“Double whoa. That’s a long time to be with someone. My boyfriend and I have only been together for three years.” Her chest tightened at the thought of Cash. “Actually, we got into a huge fight before I came here.”
“What…about…?”
“He didn’t want me to come.” Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat. “He thought it was too dangerous.”
Jamie wheezed softly, looking like he wanted to laugh, too.
“Shhh.” She ran a soothing hand over his forehead, trying not to dwell on his shallow, erratic breathing. “He was right, I guess. But you know what? I still don’t regret my decision. I mean, we’re trapped in this alley like sitting ducks, but if I hadn’t been here, you might not be here either.”
She forced herself to cling to that, to thank God for placing Jamie by her side. If she hadn’t come to San Cortés, Jamie would have been with the rest of his unit during the ambush and the bullet in his stomach could have been in his head instead.
She froze when footsteps thumped in the alley. It was too early for the rescue team to have reached them. She’d spoken to Captain Reynolds less than five minutes ago.
As her pulse sped up, she turned the volume on the radio all the way down and touched Jamie’s lips. “Shhh.”
His mouth closed. So did his eyes, but she didn’t dare try to wake him up, not until the footsteps receded. Loud laughter sounded from the opening of the alley, triggering an explosion of anger inside her. They were laughing. They’d just murdered a dozen innocent people, robbed food and medicine from the needy, and they were fucking laughing.
With shaky hands, she picked up Jamie’s machine gun. The action caused his eyes to open. Surprise filled his expression when he saw the gun in her hand, but she gave a brisk shake of her head to keep him silent.
She knew how to handle a weapon, but she’d never fired a machine gun before. The recoil on this sucker would probably break her arm, but she wasn’t about to let those gang members take her and Jamie.
Heart pounding, she tucked the weapon under the crook of her arm, fingers trembling over the trigger.
She waited.
Another burst of laughter, so close. Were they coming into the alley?
No, the footsteps were retreating, the laughter growing muffled.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “They’re gone.” She lowered the gun, turned up the radio volume, and touched Jamie’s cheek. “Open your eyes, sweetie.”
His lids wobbled open just as a faint voice hissed out of the radio. “Base to Charlie.”
She quickly brought the radio to her mouth. “I’m here. We’re both here.”
“We have an extraction team en route. It will take them ten minutes to reach the LZ.”
LZ?
Jen mentally sifted through the military lingo she’d picked up over the years. LZ. Landing zone. The rescue team was coming by plane then. Or maybe a chopper.
“LZ is one mile west of you. We need to pin down your exact location. Are there any landmarks? Anything that can narrow down their search?”
“The alley is…it’s near the butcher shop where that drug raid happened.” But…damn it, she remembered passing a lot of narrow passageways on the way from the shop to the convoy. “Hold on. Give me a second.”
She shifted in the alcove, peering at the wall directly across from their hiding spot, but all she saw was dusty concrete.
“The building next to us is white concrete. I don’t know what it is.” Panic clawed up her throat as she searched her brain for any discernable landmarks. “We’re closer to the clinic than the butcher shop. I can see the smoke from the blown-up Humvee coming into the alley. And I can hear the gang. They’re still by the Global Aid van, I think.”
Shit. She suddenly realized that the rescue team would be walking right up to a group of twenty armed maras.
“They’re still there,” she warned. “They’ll see you guys coming.”
“It will be okay.” The voice on the other end radiated confidence. “Anything else you can think of?”
She thought back to the chaos. Not the bodies or the blood or the soldiers diving for cover. She concentrated only on her surroundings, what she’d seen before Jamie was shot, before he’d dragged her into the alley. And then she became aware of the heavy weight on her chest. Her camera, still hanging around her neck. Her hands shook as she hurriedly lifted it up and turned the power on. A second later, she was clicking through the last shots she’d taken before all hell had broken loose.
“Graffiti,” she hissed out. “There’s graffiti on the wall at the edge of the alley we’re in. Look for a huge blue eye, outlined in black. Looks like barbed wire instead of eyelashes.”
“Roger that. Maintain your position, Charlie. We’ll have you out of there in no time.”
She set down the radio and glanced at Jamie. “Did you hear that?”
He nodded, his face pale and covered with a sheen of perspiration.
“They’re coming to get us, and they’re going to take you to the hospital. You’re going to be fine.”
In the back of her mind, she wasn’t so sure. She had no clue what would happen when the rescue team got there. More gunfire? More death?
What if she and Jamie got caught in the crossfire?
Her hand instinctively reached for the radio again, clicking the button before she could stop herself. “Can I talk to Cash?” she whispered into the line.
The gruff baritone of the captain she’d been communicating with rippled through. “One second. Patching you through.”
It was only a ten-second wait, but it felt like an eternity before she heard Cash’s deep voice. It slid into her ear, wrapping around her body like a warm embrace. Even when he was thousands of miles away, his unyielding strength still soothed her.
“I’m here, baby.”
Baby. Heat flushed her cheeks. She knew he was probably in a command room surrounded by his teammates, her brother, dozens of military personnel, and the fact that he would allow them to hear the endearment, the raw note in his voice when he uttered it…it caused a rush of love to circle her heart.
