The Heart of a Mercenary

by White, Loreth Anne

  She stopped at the bottom, afraid to go up to the water’s edge, petrified of what she might find. She began to shake violently, and tears made her blind.

  She swiped them brutally out of her eyes. Control yourself, Sarah. He needs you now.

  God, she hoped he did need her, that she would find some sign of life in her invincible mercenary, the hardened man who had touched her so tenderly, helped give her willpower. The man who—she choked on a sob—the man who had chosen her life over everything he’d been trained to do.

  She began to squelch toward his limp form, swallowing her trepidation and forcing herself into clinical mode as she got closer.

  He was lying on his stomach, his right arm twisted at a strange angle, his fist still clutched around the handle of the biohazard container. One side of his face was in the mud. His eyes were closed and his skin was gray. Sarah’s heart plummeted. She’d seen that look before.

  She knelt at his side, her heart beating light and fast. “Hunter?” she whispered as she touched his face. His skin was ice-cold. “Hunter!” She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. She could not, would not, lose someone else to this jungle. Not him, not Hunter. He had to be alive. “Hunter!”

  She felt him move. Her heart pounded against her ribs.

  “Hunter?”

  He lifted his head slightly out of the mud and his eyelids fluttered open. He stared at her, slowly registering his surroundings. Then he grimaced. “Hello, angel.”

  A wave of emotion surged through Sarah, so strong it stole her breath and ability to form words. Hot tears of relief filled her eyes. She smiled and placed her hand against his muddy cheek. “Thank God, oh thank God you’re alive.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and his body shuddered.

  “How…how badly are you hurt?”

  He tried to lift his head again, groaned, let it fall back into the mud. She winced and a new set of fears crept into her heart.

  He tried to move again. “Help…help me up, Sarah.” He ground out the words through clenched teeth. “I need to get up there…by the trees. Less mud there.” He maneuvered himself onto his good elbow, his eyes bright with pain. “And we…must…stay…near cover.” He swallowed a bark of pain as he tried to sit up.

  “Maybe…maybe you shouldn’t move. Maybe you should lie still until—”

  His eyes cut to hers. “Until what? The ambulance comes?”

  It hit her then, the implications of being hurt in the wilderness. There was zero hope of help, no civilized system to come to their aid. They had only themselves, two humans against a deadly jungle where only the fittest survived. And now the balance of power between her and Hunter had shifted squarely onto her shoulders. He needed her. And she had the skills to help him. She could no longer be a victim in any way. It was up to her now.

  The realization shot a jolt of determined fire through her body. She couldn’t afford raw fear now. She had to focus and fight—for him.

  She sucked in a steadying breath. “Hunter, before I help you move, you have to tell me exactly where you hurt, so that I—”

  He was feeling his left shoulder with his good hand. “Anterior dislocation of the sternoclavicular joint.”

  Surprise rippled through her. “What?”

  “My left shoulder—” he groaned as he forced himself onto his knees “—it’s dislocated.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. I can feel it.”

  She stared at him, momentarily stunned. “It…I mean, it could be broken, or—”

  “No.” He staggered to his feet, gasped as pain punched through him. “I…felt it go…when I tried to keep hold of the container as I went under at the base of the falls.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure! The muscles are already going into spasm. You’ve got to help me reduce it immediately, Sarah.” His eyes pierced hers. “I need my arm. We both do if we want to get out of here.”

  He was right on that count. And if his diagnosis was correct, the top of his left humerus had been forced forward out of the shoulder socket. The longer it stayed that way, the less likely it was they’d manage to get it back into place without surgery. And that was impossible. If left untreated, he’d be seriously disabled and in constant and debilitating pain.

  He started to stumble through the mud, holding his injured arm steady with his good hand. “Bring the container,” he called back to her as he made his way up to the trees.

  Sarah grabbed the handle of the biohazard canister and got to her feet. She squished through the mud after him, the gear on her back weighing her down.

