Heart of Danger (11 page)

“It’s okay now. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe. I know that won’t bring your friend back, but you’re going to be okay. Please know that,” he placed a soft kiss on her forehead before relaxing against the back of his chair and holding her to him.

If she could stop the sobbing she would, but she had been holding it in for too long. She didn’t want to give her captors the pleasure of knowing they had broken a piece of her so she held in the pain and the sorrow that threatened to consume her. She couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“We’re going to get you home,” Alex sat forward and took one of her hands in his. “There are a lot of questions the Australian and American governments are going to need answered, but we’ll help you through it.”

Jet took her other hand in his. They were all trying to provide her comfort, to reassure her that she was in the company of friends; of family.

“I don’t even know how it happened,” she admitted. “I mean it happened so fast. We were just hiking to our location and our guide turned around and told us about the wild life and what to watch out for. He kept walking backwards and he kept using that same loud Aussie voice. He had us laughing one minute and the next, when we cleared the brush and hit clear land we saw the men and the guns. I think we all knew that nothing good was going on, but when we tried to backtrack they turned their weapons on us and they made us come closer,” she shivered. “And Jagger, our guide, he tried to tell them we were just on a tour and we were just going to hike, but they didn’t care. They shot him and then they just,” she gasped for air as she tried to speak through the tears. “They just started shooting and they shot Kelly in the heart,” she couldn’t talk about this, but she had to. The words just spilled out.

“I thought they were going to kill me too, but they didn’t. They said Diego Valdez liked dark women and they were going to give me to him.”

“Aw, honey;” Micah seemed to hold her a little tighter. “Are you sure he didn’t…he didn’t hurt you? You can tell us if he did.”

“He didn’t…not like that, not in the way you’re thinking. But he would have if you hadn’t come for me. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way out of there. I still would have run even knowing that I might not make it. I don’t know how far I would have gotten. And if he had managed to recapture me I know he would have made me pay. He wasn’t a man who made threats; he made promises, and he had already promised me of what he would do if I didn’t do as he said.”

She felt her body trembling again. She knew she would survive this, but right now she just needed a few minutes; some time to get her head on right and then she could process the event. She could process what she needed to do in order to heal. She kept thinking of Kelly lying on the ground, bleeding, knowing she was going to die and that there was nothing she could do to save her. She felt as if she should have been able to do something more than just kneel next to her and press on the wound as if trying to stop the bleeding would keep her friend alive. Knowing that she hadn’t died instantly, that she had taken a few more breaths and suffered…that knowledge was almost too much to bear.

“How will I tell her mother,” she wondered out loud.

“She already knows Kelly’s gone.”

“She knows she’s dead, but she’ll want to know what every parent wants to know; she’ll want to know if she suffered. And I don’t know if I can handle that.”

“I think she probably knows she died quickly. The bullet hit her heart—”

“But she took a few more breaths,” her soft voice was audible, but she doubted the brevity of the situation could be conveyed in the weakness of her tone. “I kneeled next to her body and I saw her eyes pleading with me, and I saw those last few breaths and that moment when her body gave up and her eyes closed and she was…she was gone,” she cried.

“Oh, honey I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” he pulled her closer to his chest, as if she could get closer than she already was. She placed her hand, the one that Jet had released, on Micah’s chest and clutched the fabric of his shirt in her hand; clinging to it as if clinging to it could make the ache in her heart go away.

The flight back had been a mix of silence and comforting words. The landing had gone smoothly and getting back to her place had been a welcome change. The guys hadn’t left her. Jet and Preston had taken the equipment back. They had said they were going to write up their reports. Usually she typed those up for them, but they had given her the mandatory leave of absence from work. Micah and Alex, however, were not willing to leave her. When Preston and Jet returned they brought with them a change of clothes for their friends and Micah showered in her bathroom while Alex showered in the second bathroom.

She had to meet with an agent to discuss things, so she did that. They put her on a video conference with an Australian investigator. She told them everything she could and they seemed content with that. “That’s all we’ll need,” the investigator had told her. She was thankful for that. She just wanted to go home and start the healing process, but she had one thing left she had to do. Not only were her parents on their way home from Italy, their second honeymoon vacation had no doubt been cut short the moment they found out what happened. Preston had made the call to them, telling them not to worry that he would bring their daughter home and true to his word he had. They were on their way so she knew she would have to be available to them, but she also needed to go talk to Kelly’s mother, her father too, but she knew that Miriam would have the most questions out of all of them.

“I’ll take you home, Natalia.” Alex offered but Micah corrected his line of thinking quickly.

“I’ve got this,” he took hold of her arm.

“I need to go talk to Miriam, Kelly’s mom; she’s going to have questions and I can’t hide forever. The sooner I do this the sooner we can both start to try to heal our broken hearts.”

Micah nodded. She was thankful that he hadn’t been insistent that she go home and rest.

