Defending Raven (Mountain Mercenaries #7)(51)

She huffed out a breath and put her head back down. “I just don’t like to think of you hurting.”

Dave sobered immediately. “And I feel the same about you. I’d do anything to turn back the clock and make different decisions on that trip to Vegas. But we can’t. We just have to keep moving forward. One day at a time.”

She startled slightly and picked her head up once more. “Why’d you say that?”

“Say what?”

“One day at a time.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I told myself every night when I went to bed. That I had to take each day as it came. One at a time. I couldn’t think about next week, or next year, or the next five years without you. I told myself that all I had to do was get through one more day. Anything else seemed too much. Too long.”

“That’s how I’ve gotten through everything as well,” she confessed. “Every day that I was held captive, I told myself that I just had to hang on for one more day. And when I was living in the barrio, and I was so hungry I was dizzy, and scared of Ruben and everyone else, I held on by thinking that all I had to do was get through the day. That tomorrow would be better.”

“I love you,” Dave whispered. “Even when we were apart, we were on the same wavelength.”

She didn’t return the words, but lay her head back down on his chest. Simply feeling her warm breaths against his skin made him feel less jumpy. He truly did have Raven here with him. She was alive. She was a miracle. His miracle.

“Tomorrow after I drop you off to see David, I’m hoping to be able to pick up his passport. It won’t be long now until all this is behind us and we’re home,” he told her, knowing the change in topic was a bit jarring, but he didn’t want her to fall asleep before he told her that their time in Peru would hopefully be coming to an end.

They were quiet for a few minutes. Dave thought Raven was asleep when she said, “I dreamed this, you know.”

“What?”

“This. Lying with you in bed. You playing with my hair. I never thought it would happen.”

“It’s real. I’m real.”

“I know. Thank you, Dave. Thank you for finding me and loving me.”

“Go to sleep, sweetheart. Tomorrow we’ll be one day closer to going home and living the rest of our lives in peaceful bliss with our son.”

He wanted to apologize once again for it taking so long to find her. For everything she’d gone through, but he kept the words to himself. Deep down, he knew he’d done everything he could to find her, but it still grated that she’d suffered through a hellish ten years.

He felt the happy exhalation on his skin as she sighed. Then she went boneless in his arms as she succumbed to sleep.

Dave didn’t sleep. He memorized the feel of his wife in his arms and how her hair looked spread across his shoulder and arm.

Tomorrow would hopefully be the turning point in the limbo they’d been stuck in. He’d pick up the boy’s passport, and he and his team would plan the raid on the house David was being held in. Then they’d either be on their way home—or the shit would have hit the fan. He hoped for the former, but knew if the latter happened, the Mountain Mercenaries would take care of their own.

They didn’t have the luxury of waiting anymore. He wasn’t willing to risk his son’s mental well-being and health if del Rio decided to act on whatever perverse plans he had for him.

He fell into an uneasy sleep, knowing tomorrow could change his family’s lives forever, one way or another.





Chapter Eleven

“Don’t be nervous,” Dave told Raven as he pulled over to the side of the road where he usually dropped her off before watching her walk toward the house where David was living.

“I can’t help it,” she told him, biting her lip. “Every time I come here, I dread walking in and being told he’s gone. That del Rio has taken him again.”

Dave hated that for his wife. He hated the delay in freeing the boy and getting them all back to the States. “I hope the next time we come to this house, it’s to get David and bring him home,” he told her honestly.

“Me too,” Raven whispered.

“Look at me,” Dave ordered gently.

His wife turned her head, and he couldn’t help but be awed all over again that he was really sitting next to her. It was still hard to believe, after all this time. “I’m going to get our son home. Where we’ll teach him to love LEGOs and to laugh when he leaves his toys all over the house for us to trip over. We’ll take him camping . . . show him how to make s’mores. We’re going to have a future together. The three of us.”

He watched as Raven visibly relaxed. “Okay.”

“Okay. Be careful. Don’t do or say anything to David or anyone else that might raise any suspicions.”

“I won’t.”

“Did you get enough to eat this morning? Are you going to be all right until tonight when I come back and pick you up?” Dave asked.

Raven’s lips twitched. “I had plenty,” she told him. “You made me eat that last protein bar, and now I think I might burst.”

“You need the calories. Starving you is just one more black mark on del Rio’s soul.” He held out his hand, and she put hers in his. Dave brought it up to his mouth and kissed her palm. “I love you. This is gonna be over soon.”