“They said we’re going to be rescued soon,” she told him.
Cash sounded as confident as the captain. “You will. You’ll be out of there soon, I promise.”
She swallowed. “But…just in case…just in case something goes wrong…” She kept her finger on the talk button, knowing full well that Cash was probably trying to cut in with a stern objection. “I want you to know that I love you. I’m sorry I flipped out on you before I left, and I’m so sorry I made the decision to come without taking your opinion into consideration.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “But let’s save this conversation for later, sweetheart. And not just because your brother is staring at me like I signed up for knitting classes or something.”
She fought a grin as she pictured Carson’s face.
“We’re not going to talk about ‘just in case’,” he said firmly. “Because you’re going to be just fine. You can say whatever you need to say when I see you, okay?”
“Okay.” She blinked through the tears sticking to her lashes. “I’ll see you soon, cowboy.”
“See you soon, baby.”
Jen turned off the radio.
* * *
See you soon, cowboy.
She’d wrecked him.
With those four words, she’d completely wrecked him. Cash slid off the chair and ducked out of the command room, unable to look at all those sympathetic faces anymore. He sagged against the wall in the corridor, rubbing his fists over his stinging eyes.
Goddamn it. He wasn’t going to cry like a sissy when the woman he loved was being pinned down by a group of armed gangsters. She needed him to be strong for her.
Footsteps echoed in the hall as Carson appeared. He didn’t comment on Cash’s wet eyes. Hell, his looked pretty damn glassy, too.
“Did you…” Cash cleared the gravel from his throat. “Did you talk to you
r parents?”
Carson nodded. “My mom is freaking out. So’s the admiral, but he’s putting on a brave face.”
“Are they coming here?”
“No, I told them it’s better if they stay home. I’m calling them with updates, though.”
Cash nodded and averted his gaze as he blinked rapidly.
A large hand clapped on his shoulder. He lifted his head just as Carson pulled him in for a hug. He and the LT had never hugged like this before. They were all about the macho side hugs, the quick fist bumps, but this was an embrace. A tight, urgent embrace that felt fatherly despite the fact that Carson wasn’t that much older than him.
Christ, he really wished his dad were here. And his mom. His folks always knew what to say in stressful situations.
“She’ll be all right.” Carson’s voice was gruff as he released him. “Holly said the same thing when I called her. She reminded me that she trusts me to come back to her every time I go away, and that I have to trust that my sister will do the same.”
“Is Holly okay? Shouldn’t you go home to be with her and Jake?” Cash had been so caught up in his own panic he’d forgotten that Carson had a wife and newborn son at home.
“They’re okay, Cash. Jen’s okay. And that marine she’s with? He’ll be okay, too. Jen won’t let him die. You know she’s stubborn as hell.”
Cash couldn’t deny that. He encountered Jen’s stubbornness on a daily basis. Hell, it was that pigheadedness that had brought them together. He’d been determined to keep her at arm’s length when they’d first met because he’d made a promise to Carson to keep his hands off his sister, but Jen had barreled through his resolve like a determined bronco. She’d seduced him, captured his heart, and now he couldn’t live without her.
Carson was right—he had to trust that Jen would come home safe. It made him sick to his stomach that he hadn’t trusted her before she’d left. He’d ordered her around as if she were a child, and not the strong woman he’d fallen in love with.
The two men stayed out in the hall, neither one of them speaking, but Cash drew comfort from Carson’s conviction, his unfailing belief that Jen would be all right. When Stevens came out a few minutes later and gestured for them to follow him, Cash was feeling more centered, the panic in his body giving way to…faith, he supposed.
“The evac team made it to the LZ,” Stevens reported. “They’re making their way to town now.”
Relief swept through him, but the next several minutes tested that relief as they encountered nothing but radio silence. He knew the LZ was a mile or so from Jen’s location. Cash could run that in six minutes flat, but he had no way of knowing how the military team would decide to handle the extraction.
He paced. He couldn’t sit, had no idea how Carson could do it, but Jen’s brother was perched in a chair, his blue eyes revealing none of the jittery agitation Cash was experiencing.
He couldn’t lose her.
She was his whole life.
Another minute ticked by. Two. Three. Cash was losing his mind, pacing faster.
“They’ve got her.”
He froze when the petty officer at the desk removed her headset and turned to face them.
“W-what?” he stammered.
“They’ve got her,” the woman repeated, a slight smile lifting the corner of her mouth.
Carson shot to his feet. “She’s okay? She’s safe?”
“En route to the bird as we speak.”
“Casualties?” Stevens barked.
“On the enemy side, but exact number unknown, sir.”
Cash didn’t give a shit about the dead gang members. He was too busy absorbing the news that Jen had gotten out safely, but it was an agonizing forty minutes before he was fully able to relax.
When his cell phone buzzed, he was barely able to fish it out of his pocket, his hands were shaking that hard. His breath caught when he glimpsed the private number, the foreign country code, and somehow he managed to lift the phone to his ear. To croak out a weak hello.