“Hold up,” Special Agent Forester Michaels called to them. She hoped the guys wouldn’t be in trouble, but they hadn’t killed anybody in Colombia and it wasn’t unlawful to do what they did…well, maybe they could get in trouble for the weapons they took, but it’s not as if they had to use them so nobody should have even known about that.

“I think I need to talk to you all alone.”

“We already have clearance on this one.” Preston assured him, there seemed to be no need for the guys to worry.

“It’s about her,” he looked at her and she cringed.

“I’m still standing here,” she said. “And if it’s about me you can say whatever it is in front of me.” She was no shrinking violet. If he had something to say she wanted to know about it.

“It would seem that Diego Valdez took a real strong liking to you,” his tone told her he still didn’t believe her when she said the man hadn’t raped her. “Rumor has it that he’s looking to get you back. So, you all might want to keep somebody with her for a little while just until we can make sure there’s no real threat here.”

She shivered with fear. She wouldn’t go back there. If that man came and tried to take her she would rather die than end up in his custody again.

“She has a twenty-four hour seven day bodyguard right here,” Micah’s angry tone told her how serious he was. “She won’t be out of my sight.”

Now that was just the most ridiculous thing ever. Of course she would be out of his sight at some point. He couldn’t watch her every second of the day. And beyond that, while she had a guest bathroom she didn’t have a guest bedroom. She had turned that room into her play room basically. She kept her instrument in there and the sheet music, her collection of fiction books and a nice comfortable rocking chair that was made for a nursery but she didn’t care. She liked it enough to buy it for herself. Just because she wasn’t expecting a baby didn’t mean she couldn’t read in comfort. There was no second bed in her house which meant he would be stuck on the couch. That wouldn’t be comfortable.

He also had work, and other cases that she was sure would come up. Plus there was Jocelyn. She couldn’t imagine that woman would be happy with her man spending that much time with another woman.

“It’s okay guys. You know I’ll be fine. I have an alarm system…”

“We know you’ll be fine because you’re not going to be alone.” Jet nearly growled. She had never seen Jet with such an angry serious disposition. Sure, she had seen him serious. She had seen him focused, maybe she had even seen him a little angry, but usually he was more laid back and reserved than all of the guys. While Alex was the guy with the best jokes and the fun loving nature, Jet was the laid back, drink a beer and catch the game guy that rarely let his mood slip into one of anger. Right now she could honestly say that he was giving her a stern “no nonsense allowed” tone in his voice and his posture wasn’t too far behind. Maybe that was the price of working with military men, but they were all great guys and she wouldn’t change any of them for anything in the world.

“I’ll be with you.” Micah reminded her.

“And when he’s not, I will be,” Alex added.

“One of us will be with you at all times. You will not,” Preston folded his arms across his chest, “be alone at any point until we make sure you are one hundred percent safe. You got that?”

“I got it,” she smiled a half hearted, probably lopsided smile. She appreciated what they were doing for her. She was so thankful that she knew these men, that she had them in her life and that they cared enough about her to want to protect her.

Micah took hold of her arm as if to lead her away from the situation. “We’ll stop by my place first and I’ll get some clothes. If that’s okay with you.”

She laughed. She couldn’t believe she had done that. She hadn’t laughed since she saw Kelly die. “Yes, it’s okay with me. You’re putting yourself out to help me so whatever you need to do just let me know.”

“I’m not putting myself out, Natalia. We love you. We want to keep you safe.”

“I know I work for you all…”

“You’re family. I know we might not have spent a lot of time showing you that over the years, but I think that’s because we all thought you knew. Since clearly you didn’t, I feel the need to remind you that you are family. And I can’t believe you offered to pay us for coming to bring you home.”

“You all make a lot of money for those missions and I just…I thought maybe I should try to pay you in some way.”

He situated her in his truck before jogging around to the other side to get in. “When that call came in, there was no doubt in any of our minds that we would come get you. We never debated it; we never voted on it like we do for all the others; we just knew we were going to bring you home. We knew that because you’re family, and family takes care of family, Natalia. Do you understand that?”

She nodded as she studied the lines around his eyes. He really was a handsome man, and so noble and caring. “Thank you.”

“You’ve already thanked me. You thanked all of us. You don’t have to keep doing it.”

“I know, but I want to. What you all did means everything to me. I can’t tell you…I just can’t tell you how I felt when I woke up on that plane. I thought this was it; you all wouldn’t know who took me or where I was and I had no hope. I kept trying to find ways to help myself but I just was never sure I could get out. I knew I would try, but I was so afraid.” She didn’t want to stay and be violated or forced to live as a prisoner, but at the same time she was fearful of what would happen if her escape plan failed. That night she hadn’t let fear stop her. She was going to leave even if it killed her and lucky for her, leaving had saved her life because the guys were out there just waiting to take her home.