  He sagged under a tree where the red laterite was packed hard. She removed the rifle and machete slings, shrugged out of his pack and dumped it on the ground. He gave her a grin twisted with pain. “You are an angel. You brought all the gear.”

  A wedge of pride jammed into her. She smiled. “Yeah, I did.”

  His eyes trailed over her. “You got a bit messed up, though.”

  She glanced down at her clothing and a crazy giggle rippled through her. She looked like an urchin out of a Dickens novel. “Guess I was in a bit of a hurry.”

  He nodded, and his tacit approval warmed her. She felt suddenly as if he respected her, as if they were part of a team now. And she couldn’t begin to articulate what that meant to her.

  He slid his hunting knife out of the sheath on his thigh, held it out to her. “Here.”

  She stared at it. That knife had killed her pursuers.

  “Take it, Sarah. Cut my sleeve off.”

  She swallowed her mix of feelings and clasped her fingers around the hilt, felt its weight in her hand. She needed this knife to help heal him now. This was her present reality. And in some strange way, in taking hold of that knife, she felt as if she’d just become part of this strange system, this living organism of a jungle that was probably the most competitive natural arena on earth.

  She lifted the fabric of his camouflage shirt away from his shoulder, poked a hole through it with the hooked tip of the blade and jerked her hand back. The blade sliced neatly through the strong material. She pulled the sleeve loose and maneuvered it carefully down over his injured arm.

  She recognized the profile of a dislocated shoulder instantly. The next thing that struck her was that his muscles were rock-hard and in serious spasm.

  She placed her hands on his shoulder. His skin was hot. She fingered along his joint, locating the position of the bones. “You’re right,” she said. “I can feel the medial end of the clavicle here—” she moved her hand over his skin “—and the head of the humerus here. It’s an anterior dislocation.”

  He said nothing, just watched her intently.

  She checked the pulse at his wrist and compared it with the strength of the pulse at his elbow. She let out a silent sigh of relief. The major blood vessels that passed through the shoulder area were undamaged. “Pulse is fine.” She pinched the back of his hand. “You feel that?”

  “Yeah, I felt a nibble.”

  She smiled. His muscles were so tense and his skin so taut it was impossible to grab enough flesh between her fingers to give a real bite. But the fact he’d felt it at all showed his nerves were in working order. She pinched his rock-hard deltoid muscle, just below his shoulder on the top of his arm. “And that?”

  He nodded. “That, too.”

  Relief surged through her. His axillary nerve, one of the most vulnerable in this sort of injury, was undamaged. This was looking to be a straightforward dislocation. All she had to do now was manipulate the joint back into place without damaging any nerves in the process. That was easier said than done. His muscle tone, strength and size were phenomenal, while she was slight in stature and in a weakened state. She was no match for his body. His muscles were going to fight her every step of the way.

  She rocked back on her heels, pushed her wet hair off her forehead. How in heavens was she going to do this?

  He was watching her, reading her mind. “Yo
u have to fix it, Sarah.”

  “I…I know. It’s just—”

  “Do it, Sarah. Now. We don’t have time to waste. The longer we leave it the more my muscles are going to fight you.”

  She began to remove her shoe. “Lie back.”

  Hunter lowered himself slowly down onto the packed earth. The pain in his left shoulder was excruciating, and his muscles had tightened to fight against the injury. This was going to take time—time they could ill afford. They needed to get well into the cover of the jungle before the soldiers arrived and sighted them from the opposite bank of the river.

  Sarah positioned her butt in the dirt at his side, one shoe off. “Ready?”

  Hunter stared at the little yellow pompom on her wet sock, and in spite of his pain, he felt a smile in his heart. This woman was something else. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  She positioned her socked foot in his armpit, wrapped both her hands around his wrist and leaned back, exerting pressure with her foot as she began to pull his arm.

