“Exactly.” Riggs chafed my arms. “You’re a natural.”
The steam from the shower billowed around us as I looked up into his face. “And what if it doesn’t work? What if I can’t convince him?”
“Then I sneak out and poke around on my own and find one. I’m a trained operator, Carter,” he added when I made a disapproving eep sort of noise. “This is my job.”
No, I was his job, as he kept reminding me. And I was very afraid my poor choices were going to get us both killed.
“Kinda makes you wish we’d stayed back in Gelada and let the rampaging capybaras have their way with us, huh?” I said, not even joking.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s rampaging capybaras or monologuing drug lords with indigestion—”
I snorted. “God, he really does monologue, doesn’t he? I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed it.”
Riggs shook my shoulders gently. “Listen. My point is, it doesn’t matter what the danger is, I’m gonna keep you safe. We’ve got this.”
Awww.
The sound of something slamming against the bathroom door stopped me from getting too sappy. Someone yelled something in angry Spanish from the bedroom.
“Adelante,” Riggs yelled to them. “Shit,” he muttered to me. “Santiago’s asking for us. Here, you take this. Just in case.” He bent down, hiked up my pant leg, and affixed his knife in its sheath. He looked up at me with solemn dark eyes. “I have every faith in you, Carter.”
The banging escalated.
“¡Esperate un segundo! Está atascado,” Riggs called. To me, he added, “I told them to wait a second ’cause the door is stuck. FYI, we’re in here together because the shower is broken and we’re trying to fix it.”
“It is?” I whispered, glancing dubiously at the perfectly functional shower.
Riggs turned the temperature control to cool and whacked the side of the showerhead with his hand, causing water to spray everywhere. “It is,” he confirmed.
He threw the door open, and two guys jumped in brandishing handguns. One was Beardy, from earlier, but the other guy was new and wore thick black glasses.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Riggs scowled. “We’re just trying to fix the shower so my boss here can clean off.”
“Why you locked the door?” Glasses asked me in accented English.
“We didn’t,” I lied unconvincingly. “It must’ve gotten stuck. You know, what with the steam warping the wood and the, um, the door-locking mechanism? Kind of a common problem with older homes. The seals get corroded and things get loose and before you know it, things are oxidizing left, right, and center!” I laughed nervously and tried to stop talking, but it didn’t work. “Chemistry, am I right? Can’t fight it! Why, one time, back at my grandfather’s house in Tennes—”
“Dr. Carter?” Riggs interrupted.
“Erm. Yes, Nurse Riggs?”
“I’m guessing these men don’t need a lecture on oxidation. Not at this juncture.”
“No. Right.” I swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
Add overtalking to the top of my list of terrible, terrible stress responses, damn it.
I prided myself on staying calm and collected in a crisis—I’d be a pretty terrible doctor if I couldn’t—but apparently that calm only extended to situations I could control. Throw me in a tiny, steam-filled Venezuelan bathroom inside a drug lord’s jungle compound with a couple of armed men and a sexy-as-fuck bodyguard, and apparently I panicked as much as anybody. How lowering.
Glasses looked back and forth between us like he was confident that we were up to something, but he wasn’t sure what… which was fair, because I wasn’t entirely sure either.
“Señor Santiago needs el doctor,” he said finally. “His heart is getting worse.”
“Okay. We’ll come now.” I motioned toward the bathroom door.
“Not you.” Glasses caught Riggs in the chest with his palm and halted him in his tracks. “You stay here.”
“Hell, no,” Riggs shot back. “Dr. Carter needs me. He’s useless without me, remember?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Nurse Riggs is correct, I need my nurse. He assists me with all, um, tests and diagnoses, so—”
“Not him,” Glasses insisted, brandishing his gun. “Señor Santiago says sólo el doctor.”
I eyed the gun nervously and gave Riggs a helpless shrug. “Fine. Certainly. Well. I’ll be back, then, Nurse Riggs.”
Riggs’s nostrils flared. “What happened to safety in numbers, Doctor?”
“You have your job, and I have mine,” I reminded him. We had to stay the course for a week, right? This was still only the first day.
So I nodded at Glasses and let them lead me away.
When Glasses and Beardy let me in Santiago’s bedchamber, it was much darker than it had been earlier. The cadre of weeping women was gone, the shades were drawn, and the room was in almost total darkness, save for the dim yellow glow of a bedside lamp. Santiago lay flat on the bed with his hands resting on his chest, perfectly motionless, and for a second I wondered if I’d been wrong earlier—if maybe the man had taken a turn for the worse somehow.