The chopper was gone? Her stomach lurched, her heart rat-tat-tatting like the gunfire.
Sutton swayed, his knees buckling as his eyes rolled back in his head. Jose tucked his shoulder into the injured student’s gut and hefted him into a fireman’s carry. Sutton’s arms hung limp, his whole body slack with unconsciousness.
Jose turned to his teammate. “Bubbles, lead the way.”
“Roger that, Cuervo.”
Not even wincing at the extra hundred and sixty pounds of unconscious student, Jose picked his way around the rubble toward the gaping hole in the fence—the only blessing from the explosion.
Gunfire grew louder, closer. The outer realm of security was engaging. Jose was right. They needed to bail. How ironic that she’d always been the one pointing out the logic, the reasons they were perfect together, and how their future fit. He was the wildly impulsive one. The romantic.
Yet here and now, he was keeping his cool, completely in the moment. She wanted to lose it, to scream over the danger she’d put him in.
And yet she’d done what she had to in order to get the innocent students out. She would do the same again.
If only she’d had time to learn more about the group’s agenda.
Local government officials had pleaded with the UN for help. Intel on the warlord indicated he wanted control of an already unstable region. They had pirates on their side operating as rogue mercenaries, funding their operations and splitting the profits. If they gained control, the area would be at the mercy of a brutal totalitarian regime where the rights of children and women would become nonexistent… There were so many horrific scenarios for what they could have in mind and she’d only begun to scratch the surface.
But if she’d been there longer, she would be dead. She had to focus on one thing only now: keeping her head on straight and staying alive.
***
Jose resisted the urge to rub his five-year sobriety coin again.
Hyenas seemed to mock him in the distance as he trekked farther and farther from the compound, deeper into the night to keep Stella safe. Everything he’d bottled up steamrolled him. This day had been—hell. And it wasn’t over.
The weight of the student didn’t drag him down. He’d trained with heavier, once carrying hulking Bubbles for ten miles. But the burden of how close he’d come to losing Stella back there? That threatened to send him to his knees.
Damn it all, he should be celebrating getting her out. If things had gone according to plan, she would be in a doctor’s care being checked over and eating real food rather than a prepackaged protein bar. She should be in a safe compound, rather than in the wilds of Africa with the guttural growl of lions echoing in the distance. She should be heading off to sleep in a bed with fresh sheets—
He stopped those thoughts short. He would be better off not thinking about Stella and sheets.
She was alive. He needed to concentrate on keeping her that way until he could load her onto a rescue chopper. She had to be maxed out after her time in captivity. Shifting the student more securely over his shoulder, Jose shot a quick glance left to check on Stella. She marched alongside him, pale but steady as she swacked a stick ahead of her to check for warthogs and other African jungle beasties. To clear for scorpions and snakes. Vermin as lethal as her captors.
What exactly had she been through? What had she endured in the days before the surveillance cameras had been flown into her cell?
Bile rose in his throat again, and he pushed down the lurking question that threatened to drown him. Stella was a survivor. She had pocketed a small arsenal of weapons out of the artifacts. He had to focus on the survivor part of her, the professional part, because allowing himself to dwell on the personal… on the essence of Stella…
Hell. Back to the work side of her, the part that had carried her through this nightmare and whatever shook down. He’d always admired her dedication to her job. When they’d been dating he’d thought he found the perfect woman. One as tied to work as he was. She would understand his call to serve and he understood hers. But it turned out she wanted the one thing from him he couldn’t give.
So many regrets slammed over him, yet he couldn’t ignore the fact that today he could have lost even the comfort of knowing she was alive. Sure, it tore him up thinking about her building a future with someone else, but that pain was nothing compared to the hell of envisioning her dead. The crushing hell he would have lived with if he’d arrived too late.
Shit.
Bubbles slowed as they neared a muddy stream and stopped under the umbrella of a leafy higlo tree. “Time for a breather.”
“I’m good,” Jose insisted and he was—physically. It was his brain that was about to explode. “Stella?”
“I’m all right,” she insisted, then swayed on her feet.
“Damn it.” Jose shifted the student over to Bubbles in a flash.
His teammate assumed the burden without hesitation and settled the dude against the tree trunk. “We’re safe here for now. I’ll check over the student. You take care of Stella.”
“Jose?” Her whisper carried on the night air with the distant chirrup of a cheetah. Stella jolted. “We shouldn’t stop. I can do this. I don’t want to hold you back or make us a target.”
Dark circles stained under her eyes, but sharp attention sparked as she scanned past the tree to the wild dogs lapping from the shallow stream.
Even now, she was worried about him. Regardless of what she’d been through, the lack of food and sleep, she was ready to kick ass again with the help of a protein bar. She was every bit as incredible as he remembered, indomitable. And alive.
To hell with objectivity.
He gripped her shoulders, and without another thought, he hauled her to his chest. He held her vibrant and whole body against his. He buried his face in her hair that still held the barest hint of her eucalyptus shampoo in spite of the hellish few days.
