Page 12 of Delirium

Instead, I took a seat on one of the uncomfortable wooden benches that lined the walls of the boat, trying to focus on anything other than the heat slowly seeping through my clothing.

The three of us were silent, with only the odd interjection from Nash’s navigation to interrupt the quiet, rhythmic sloshing of the river against the hull.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed until the sloshing began to slow or until Nash’s steering grew less erratic,Carpe Diembarely swaying anymore. We had to be out of the hardest bit of the river, like Nash had mentioned earlier.

“The fork is just up ahead. I’ll dock us to the far side of the river, until we know what we’re doing. There’s a bit of a cove, so it’s pretty calm.”

We didn’t respond. Scarlett stared off into the rainforest, lost in thought, and I stared after her, wondering what she was thinking about so deeply. I wasn’t sure what Camp stared at. I also didn’tcare. Soon enough, he wouldn’t be my problem. As long as Scarlett and Nash were smart, anyway.

Sure enough, the fork in the river loomed just ahead of us, both sides splitting off deeper into the rainforest. The dark greenery was foreboding, speaking a natural language long lost to civilization.

Nash pulled us into the small cove with ease, less than ten feet from the bank of the river. He killed the engine, and the clanking coming from below told me he had dropped the anchor, keeping us in one place. The trees twisted their roots into the mud, their branches spiraling up into the nonexistent sky. Vines stretched around the trunks, choking out any life it deemed unsatisfactory. Despite the dense overgrowth, I could just make out bits of smoke through the green. Conversation carried toward us, an entire life taking place without knowing we even existed.

Some of the villages deep in the rainforest could go decades without seeing an outsider, some even longer than that. I wondered what such a life would be like, to be so sheltered, and to have the opportunity to not concern yourself with the rest of the world.

Maybe it was simpler, to not concern yourself with all the outside noise. Where only the people in front of you mattered, along with the food you were growing, and the life you eked out for yourself amidst the trees and the mud.

Nash came toward the three of us, shrugging into a thin linen shirt that he—of course—left entirely unbuttoned. If I was expecting this man to suddenly develop modesty, I would have been sorely mistaken.

Nash clapped his hands together with a smile, all too cheerful despite the current situation. “Right. We’re safely in one place now. Let’s get to the matter at hand. What do we do about our new guest, Camp?”

“I wouldn’t really call him a guest,” I muttered.

Scarlett rolled her eyes again. “I think we should let him go, and not turn him into the village. Besides, even if wewereto turn him over to the village, how are we supposed to know they’ll take him where they say they would? We don’t know what we’d be turning him over to.”

Oh, sweet Scarlett. She had no idea what she was arguing, truly, but the naïvety was endearing.

“He committed a crime. That makes him a criminal. I don’t know what it was like where you grew up, but in my city, we usually punish criminals instead of letting them go on their merry way.” I looked over to Camp, giving him a shrug. “Sorry, mate.”Not sorry at all.

Even if he hadn’t committed a crime, he had been extraordinarily rude to Scarlett, and that wasn’t a man I wanted to get away with anything.

Scarlett sighed. “Nash. You’re obviously the tie breaker here.”

Nash reached up, thoughtfully scratching his close-cropped beard. “Well, I think we should let Camp plead his case.”

“Excuse me?” I snarled. “We already know his case. He confessed to his crime. There’s no reason to have an entire court case when we have ascheduleto keep, don’t we,captain?”

Nash kept crossing lines, and I needed to remind him who was paying his bills right now, because it certainly wasn’t Camp.

Nash held up his hand. “I appreciate that, James. I do. But I’m not about to send a man to rot in a foreign jail if he has a good explanation for his crime. So let’s hear his explanation, and then we can vote.”

Anger flooded my veins, making me all too aware of every inch of my surroundings. I couldn’t explode and make a scene without Scarlett getting caught in the crossfire, and for whatever reason, I wanted her to think of me in a positive light—even if the odds of that possibility had already been shot to hell.

I forced myself to reduce my boiling fury down to a simmer. “Fine. But it better be good, and it better be quick.”

Nash nodded toward Camp. “The floor is all yours, friend.”

Friend. As if they had known each other for years instead of hours. As if Camp hadn’t boarded Nash’s boat without a ticket, forcing us to conduct court in the middle of the goddamn rainforest. I slapped a mosquito on my neck, even more annoyed.

Surreal was only one way to describe this entire day so far. The way things were going, I couldn’t be certain I hadn’t been dosed with some kind of drug during my time in town, only for me to wake up and realize this afternoon had all been some kind of horrible nightmare.

But I knew the chances of that were slim, and somehow, this vivid dream was my current reality.

Chapter

Five

SCARLETT

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