On the Line (Special Ops) (12 page)

“So he was disappointed then.”

“No. He was still proud of you for joining the military. He was worried about you almost as much as I was…I mean you know we were all worried about you. I think he just thought of you like a son and he wanted you to be safe. Joining the military was in no way going to keep you safe, Alex.”

“I made it back,” he said.

“A lot of men and women didn’t. Sad isn’t it? So sad that people can kill without thought; that war has to happen at all.”

“It is, but it does. I know you probably looked down on me for going…”

“No, I didn’t. I was proud of you before you joined the military. I was proud of you while you were there. I was proud of you when you returned home, and I’m proud of you now, Alex. I just meant that I wish war didn’t have to happen. I wish everybody on both sides would just think before leaping into things. I wish they would care enough about each other to respect and show love. We’re not all going to agree. We’re not all going to have the same religion or the same ideas, but that doesn’t mean we have to go around murdering each other. If it weren’t for you and men and women like you and your friends who go off to battle to keep us safe here at home then I think we would be in worse shape. All I meant to say was that I wish it didn’t have to be that way—that you all didn’t have to risk your lives…I just wish things were different that’s all.”

He sighed. He hadn’t meant to rush to judgment, but he was thinking about why her mother had told him she didn’t want him to contact her anymore. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thought you meant anything otherwise. It’s just…well when you said the reason you didn’t want to see me had nothing to do with Kelly I started wondering what might have driven you away.”

“I never said I didn’t want to see you. My mother told you that apparently and I am sure it had nothing to do with you being in the military. I think she just tries to look out for me and sometimes she oversteps the boundary line. She didn’t speak for me, Alex. I thought your not calling me, not emailing me or coming to see me had to do with the fact that you didn’t want to see me. I guess we both…” Her voice trailed off the second he held up his hand to stop her from talking. He saw Micah’s closed fist go up and he knew that meant potential trouble was ahead of them. He was glad Zahara knew to be quiet too because right now he had to be vigilant. He could talk to her about their misunderstanding later. Now was not the time.

“Stay low,” he said as they all dropped to one knee and surveyed their surroundings. Several minutes passed before Micah gave the all clear signal and they carried onward. This time they walked in silence. He could tell Zahara was afraid, yet she tried to put on a brave face for all of them. If he had been able to have his way he would have left her at home, but he couldn’t because she was right—they needed her to help get them this far. This wasn’t the place for her though—for any of them, but they both had somebody they cared about stuck out in this hell and they had no plans of leaving them there.

It would be light soon. They had gotten a little rest before pulling out which meant it was just after midnight when they set out on foot. Soon it would be light enough to pull off the scopes and keep moving without them. They were pressed for time. They needed to get to Preston sooner rather than later, but they also would have to stop to sleep, and Zahara, she was going to need rest too. He and the guys were used to covert missions with insane sleeping and moving schedules, but she wasn’t.

“Will you be okay?” He asked her in a very low tone. “Are you tired? Do you need to rest?”

“Yes, no and no,” she said. “In that order. Alex, I do all of my work at night. I watch the stars constantly so sleep, for me, comes during the early morning hours to the late morning hours. You don’t have to worry about me right now, but I will forewarn you that I’ll be sleepy by about seven until at least ten or eleven. Usually that’s my sleep time. But I’ll be fine. I won’t slow you down. I promise.”

He mumbled under his breath. He felt the need to take care of her when he should have realized she could take care of herself just fine in certain situations. Still, that didn’t mean he was going to drop the protection detail.

“All right,” he said. “If you need to stop you let me know and I’ll arrange time with the guys.”

“I’ll be fine, Alex. Don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry about you,” he said because he couldn’t stop worrying about her. If only she knew how many times he looked up at the stars and thought of her; if only she knew how much he wished she were there beside him, then maybe she would understand just why he couldn’t stop worrying about her. Maybe part of the reason things didn’t work out with Carissa wasn’t just that she seemed to want to change him, but that many of the nights he spent looking up at the stars with her he had wished she were Zahara.

Carissa didn’t care about the sky above. She sat through some of his ramblings about galaxies and space exploration, but he wasn’t dumb; he knew exactly when she had blocked his words out and started thinking about something else. He had wanted to share his passion with somebody who would appreciate it, and while taking on a relationship with a woman who loved to talk about space wasn’t a requirement for him he wouldn’t deny that he had been silently longing for it—he had silently been longing for her.

Chapter Ten

“T
ime to wake
up,” Preston mumbled as he placed his hand on Ariana’s shoulder. She awakened quickly as she always had before. He liked that about her. He never had to wait for her to get up and get going and that was something they both had in common. He was glad to see the years hadn’t changed her habits.

