Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(81)

“A mistake made by my overzealous compatriots, I assure you!”

“And when you took a shot at her now?”

“Not her!” Shadow Man called. “You! You know as well as I that the woman is no good to me dead! Just send her out!”

She swallowed, curling her fingers more tightly around his waistband. He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, cari?o. I’ll get you out of this.”

“I know,” she whispered, trusting him implicitly. She lifted a hand to squeeze his arm reassuringly. He needed all his wits focused on the terrorists, not worrying about whether or not she was about to disintegrate into a puddle of terrified goo around his jungle boots. “I know you will, and I—Oh my God! You’re hit!”

Her hand came away from his arm wet with warm, sticky blood. And when she glanced down, she saw it dripping from his fingers, speckling the big roots of the tree snaking beneath their feet. Just like that, the world titled on it axis. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it spun crazily in its orbit. She squeezed her eyes shut.

So much for not turning into a puddle of goo around his jungle boots. She knew from experience that what came next was something straight out of a Pitbull featuring Ke$ha song. She was going down. Although, as far as she could figure, no one was yelling, “Timber!”

Chewbacca’s flying shit, Abby! Don’t do this now! But no matter how she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, little flashes of white strobed behind her eyelids, the precursor to lights-out.

“Abby.” Carlos grabbed her arm, giving her a little shake. “Take a breath. It’s nothing. Just a nick, eh?”

Yep…just a nick. With a lot of blood.

No! She wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t pass out. She might be the damsel in distress. But by God, she refused to act it. Concentrating everything she had on remaining vertical, she planted her hands on her hips and forced great gulps of air past her constricted throat and into her lungs. Oxygen rushed to her brain in a dizzying whoosh, and the forest instantly stopped doing its best impression of a merry-go-round. Although, when she opened her eyes, little specs of light were still flashing in her peripheral vision.

Not exactly great. But better.

Not daring to glance down at Carlos’s wounded arm, she grabbed the hem of her tunic and raised the material to her teeth. Finding a seam, she bit down hard, and yanked. A long strand of cotton tore free, and the curious quiet of the jungle caused the subsequent riiiiiip to sound ridiculously loud. Before she could think about what she was doing—and have another go at performing the ol’ Pitbull/Ke$ha timber maneuver—she wound the material around Carlos’s bicep. Doing her best to tie it off without really ever taking a good, long gander at the furrow of shredded flesh that leaked long streaks of—gulp; Oh, God!—blood down his forearm.

“You okay, mi vida?” he asked when she lifted her hand to her head.

“Yep.” She nodded vigorously. Too vigorously obviously when the jungle did another slow tilt. Gah! “Sorry. I’m no good around blood anymore.”

Just don’t look down at his arm. Just don’t look down at his arm. Just don’t look—

“No worries,” he told her. “I’ve cut myself worse shaving.” And if that was true, the man definitely needed a new razor. “But thanks for the field dress—”

“Uh, I hate to interrupt,” Yonus said politely, as if it were every day he found himself smack dab in the middle of a Mexican standoff. Malaysian standoff? “But I think someone is trying to sneak up on us. I saw a flash of movement over…over there.” He pointed.

Carlos’s chin swiveled in the direction of Yonus’s finger. Then, “Stay with her,” he told the young man. “As long as you do, you’ll be safe. You heard him. They won’t kill her. They need her alive.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his arm—his uninjured arm; don’t look down, don’t look down. “You can’t go out there by yourself.”

“Trust me.” He chucked her on the chin. And then he did it again. He frickin’ winked at her. She opened her mouth to tell him they needed to have a serious discussion about which circumstances were and were not appropriate for winking, but he cut her off. “I do this kind of thing all the time.” And with that, he pulled that deadly sharp knife from the clip on his waistband and disappeared into the undergrowth behind them.

Yep, he might do this kind of thing all the time, but he’d never done it for her. To protect her. And for the first time since they made that madcap dash across that rickety bridge, she considered the possibility that Carlos could very well die while trying to spirit her across the border to Thailand.

No. God, no. Don’t let that happen. And although she’d gotten pretty good at praying over the years—mostly for Carlos—the pact she made at the moment with the big man upstairs would have her down on her knees every single night for the rest of her days…

*

Steady flattened himself behind a tree less than twenty yards away from Yonus and Abby and waited…

Yonus was right. Someone was trying to flank them. Fortunately, whatever else this JI * was, stealthy he was not. Steady could hear each of his footfalls disturbing the debris littering the forest floor. And every time he moved a little closer, the clip attaching his AK-47 to its strap clanked quietly. The man obviously hadn’t learned the trick of wrapping the harness around his wrist and arm. That little maneuver both kept the weapon attached to the body should the shooter lose his grip and also kept the accoutrements from jangling against one another.