Page 115 of Duty Preserved

Sarah was against the wall where I’d left her, her arms wrapped around her knees. The gunfire was over. She knew it was over. But her body hadn’t caught up yet.

“I’ve got her now,” I said in a low voice.

Zayn nodded and walked back outside.

I dropped to my knees and pulled her into me. She locked her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. She held on with a strength that didn’t seem possible from someone her size.

I placed one arm around her waist. One hand cradling the back of her head. Her whole body shook, and her ribs expanded with each breath.

“It’s over,” I said. “I’ve got you.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric at my shoulders. Her grip tightened and didn’t let go.

Outside, the farmstead had gone quiet. Zayn’s voice carried through the walls, steady and calm, directing his men through the final sweep.

They’d chosen this.

I put my mouth on Sarah’s hair and kept my arms around her.

Chapter 31

Donovan

Sarah’s breathing had steadied against my shoulder. Her fingers were still locked in the fabric at my back, but the desperate grip had loosened into something closer to exhaustion. I heard the rangers’ voices outside the building. Zayn calling out orders, Baraka and the other men’s replies as they secured the area and started cleanup.

I held on for another minute. Then I eased her arms from around my neck and leaned back so I could see her face.

The left side of her jaw was swollen. A bruise was already darkening beneath her eye. Something hot and violent moved through my chest at the sight of it. I wanted to walk back outside and find the man who’d done this to her. But he was already on the ground with the rest of them. She was here, and I’d gotten to her before anything worse had happened. I held on to that.

She looked at me and didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

“You’re safe now.”

“I didn’t expect you to come for me.”

“Well,” I said, gesturing at those of Nasser’s men who were dead, “they didn’t expect us either.”

She nodded. Her hands dropped into her lap, and she pressed her back against the wall. I got to my feet, and my knees ached from the concrete.

“I need to go help the rangers. I’ll be right back.”

She looked at the metal ring in the floor. The cut zip ties still attached to it. “I don’t want to stay in here.”

“Okay. Then let’s get you outside.”

I helped her up and walked her outside. I found a spot in the grass at the edge of the yard, away from the prisoners and the bodies. She sat down, and I pulled the canteen from my vest and put it in her hands.

“Here, drink something.”

She unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. Her hands were still shaking, but she held it steady enough.

I straightened up and looked back at the farmstead. It looked different from this side of the fight.

Nasser’s men were facedown in the dirt with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Rangers stood over them with their still-warm rifle muzzles providing just the right amount of incentive for the prisoners not to do anything stupid.

Zayn was arranging a security team, making sure none of Nasser’s men had slipped away or were hiding. Jomo had a small team conducting a detailed inventory of weapons and contraband from the three buildings and the two trucks. Baraka and his team were maintaining control of the prisoners.

They didn’t seem to need my help after all.