“Good morning,” she rolled over onto her back and looked up at him. There were so many things he wanted to do to her right now, but he shouldn’t want to. Seeing her again just reminded him of the woman who broke his heart.

“’Morning,” he mumbled. “We need to move.”

“Did I do something wrong?” She pushed up to a seated position and looked into his eyes.

“No. We just need to get moving.” He would not let her sweet appearance lure him in. He had every intention of going to her when he got back home, but maybe that would have been a mistake. Right now he was nearly fuming that she had left him in the first place. Eighteen years! It had been eighteen years and had they stayed married they could have had eighteen beautiful years together, but she ruined that. She ruined him. Instead of being in love for eighteen years he had spent eighteen years trying to recreate what he had with her and that surely hadn’t worked out well for him.

“Fine,” she mumbled as she got to her feet. “Let’s keep moving.”

He exhaled slowly. He knew he wasn’t making this any easier on her. He wanted to assure her everything would be fine, but they didn’t have water or food and of the two the most important thing was water. They were going to drop dead of dehydration if they didn’t find water soon. Beyond that he was angry with her—or maybe more so with himself. Looking at her now reminded him of what he hadn’t fought for before. He should have gone to her when he received those papers. He should have refused to sign them. He should have made the divorce hard to get while he found a way to make her stay, but back then he only saw that she sent him papers. He only saw that she wanted out and his pride wouldn’t let him beg her to stay. He was angry with himself for not resisting the divorce and angry with her for requesting it.

They started moving before the sun even crested the sky. They needed to make headway not just because they surely had people in pursuit at this point, but because the higher the sun got the harder the journey would be for them. The first problem was of concern, but he wasn’t shaking in his boots because he figured they would have to take a guess on which way he went. On the other end of that, there could be more than one group coming after them so they may have searched all directions. The fact that a jeep hadn’t caught up with them yet told him they either weren’t following behind him, or they just weren’t doing it on wheels. If they were on foot then at least that gave him and Ariana a chance to get ahead.

He needed to get a message to at least one of the guys. He was going to need that jet, and he would need it fast. If he could get the call out then he could tell them to have Julian fly in to the same spot he did four years ago when he had to do a night rescue.
If
, was his operative word because he would have to get to a phone first.

They had been walking for nearly seven hours when Ariana collapsed beside him. He dropped to his knees. “Ariana,” panic laced his tone as he checked for a pulse. She had one. He felt the knot in his stomach ease at least a little. He patted her cheek as he tried to help her regain consciousness.

She stirred. “Come on, my beauty; wake up.” He always called her his beauty and that’s because she was beautiful and at the time she was his. She wasn’t his now, but he wouldn’t squabble with himself over words. He needed her to get up so they could keep moving. He couldn’t carry her. He was barely carrying himself.

“Preston,” she said breathlessly. “Leave me.”

“No,” he nearly barked.

“I can’t…I can’t continue. Leave me. Save yourself.”

“The hell I will,” he yanked on her arm, pulling her up to a sitting position. “You can shake your behind on stage for hours but you can’t walk across some sand,” he said trying to bring out her inner fighter. If he could piss her off enough to make her get on her feet then she could, and would, press onward. He knew her; she was a fighter to the core and she hated for anybody to think she was weak. The woman danced on a sprained ankle for four weeks before her doctor mandated her off it, and even then she kept trying to do the local shows. She was a fighter and he needed her to fight now.

“On your feet,” he ordered harshly.

She looked at him as if she was ready to pull out a blade and carve him up some respect, but she still pulled herself to her feet. That’s what he needed her to do.

A few hours later he thought he just might collapse too. He was hearing voices and he figured that was the result of extreme dehydration until the fog in his head cleared and he heard those voices once again. He didn’t think. He just pulled Ariana down and she gave a startled yelp. He placed his hand over her mouth to quiet her although she had already been quiet after she let out the yelp. Perhaps he should have given her warning, but there was no time for that.

The voices stopped and that told him whoever was coming toward them knew they were out there. The voices had definitely been moving in his direction, only whoever it was had been on the other side of that mountain of sand. He didn’t have anywhere to hide. If they had weapons they would probably kill him and reclaim her as their hostage. He wasn’t sure where he was. He just knew he had headed west when they got out but for all he knew he could have been heading toward more enemies.

He heard the shuffling of sand. “I’m going to have to take care of this.”

She shook her head no as he removed his hand from over her mouth. “You can’t. You don’t have a weapon. They’ll kill you.”

“They’ll kill me even if they find me lying here.”