And then he heard her voice.
“Hey, it’s me. We made it back to the base.” She paused, and a rush of emotion echoed over the line. “I’m coming home.”
9
Adrenaline was a bitch. It kept Jen awake during the entire flight back to California, making her bounce in her seat, wring her hands together, tap her feet. But she wasn’t about to complain about the restless energy crackling through her. She’d survived a near-death experience, for Pete’s sake.
She still couldn’t believe that the rescue team had found her and Jamie. Saved them. Brought them to safety. She knew many of the mara members had been killed, though. The survivors had been arrested, but one of the soldiers admitted they’d probably be back on the streets at some point. The prisons were too overcrowded, and lack of enforcement was the reason the gangs existed in the first place.
It made her angry to think that the people who’d ambushed the convoy might be allowed to walk free, but she knew there was nothing she could do to change that. She had done something, though. Something important—she’d kept Jamie Holbrook alive, and that was something those bastard maras couldn’t ever take away from her.
Jamie had been rushed to the military hospital on the base the moment they’d landed, and she’d been told he would be transported to Indiana once he was stabilized. Back to his family and Madeline. Jen hadn’t received any new updates on his condition, but the medic who’d met them at the chopper had told her that she’d “done good”.
He wasn’t the only one who’d said it; today she’d received more praise than she’d ever gotten in her entire life. But she didn’t want pats on the back—she just wanted to go home.
She’d almost died today, and the terrifying notion was causing her to wonder if maybe she wasn’t cut out for the dangerous assignments. Maybe she really was better off taking pictures of politicians and activists. And yet when she thought about the photographs she’d taken in Guera and San Cortés, a part of her still thought it might be worth the risk. She’d never forget all those starving people, the dilapidated buildings and dirty sewers and armed kids wearing gang colors and roaming the streets.
If she didn’t show the world what was happening in places like that, who would?
Ugh, there were too many muddled thoughts floating through her head at the moment. She pushed them all aside, focusing instead on Cash. Her family. Her friends. They must have been worried sick about her, and she was eager to see them.
By the time the city skyline came into view, Jen was ready to parachute out of the plane, just so she could get off the damn thing. She impatiently drummed her fingers against the armrests, wondering if Cash would be waiting on the tarmac for her.
Ten minutes later, she got her answer, because Cash’s face was the first one she saw when she got off the plane.
He stood at the far edge of the runway, the early evening breeze plastering his black T-shirt to his muscled chest. Vivid blue eyes lit up at the sight of her. Jen was running toward him before she knew it, throwing herself into the powerful arms he held open for her.
“Oh hell,” he choked out. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
He pressed his lips to her neck as he spoke, nearly crushing her with the force of his grip, suffocating her as he tangled his fingers through her hair and pressed her head to his chest.
But Jen didn’t mind. She didn’t need air or room. She just needed Cash.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he said urgently, his trembling hands touching her face and running along her bare arms as if assessing her for injury.
She’d taken a shower at the base in Honduras because she hadn’t wanted him to see all the blood and freak out, but she still smelled copper every time she inhaled. “I’m fine,” she assured him, but sadness took root when she remembered the men and women who’d died earlier today, and when she thought about Jamie recovering in a hospital somewhere.
“I was so scared I was going to lose you,” he mumble
d.
His lips found hers then. He kissed the breath right out of her lungs. Desperate, passionate, his mouth a tight seal over hers.
She kissed him back, oblivious to their surroundings and the people moving all around them. Their tongues tangled and she drank up the taste of him, breathed in the familiar scent of spice and man that flooded her nostrils and replaced the awful scent of blood.
“I’m sorry I made you worry,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I acted like a caveman,” he whispered back. “I love you. So much it hurts. I just didn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“I know.” Her throat closed up. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you either.”
“But I’m the alpha asshole, right? I’m allowed to risk my life, but you’re not allowed to risk yours.” Regret flickered in his eyes. “I treated you like you were a fragile little kid, and that wasn’t fair. I know you’re not fragile. You’re strong, Jen. So fucking strong.” He kissed her again, just the fleeting trace of his lips. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
She stroked the stubble on his jaw, locking her gaze with his. “You didn’t. I’m okay. We’re okay.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, then reached for his hand. “Come on, cowboy. Let’s go home.”
* * *
They didn’t make it back to the apartment right away, but Cash hadn’t expected them to. Carson and Holly had wanted to see Jen, and then they’d sped over to her parents’ house so Laura and Gary could hug the living daylights out of her. The admiral had been in honest-to-God tears, which was a shocking sight, and yet it made total sense. Jen was the bright light in everyone’s lives, and even Gary Scott hadn’t been able to control his emotions when he’d seen her walk through the front door.
And now they were walking through their own front door, finally alone, and Cash didn’t waste a second drawing her into his arms.
He couldn’t stop touching her. Kissing her. Stroking her hair and caressing her body. It was like he needed to prove to himself that she was here. That she was real.
Out of Uniform Box Set: Books 4-6 plus 2 Bonus Novellas Page 90