“God, Stella, I didn’t think you were going to make it out of there.” His voice rasped in his throat, each word, every emotion grating through him like broken glass. Each word sliced him so tangibly he could have sworn he saw the starlight glinting off the shards.
“You made it in time.” She pressed her forehead to his chest, her fists gripping his survival vest.
“You called.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She trembled in his arms.
His body zeroed into just the feel of her against him and for a few seconds he allowed himself to forget she needed him to be a different kind of man. To forget they were in the middle of nowhere. To forget he still had tough questions to ask her.
A cleared throat had him pulling back. Even keeping a steadying palm on her waist, his arms already felt empty without her.
The injured student—now clearly awake—whistled lowly in the dark. His back against the trunk, Sutton Harper half grinned, despite his injuries. “I take it you two already know each other? Because if not, I’m feeling shortchanged on the post-rescue TLC.”
Jose shot a scowl at Bubbles for failing to alert him that their extra passenger was back in the land of consciousness. Bubbles shrugged. The trumpet of elephants blasted in the distance. The wild dogs twitched their satellite large ears before sprinting off in a streak of mottled fur.
Stella pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re awake. Thank God you’re all right, Sutton.”
“Anybody got food?”
Bubbles leaned over him, checking the cut above his eyebrow. “This isn’t a 7-Eleven, dude.”
Jose gathered his scrambled thoughts and elaborated for his not-too-chatty friend. “What he means to say is that he needs to check you over first. You were unconscious for a long time. We can take a few more minutes, but then we need to find somewhere to hunker down for the night.”
Stella handed Sutton a canteen. “Maybe some water would help?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” Sutton took a swallow and passed it back. “Tell your boyfriend thanks.”
Her hand shook as she swept stray hairs back from her face. “Old friend.”
The guy held out his uninjured hand. “Well color me lucky. I’m Sutton Harper, and to whom do I owe my life and my firstborn child? She called you Jose, right?”
He simply grunted, easing back from Stella, keeping an arm around her waist. Names weren’t passed around in his or Stella’s professions and he would prefer the less known about her life, the better.
Harper lifted an eyebrow at his curt response. “How cool to have an on-call military boyfriend if you happen to be kidnapped by warlords in a foreign country. Kinda coincidental for a simple student, don’t you think?”
Unease iced up his spine.
Stella stepped aside. “I guess I’m just a really lucky lady. Your good fortune too, to be kidnapped with me, don’t you think?”
Bubbles passed the student a protein bar. Damn good distraction and a reminder they had practical concerns.
Jose studied Harper, noting his pale face and twisted ankle. A few superficial bruises and some scratches, but no stitches needed after all. Butterfly bandages would take care of what he could see. Granted, not all torture left visible marks and there could be more injuries under his clothes. But right now he was wondering if the student had flipped, giving over information… Except what did he know?
He damn well didn’t need to learn anything more. “I think we need to stop chitchatting and find somewhere to park ourselves until our next ride rolls around.”
“Next ride?” Harper sat up straighter and scrubbed his sleeve over his sweaty brow. “So you dudes really do have a plan B. That’s a relief. Preferably something that doesn’t bail on us when it gets a little hot.”
What the hell? Saving this fella’s ass had cost them those precious seconds. If the student hadn’t panicked and set off the land mine, they could have made it to the rendezvous point, and they wouldn’t have brought a slew of forces charging right at them.
Jose forced a smile. “You sure are picky for someone who just got rescued.”
“Chalk it up to nerves. Makes me mouthy. Sorry to be an ingrate. Thanks for the Rambo moment.” The student’s voice rang with sincerity, easing some of the tension. “What can I do to help now since I’ve been a total slug so far?”
“Can you walk on your own or do you still need to be carried?” Jose turned to Stella. “And you? Are you sure there aren’t any medical issues I need to know about?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. He sensed a brittleness in her from her efforts to hang on to professionalism to the end. And pride, he saw that too in her eyes, a defensive wall she’d erected between them because of how they’d ended things. He scratched the ache lodged in his chest—not that he expected any relief from the pain of losing her, from the teeth-grinding frustration of knowing he wasn’t the right man to give her what she needed.
Sutton cricked his neck from side to side. “Isn’t there a boyfriend/girlfriend conflict of interest in you treating her?” He held up his hands. “What? I’m standing, ready to walk.”
Bubbles coughed once, flicking a fuzzy caterpillar off his arm in disgust. “Quiet’s a beautiful thing.”
“Fair enough.” Sutton raised his hands again. “I’m embracing the chi of quiet.”
Jose slid an arm around Stella’s waist for support, nothing more. She’d made that clear enough when she broke things off with him. There could never be anything more.
***
Stella wasn’t sure she could take much more.
She understood they needed to get far away from the compound. The place would undoubtedly be crawling with bad guys. She prayed they assumed everyone had flown out in the chopper, but they couldn’t count on that.
Still, Jose was making damn sure their tracks were covered. Now Bubbles had Sutton over his shoulder, the student’s ankle having given out after five minutes of hobbling.