A High-Stakes Reunion by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2024-02-07T16:15:50+00:00

Chapter 16

Scott clearly wasn’t doing well. They’d been on the move for hours, stopping only to feed and change the baby, to eat cactus fruit and power bars and drink more juice. And while the FBI agent didn’t slow down, he wasn’t meeting her gaze anymore.

At all.

Like if he didn’t look at her, she couldn’t see his pale skin?

Wouldn’t know that something was wrong?

Her check of his face and neck earlier, in the cave, had indicated that he wasn’t running a fever. The flush was gone. His lack of color came with its own information.

They were still traveling in the mountains, not always in sight of the miles-long road that led out of the mountain range, but parallel to it—their route much longer, more circuitous, due to the peaks they had to climb, or circle around. The need to keep cover—and to hike in the shade for the baby’s sake—all played a part as well.

What had looked to her as a day trip from zoomed-in photos and aerial views from above was turning into something far more onerous.

And with Scott clearly fading, the journey felt almost impossible.

Would her team work their miracles and find them somehow? Was it ludicrous to hope for a helicopter overhead, sent by Sierra’s Web to save them?

She looked for landing spots as she walked. To keep her mind occupied. To keep at bay the emotions that would weaken her.

To keep belief alive.

If she didn’t believe in something, she’d be lost.

And she did believe that she’d do all she could to help save lives. So she walked. She assessed. She climbed, and, on occasion, slid. Insisting, when Scott offered to take his turn with the sling, that she needed him to be ready with the gun. To use his skills to keep them safe.

He’d insisted on carrying the satchel. No way she was giving the man any more extra weight on that leg.

Dusk hadn’t yet fallen, but it was getting closer when Dorian saw Scott stumble. He righted himself immediately. Continued on without losing forward momentum. But she’d seen him wince.

His injured right leg had been the one to misstep.

“The baby needs real time out of this sling,” she said to him then, no longer able to hold back. Telling a truth, but not the one that concerned her the most. She’d changed the newborn’s positions regularly, and had refashioned the sling periodically, as well, allowing him to move more freely, so that his little body didn’t get cramped. “I know it’s early, but we should find cover for the night.”

It would be their second in the mountains.

Her third away from home.

Seemed incomprehensible. Her life had changed so completely in just a few days’ time. Far more than it had during her previous kidnapping, where she’d been largely kept physically comfortable, with enough to eat and drink, and in one place.

Seconds after she’d spoken, Scott spared a quick glance for the bundle covering her chest. Nodded. And continued taking them farther from the previous night’s compound. And toward, she hoped, their salvation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.