by Dianna Love
“Not far enough away, Tarzan.”
“We can’t outrun those guns.” He could, but she couldn’t.
She had a thoughtful look. “Let me take this side. I can use the tree to steady my arm to shoot.”
He moved her to where she hugged the tree but out of view from the direction he figured the threat would be coming. “Do not move from that spot unless I tell you.”
She mumbled something about not mistaking her for Tarzan’s chimpanzee.
“Just wait until they’re both close enough.”
More grumbling.
Logan moved to his right, hoping he could get off both shots before she had to shoot. She’d turned bone white from all the jostling and banging her arm again when they’d hit the ground.
Every person had a limit. If she had to go through much more, her body would take over. She’d pass out.
He saw the first man sneaking through the bush, gently pushing palms out of his way. His sidekick was thirty feet to the right.
Neither one was skilled at hunting in this environment. They were nothing more than common thugs without any real training. No wonder the leader had called in more people.
Logan could get the one on the left first, but he had to wait until the one on the right passed by a tree so that Logan could catch him in the open, too.
When the guy cleared the tree, Logan nailed him at thirty yards, which was saying something for an unknown pistol. The second guy fired at Logan, but a bullet struck the guy in his chest a split second before Logan fired.
Both men were down.
Well, hell, Margaux was a decent shot with her weak hand. Logan grinned, turning around to tell her she wasn’t half bad, and found her on the ground.
CHAPTER 18
Margaux couldn’t catch her breath against the pain.
“Are you hit?” Dragan’s hands were carefully lifting her shoulders up.
“No. He missed.” She was panting. Her arm from her shoulder to her hand felt as if it was the size of her thigh. Hot air burned her lungs. It felt like someone was torching her insides and beating on her arm at the same time.
The First Aid kit dropped into view. Dragan was flipping the catches and rummaging through the supplies.
She still couldn’t get past Dragan’s going back to get antibiotics. If he hadn’t been set on that, he might not have handed off the sat phone. She’d fought her way to the spot where she’d waited for him and taken that opportunity to call Nick, the only person she knew who wouldn’t condemn her for going after the Banker.
Nick had used ten seconds to tell her she was an idiot, but he’d been ordering someone to track the sat phone at the same time.
Sabrina would send in a team.
Ninety-second conversation. Help was on the way.
Margaux had to convince Dragan to go along with her story that he was just another prisoner in the camp here. She couldn’t hand him over to Sabrina and the FBI. Not after what they’d been through. Once he was gone, though, he would be back on their radar because Margaux would have to come clean with Sabrina.
Then she’d find out what Sabrina had told the FBI, who weren’t supposed to know that Margaux existed, but she’d brought this on herself going after the Banker for months.
She started shivering hard. Hot, cold, hot, cold. She wished her body would make up its damned mind.
“Give me your arm, Sugar.”
“All yours. Just cut it off.” Did he really think she could command this arm to move?
She kept breathing in gasps, just trying to stay conscious. When she didn’t make a move to offer her arm, because she couldn’t, Dragan turned her around carefully and leaned her back against the tree. Bile ran up her throat over that small motion.
She squeezed out, “We have to go.”
“We’re as far as we’re going to get until this infection is dealt with.”
You’d think he had a First Aid kit just like that one by the efficient way he pulled out everything he needed. He dumped two pills from a brown pharmaceutical bottle into his hand.
Just when she was sure the throbbing couldn’t get any worse, her arm would prove her wrong. That limb could be a heat beacon. Her sausage fingers wouldn’t close. She had the mother of all headaches and, now that she was drinking water again, sweat poured out of her.
“Take this,” Logan ordered.
She opened her mouth, wanting water more than anything. He placed two pills on her tongue then put the canteen to her mouth, pouring slowly.
She ignored the metallic taste, leaning forward for more than two swallows.
He pulled it away and she glared at him.
“Sorry, Sugar, but I’m not sure you’re going to hold it all down and it’s time to deal with that arm.” He slit her sleeve open and started unwrapping the undershirt bandage.
“’K.” It couldn’t hurt any worse than it did right— “Fuck!”
“I hate it, Sugar,” he murmured as he pulled the cloth away from where the dried blood had glued it to her skin.
Tears welled up in her eyes. She heaved in and out more deep breaths through clenched teeth.
Dragan soaked a wad of gauze with water from the canteen. He cupped her injured arm in a gentle but firm grip and said, “This is gonna hurt but it’ll be better soon.”
He scrubbed open the wound.
She lurched away from the pain, straining her neck when she twisted, but he held on and kept cleaning it out. She could smell the nasty infection that had bottled up in her arm, but oh, fuck, that hurt.
Tears ran down her face and that just pissed her off.
She must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing she knew, Dragan was telling her to wake up. She rolled her head against the tree trunk until she faced him.
He used the extra piece of undershirt that had been turned into a washrag to wipe her face and neck with cool water. Worry rolled through his grim gaze. “How you doing?”
