in Spanish. They all looked at us gravely.

“My arm is starting to hurt,” Alex said.

“Shock must be wearing off,” I responded.

“Or replaced,” she gave a quick glance at Anthony. I was with her on that.

“I’m a little irritated that we are going to be saved by the cavalry instead of our own ingenuity.”

“I wasn’t looking forward to hanging out in the jungle and catching lizards. I’m going to bleed to death while we wait on them to figure out what to do.”

“No you won’t, you’ve pretty much stopped bleeding. As long as the post is in, you’re good. The blood has clotted around it and stopped the bleeding. When they take it out, you’re going to bleed like a stuck pig.”

“How’s your hip?”

“It doesn’t feel right. My shoulder doesn’t either. I think I have a concussion. My head bounced off the balcony floorboards pretty hard when it collapsed. However, I still think I’m better off than you.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see, eventually.”

“That’s ominous.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Anthony finally turned to us, “they are bringing you a doctor, probably at gunpoint, to decide if you can be moved or not. I’m going to stay with you until someone returns.”

“And we are just supposed to lie here until then?” I frowned at him.

“Yep, do you need anything?”

“Aspirin and soda.”

“Alex?” Anthony asked.

There was a sudden flurry of Spanish issued from the lips of the henchmen and the drug lord.

“Oops,” Anthony stood, turned and pulled the trigger on his machine gun. Nothing happened.

“Oh my god!” Alex shouted.

“We are sitting ducks!” I shouted back.

Together we began trying to move our damaged bodies away from the gun play. More shots came from the woods. Anthony tucked, rolled and found cover. We did not. We continued to use whatever working body parts we had to scoot along the busted balcony. Alex was dragging part of the railing with her. The drug lord and henchmen seemed to have Anthony’s playbook. They all took cover and began firing.

“This isn’t working!” Alex yelled.

“I know, but I can’t think of anything better to do. I don’t have a gun!”

Someone grabbed hold of me and jerked me to my feet. The pain was immediate and overwhelming, I vomited. The guy holding me stiffened, twitched, his grab getting stronger, then began to slump. As he fell, I fell with him. He landed on top of both of us.

“There’s a dead guy on us,” Alex said.

“At least we are not in any immediate danger,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. My hip throbbed now, shooting pain through my entire body.

“How do you figure?”

“If they shoot at us, they’ll hit the dead guy,” I said.

There was the sound of an explosion. The floor we had been held on exploded in a shower of plaster, wood and metal. Alex and I huddled together under the dead guy.

“Oh my god, it was a head shot!” Alex suddenly started fighting to get away from the body. I looked and agreed with her. I would rather be dead than under him any longer. We both began the agonizing scooting across the balcony ruins again.

“Stop that,” Anthony hissed at us.

“It’s unsanitary!” Alex hissed back. “His blood might get in our wounds and we would get blood poisoning as a result. Someone blew his damn head off.”

“What if his blood gets in my shoes and causes jungle rot?” I shouted at Anthony. Anthony took a second to look at me. Maybe jungle rot wasn’t communicable.

“Or you could have jungle rot already and it would make it worse,” Alex seconded. I honestly believe Anthony was trying not to laugh at us. I decided ignoring him was the best course of action. He was too far away to actually help anyway, I turned my attention back to Alex.

“We can’t drag the railing with us,” I told Alex after a couple more seconds. “I’m going to snap off the post where it meets the railing.”

“I’m going to bleed to death,” she moaned.

“Either we risk that or we risk getting shot in the head.”

“Snap it off.”

It took all my strength and some serious body maneuvering on both our parts to detach the post from the railing. Once free of the cumbersome wood construction, Alex moved more freely. Her foot was obviously broken, but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t try to stand, just grabbed me with her good hand and continued to scoot across the ground. I used my good leg to help her. With effort we made it behind a car. She leaned against the tire, panting and exhausted.

I was with her. My breathing was ragged and my body exhausted. I tried to mimic her position, but found it painful.

“What do we do?” I asked her as we hid behind the car.

