The light flickered and cut out. Darkness swarmed back in. She blinked, blinded. Of course she should fire. But where had they gone? Around her, gunfire cracked, thwacking along the earth, pelting the rock. Incoming, not outgoing. Oh God, had her hesitation got Flynn killed? Where the hell were the men?
Screw it. Tess had an automatic rifle—no need to pinpoint the bull’s-eye. She squeezed the trigger, fighting the kickback as she peppered the trees. The recoil shook her skull, strobing her vision. Her hearing muffled. Far away a man was talking. She couldn’t release her finger—the trees were becoming men, one by one, then a dozen at a time, closing in from all sides.
Something gripped her forearm. “Stop.”
She let go of the rifle with a start. The voice—it had been Flynn’s. Her hands reverberated—hell, her whole body shook. The hordes of enemy morphed back into trees. Crap. Had there been any real soldiers?
“You got them,” Flynn said, his voice soaring down from the stratosphere, his hand tight on her arm. From the gully the screams continued—or was that in her ears? Gunfire rattled, like a million balloons bursting in her head, the shouts of a dozen men laid on top. “We need to move.”
He swept the backpack on and pulled her up. She’d shot the two goons? Were they dead? She grabbed her rifle and stumbled after Flynn, clutching his hand like a lifeline. So much for keeping her distance. Hell, they were deep in this together; they might as well get blown up together.
The screaming rose in pitch, and broke into a shout. “La. La! Laaaaa!”
No, in Arabic? A single shot rang out above the rest. The screaming stopped. Flynn’s hand tightened. A faint buzzing circled, like a toy helicopter. She clicked her jaw but her ears wouldn’t equalize. She couldn’t hear her feet hitting the ground, though she could feel them, all right.
Something moved through the trees. She yanked Flynn’s hand. Too late. A guy ran toward them, raising his rifle. Flynn released her, spun, lifted his weapon. Kaboom. Everything exploded into light—the ground, the air, the trees. A force rammed her back and shoved her down, slamming her nose and mouth into the earth. She couldn’t breathe—she was buried under something huge and heavy. A boulder? A tree?
Someone had hit a land mine. Her? Flynn? Hail pelted the dirt—not ice but shrapnel, sticks, stones. The hulk on top of her shifted and groaned. Oh God—Flynn? His breath rasped like his throat was crammed with gravel. Then he went still and silent. No, no, no. She was panting so hard she couldn’t tell if his chest was moving against her back. She forced her face to the side, scraping her cheek on stones.
A flame flickered, lighting up a swirling fog of dust, flaring just long enough for her to identify the shape in front of her face. An arm. Only an arm. Too skinny to be Flynn’s. Oh crap—hers? She clenched both hands, scraping her fingernails through the dirt. All fingers accounted for. Her feet were evidently still attached—nothing phantom about the pain shooting from her toes to her thighs.
She gagged on the smell of dirt, smoke and she didn’t want to think what else. Footsteps approached. Flynn remained dead still. She swallowed a mist of hot dust. Beyond the bloody arm she made out two figures, slinking closer. Quiet, urgent voices carried. One of them kicked something, with a fleshy thud. Any second, they’d spot her and Flynn. Her rifle poked into her ribs but she couldn’t budge, let alone grab it.
The voices trailed off. The goons didn’t seem to be coming closer. They were...retreating? No way. Flynn was in head-to-toe desert camo gear, no doubt coated with dust and debris—maybe they looked like a rock? We might get lucky if our camouflage works.
Dark silence dropped like a blanket. A gulp stuck in her throat. Too scared to whisper, she forced herself to stop panting, ignoring the need in her lungs. Was Flynn’s chest rising? Was he breathing? Be okay, be okay.
A guttural curse scraped out of him. She relaxed into the ground. A swearword had never sounded so beautiful. He lifted off her with a groan, like it was a huge effort. She lay still a second, the sudden absence of his weight giving her the sensation she was levitating.
“Too close,” he moaned. “You okay?”
“You die or you don’t,” she rasped, rolling onto her back. He leaned over her, a shadow against the stars. She patted down his chest, his ribs. Intact. “I thought you’d...” She swallowed.
“I’ll live. You good to walk?”
She lurched to a sitting position. “I think so. You sure caused chaos.”
He pushed up into a crouch, grabbed her upper arms and lifted them both to their feet. “It wasn’t all me, sunshine,” he whispered. “That was some crazy shooting of yours. Not bad for a—”
“I hope you’re not going to say, ‘Not bad for a woman.’”
He groaned, dropping contact. “Not bad for a woman who couldn’t bring herself to kill a mouse a few hours ago. Jeez, Germaine.”
She wiped her dusty hands on her dusty trousers. “Honestly? I have no idea what just happened. What was going on down below?” She nodded to the gully. “Before we moved, before those guys...” Before I became a killer. “Someone else stepped on a mine?”
“I exploded the one you found.”
“How...? Wait—the reflective strip. You shot it.”
He winced. “It was meant to be a diversion. They were closer than I’d thought.”
“The screaming—it stopped. Abruptly.”
In the shadows, something crunched. A walkie-talkie crackled with static. Flynn pulled her behind a tree, his arm tight around her waist. Her rifle bumped a branch. She caught it. Beyond the spindly foliage the outline of a man passed, his movements jerky, too fixated on scanning the ground to spot her and Flynn. Chaos was right. These guys were spooked. Hell, so was she.
Another guy appeared—no, a woman—farther away, creeping in the same direction. Flynn tightened his grip, his fingers digging into her hips, his muscles tensed against her, all the way across his arm and shoulder and down his thigh. Last night—was it only last night?—she’d run her hands down those long, powerful legs. Yes, focus on that, not the goons with guns passing a few feet away. Then, Flynn had been a very fit body. Now he was every other kind of sexy, too—smart, brave, witty, protective. An all-round menace.
Words buzzed from the walkie-talkie. Nothing discernible. The woman looked directly at their tree, frowning. Trying to make out the message, or trying to identify the suspiciously thick shape? Tess held her breath. She’s staring into space. She hissed something to her friend and they skulked off.
Tess stood rigid. The soldiers melted into the darkness, their silhouettes no longer distinguishable from the trees. As silence returned, her scalp tingled. She stretched and fisted her fingers to stop the trembling. It didn’t work.
“We’re clear,” Flynn said, releasing her. “Let’s move, fast and quiet.”
At the next boulder he pulled out a fresh water bottle and offered it. She bent double, resting her hands on her thighs. She could barely inhale, let alone drink.
“Can
