Dani
The explosion had taken me completely by surprise, so I’d never quite understood what hit me.
Stunned, I was on the dirt floor, still trying to process what had happened when my mind latched on to one thing: Marcus was outside.
Marcus. Oh, God. Was he safe?
“A bomb. It had to be a bomb,” I muttered to myself. “And it was close.”
I wasn’t unfamiliar with the sound of a bomb exploding, but it had taken a minute to shake off the shock and realize exactly what had happened so close to my location. I’d never experienced the noise quite so loud or so devastating.
The entire building had come down on top of my head. I had a small space to move, but there was no way I could get myself out of the debris. Part of the ceiling was right above me, and between the rafters on the ground, I could see a ton of broken glass.
If I’m in a desperate situation like this…how is Marcus?
He’d been out in the open, exposed to the full force of the explosives.
My eyes were starting to adjust to the dim atmosphere around me, the air still loaded with small particles and smoke.
“Baris!” I tried to call out to my friend who had been across the room from me when the bomb had gone off.
He didn’t answer, and I was hoping he had gotten clear of the falling building. Baris had been close to the exit, so it was entirely possible he was safe.
I kept shouting out my friend’s name, but there was no response.
There were voices outside screaming, so help had arrived, but my heart was pounding as I laid my aching head down on the dirt.
“Please let Marcus be okay,” I murmured in a painful whisper. “Don’t let anything happen to him.”
A tear trickled down my cheek, my heart desperately wanting to deny that he could be injured…or worse.
“I love him,” I said aloud, hearing the words I’d been keeping inside my mind for days.
It was a relief to admit to myself exactly how I felt about Marcus. Honestly, I’d probably always just been a little bit in love with the frustrating alpha male. But it had really grown during the time we’d spent together in Florida and in Colorado. I’d gotten to know who Marcus was inside, and fallen completely, head-over-heels in love for the very first time in my life.
It felt good.
But it also hurt because I knew our relationship would be temporary.
Marcus would eventually have to go back to traveling, and I’d move on to my next story. Problem was, I hadn’t wanted to miss a moment of what was in between those events, so I’d let myself experience the pleasure. I’d pay a high price for indulging, but it didn’t matter.
He’d probably been the only man I could have trusted enough to sleep with after what had happened to me.
It was ironic that the very healing I’d experienced with Marcus would probably break my heart in the future.
“Just let him be okay. I’ll deal with everything else when the time comes,” I whispered, my throat too sore now to speak louder. The smoke and dust was getting to me.
I tormented myself about Marcus’s safety, trapped until somebody came along to help me out of the toppled building. I felt so damn guilty. I’d been the one to get Marcus into this position. If he hadn’t come to Florida to find me, he probably wouldn’t be in this particular border town right now. If not for me, he’d be safe.
I told myself over and over that I couldn’t think about the past, but I still did. If something happened to Marcus, I’d hate myself for insisting that I go with him. Even if he’d still ended up here looking for the missing women, he definitely wouldn’t have been in this area. It was me who had brought him here because I had my own contacts to see.
“Please be okay. Please be okay.”
I chanted the words under my breath, the small phrase becoming my mantra.
I’d come here to help save lives, and I’d quickly regained my confidence and lost my fear of this town and the surrounding area. It hadn’t taken me long after I’d arrived here to get back into the swing of hunting down information. The friends I’d made in this village had greeted me warmly, all of them happy that I was doing okay.
Finally, I’d felt like I was making a recovery from my fears.
I just desperately hoped that I hadn’t gotten Marcus hurt in the process.
If it wasn’t for me, he most likely wouldn’t have been in Turkey right now, much less a border town that evidently had just taken some kind of bomb strike.
He never would have gotten involved in Miami if I hadn’t been chasing after Becker, and it would have been a much lengthier time until we’d run into each other again.
I closed my eyes, the smoke and dirty air around me starting to make them burn like crazy.
Even though I loved Marcus more than anything, I’d give everything up right now just to see him be safe.
I have to find him!
I really wanted to get the hell out of this store and go find Marcus, but if I started to move, I’d more than likely cause the roof to come down on top of me. I needed somebody to move stuff from the outside in so I had an escape route without moving some of the supports around me that were keeping me from getting crushed.
My heart started to hammer as I heard movement coming from outside the building. I could hear people working on digging me out. Although I had no patience for waiting, I had to keep myself alive so I could do everything I could to help Marcus. I had to find him, and to accomplish that, I’d have to get out of this spot alive.
“Danica!”