“Do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“Then we do nothing, hope our guys win and come to the rescue when they are finished.”

A bullet ricocheted off the car hood. We scooted further down on the body.

“That sounds like a crappy plan.”

“You can’t walk. I can’t walk. My foot feels like it is made of Jell-O, I don’t even want to glance at it. I have a post sticking out of my arm, your shoulder is way out of socket now. We both need doctors, not bullets.”

“Yeah, your foot’s pretty bad. I’d say it was crushed,” I commented.

This was taking a lot longer than expected. In the movies, the good guys ambush the bad guys and in minutes, it is all over. I would bet we had spent at least ten minutes trying to get out of the line of fire. Now we were curled up behind the car, having a nice little chat, while gunfire erupted in short bursts around us. Every so often, you would hear a softer noise, I knew it was a sniper rifle and I was positive Zeke was behind the scope.

A couple more bullets hit the car. This time, I heard them tear through the metal. I looked at Alex.

“Should we be taking refuge behind a car? What if they blow it up?” I asked.

“Then we die, I’m too tired to move anymore,” she replied.

“I really don’t want to get blown up,” I looked around. There was a garage a little ways from us. It seemed like the better place to take shelter. I grabbed her arm and we began scooting our way to the garage. Sebastian showed up, offering cover fire from behind the car. I gave him a thumbs up as we got closer to the garage.

“I’m done,” Alex lay down on the concrete floor. “Holy shit!”

I followed her gaze. Above us was a jaguar. I looked around and found a cage that had been forced open.

“No sudden moves,” I whispered.

The jaguar was hanging around on the rafters. He looked at us and yawned. I guessed we weren’t that interesting. He put his big cat head back down on his paws and closed his eyes. Since he wasn’t afraid of us, he must have been some sort of pet instead of a wild jaguar. A wild jaguar would not be happy with us invading his space.

“What do we do?” Alex whispered.

“We lay here and look as unthreatening as possible.”

“I’m bleeding.”

“You must not smell like lunch, he hasn’t pounced.”

“How do you know it’s male?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why call it a ‘he’?”

“Does it matter? There’s an apex predator above our heads and you want to argue about gender pronouns?”

“Sorry,” Alex gave me a sheepish smile. “Should we try to exit?”

“With the way we move?”

“Well I think eventually, it’s going to smell the blood and come down to investigate.”

“I am at a loss.”

“You have experience in this.”

“Yeah, I got mauled, remember?” I hissed at her. The jaguar opened its eyes again. This time it started to move.

Like most big cats, jaguars don’t walk or lumber or just move, they stalk or skulk. Every movement seems to be a reflection on their status as an apex predator. Our jaguar was no different. He moved from rafter to rafter with ease and grace. He reached the edge and leapt down, landing with a very soft thud on the concrete floor. This would have jarred my bones and I would have had to take a minute to recover. The jaguar did not. He turned large almost glowing eyes on us that I was sure was an illusion because of my terror of big cats.

He stalked around us, sniffing the air. He never growled or hissed or gave any sign of attack. He seemed to be inspecting us.

“I think I’d rather deal with drug lords,” Alex whispered. I carefully and slowly nodded in agreement. The jaguar bared his teeth at us.

“That is a bad sign,” I whispered.

“No shit,” Alex whispered back. I slipped my good hand into my pocket. It was empty except the pearls that didn’t go around the neck.

“Did you find a slingshot?”

“What?”

I showed her the pearls I was slowly pulling from my pocket.

“I don’t think those are going to help,” she hissed at me.

“Me either.”

The jaguar let out something that might have been a scream and might have been a growl. He stalked closer, just within arm’s reach. He pounced taking both of us to the floor. Alex let out a cry. I shoved the pearls into the jaguar’s mouth. It gagged and backed off.

The jaguar did the cat equivalent of the Heimlich Maneuver. The pearls ended up on the floor, but he kept further away from us. We waited. He stalked out the door.

“Fuck me, those really are lucky!” Alex shouted.

