Chapter Twenty-Nine
Linden
Voices carry through the trees in front of me, and my entire body is locked, frozen in fear. I’m trapped, and Avery is gone. They have every reason to kill me on sight.
I just want my baby.
Flashes of light flicker across the brush as they get closer and closer. A line of guards who look more like trained soldiers step into the moonlight as the trees thin out.
Very quickly, a singular beam of light blinds me.
“Where’s the girl?” A deep voice asks, but I can’t see his face.
I shake my head, but I can’t make my mouth move.
The light gets brighter as he steps closer and tugs swiftly at the chain attached to my ankle, making my scream of pain echo through the air.
“Where is she?” He yells this time.
“She– She got lost.”
He kicks my shin, inches above the trap, and I howl in agony until my vision goes white, and I know the flashlight isn’t the culprit. My stomach rolls, and I turn my head just in time to wretch into the dirt beside me.
Sweat’s coating my face, and I know if they don’t kill me, the pain will. Maybe they’ll just leave me out here to be eaten by the coyotes.
My head lulls to the side because I’m still woozy, and I don’t hear him speaking the first time.
“Hear me? You tell me where she is, or I’ll gut you until your screams draw her out.”
“No,” I groan, squeezing my eyes shut against his light.
His light lowers– No, it raises above my head completely, scanning the hill behind me, finally giving me a chance to see as I blink through the splotches in my vision.
Avery. Please, don’t let it be Avery.
She’ll be so scared.
“Start talking, or I’ll–” He raises his boot to stomp on my leg again, and I brace for the strike of agonizing pain, but instead thunder cracks in my ears.
The man in front of me jerks, stumbling back as a dark spot blooms on his forehead. Utter chaos erupts in front of me.
Flashes of light move forward, and some move back as shouting and small explosions fill the air.
I cower against the ground, smashing my palms against my ears, but my eyes fall to the man now slumped near my feet. A line of blood streams down his forehead from a bullet hole… And his vacant, lifeless eyes are staring right back at me.
Dead… He’s dead…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dead person. Not as graphically as this.
And the gore continues all around me as bodies hit the dirt one by one. Am I dead already? This has to be hell.
A man jumps on top of me out of nowhere, and a scream hurtles from my throat as he straddles my waist. His hand shoots out, gripping my jaw brutally to keep my head still as he raises his gun, and I can’t fight it. My panicked flails don’t affect him at all.
The barrel comes down, inches from my forehead, and I freeze. This is it… I’m dead.
Avery…
My eyes focus on the man above me, but he’s not even looking at me. He’s not looking at the innocent woman he’s about to murder… He’s looking up and behind me.
“I’ll kill her—” the man warns right before his head explodes.
I can’t cower from the matter raining down on me; I can only scream as the man’s body is flung off of me.
In his place is someone new, kneeling over me, bracing me between their thigh and opposite calf, but not trapping me… Guarding me with their body.
I can hardly see his face, but I can feel him.
Jack.
My soul knows he’s the one protecting me.
His left shoulder jerks back, and he grunts, but his rifle is tight to the pit of his right shoulder as he aims, firing continuously into the thicket. Each explosion makes my body flinch as metal casings trickle down on me.
“Got momma bird. Alive in enemy fire,” he speaks, but it’s not to me. “Keep your head down,” he says gently, and this time I know it was meant for me.
“Avery,” I force through ragged breaths I hadn’t realized I was gasping. “Avery,” I repeat, and it’s all I can choke out.
He fires one shot, a second, and then a third, and I watch the bodies hit the ground. He’s killing these men… All of them.
“She’s safe.”
My entire body deflates against the ground like all of my remaining energy was being reserved to find out if my baby was okay… My face melts into the grass as I sob, and I don’t even care to see the destruction happening. My baby is safe.
“I’m broadside on an uphill slope. Targets are regrouping,” he speaks into the air again, and I realize he must be wearing a radio. He glances at my ankle and assesses the damage.
