“That’s not true,” he argued. When I shot him a disbelieving look, he added, “Okay, I maybe suggested something to that effect before we left the States, but I know better now. The work you do might not fix the problems in Venezuela, but you’re changing the lives of individuals. It’s inspiring—”
I held up a hand to stop him and tried to pretend his words didn’t matter, that they didn’t burrow under my skin and chase away the chill of fear. “My point is, we only have each other right now. You’re the one person in this whole country I can count on. And I can’t count on you if you’re keeping things from me, even if you’re doing it to protect me.”
Riggs ran both hands through his hair in frustration and relented. “Look, I wasn’t lying about anything I said, but…”
“But?” I prompted.
“But with the political climate being what it is, it won’t mean much for Doctors Across Continents to report us missing,” he admitted. “The US can’t just mount an armed rescue in a foreign country, and if these guys are connected to the cartel, the local police are probably on the payroll.”
Well. I’d asked for honesty, right?
“Champion Security will be the ones to get us out of this mess,” Riggs continued confidently. “And they will. One hundred percent. But it’s gonna take time for them to get the word that we’re missing and then to formulate a rescue.”
I clung to this measure of hope and nodded like a bobblehead. “How long?”
“Maybe a day or two before they hear, unless we can speed that up? Another day or two to figure out where we are. Another day or two to get here and get us out.”
“That’s…” I cleared my throat. “A lot of days.”
He nodded. “It is. And frankly, that’s best-case scenario. We need to be prepared to be here for as long as a week.”
“A week!”
“Or more, potentially.”
“Wow. Okay.” I leaned over again, hyperventilating just a little. “So we’re screwed.”
“No,” Riggs said firmly. He yanked me upright and put his hand under my chin, compelling me to look at him. “You don’t think like that, you hear me? Because if you think you’re gonna fail, you’re gonna act like you’re gonna fail, and I need you to be at the top of your game for both our sakes. You’ve got to believe it’s going to be okay, Carter. Really believe it. Can you do that for me?”
His fingers were rough on my face, grounding me in reality, and I nodded… then I shook my head. “I want to believe it, Riggs, but how am I going to keep drawing out his heartburn for a week without him getting impatient? It’s cruel to let the man think he’s dying when all he needs is an antacid, and it’s cruel to not give him an antacid when I could. And even if I were okay with all that, I suck at acting, especially under pressure. When my kindergarten class performed The Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, I played a rock, and I still screwed it up. There’s no way I can pretend for that long.”
“But you won’t be acting.” His thumb stroked my chin. “The truth is, you don’t know for sure he’s not dying, do you? You think he’s not, you’re almost positive he’s not, but that isn’t the same thing as being sure. Is it?”
I blinked. “I suppose not.”
“You are just being a super-diligent medical professional by triple-checking everything. Urine sample, a few days of EKGs, loads of bloodwork. It’s not acting,” he repeated. “It’s just not sharing all the information you know. It’s discretion.”
I made a face. It was a stretch, but he wasn’t wrong.
“You like to be in control of things, right?” he asked softly. “I get that. Same here. So control what you can control, Carter.”
I nodded. I could do that.
And Riggs had been right earlier too. I hadn’t consented to be our captor’s doctor. I had no obligation there.
“Okay, I can try. Is there anything we can do to speed this process up, though? Maybe bribe a guard, or—”
“No. Definitely not. We don’t know who we’re dealing with here.”
I frowned. “You mean, we don’t know the guards?”
He nodded robotically. “Yes. The guards. That’s… that’s what I meant.” Before I could call him on his hesitation again, he continued. “What we need is to gain access to the internet somehow so we can get a message out. All I need is ten unsupervised seconds, and I can open a search portal that will ping our computer guy, Hux, to track my search. It’s a back-end thing he set up after an assignment went wonky in Jakarta and we almost lost— er. Never mind.” Riggs cracked his neck from side to side.
Riggs was right. There were some things I didn’t want to know. “Okay, so maybe I ask Señor Santiago if I can consult with a colleague back in the States about his very delicate condition? Or say I need to check which pharmacies in Caracas carry the meds he needs.”