“I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Pain?”

“Terror. I just stuck my hand in a jaguar’s mouth.” I looked at my hand. There were a few scrapes from where my fingers had hit the teeth, but it was otherwise, unscathed. I was shaking all over when Sebastian came through the door.

“Did I just see a jaguar leave?”

“Yes, Nadine choked him with her pearls, saving us from being lunch,” Alex was giddy.

“Are you both alright?”

“No, no I am not,” I laid down on the concrete and felt the coolness seep into me. There was a moment when I thought I would be fine.

“We’ve called the police and an ambulance. You girls will get treated by the finest doctors in Belize.”

“That’s good, ‘cause I think my foot may need to amputated.”

“Probably jungle rot. If you guys are good, I’m going to pass out now,” I closed my eyes and let the darkness suck me in.

Friday

I was in a hospital bed. My hip and shoulder were both back in socket. However, more damage had been done to the hip than shoulder. I was supposed to see a specialist when we returned to the States and have surgery done on it. They couldn’t do it with all the inflammation right now. My head had been x-rayed and my eyes checked. I had been right, I did have a concussion. Alex lay in the bed next to me. Her arm was wrapped in bandages. Her foot was in a cast and it was being held in traction. She also had a concussion.

Giggle fits were abundant though, we were both on pain killer drips. This meant when we weren’t sleeping, we were giggling or crying. Aside from the two of us, the room was blissfully quiet. There was a police officer outside the door, turning away the press with cameras that might try to sneak in. Only the guys had permission to enter. Turns out these sorts of things do not happen in Belize very often. They are very fond of their tourists.

“So, explain the lizard thing?” Alex giggled.

“There’s nothing to explain. The night we spent in the jungle, Zeke caught and cooked a lizard. I had to eat it. It seemed better than the alternatives. Ironically, I was terrified that night that we could be killed by a jaguar. And yet it wasn’t until I was safe and sound in a building that I encountered one.”

“Your mind just kept clinging to the lizard image then?”

“Probably. Let’s face it, if the worst thing to happen to me on this trip was eating a lizard, it would have been a great trip. Since that wasn’t the case, I think I was clinging to a best case scenario.”

“By the way, you were right, the jaguar was male. I noticed its parts when it gracefully leapt from the rafters.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

“Sure you do. I’ve never seen a big cat up close and personal like that. It was amazing and terrifying.”

“Yes, it is. There is something about them that mesmerizes you while you quake in your boots. If we had been standing, my knees probably would have given out when he jumped down like that.”

“Why didn’t he just attack from the ceiling?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a jaguar expert. That is the first I’ve seen outside of a zoo.”

“You were mauled by a tiger.”

“True, but tigers are not jaguars and there weren’t any at the sanctuary where I worked when I had my unfortunate encounter with the tiger.”

“How long do we have to stay?”

“In the hospital? A week, maybe a week and a few days. Between your busted foot and my busted hip, we are a mess.”

“You realize we won’t be able to fly back to the US?”

“Yep and I believe the guys are looking forward to the road trip.”

“How long will it take us to drive back?”

“Beats me, but I can’t imagine we will enjoy being stuck with them in the car for that long. And I don’t know how many countries we have to pass through to get there.”

“Hello ladies,” Zeke said, pushing open the door. Anthony and Sebastian were behind him. They all carried flowers and balloons.

“Hello,” Alex chirped at them.

“How are you feeling?” Anthony set the flowers down between us. The balloons floated to the ceiling and hung around.

“Like I crashed to the ground on a balcony and was then attacked by a jaguar,” I answered.

“Speaking of that,” Zeke pulled the pearls out of his pocket. “They’ve survived the trip so far. Ingenious but stupid plan shoving the pearls into the jaguar’s mouth.”

“It wasn’t a plan, just a reaction. He pounced us,” I answered looking at the pearls like they were snakes.

“We’ve cleaned them with hot soapy water and bleach,” Sebastian assured me.

“Put them on the nightstand or something,” I told Zeke.

