He let her go and she gasped for air. Swallowing the bile rising in her throat, she gritted her teeth until the acute agony faded to something she could bear. Then she lay still, not moving a muscle until she decided she could move without vomiting.
“That was not nice,” she muttered.
“Don’t move,” he said.
She wasn’t sure she could, so she said nothing. And didn’t move.
Chapter 34
Kane forced down the panic building inside him.
He could no longer see their attackers. They’d taken cover behind a huge rocky outcrop. Leila and Brandon, and he guessed the colonel, since he hadn’t returned, were on the far side of them, shooting. They might hit Kaitlin, and he needed to stop them. But he couldn’t risk taking off the reflector device, or he’d be incapacitated.
A scream ripped through the air. Kaitlin.
He lurched forward, but someone grabbed him from behind.
“Wait,” Jake said.
Silence followed.
Was she hurt...dead?
Shots still rang out from beyond them. Had Kaitlin taken a bullet? From one of their own people? Jesus—he needed to know more. He jerked at the grip on his arm, but Jake held him tight.
“You can’t go out there. You’ll be in the direct line of fire. Come on, Kane, pull it together. You can’t help her if you go to pieces.”
Kane slowed his breathing, taking long, deep breaths. She couldn’t be dead. Even without the telepathic connection, he’d know. He would sense it. He had to work on the presumption that she was alive, though she must have been hurt. That had been a scream of pure agony. He was going to kill the fuckers. And he was going to kill Leila. She must know they had Kaitlin.
Jake was right. They had to think through this. Work out a way to get her out and neutralize whoever had her. First, he needed confirmation she was alive, because if not, he was going right in there and killing them all.
“Kaitlin,” he called out. “Are you okay?”
For a few seconds there was no reply, and he could feel the panic rising again, choking him.
“I’m alive,” she called out, and for a moment his heart stopped beating. “And I’d really like to stay that way, if that’s okay with you.”
Oh God, he could breathe again. But he needed to hold her. “Are you shot?”
“No. I twisted my ankle running down the mountain.”
“Thank Christ,” Jake muttered from beside him.
It was a stalemate.
Leila and Brandon had their attackers pinned down. They couldn’t move from their cover under the rock, or they would be easy targets. Their next move had to be some sort of threat against Kaitlin in exchange for safe conduct. Except, he didn’t think that would work with Leila. While she wouldn’t kill Kaitlin in cold blood, she would do whatever was necessary to protectthe time machine. And if that resulted in Kaitlin’s death, she would see it as a fair trade.
“We need to find out what they want,” he said.
Jake ran a hand through his hair. “It’s pretty obvious they were heading for the time machine, so we have to guess it’s something to do with that. I don’t think they simply want to take us out.”
“But do they want to steal it, or do they want to destroy it?”
“Who the fuck knows? But we need to decide what our priority is here.”
Kane glared at him. “Our priority is getting Kaitlin out of there alive and safe,” he snapped.
“Good. Because if it was anything else, we’d have a problem.”