“Ah,” I cry when he tests the clamp.
“Shit.”
We both hear the engines revving as reinforcements head our way, and neither of us says a word. I’m not even sure who I’m speaking to because he looks like my Jack, but he moves like…
“Stay still,” he warns me right before he shoots the chain connecting the bear trap to the closest tree.
It breaks the chain, but I’m still trapped in the metal clamps.
“Come on, we need better cover.” His arm goes around my back, anchoring me by my armpits as he keeps his rifle high and drags me behind the closest tree.
I groan in agony the whole way, and his sorrow-filled eyes meet me as soon as he rests my back against the trunk.
“You’re here,” I murmur in exhaustion.
“Of course, I am,” he says so assuredly. As if there is nowhere else he would possibly be than right here… Saving me.
He brushes his thumbs over my face, clearing the hair and muck from my skin. “I’m taking you home.”
A sad sob escapes me because home seems too far away to be possible.
He leans wide all of a sudden, popping off two more shots into the trees where two men emerge. They drop instantly, and I’m left staring at the man who is still a stranger to me.
“What are you?”
“I was a SEAL.” That’s all I get before three more men come running into the clearing and he puts them down. “Let’s get this off.”
He lowers his rifle from his shoulder and grips both sides of the trap in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
“This might hurt, and your foot might feel like it’s going to fall off, but it won’t. I promise.”
“Jack,” I whimper right before he pries the metal clamp apart with brute force, grunting as air escapes his lungs.
He white-knuckles it until it’s wide enough that my ankle is released from its teeth, making me cry out in agony. The exertion it takes to hold it open long enough for my foot to slip through makes his veins pop, but he doesn’t relent until I’m free.
Gasping in pain but free.
He finally releases the trap, letting the spring slam shut again, and it nearly catches his fingers before he chucks it into the trees.
“Ow, ow, ow,” I cry, hugging my knee to my chest because it hurts so bad.
He looks as closely as he can at my bloodied leg, but it’s dark, and I can tell he doesn’t want to touch it. It’s either that bad, or he doesn’t want to risk hurting me further.
“Can you move it?”
“No,” I answer immediately.
I can see his wheels turning as he checks the rounds left in his rifle and readies it back across his chest.
“Have you ever shot a gun?”
“No.”
He hands me the smallest one he’s probably carrying, but it’s like a boulder in my hand. “Point and shoot.”
“Jack, I don’t know how…”
“Linden, they want to keep you from getting to Avery. Shoot any mother fucker who wants to stop you.”
Well, when he puts it that way.
“Momma bird is wounded. Making our ascent now,” he speaks out loud again, and I finally see him pressing his ear.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, gasping in pain when I try to rise to my uninjured leg.
He glances at me and his lips part, but he shuts them again like even he doesn’t know how to answer that.
“Tell them that if I don’t make it, Avery’s grandparents can’t have her. They have to get her to my parents in New York,” I beg, dragging my aching body up the trunk of the tree.
“I’m getting you back to your girl, Linden.”
“Jack, please,” I demand, gripping his shirt. “You don’t know what I saw tonight. I need to know Avery will be safe no matter what!”
His jaw locks, and he nods, but just before he presses his ear, he hesitates. “Just so we’re clear, this is pointless because I’m not letting a God damn thing happen to you,” he grits out, holding my gaze.
His dark, serious eyes don’t even blink as he finally presses on the radio in his ear.
“Real and fake passports for baby bird and momma bird are in my safe with their personal files. Right next to the account information for their trusts. My plan of action for their well-being is notarized and in my personel file with my Will. If I don’t make it out of this, make sure both birds fly free and clear.
” He says to whoever, watching me closely as I absorb his words.
“The Scotts don’t come near them. Copy?”
Fake documents?
Baby bird? Momma bird?
Plan of action? Trusts?
He didn’t say if we don’t make it out, just if he doesn’t.
“Who are you?”
“I’m no one,” he says. “Not anymore.”