She had to think about that. Her arm no longer felt twice its size even though it was still swollen all the way to her fingertips. It continued to throb and burn, but the agonizing just-kill-me-now pressure had eased. “Better.” How long had they been sitting there? “I’m ready to go.”
“Drink some more water and we’ll head out.”
She did, again with his help, because even though he’d cleaned out the infection and probably loaded it with some kind of topical antibiotic, she was lightheaded and shaking. Not hard to understand why when you’d been tortured, starved, deprived of water, and let a wound get infected. Of the many things she had on her hate list, being weak was close to the top.
When Dragan had the First Aid kit on his back and the canteen stowed, he got her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
“Do I have a choice?” she smarted back.
“I can carry you.”
“Don’t take this whole primitive living too far, Tarzan. I’m good to go.” Then she almost fell on her face when she took a step, but Dragan had her good elbow and kept her upright.
She managed to walk, but it wasn’t fast and she was losing strength.
She’d told Nick that she couldn’t stay at the GPS location he was picking up due to more unfriendlies on the way, but that she’d walk north-northeast to reach a high point. That had been the plan Logan laid out on the way to the Quonset hut.
Sabrina had contacts all over the world and she was fiercely protective of her team, even the ones who did something stupid on occasion. This time tomorrow, Margaux would be eating food, taking a real shower and sleeping in a real bed.
If she never saw another tree up close again she’d be happy.
“Careful, Sugar.” Dragan caught her around the waist and pulled her to him.
Where was her sharp tongue when she needed it to tell him she could stand on her own? But she wasn’t standing on her own. She was leaning against his hard chest and, hell, she just wanted to rest here for a moment.
His hand cupped her head. She didn’t care. H
e muttered, “Have to get that fever down.”
She was fine as long as she could snuggle up to him and get rid of the chill that she doubted would ever go away. She opened her eyes and saw the sat phone hooked to his waistband. The First Aid kit was cumbersome, but she could at least carry the damn phone.
Did she really care? No. Let macho man carry it all.
“Come on, Sugar. Just a little further.”
She could do this. Pushing away from his chest, she looked up in his face and noticed his swollen eye had opened up more since this morning. He had nice eyes. Pretty brown eyes for a man. She’d told another man he had pretty brown eyes once.
When?
He kissed her, not crazy wild like before, but just a kiss on her forehead. She let him. Why not? They were stuck here, wherever here was. He kissed her on the lips this time.
She liked the way he kissed. Had always liked that mouth.
That was a dumb thought. It made no sense.
“Can you still walk?” His words came from a distance, but he was right in front of her, still holding her and rubbing circles on her back.
She thought she’d snapped back, “Is the Pope Catholic?” but it sounded slurred. Must be the drugs and that she was so dog-tired.
She clenched her eyes and tried to think. They were running from kidnappers. Check. She called Nick on the sat phone. Check. She had to tell Dragan something before Nick or Sabrina showed up. What was it?
The world came into focus and went out again. One minute, she was walking and the next minute everything blurred then she was hanging over Dragan’s shoulder. What the hell?
Every time she almost fell asleep, he’d say, “Wake up, Sugar. I need you to watch my back.”
She’d shake her head and look around.
Time stretched forever with that constant drill of waking up and falling out of time until Dragan stopped. He slid her down in front of him and held her head against his chest. She could feel his heart thumping, but she was no small woman and he’d been carrying her awhile.
He sat down on a fallen tree and pulled her onto his lap. “Let’s rest.”
She should tell him he was a pussy and they had to keep moving with the enemy on their tail, but she was freaking tired and lying here against him felt too good.
“Don’t pass out now,” he ordered her. His hand cupped her forehead again and he cursed. “Stay alert. We aren’t out of here yet.”
That perked her up. She lifted her head and looked around, but nothing was in focus. “We need to hide until ...” She swallowed. “Until we can make it further.”
“We’re good here.”
She couldn’t push him to keep going when he was stuck dragging or carrying her. “I have to tell you something.”
“What?” His hands were massaging her neck and back.
He had nice hands. Not like the two other men she’d been with in past years, but hands that knew her body.
“Sugar?”
“What?”
“You had something to tell me.”
“I like your hands.”
He chuckled, but it was drowned out by a whomp, whomp, whomp sound. Her brain registered helicopter.
Dragan yelled something. He picked her up and was hugging her to him as he started moving.
A chopper. Sabrina was better than anyone knew. Who had she called to get someone here so soon? Sabrina. FBI. Oh, shit. That’s what Margaux had to tell Dragan.
This rescue would suck if he said the wrong thing.
The noise roared as the chopper descended.
She remembered what she had to tell him. She clutched his shirt.
He covered her hand. “It’s okay, Sugar. Don’t worry. This is our ride outta here.”
“You don’t understand. Don’t tell them your name.” She thought she’d shouted that but she hadn’t heard her own voice.
Dragan stood with her in his arms and she didn’t have the fight left in her to bite his head off for carrying her in front of a rescue team. She tugged on his shirt again.