  His nerves screeched in pain and his muscles contracted in resistance. But she kept the pressure steady, consistent, fighting his body. He knew Sarah had been running on empty before her plunge into the river, and she had to be even more drained now. But she kept at it, color beginning to rise in her cheeks.

  He felt his muscles begin to give, and a groan of pain escaped him. Shock flared in her eyes and he felt her release the pressure slightly. “No.” He ground out the word. “Keep…pulling.” This could take upward of twenty minutes, the way his muscles were protesting.

  Perspiration began to bead on her brow and glow on her face. Her limbs started to tremble with the effort. “This…this isn’t working, Hunter,” she gasped.

  “Pull, damn it!”

  She gritted her teeth, scrunched her eyes tight, held the pressure. Hunter used every ounce of mental strength to force relaxation into his spasming muscles. And finally he felt them begin to release. “Hold…hold it now!”

  Sweat poured down her brow and she steadied the pressure. He could feel the muscles in her leg quivering with the sustained tension. But she was good. Damn good. A pro. He could feel her twist his arm, maneuver his bone ever so slightly, timing herself, releasing movement when she could sense give. She eased, waited. Eased. Waited again. Then suddenly he felt the telltale bump as his shoulder jerked back into place. The intensity of pain subsided almost immediately.

  Hunter released a huge breath of air, and his body went limp. He laughed out loud in sheer relief, couldn’t help himself. “God, you really are an angel, you know that?”

  She kept her eyes closed. She just sat there, hunched over, her face streaked with mud, her hair a wet tangle, one shoe on, one shoe off, her wet sock with the pompom now streaked with bloodred dirt. And in that instant, Hunter had never seen anything more endearing, more appealing, than this woman.

  He pushed himself to a sitting position. “Sarah?”

  She still didn’t open her eyes. Tears began to leak out from under her lashes and drip silently down her cheeks, tracking crooked trails through the dirt. A sensation washed through his body, a feeling for her so deep and so explosive he couldn’t begin to articulate what it was. He’d done the right thing going after her. He knew it in his heart. He would never have been able to live with himself otherwise.

  She opened her eyes and looked right into him, into his soul. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for coming after me.” She leaned forward, cupped her hands around his face and brushed her lips softly over his. “I didn’t believe in you. I’m so sorry.”

  He closed his eyes, shuddered. How could a simple touch be so sweet, words so achingly painful? It was as if she’d just ripped a yawning chasm of need right through the very center of his heart, an empty void so deep and vast that he knew he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to fill it. Damn this woman. The rawness, the explosive clout of the unexpected emotion was almost too powerful.

  “Hunter?”

  He couldn’t talk to her. Not now. He had to get control of himself. He climbed to his feet and reached for his gun. They needed to fill the canteens and get into jungle cover ASAP.

  “Hunter—”

  “My knife, hand me my knife,” he barked. He knew his words were clipped, but he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t handle his feelings.

  Her mouth dropped open slightly. Confusion knitted her brow. She reached for the hunting knife at her side, handed it to him. “What about your arm? We should splint it. I should check the pulse again to see that we didn’t—”

  “Later. We move now!” he snapped. He turned his back on her, angrily blinking back the hot burn in his eyes. Christ, he hadn’t shed a tear in fifteen goddamn years. He wasn’t about to go soft now.

  Chapter 9

  12:14 Alpha. Blacklands.

  Tuesday, September 23

  Sarah’s triumph in having helped Hunter—a man she’d viewed as invincible—had fired her with a fierce new determination to survive. It also gave her a deep sense of her own value, something she’d been lacking for a long, long time. The old Sarah, the person she’d been before Josh, was finally poking through, and in her heart she was feeling strength again. But the nurse in her was still worried about the mercenary.

  She watched Hunter carefully as he led the way along the narrow, rutted game path. The going was relatively easy here, the ground drier, the trees tall and covered with white lichen. But the two of them had been walking for almost four hours since he’d gone over Eikona Falls, and she could see he was beginning to weaken. He’d given her the biohazard container so that he could keep his left arm immobile, but he insisted on carrying the rest of his gear himself. She wished he’d allowed her to splint his arm. If he fell, it could pop out again.