My heart lurched as I heard a male voice calling my name. A tone that sounded very much like Marcus.
My eyes popped open, and I could see someone progressively making their way to my location, the masculine figure tossing large pieces of debris aside much faster than he ought to be able to move.
“Marcus!” I shrieked.
“Dani?” he called, his voice hoarse and stressed out.
“I’m here. Be careful. The roof is going to collapse. There isn’t much holding it above the ground.”
I could see him now, and I watched as he pushed away the loose wood, being careful that he didn’t yank out a necessary piece.
“Are you okay?” he hollered.
“Yes. I just need an opening to get out. If I move some of these pieces near me to get out of here, I’m afraid the roof will go.”
“Don’t fucking move,” Marcus demanded. “I’ll clear a path from here.”
“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
“Hell, no, I’m not okay. I’m goddamn terrified that you’re going to get crushed.”
It was a typical Marcus kind of reply, but so incredibly sweet that it made my tears flow steadily. “I meant are you physically all right? Were you hurt in the explosion?”
“I’ll live,” he said in a voice loud enough to travel.
To me, that meant that he was injured, but didn’t want to admit it.
I finally saw his face as he crouched at the end of an opening he’d cleared with his bare hands.
“Marcus, you are hurt,” I cried out, anxious because I could see the blood on his face.
“I’m fine,” he said sharply. “Right now all I want is to get you out of here. Can you give me your hands without upsetting anything? I’ll pull you out through the area I just cleared.”
He was downplaying his injuries, but I wasn’t going to get any answers until I got away from the building.
“Yes. I can move them.” I lifted my arms carefully, stretching out so I could clasp his hands.
“Are you hurt? I don’t want to make anything worse,” he questioned hesitantly.
“No,” I replied. “I was confused for a few minutes, but I’m not hurt.”
He reached into my space, grasping my hands and then pulled me out, slow and steady. I carefully tried to keep myself positioned away from the beams that I was fairly certain was keeping the roof from hitting the ground.
In just a few moments, I was out, away from the building, and being held tightly in Marcus’s arms.
We clung to each other, and I never wanted to let him go. In the moments I’d questioned whether or not he was still alive, I’d nearly died myself.
“Baris?” I asked anxiously about my friend as I hugged Marcus just as firmly as he was holding me.
“He’s okay,” Marcus answered. “Just a few minor injuries. He’s being treated at the clinic.”
I pulled back so I could look at him.
I reached up to touch the gash on his head. I couldn’t help but notice his hands were also bleeding from digging through the wood and glass to get me out of my prison barehanded. “You’re hurt, Marcus. You need to get to the medical clinic.”
The wound on his head was open and blood was still flowing from his injury. The shirt that had been white this morning was now covered in his blood. No doubt the head wound had just kept on bleeding as he’d pulled me out of the wreckage of the store.
“I’m good,” he said in a tone heavy with emotion. “I just want to get you the hell out of here.”
“I’m okay,” I argued.
“I’m not,” he confessed. “I don’t ever want to live through another incident of not knowing whether you’re dead or alive, Danica. I can’t.”
“I was scared, too,” I said in a tremulous voice as I put my arms around him again and hugged him to me. “I knew you were outside. I didn’t know where you were when the bomb exploded.”
“I was worrying about you. It seems I’m rather good at doing that now,” he answered, his torn-up hands stroking over my hair in a comforting motion.
“We’re safe,” I said tearfully, the enormity of what had just happened starting to sink in.
“Let’s go home,” he suggested, but he didn’t move.
“We have to find those women—”
“They’re safe,” Marcus told me. “Somebody helped them get home. Jett confirmed it.”
Oh, God. The irony didn’t escape me that we were in Turkey looking for the two women, and they were home safe. We’d nearly gotten ourselves killed for two females who hadn’t needed our help.
Even though it hurt to separate myself from Marcus, I pulled back so we could leave. “You need to have your injuries checked before we go,” I insisted, concerned about the size of the laceration on his head.
“I’ll have them checked when we get home,” he said stubbornly.
“Now,” I demanded.
I expected a smart-ass answer, and I was actually concerned when I didn’t get it. I looked at Marcus anxiously, noting that he was pale, and he was holding his hand to his head.
“I’ll be...” His voice trailed off as he sat down on a nearby crate that hadn’t been blown away.
I squatted beside him. “Marcus, talk to me,” I said in a panic.
He never said another word.
He lost consciousness as I struggled to hold him up, screaming for somebody—anybody—to help me.