“No,” she tugged on his arm and yanked him down. He fell on top of her as he tried to steady himself. God, if he weren’t having the most salacious thoughts about the hot body beneath him right now. He wanted her. He was in the desert with the enemy approaching and he was thinking about having sex with her.

He mentally slapped himself and tried to move, but she wouldn’t let him go. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held him there. She always did have strong thighs…thighs he liked being between. He tried to pull away from her but the action caused her to lift up, bucking against his already hardened erection. This was not helping.

“Ariana,” he growled.

“Stay low they won’t know we’re here,” she whispered.

“They already know,” he assured her.

“Are we interrupting something?” Micah asked as he approached. “It’s okay you all. It’s just Preston and…Ariana I presume. Either that or Preston has found a woman in the desert he decided to get acquainted with,” he laughed.

Ariana released him and he glared at her, angry that she had put them in danger.

“How did you get here so quick?”

“Well hello to you too,” Micah said as the others came toward them and Preston completely distanced himself from Ariana.

“Micah,” he glared at him.

“Her friend, Zahara, came to us. That and Natalia had a feeling our client might be a little shady.”

He nodded as he walked toward them. “Do you have water? We need water.”

“Ariana!” Zahara broke away from Alex and ran to Ariana. She wrapped her arms around her briefly. “I have water.” She shucked her pack and dug in for a bottle of water. Preston watched as Ariana greedily drank and then he turned his attention to Jet who was handing him a bottle of water. He wouldn’t say that he drank with any more grace than Ariana.

“Natalia was right,” he finally said when he stopped guzzling water long enough to talk. “Victoria set me up. And her sister isn’t a package worth returning. She’s in the man’s harem. They all set me up.”

“They went after your ex?”

“No. Apparently the guy has been fixated on her since she was sixteen. I’m not sure he even knows we were married before. We didn’t exactly do a wedding announcement in the paper, so who knows…we have to get out of here. We need to call and have a plane sent, and beyond that I don’t know how far back they are. I don’t even have a weapon…” His voice trailed off as Alex handed him a gun.

Alex walked past him toward Ariana and Zahara and he followed behind him.

“I remembered what you said…I saw that man take you and I remembered that you told me Preston was the man you would trust if ever anything happened to you. I went to find him.”

She smiled. “He was already here…but I am so thankful to you, Zahara. Thank you.”

Zahara wrapped her arms around her again.

“We have to get moving, ladies,” Jet called from behind them. Alex wrapped his hand around Zahara’s arm and pulled her up.

“When I say stay by my side that’s what I mean,” he looked at her in a way that told Preston these two had history of their own.

“Alex, this is Ariana,” she said as if that should excuse her running away from the position he told her to stay at.

“Nice meeting you,” Ariana pulled herself up, still unsteady and weak from exhaustion.

“You too,” he said but he hadn’t let go of Zahara’s arm. “Come on. We have to keep moving.”

“We’ll stop as soon as we can and let you two rest,” Micah said.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Preston mumbled. He would rather get out of Egypt and back to the safety of the United States not just for himself, but for Ariana too. “Does anybody have a way of contacting Julian? Or are we all without communication here?”

Jet pulled out a SAT phone. “I’ll let Natalia know to get transport fired up. Julian said if we needed him he would still help us. Of course he, just like all of us, thought Micah would be flying in for this one. I didn’t have a chance to contact him, but Natalia did before we left. We just couldn’t wait on an answer. The commercial flight was boarding and taking off too soon for that.” He looked to Preston. “I’m sure she received confirmation from him by now. Should we go with your original idea for pickup or do we need a new spot?”

“A new one,” he said. “I didn’t tell anybody about my trying to get to the first pickup, but I can’t chance it. Julian and I had a night escape about five years ago. Tell him to go there, and he’ll know what that means.”

Jet nodded. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. He could make a call and walk at the same time. He had to because there was no way in the world they could just stand still in broad daylight without a place to take cover should the enemy come up behind them.
 
This rescue mission had gone horribly wrong, but something about having his friends by his side now made Preston feel a hundred times better.

He left Ariana to her friend, a friend Alex had clearly taken it upon himself to guard with his life. He would have to ask for details later because he was sure there was something between the two of them and he knew Alex, there was no way he moved that swiftly when it came to a woman. If he had just met her when she showed up at the Squadron headquarters then Preston doubted that Alex would have been serving as bodyguard so soon. Still, knowing Alex was guarding the women gave Preston a little leeway to do what he did best, shoot and command. Ariana would be okay beside Alex and Zahara; Preston was sure of that. Right now he needed to put his focus back on getting them out of there alive.