Chapter Nineteen
She hurt. Her whole body ached. Elizabeth let out a groan as her eyes slowly opened.
“Baby?” A rough hand pressed to her face. “Look at me, okay? Look at me.”
That voice—Sawyer’s voice. Her head turned and she found him, leaning over her. Blood streaked his forehead, and his face was stained with dirt and sweat. He was staring at her, his face grim and scared. That was odd. Sawyer didn’t get scared. She’d never seem him be afraid before. Why would he be—
The helicopter.
The crash.
They’d fallen out of the sky. Out of the sky. And he was still alive. She was still alive. Impossible. Insane.
Elizabeth jerked upright.
“No! Stop, just take it easy.” He swore grimly. “You scared the hell out of me.” His arms wrapped around her, cradling Elizabeth carefully. “Shit, doc, I thought I was losing you.”
She’d thought they were all dying. “H-how?” That one croak was all she could manage right then.
He was warm and strong against her. “I tried to shield you with my body. When we hit the ground, I held you as tightly as I could.”
“We crashed. We should be dead.”
A gruff laugh came from him. “Yeah, you mentioned that to me before. You seem to think I’m always dead.”
But they weren’t dead. They’d survived a helicopter crash. If he was strong enough to survive and use his body to protect her during that kind of fall, then that meant… “You’ve been keeping an awful lot of secrets, haven’t you?”
There was a faint cough from her right. Elizabeth’s head whipped around, and she saw Cecelia, a bruised but very much alive Cecelia, standing at Flynn’s side. “They’ve all been keeping secrets.” Cecelia’s clothes were torn and a bit bloody in spots, but she seemed okay. They’d all survived a crash that should have killed them.
Super soldiers.
“We all have different strengths,” Sawyer said quietly. His fingers stroked over her arm. “Flynn and I…well, when we worked the second mission for Jamison, we found out that we were both damn near indestructible. And when we do get hurt, we heal very, very fast.”
“I broke my left ankle and my right wrist in the crash.” Flynn gave a shrug. “They’ve both healed already.”
She blinked.
“Doc, we used our bodies to protect you and Cecelia, to cushion you from the impact. Wasn’t sure it would work…” Sawyer’s smile was weary. “But it was the only option we had, and I was desperate. I would have done anything to keep you safe.”
“Same here,” Flynn growled as his fingers slid over Cecelia’s shoulder. “You weren’t dying on my watch.”
Elizabeth looked at the wreckage. It waited, about fifty yards away. A tangled mess.
“Are they going to think we all died?” Cecelia asked. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
“That would be too easy.” Sawyer released Elizabeth, but he didn’t move away. And she liked having him close. Maybe he made her feel safe.
Maybe he scared her to death.
“A team will come out and search the wreckage. We have to be long gone from this site by then.” He swept his gaze over her. “I can carry you. Every step of the way. But we have to get out of here.”
She tried walking. Nothing hurt too badly, so she figured she had this. “I can walk.”
“But not as fast as I can.”
Yeah, okay, he had a point.
“We need to get moving. They’ll be after us soon. The sooner we disappear from here, the sooner—”
Elizabeth grabbed his arm. “They aren’t going to think you died. Not you.” Her gaze swung to Flynn. “Not either of you. And it doesn’t matter how fast or how far you run, they’ll find you.”
Flynn’s shoulders straightened. “No, they won’t. They aren’t dragging me back into the ground, into their damn facility to be their attack dog. They won’t—”
“They have a tracking device on you. On you both.” She licked lips that were desert dry. “As long as that device is on you, they can figure out where you went.”
Sawyer pulled her closer. “What device?”
“Wright said that a tracker was implanted on all of the test subjects, hidden beneath scars that you already had. The metal band that you wore for missions, that was just—it was a bomb. It was designed to be a back-up plan in case you ever went rogue.”
“We’re definitely fucking rogue,” Flynn snarled.
Beside him, Cecelia flinched.
“You have to get the tracking devices out.” Running would do no good while the trackers were under Sawyer’s and Flynn’s skin.
Sawyer stalked away from her, heading back toward the chopper.
She stood there, uncertain, and then she saw him scavenging inside. He pulled up a dark backpack. She caught the gleam of a blade. The rough form of a gun. And—
The laptop. Sawyer had just shoved it aside while he searched but she rushed forward. Her steps were uncertain at first and she felt a bit dizzy, but she staggered toward him and grabbed for the laptop.
“The thing is blown to hell,” Sawyer told her as he turned away from the chopper. “Leave it.”