“Nope, I think they are charmed, you are carrying them with you, everywhere,” he shoved them into the pocket of my hospital gown.

“Thanks,” I groaned.

“How did you guys know we were there?” Alex asked.

“And how did Anthony become entrenched with them?” I added.

“Do you want the long version or the short?” Anthony asked.

“We have time,” Alex and I started giggling after we said it in unison.

“Great,” Anthony sat down. “When we got Zeke’s call, I got into contact with some buddies. They knew the guy was looking for a good assassin, I played the part. Zeke decided to check in with you before you got to the airport to tell you to check in when you got to your lay-over destination, but some guy who spoke Spanish answered the call. I started poking around and found you at the drug lord’s compound. We were planning a rescue, but when we saw you crawl from the bathroom window. From there, we had to improvise.”

“That seemed like the short version,” I said.

“Nope, that’s the long one. The short one would be, Zeke called, someone else answered. I was playing the role of an assassin hired to kill Zeke. We found the compound and the rest is history.”

“That is much shorter,” Alex commented.

“Why did they need an assassin?” I asked.

“Did you see how well their sniper did?” Zeke smiled at me. “He had six guys total, none of them trained very well. Mostly they were just supposed to be menacing looking. Even the bomb wasn’t that great or it would have had a bigger impact. If you notice, most of the damage was done from the taxi exploding, not from the bomb. There was no shrapnel or anything. It was just stuck to the gas tank. You can look up idiot-proof bomb plans on the internet, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You’ll end up on a watch-list.”

“How are we getting home?” I asked.

“I’ve made arrangements for an RV. You girls can ride home in comfort in the back,” Zeke said.

“Can you drive an RV?” I frowned at him.

“Baby, I can drive a tank,” he replied.

“Good shot by the way, but next time, could you make sure the dead guy whose head is mostly missing doesn’t land on us?” Alex asked.

“No guarantees,” Zeke shrugged, “but at least he didn’t kill either of you.”

“There is that,” I told Alex.

“By the way, our mothers know about this little episode. Someone called them and told them, they are both coming to stay until you are back on your feet,” Zeke told me.

“How long will it take us to get home?”

“About a week or so,” Anthony answered.

“Anyway to take the long way?” I continued.

“That is the long way. The short way is flying,” Anthony grinned. “But you’ll be in here another week, so that gives you at least two weeks before you have to deal with them.”

“But it will be three months or so before you are all healed up,” Sebastian said. “The doctor here said that you should get surgery pretty quickly once you are back in the US. The inflammation will be gone by then and you need to get the ligaments fixed so that your hip doesn’t keep slipping out of socket.”

“I don’t have any clothes or my passport or any identification,” I suddenly remembered my bag left in the rental car parking lot.

“We managed to retrieve the bags and Alex’s purse. They took them to the house with you guys. And we are going to go shopping for everyone because none of us have enough clothes for the trip home. We packed overnight bags, not two weeks’ worth of luggage,” Anthony told us.

“Nothing too skimpy or racy, I see no need to show off any new scars,” I told him.

“Yes dear,” Anthony gave me a wide grin.

“Go away, I’m tired,” I told them.

“Me too,” Alex yawned.

“Lunch will be here soon, we’ll leave after that,” Zeke answered.

“Great, it isn’t lizard, is it? The lizard made me bloat, that’s why I got stuck in the window.”

“Thinking with your stomach again?” Alex laughed at me.

“Maybe this time,” I smiled at her.

It wasn’t long before lunch arrived. We ate and chatted. Then the men got up and left.

“What’s in your drip?” I asked Alex after everyone had gone.

“Demerol, I think.”

“Pity, mine too.”

“Why?”

“If you had something better, I was going to suggest we switch for a while.”

“Hurt that bad?”

“Nope, just bored. Considering the amount of time it would take us to switch IV drips and how tiring it would be, by the time we got done, I’d be asleep and no longer bored.”

“Yeah, they could have brought us books or something.”

“My ereader got cooked in the car bomb.”

