Free Fall (Elite Force #4)(10)
Author: Catherine Mann

Sutton sat holding his head. “What do you mean?”

“Chopper’s gone. They’re taking fire. They can’t wait any longer and risk everyone else on board. That’s all I got before the headset shorted out.” Jose hauled Sutton to his feet. “We run and evade until they can come back.”

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.