It did look as if it had been to hell and back but… “I have a friend who might be able to retrieve the data on here. This is Landon’s computer. Every secret he has could be on this machine.” She wasn’t just going to let it go. “It’s important. We need it.”
He stared at her a moment, then gave a hard nod. And he offered her a knife.
She clutched the laptop tighter as she eyed the weapon. “What do you want me to do with that?” But she had a sinking feeling in her gut.
“Find the tracking device. Cut it out of me.” He pulled the laptop from her and shoved it into the backpack.
With shaking fingers, she took the knife from him. “But we don’t know where the tracker is.” Big problem.
“Then you’ll just keep cutting until you find it.”
Oh, no, she wouldn’t.
They hurried away from the wreckage, moving to the shelter of a small patch of nearby trees. Narrow trees that had sprouted in the middle of that rough, red terrain. The night was lit by the full moon’s glow. It hung, heavy and low, in the sky.
Sawyer dropped the pack and stripped off his shirt. He let it hit the ground. “Doc, you help me. Cecelia, you get the tracker out of Flynn.”
Flynn already had a knife in his hand that he was offering to Cecelia. She stared at the weapon in absolute horror. “I don’t like knives,” Cecelia whispered.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like having a tracker under my skin or being a freaking test rat for the U.S. government, so looks like we’re both dealing with unfortunate shit today.” He pushed the knife toward her. “Take it.”
She didn’t. Cecelia backed up a step.
“Come on,” Flynn urged her. “Let’s just check and—”
Cecelia was adamantly shaking her head. “I don’t like knives.”
When she was fifteen, she was taken right off the street. Elizabeth remembered what Landon had told her about Cecelia’s past. Oh, damn. “I’ll do it!” Elizabeth cried out. “I’ll get it from both of you.”
Flynn frowned at her.
“Don’t make Cecelia do it, okay? I’ve got this.”
Flynn focused back on Cecelia and finally seemed to notice that she was staring at the knife with a kind of numb horror on her face. “Cece?”
“The last time I used a knife like that…I killed a man.”
Flynn’s brows shot up.
“I just…” Cecelia’s lips trembled. “I really don’t like knives.”
Flynn considered Cecelia a moment. “I can cut it out myself.”
He couldn’t just start cutting into himself. They had to think this through. “L-look for a rougher ridge in a scar you have. The tracker will be small, but near the surface of your skin so you shouldn’t have to cut far to get it out.” Elizabeth bit her lip. “If you guys heal as fast as you say…” And, obviously, they did. They’d just survived a helicopter crash! “Then Landon could have put the tracker in when he was doing another exam on you, and you never would have known.”
Flynn flipped the knife in his hand. “I’ll find it.” He turned on his heel. “Think I’ll get a little space while I do the job.”
He walked into the darkness. Cecelia stared after him a moment, then she hurried forward as she called, “Flynn! Wait! I-I’ll help, but just don’t give me the knife.”
Their steps faded away.
Elizabeth turned her head and found Sawyer staring at her. She swallowed. The knife was still gripped in her hand. “How long do you think we have—”
“Before a team comes after us? Not damn long, so we need to hurry. There’s not a lot of cover in this desert, and they’ll use an air team to do the sweep.”
She was actually surprised that she hadn’t already heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. But…
Sawyer lifted his hands and began sliding them over the scars on his chest. “A ridge, huh? I think that will be hard to find. I can—”
Her left hand flew out—the hand not holding the knife—and her fingers caught his. “I can find it.” She would find it. He stared down at her. So big and dangerous in the dark. Maybe she should be running from him, but she wasn’t. She’d gone to Lazarus with the express plan of freeing Sawyer. She just hadn’t realized what a nightmare she’d find inside the facility.
I should have known, though.
His fingers slid away from hers. His hands dropped to his side. She eased out a slow breath, and then her fingers were sliding lightly over his skin. First over the scar that slid too close to his heart. She could feel the rush of his heartbeat beneath her touch. So fast and strong. Heat pulsed from his skin as her fingers drifted down. More scars slid over his ribs.
“I’m fucking covered in scars,” he growled, voice deeper than before. “Don’t even know where most of them came from.”
Her touch stilled on the scars over his ribs. “You got these when you rescued a missionary off the coast of Africa. He’d been taken by a drug lord there, tortured, held for ransom. He’d been in captivity for forty-five days.” Her fingers slid away from the scars. “You got him out within four hours of landing at the drop site.”
He stiffened.
