“I will.”
Comms go quiet.
I can faintly hear the distant sound of trucks approaching the compound. Engines growling through the jungle. We need to move. I look down at Sloane. She’s been listening to my half of the conversation, those sharp eyes assessing even through exhaustion.
“There’s more coming,” she says.
“Yes. We need to go.”
“Who are the others?”
“Kelt and Aldar came with me. We also hired two former Navy SEALS. They are taking a different route out. We’ll meet them at the extraction point.”
She nods, processing. Then pulls back slightly, testing her own legs.
“Can you walk?”
I see her weighing the answer, pride versus reality. Then she takes a step and nearly falls. I catch her arm before she goes down.
“I can—” she starts.
“I’ll carry you.”
“For forty kilometers?” A flash of that wry humor I remember from our video calls. Even now.
“If I have to. Sloane, I’m not human, I’m an orc. Carrying you that far is nothing to me. You will be light as air. I must carry you because we need to move fast to create distance from us and the cartel, also we have a lot of terrain to cover in order to reachthe extraction point in time. If we move slow, we’ll miss our window.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I understand.”
I lift her easily, as promised she does indeed weigh nothing — even less than she should after twelve days of starvation. She doesn’t argue any further and doesn’t continue to insist she can walk. That tells me more than anything how bad off she really is.
I adjust her against my chest, one arm under her knees, one supporting her back. “Hold on to me.”
Her arms go around my neck. Her face against my shoulder. I can feel her breath warm through my tactical vest.
I head east, away from the approaching cartel force.
Behind, I can hear the distant sounds of vehicles arriving at the compound. Shouts. Gunfire. I force myself not to think about it. Kelt can handle himself. Cole and Martinez are professionals. Aldar’s the smartest person I know.
My job is her. Only her.
Sloane’s breath is warm against my neck. I need to get her out of here so she can be safe and receive medical attention. Forty kilometers of jungle between us and the extraction point. I hold her tighter and start moving. We’ve got a long way to go.
Chapter Five
Sloane
I’m in the arms of a seven-foot-tall green orc, racing through the Colombian jungle in the middle of the night.
This is not how I expected my rescue to go.
Two black horns jut from his forehead, curving back over his skull. Tusks rise from his bottom lip, gleaming white in the occasional shaft of moonlight. His skin is actually green, not the olive undertone some humans have, but genuinely, truly green. And his muscular arms are wrapped around me like I weigh nothing at all.
I’ve seen this face before, pixelated through bad wifi at two in the morning, frozen mid-laugh when the connection glitched, grainy and distant through a laptop screen. But seeing Jonus Irontree in person is something else entirely.
Everything about him is more.
He moves through terrain that nearly killed me like it’s a city sidewalk. Roots and vines that tripped me, branches that whipped my face, undergrowth so dense I could barely pushthrough, he navigates all of it without breaking stride. He’s got a backpack, heavy weapons, and me in his arms, and he’s not even breathing hard.