“I didn’t bring mine, I didn’t think we’d be in here that long.”

“I’ll have to buy a new one.”

“Call Zeke, tell him to bring us books.”

“Call Sebastian and tell him to bring us books.”

“Sebastian doesn’t read.”

“Do you love him?”

“I think so.”

“Oh yeah, you are so getting married.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“You may not have a say in the matter.” I thought about Alex’s mom. My aunt Alyssa could be just as determined as my mom. Melina and Alyssa together were a force from hell. Oh, let the plotting begin.

Epilogue

I had to give the guys credit. The RV was definitely the way to travel. Alex was propped up in a recliner, her foot secured on the footrest with a pillow and a strap. I was reclined on a couch, with a mountain of pillows behind my back to keep me at just the right angle. We’d been released from the hospital after nine days. We had started the journey home yesterday and were now in Mexico.

The scenery whizzed past the windows. We entered a city, but I missed the city sign announcing the name. The RV slowed down and turned into a small cantina. Since Alex and I were mobility challenged, this place seemed impractical.

“We’ll go in and get food, Anthony is going to help you get out of the RV for a few minutes. Do you need to use the restroom or anything?” Zeke asked.

“Nope, I’m good,” I said, adjusting to prepare for Anthony’s hoisting me off the couch. I could use the leg, but only with some pain.

Anthony pulled me off the couch, got me standing and helped me down the set of steps as two of the guys went inside. I walked around a little while, gently putting weight on my bad leg. While I meandered, Anthony retrieved Alex and brought her outside.

Alex had crutches. I had a cane. The ground was dirt with chunks of gravel put down.

“Um, Anthony, stay close. I don’t want to turn into Nadine. I could see one crutch catching a gravel chunk and spewing me across the ground,” Alex said.

The thought of Alex sprawled across the gravel made me giggle. They turned and looked at me. I smiled back.

“Sorry, just had a thought,” I responded.

“I can only imagine,” Anthony smiled back. “You two need to not be mauled by jaguars, shot, or cause balconies to collapse. I know that technically, I’m not your body guard anymore, but it still reflects badly on me.”

“The assassin with a heart of gold,” Alex smiled as she held onto his arm.

“I think that life is long gone. Maybe I’ll pull a Zeke and settle down for a while.”

“Kenzie’s single,” Alex giggled.

“And cute,” I added.

“Yeah, don’t play matchmaker. It doesn’t suit you. You can’t even sort your own love lives.”

“Those that can’t do, teach,” I said. “Or in this case, fix other people up. Kenzie needs a stable man who won’t flake on her just because she has a dangerous job and makes lots of money.”

“Why is her job so dangerous?” Alex asked. I gave her a look. She frowned.

“I thought you knew?” I said.

“Knew what?” Alex answered.

“Kenzie’s dad was a plant in the IRA. That’s what got him killed. Her mother moved her here when she discovered that her dad was working with Scotland Yard from inside the IRA. If she hadn’t, both of them would be dead now too. The IRA found out and blew up the house they had been living in. They came to KC to be with my dad. But the IRA has long memories. It’s getting better, but she’s got as many problems with them as we do with the Russian Mob.”

“I didn’t know that,” Alex shook her head.

“Kenzie doesn’t talk about it,” I said as Zeke and Sebastian came back out carrying bags of food.

“It is mostly tacos,” Zeke said as he got back on the RV. He came back to the door, “how did you manage to get a double dose of the disaster gene?”

“Luck,” I said.

I turned to look at the landscape one last time. There was a beauty in the scrub lands that stretched out around us. My eyes landed on a nine-banded armadillo. For a second, my brain processed options. Finally, I pivoted on my good leg and took off towards the RV. My bad leg and cane hit a pot hole. The cane head snapped off in my hands and I face planted into the gravel and dirt.

“Wonder if Kenzie just fell in love?” Alex quipped.

