Page 51 of Mountain Shadow

Jens tensed as Sarah approached One’s body, but the man was out for the count. He talked Sarah through the process of cuffing the man’s wrists and ankles.

“There. Now move away from him,” he ordered. He stiffened as a new wave of pain slammed into him.

“What can I do to help?” Sarah asked. Jens was amazed at how well she was dealing with this—she should be terrified out of her mind, and instead, she was asking what she could do for him.

“Just give me a second. I’m feeling better already,” he lied.

“Let’s see if we can get you to the couch. You’ll be more comfortable there.” She squatted beside him. Her arms went under his armpits, pulling him upwards. Jens clenched his jaw—Sarah was determined, but he had over a hundred pounds on her—this wasn’t going to work unless he could get his muscles to cooperate.

By the time he was in a sitting position, his entire body was shaking. The distance between them and the couch might as well be measured in kilometers.

Sarah smiled brightly. “Cool. We’re almost there.”

“I see you’re a glass half-full kind of woman.”

“Glass? What glass? I’m a pitcher of sangria kind of woman.” She stood up, which placed him eye level with the top of her creamy thighs. He couldn’t suppress a groan.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Then she looked down, following his line of sight. “Oh. Maybe I should put some pants on before your friends get here.”

15

Sarah

“Post-adrenaline crashes are the worst, aren’t they?” Kat said, offering Sarah a cup with some kind of liquid sloshing inside. “Drink this. It’s tea with lots of honey.”

The pilot sat down next to her on the couch. Although she was obviously pregnant, it didn’t seem to be affecting her agility at all.

Sarah tried for a smile, gave up when her muscles refused to cooperate. Instead, she took a small sip. The tea was lukewarm and way too sweet.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you all for rushing in like this.”

The activity in Jens’s living room was frenetic. Sarah was glad she’d run upstairs to put on a bra and some leggings—she couldn’t imagine facing all these people in her underwear.

Jens’s team had shown up first. Then the ambulance had arrived, along with several other officers Sarah had never seen before.

Once they’d taken the two unconscious men out of the house, Sarah had finally been able to draw a deep breath. She hadn’t even realized, until they were gone, just how much their presence had been stifling her.

She shivered now as she watched the younger officer mopping up the blood from the floor.

“Will he be okay?” Sarah asked, her chin pointing at Jens.

Jens was sitting at his dining table with two men. Though he wasn’t complaining, Sarah could see the way his breath hissed between his teeth every so often, and knew that he was still in a fair amount of pain.

Kat nodded. “See the dark-haired guy he’s with? The one with the beard? He’s the medic from another search & rescue team. If he thought Jens needed to go to the hospital, he would be there already.”

“Okay. What about that man? Who is he?” Sarah asked, looking at a tall man with reddish-blond hair.

“That’s Alex. He’s a security expert.”

“Jens says the alarm was on.”

Kat nodded. “They managed to disable it, somehow. Alex is looking into it.”

Sarah shuddered, remembering.

“Who were those men?”

“If they’re related to the man from the plane crash, the one who died at the hospital, there’s every reason to believe they’re members of the Italian Mafia. We ran his fingerprints against Interpol’s databases.”