He leaned down. “What?”
“Don’t give up your real name,” she whispered, the last of her energy draining out with that effort. Her head rolled to the side where she saw men dressed in fatigues, armed to take out a small country and ... not a face she recognized.
Sabrina must have used a marker with her military contacts.
Add that to the debt Margaux owed her.
The men blurred into one big blob of jungle camo and she gave up the fight to stay lucid.
CHAPTER 19
Voices were whispering again.
Cold cloth moved over her face. Margaux had to climb out of this black hole. She’d been bobbing up and down, living in this half world, listening to sounds in between moments of pain and falling back into the void.
This sucked.
She hated to be still. Add that to her hate list, too. Right along with not being able find her way out of this stupid darkness. Who was talking around her? Warm lips touched her forehead, then her cheek.
She mumbled something about kicking someone’s ass.
Not that those lips hadn’t been nice, but no one kissed her unless she decided they could first. Someone was getting ripped a new one, just as soon as she got her stupid eyelids to open.
How hard could that be? Blink, dammit.
Time dissolved.
She surfaced again, but this time she opened her eyes.
Why was it still so dark? Was she blind?
A flicker of light registered to her right. It wasn’t enough to make out anything but dark shapes in the room, and she didn’t see a window. A candle had burned down to the point the flame was little more than a suggestion. Anxiety hung at the edge of her consciousness, reminding her of the last time she’d been locked in a dark room. A closet really.
She curled her fingers and touched ... sheets. Thank goodness. She wasn’t sure why that was special, but trusted her gut that this was a good thing. Now, to figure out where she was and what was going on. She was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, but not bound. Lying on a bed. She had on a shirt that clung against her hips, but not another stitch of clothing.
Her right arm lay on the bed and it was sore, but tolerable. Nothing like before.
That’s right. She’d been in the jungle. She’d gotten cut. The back of the other hand, at the edge of the bed, felt pinched. If she started counting aches and pains, she’d need a calculator. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Odd that she wasn’t scratching her scalp after going without a bath for so long, but she didn’t feel grungy either.
She’d been naked on the floor of a hut in the jungle. She and Dragan had escaped.
They’d been rescued.
Men in cammies. Sabrina had made a call and a military unit had picked them up.
What had happened to Dragan?
Margaux’s heart thudded in her chest. She hadn’t been cognizant to protect him from Sabrina. Had he ...
The mattress moved.
She looked in the direction of the shift and someone was there, turning to prop up his head on his hand and bent arm. Dragan. She couldn’t see his face, but the outline of that large body had to be his. She just knew, could feel him when he was close. How weird was that?
He asked in a ragged sleep voice, “You caught up on your rest, Sugar?”
“Guess I needed it.”
“Want some water?”
“Hell, yes.” She unconsciously licked her lips, anticipating a swallow while the bed moved. When he returned to her, he lifted her head and put a cup to her mouth. She drank the best tasting water she’d ever had, but stopped before she made herself sick. “That’s all I want.”
He put the cup away and came back, a big hulking shadow hovering over that side of the bed. “Think you can eat?”
That didn’t sound so good. “Not yet. How long have we slept?”
“I napped an hour since lying down tonight.”
“Is that all? You have to be b
eat.”
“Oh, I slept the first day here.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. The first day as in they had been here for more? Were they locked up together? Couldn’t be. She didn’t understand and frankly didn’t care right now, because she was glad he was here.
With her.
She could have died out in the jungle, but the two of them had gotten each other through and he’d kept her moving when her body wanted to hole up somewhere and quit. If they were locked away together, why question good fortune when it came her way? “How long have we been here, and where is here?”
“We’ve been here for four days. You’ve been out most of that time.”
“What the hell? Why didn’t you wake me up?” She raised her hands to emphasize her words and sucked in a breath when she bent her injured arm at the elbow.
He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder, gently pushing it back down. “Careful. We’ll take out the IV in a little while now that you’re drinking water.”
“How about right now? I hate anything attached to me.”
“Hold on.” He got up and moved around. How he saw in such low light she had no idea, but his fingers seemed to work by rote once he unclipped the IV. He moved around and made a noise searching for something then came back to remove everything from her left hand. He pressed cotton and tape over the puncture.
As soon as she was free, she tried to lift her injured arm again and sucked in air. That hurt.
“Don’t make me regret doing that, Sugar.” He took her hand and guided it back to the bed then leaned across her, putting his arm down for support. “If you don’t eat, the IV goes back in.”
“Yes, sir. Sir,” she smarted back. That kept her from thinking about how nice he smelled. He’d had a bath. The dog.
His fingers brushed over her cheek and forehead. “You were unconscious longer than I expected. Once the fever was down, I let you sleep because your body needed it.”
She’d managed to stay out of hospitals and couldn’t recall the last time anyone had cared for her. For four days, no less. She didn’t want to feel anything for this man who had been in San Francisco to meet the Banker, but tell that to the warm sensation that spread through her with him so close.
