To the Brink (19 page)

Oh, hell. She was near tears. She wouldn't cry over the pain, but she'd tear up with gratitude. With those blue eyes and that blond hair, he couldn't help but think of his kid sister. Eve was a blue-eyed blonde, too. Maybe a few years older than this woman. If anyone had done this to Eve ... if anyone had abused her this way ... he'd make the bastards pay.

He swallowed hard, realized he wouldn't mind doling out a little more frontier justice on the barbarians who had done this to her.

"What's your name?" she asked, startling him back to the reality that they were two strangers who knew nothing about each other.

"Garrett. Dallas Garrett."

"I'm Amy," she said, then added as if it was an afterthought, "Amy Walker."

It was a soft, simple name for what he'd decided was a tough, complex woman.

And they didn't have time for social hour—just like he didn't have the inclination to get acquainted. She was a job—an unexpected and unwanted one at that— and he didn't need to know her to get her safely out of here.

He stood, shrugged back into his pack, and picked up his M-4. "We've got to keep moving."

It had to hurt like hell, but she pushed to her feet. Not so much as a whimper.

More points for the gutsy little blonde with the pale baby blues. Even more when this time she waited for him to lead the way.

Chapter 14

The loss of blood was making Ethan
light-headed. He knew he should have stopped before now, but he'd wanted to put as much distance between them and the tangos as possible before they took a break.

He'd shed the NVGs when daylight had broken a half an hour or so ago. Now he paused to try to catch a breath and scan the terrain around them. Through a tangle of stringy vines and fern fronds something caught his eyes: a rock formation half-hidden by a clump of dapdap bleeding red flowers and a small stand of palms.

If he hadn't been bent over, sucking air and leaning on his rifle for support, he never would have seen it. Which meant that anyone else passing this way probably wouldn't see it, either. Could be it was their best shot at laying low for a while without being detected.

He headed for the outcropping. Like she had all morning, Darcy stuck close on his heels. Because she was exhausted, because the terrain was a bitch, Darcy was oblivious to the fact that he was weaving on his feet and leaving a blood trail a myopic bloodhound could have followed.

Beneath the jut of rock Ethan discovered that the earth dropped off into a gully and exposed a tangled tree root system. Behind the roots and a curtain of hanging moss erosion had carved a tidy little bowl into the earth. It looked like the opening to a cave when in fact it was just a five-by-five-foot indentation that would easily hold two people. They could tuck in behind the roots and for the most part be hidden from anyone they didn't want to find them. If they got lucky, no one would.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, slid down the embankment, and ducked in under the network of roots. Supporting his weight on his good leg, he leaned heavily against the wall of dirt. He'd have liked like hell to sit but was afraid that if he did, he'd never get up again.

Darcy eased in beside him. And for a moment, there they stood, catching their breath, hidden from view by the cover of open tree roots, ferns, and vines.

"You don't need to stop for me," she said, closing her eyes and resting her head against the wall of brown earth. "I can go on."

"Yeah. Well, I can't."

Her eyes snapped open. Ethan tried to distract her by handing her the M-4. "Anyone shows up that you don't like the looks of, just point and squeeze."

She looked from the automatic to him. "What's wrong?"

It took all of his strength to shrug off his ALICE pack. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn't open the compartment containing his first-aid kit. "Guess I'm just a pansy ass. Need my midmorning nap," he mumbled, heard the slur in his voice, and knew he was drifting toward some very deep shit. "Look, you're going to have to open this for me."

And that's when she took a good long look at him.

Ethan knew what she saw. The tight set of his mouth against the pain. The sweat that beaded his brow beneath the floppy brim of his boonie cap. Sweat. And yet he felt cold.

"Oh God." Her green eyes widened in horror. What she hadn't been able to see walking behind Ethan in the darkness was glaringly clear in the light of day. "You've been hit."

"Always were a quick study," he said through alternating waves of pain and a cold, blessed numbness.

"Where?"

"Thigh."

She dropped to her knees in front of him. And gasped.

"Ethan. Oh my God, Ethan. There's so much blood."

"Looks worse than it is."

And he'd go to hell for lying.

He'd taken the hit high—close enough to his pride, his joy, and his joystick that he could have been singing soprano if the round had hit him an inch to the right. His pants were soaked with blood all the way into his boots. His thigh burned like blazes. And then it burned like the fires of hell when she ripped his pant leg open.

She swore shakily and tore frantically into his pack for the first-aid kit. He hissed in a breath through clenched teeth. "Gawd damn! Could have warned me, sweetheart," he gritted out when she doused the wound with alcohol.

And that was all she wrote. His legs went out from under him. He landed on his ass in the dirt.