  “Hunter,” she called to him.

  He stopped, turned around. The strained tightness of his features, the bright sheen in his dark eyes startled her. She hoped he didn’t have some internal damage he wasn’t telling her about.

  “Could we take a rest?” This time she wasn’t asking for herself, she was asking for him. She knew he wasn’t going to stop because he was tired.

  “Not yet.” He began to turn back.

  “Hunter! I insist.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, cocked an eyebrow.

  “I need to splint that arm, and I need to check your pulse again. The nerves could’ve been pinched when the bone went back into the socket.”

  A grin twitched along one corner of his mouth. “That the nurse I hear talking?”

  “Damn right. You have got to take a break. You said we’d be safe here in the Blacklands, once we got into the trees.”

  He studied her.

  “Well? Are we safe now?” She angled her head. “Or were you lying just to mess with my mind again?” And with a little spark of surprise, she realized she’d just joked about something that up until this second had been dead serious to her.

  That smile tugged at his mouth again. “Another hour,” he said. “Then we rest.”

  She scowled at him and put her hands on her hips.

  His grin broadened. “I promise.”

  “Okay, but I’m going to hold you to that promise, soldier.”

  The day grew hotter as they moved deeper into the Blacklands, and her clothes, still damp from the river, chafed against her skin. The sound of a bird—tok tok-boo, tok-tok-boo—seemed to follow them constantly.

  “What is that?”

  “Red-crested cuckoo. Each bird calls to the one in the next territory as we move.”

  It made her feel creepy, as if they were being watched, their progress being telegraphed from one cuckoo camp to another in some kind of jungle code. A chill of foreboding crept over her skin. She hoped Hunter was right when he said no one would follow them into this place.

  They broke into a clearing and were hit with such a fierce wave of sunlight and heat that it stole her breath. A narrow corridor of grassland stretched out in front of them, perhaps ha
lf a mile long, bounded by thick shrubs and low forest. Golden grasses swayed gently in the hot breeze. She could see blue sky, huge cotton candy clouds scudding across it, driven by an invisible wind high up in the stratosphere.

  Sarah stepped forward into the grass, and a cloud of butterflies the size of small birds fluttered up into the air. They were scarlet and yellow, some spotted and dashed with streaks and whorls of iridescent blue. Others were speckled with orange and brown, like autumn leaves that had come alive and taken flight. Sarah gasped. “It’s…it’s so beautiful,” she whispered. “I never expected to see anything like this in the middle of the jungle.”

  “Edaphic savannah,” said Hunter. “Little natural savannahs entirely enclosed by forests, pockets of grassland on soil too run-down to support even the smallest trees.” He scanned the area with narrowed eyes as he spoke. “Usually you find them along sandy riverbeds that dry out when the stream changes course. Almost nothing is known about them….” He glanced at her. “What you’re seeing is damn rare. This ecosystem is unique to this region of the Congo basin, and it’s protected because few people dare venture in here.”

  She moved her hand slowly through the cloud of dancing butterflies. “A slice of pure Eden,” she whispered to herself. “Cursed by the spirits or protected by the gods, it’s a matter of perspective.”

  Hunter looked at her, a mix of interest and surprise crossing his features. “Exactly.”

  “We can rest here,” she said. And it wasn’t a question.

  He consulted his watch.

  She glowered at him. “You promised, Hunter. We can dry our clothes here, and I must splint your arm.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?”

  “Anyone ever told you that you’re insufferably pigheaded?”

  He smiled again and the sunlight caught his eyes. Something cracked in her heart. She hadn’t seen him smile like that. Genuine, gentle almost. It was as if he’d let his guard slip momentarily, and she was seeing the true man inside, the man behind the mercenary.