“Probably,” I said from my position face down in the dirt. I flipped over to see where the filthy creature of loathing was, my mind had him creeping up on me ready to attack. He was exactly where he had been before I turned to run. He looked me over once and began to walk away. I was sure if he could talk, he’d be laughing at me. Anthony rushed to my side. My face hurt and I could feel small rivulets of blood running down my check. My hip also hurt, it felt like something was stabbing it.

Anthony got me to my feet. The stabbing pain continued. I pulled out the pearls that didn’t go around the neck. Three of them had broken.

“They survive jaguars and car bombs, but not you running away from an armadillo,” Zeke threw his head back and laughed.

Keep Going There’s More!

Animal Disclaimer

The author wishes it to be known that no armadillos were hurt during the writing of this book. Nor does the author wish to give the impression that armadillos are evil creatures that are only good as road kill.

In fact, the author is quite fond of armadillos, despite the fact that they are known carries of many diseases that can be passed to humans. The author doesn’t imagine it’s their fault and doesn’t think it should be held against them.

Furthermore, the author requests it to be known that no jaguars, bullet ants or other members of the animal or insect kingdoms were harmed during the writing of this book… except the poor iguana that was cooked and eaten. The author would punish Zeke for this behavior, but figures being married to Nadine will be punishment enough.

About the

Nadine Daniels’ Series

(A Note from the Author)

The Nadine Daniels’ Series has one novel and a series of novellas. I have been asked many times if there will ever be another novel. At this time, one is not planned. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.

Personally, I have a ton of fun writing the novellas. I have lots of things planned for the series that I’m just not entirely sure can be done with a novel. I have plans to introduce all the characters in more detail and have even considered doing a series of “spin-off” novellas where Alex Zeitzev and/or Kenzie Reynolds are actually the main characters.

This series is completely fan driven. I never intended a novella or a sequel to The Life & Dysfunction of Nadine Daniels’. After its publication, there was much enthusiasm for a follow-up. Since my plate was filled at the time with writing the Strachan Series and the Dreams & Reality Series, I didn’t want to commit to another novel. Instead, I released The Dysfunctional Valentine.

This turned out to be one of the most fun things I have ever written. It was a “half-hour sitcom” in book form. Shortly afterwards, there was another outcry. Mainly with this comment: Did she get married or not?!? This novella is the follow up.

And the same still applies. I have more fun writing these novellas than I do anything else. Nadine and her merry band of disastrous characters are a riot to write. I even enjoy the revisions and edits that get done (for example the fear of armadillos came from a session with my editor who said: just about everyone is afraid of snakes, can’t you find something cute and cuddly to make her afraid of? Why yes, yes I can.).

I am considering naming the series The Dysfunctional Chronicles. I think that describes the characters and the tone of the books perfectly.

Also, while I do not have plans to write another novel (but exploring the characters through the novellas), I will not rule out the possibility that one may come to fruition. It would require the cosmos and Nadine’s life to align just perfectly, but she manages to get just the wrong alignment every once in a while…

About the Author

Hadena James began writing at the age of eight.  As a teenager, she had several short stories published in literary magazines.  She completed writing her first novel at the age of 17.

Hadena graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in European History with minors in German and Russian studies.  She has always wanted to be a writer so she also took several classes in creative writing.

Currently, she writes three series. The Brenna Strachan series is an urban fantasy with the main character being a half-demon/half-witch with serious identity issues. The Dreams and Reality series is a thriller series about a group of misfit US Marshals tracking down serial killers. And the Nadine Daniels’ Series is a comedic thriller where the main character, Nadine Daniels, has no need to go looking for trouble…It always seems to know exactly where she is or will be.

When she isn’t busy writing or running her business, Hadena enjoys playing in a steel-tip dart league.  She also loves to travel throughout North America and Europe. Her favorite cities are Chicago, Illinois and Berlin, Germany.  She is an avid reader, reading everything from the classics like Jane Austen to modern writers like Terry Pratchett.  One of her all-time favorite books is “Good Omens” by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett.  She writes all of her books while listening to music and the bands tend to get “honorable mentions” within the pages.

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