"Ethan. Blood is spurting everywhere."

"My belt," he mumbled. "Need ... need to stop the flow."

This much blood meant only one thing. The slug must have hit the femoral artery. Not severed it or he'd have bled dry and been dead by now. But the artery had been nicked well and good.

"Take off my belt," he repeated, fighting to stay conscious. Stay with the program. If he went down, so did she, and that just couldn't happen.

While she fumbled frantically with his belt, he applied pressure to the wound with the flat of his hand.

"You used to be a lot faster at that."

She was near tears as she struggled to undo the buckle. "Jokes? You're cracking jokes at a time like this?"

"Ease up, babe. Just slow down. Take a deep breath. You can do it. Atta girl. There you go. Now slip it under my thigh."

"Where do I put it?"

"Up. Higher. Higher. Okay. Good," he said when she had it situated just below his groin. "Now fasten and tighten it."

Her hands shook as she drew the leather through the buckle. "There's just so much blood," she said again in a tremulous voice.

"We're gonna take care of that right now. Good. Okay. Tight. Tighter," he said through gritted teeth, and fought to keep from passing out. The pain was excruciating.

"How we doing?" he asked to keep himself from sinking closer toward unconsciousness.

"I don't know. I don't... Oh God, I need help. Where's Dallas? And Manny?"

"They're taking care of business," he told her, although, like Darcy, he wished like hell one or the other of them would show up. Chances of that were slim and slimmer as the escape plan had been to fan out, then meet up later at pre-established coordinates.

"Darcy." He lifted a hand to her hair. "Don't lose it now. Not now. We've got to get you out of here. And you're going to need me to do it."

"How? You can't go on. You can't possibly walk like this. You'll bleed to death."

"I'm not going to bleed to death, okay?" he said, working to reassure her and damning the tremor in his voice that gave away just how weak he was. "Not here in this shit hole."

She closed her eyes. "I'm so sorry I got you into this."

He forced a smile. "And here I thought you were glad to see me."

The bleakness in her eyes was heartbreaking.

His leg felt cold. "How's the bleeding?"

She swallowed and checked. "Slower. A lot slower."

"There ya go. See? We're cookin' now."

He could tell she didn't buy it. And it was up to him to make sure she did. He needed her solid. He needed her steady. Because if he bought it here, she was going to have to keep it together until Manny or Dallas circled back and found her. If they found her.

He rubbed his thumb across her cheek. Didn't know if it was his blood or the blood of the bastard Manny had greased covering her now. "You're a mess, babe. You know that?"

She turned her face into his hand. Pushed out a pained laugh. "You're not exactly spit-and-polished yourself."

"But I'm still hot, right?"

Another small, strained laugh. "Yeah. You're still hot. Not to mention you're still full of yourself."

He met her eyes. Green eyes he'd dreamed about every night since he'd lost her. "And you're still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

She became very quiet. And they both knew why. This was old ground. No point treading it. Not here. Not now.

"So. How's life been treating you?" he said, trying for snappy, but it came out slurred. "Present situation excluded."

She shook her head.

"Shit," he said when a thought struck him. "You've got to be starved. I've got MREs."

"You expect me to eat? While you're bleeding to death?"

"I told you. I'm not bleeding to death. Come on. You believed that pansy-ass remark?"

"Ethan—"

"Here's the way it's going to work," he said, finding it harder and harder to keep things in focus. "You're going to drink. I'm going to ... drink. You're going to eat. I'm ... going to eat. Then we're going to clean ... this thing up," he pointed to his wound, "slap some antibiotic paste and a dressing on it. With me ... so far?"

She nodded, not looking at all convinced.

"We're going to rest... for a bit while you tell me how you got into this fix; then we're ... getting the hell out of here."

It was a solid plan. In a little while—when he felt a little more comfortable risking it—he'd turn on his SAT phone and try to raise Dallas and Manny.

Good plan,
he thought again as he fought to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. Solid plan.

Would have worked, too, if he hadn't picked that moment to pass out cold.

"Anything?" Manny cut straight to the chase.

Dallas tipped his SAT phone back down to his mouth, his expression grim. "Negative."

It was the second time in as many hours that Manny had raised him to see if he had news from Ethan. This had been the longest fucking day of his life. And it looked like it was far from over. "Any luck with the GPS?"

"That's a big no. Either Ethan doesn't have it on or it's inoperable."

Dallas had fixed Manny's location at about half a click north. About a quarter of an hour ago he and Amy had made the designated rendezvous point the team had set ahead of time.

"Roger that," Dallas said. "I made commo with Nolan just before you called. He's going to see if he can get a bead on Ethan from his transmitter. In the meantime, no news is no news."