He waved a hand. “It feels…empty.”
Empty was an understatement. They’d been hoofing it for ten clicks. Dropped in far behind battle lines, their team headed into a hot zone. Wounded men, too critical for aeromedical evacuation, waited for her team to stabilize them before help could come. In this case, it meant emergency surgery in the field.
A glance upward revealed a featureless expanse of faded out blue. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Nothing but a bright ball of fiery brilliance blazed down on them, but even the sun seemed washed out. The air tasted dry and lifeless, and there was nothing but rock and sand as far as the eye could see. The entire world was desolate.
She examined the map. “Sir,” she said, pointing, “we can cross here.”
Indeed, the ridgeline they were supposed to be traveling lay across the valley from the one they occupied, but there was a way across.
Collins cursed and gathered the team. “Change of plans,” he said.
Everyone gathered round. Collins confirmed her assessment. If they were off course, it needed to be reported to command and controland their new route verified. Lyons lumbered over. He carried the radio gear, making his pack outweigh all the others.
Lyons called their position in, and while he spoke to command, she took a load off and shrugged out of her pack. Protocol demanded she keep a low profile, but she couldn’t help but stretch out the tight cords of the muscles of her neck and shoulders. The physical part of this job never let up.
The high-pitched whine of a bullet sounded moments before ricocheting off a rock to her right. Lyons leaped up, plowed into her, and slammed her to the ground. Her helmet hit a rock and cushioned her head from impact. Lyons’s entire body covered hers, every rock-solid muscle clenched with murderous intent as he protected the sole female in the group.
“Take cover,” Collins called out.
The team flattened themselves against the ground, providing minimal profiles to whoever had them in their sights.
She shoved at Lyons, not moving him an inch. “Move,” she said.
As he lay on top of her, his jaw clenched. “Not on your damn life.”
His gaze lingered on her face, radiating his primal need to protect. Time slowed down as the lethality of the moment sank in. A crescendo of what-ifs passed through her mind.What if she’d been a little more to the right? What if the shooter had better aim? What if she’d been hit? Or worse, what if she’d been killed?
Fear was a mind killer, and she had no time for it. So, she turned her fear into anger and directed it at Lyons. She could damn well take care of herself, but what she hated most were the vibrations humming in her veins with him lying on top of her. Perhaps he felt them, too, because his grin grew impossibly wide, even as the furrow in his brows deepened. The man was a master at expressing disparate emotions within the same glance. His left knee pressed between her legs, spreading them and making their relative position entirely too intimate. Under differentcircumstances, it might be considered a prelude to something more.
Whomever their sniper was, the bastard had either run out of ammunition or bravery because, after ten minutes, there were no more shots fired. Ten long minutes of Lyons lying on top of her with their faces entirely too close.
Tia’s team was armed and packed some heat, but medical gear filled their rucks, not bullets. It was impossible to know who was shooting, so they could be pinned down by a band of insurgents or a goat farmer with a rifle and a handful of bullets. Either way, that shooter had her team hunkered down and her trapped beneath Lyons.
Insurgents had been in the area. That was the reason they’d been sent out. There’d been a firefight, and men were down. Reports said the enemy had been neutralized. There shouldn’t be a shooter. Helicopters would be sent in soon, but before that, she and her team had lifesaving surgery to perform for two of the men attached to the special operations unit they’d been sent to assist. One had a collapsed lung. The other had his guts torn up. Their field surgeries stabilized and saved lives but weren’t pretty.
Getting to their target quickly couldn’t be more important.
Instead, they found themselves plastered flat against the heat of the rock. She found herself sandwiched between the hard ground and the unmoving physique of Lyons. His eyes bore into her, green fire lashing out, and the bastard refused to budge.
“Get off me,” she said, trying yet again to roll him off her body.
“No,” he said.
He was a man of few words, so she was surprised to get that much out of him.
“You’re making yourself an easy target,” she said.
“All the important bits are covered,” he said with a grin.
“Not your ass.”
“Oh, glad you care about my ass, T,” he said with more sarcasm than that comment deserved. That was the way with Lyons. He had no filter and no idea how to turn off inappropriate thoughts.
“The only reason I care about your ass is because, if something happens to you, we have to split your ruck.”
“You mean,” he drew out his words, toying with her, “the others will pick up the slack. You’re maxed with what you can carry.”
She’d punch him if it wouldn’t hurt her fist. Not only was Lyons packed with muscles, but his battle gear was also hard Kevlar. The ceramic ballistic plate on his chest pressed against hers, putting painful pressure on her breasts. She bit back a groan.