She touched the jagged line on his stomach. “This was a knife fight. Not one you got from a battle in some distant land. You got this when you were in high school, and a man in an alley tried to rob your dad.”
“What?”
“You always fought back. That’s just who you were.” Her hand moved to the next scar. “And this—”
“Where is my father?” There was pain in his voice.
And it hurt her to tell him, “I’m sorry, Sawyer. He died last year. You were…you were with him when he passed.” A long battle with cancer had taken his father. Sawyer had told her that story, when they’d been together one night, wrapped up tight in each other’s arms.
“My mother?”
“She died when you were a child.”
Elizabeth traced the scar right next to his belly button. Frowned. Traced again—
“Any other family?” Now his voice was flat.
“No. You were an only child.” She could feel a hardness in that scar. Right at the tip. It was thicker there than it had been below. She knew this scar, too. Another reminder from a knife attack. He’d gotten this wound in Russia, during his early SEAL days, and she remembered that the scar had been thicker at the bottom. Because the guy who’d attacked Sawyer had twisted the blade. But the scar was different now. The bottom edge wasn’t the widest point of the scar. The top was bigger, rougher. Was the tracker right there?
“No family.” His muscles had tensed even more. “Then I guess there was no one to miss me when I vanished.”
She looked up at him. “Someone missed you.” I did. Every single day. “I…I think I found the tracker. It’s going to hurt when I slice into you—”
“Do it.”
Using the tip of the blade, she cut into his skin. The blood pulsed out and she clenched her teeth as she had to dig a little deeper, make the entrance cut wider. Then she pressed her fingers against the small opening, she caught the tip of the tracker…
“Get it out,” Sawyer snapped.
She pulled it out. The device was covered in his blood and smaller than the length of her pinky fingernail.
Sawyer took it from her, and he dropped it to the ground. He smashed his foot on it, obliterating the tracker. Freeing him.
“Got mine, One,” Flynn called. “The bitch is out!”
She didn’t look over her shoulder at him. Sawyer was still in front of her, bleeding but not seeming to care about his wound at all. “Now they can’t find you.”
This was it. She was going to watch him walk away. He would be free.
She motioned toward the mountains that waited in the distance. “I hope the world is everything you want it to be.”
He frowned at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
Uh, it meant… “Go. You and Flynn are far faster than Cecelia and me. You can disappear long before any search party arrives.” She dropped the knife and it clattered to the ground. Elizabeth’s shaking fingers—covered with his blood now—fisted. “I swore I’d get you out.” She had to force herself to speak the words. “I wasn’t going to leave you with them. I don’t care about any video Landon showed me, I know you didn’t volunteer. It wasn’t your choice, and I wasn’t going to leave you there.” Locked away. She wanted to say so much more.
Instead, she turned away from him. It would be easier if she didn’t see him leave.
“Why?” The one word was guttural.
She looked straight ahead and saw Cecelia staring at her. Was there pity on the other woman’s face? Elizabeth couldn’t tell, not for sure. That was good, though, she’d never liked pity.
But it wasn’t the time for lies. Elizabeth didn’t look back at Sawyer as she said, “Because I loved Sawyer Cage.” She’d loved him and lost him.
Only now, finally, she might be able to sleep at night. Sleep and not wake up with nightmares over and over again.
Once, she’d had terrible dreams about her family. Her mother and father. Their deaths. Being trapped with them.
Then she’d lost Sawyer, and a new terror had claimed her nights. Twisted dreams of him, being trapped, experimented on, of him being on an exam table and calling for her.
Maybe that dream would stop now. Maybe not.
His hand closed around her shoulder. She felt his touch all the way to her core. “The man you loved died.”
Her eyes closed. “Yes, and his death ripped out my heart.”
He spun her toward him. “I’m right fucking here.”
She could only stare at him. He’d jerked on his shirt and his blood dotted the front. He’d already slung the backpack over one of his shoulders.
“You think I’m not the same? You think because of the poison in my head, you think because of the things they did to me that I can’t ever be that man again?”
“Sawyer—”
“Whatever I am now, whoever I am, know this…you are mine. I knew it from the first moment I saw you. I just have to prove it to you.” He lifted her into his arms. “And I’m not leaving you behind. That shit isn’t happening. You’re staying with me. I’m not abandoning you in the desert. I’m getting you to safety.”
“But you’re faster without—”
“I will not be without you.” Low, rasping. “I will…not.”
She stared into his eyes.
“Two—Flynn,” Sawyer corrected quickly. “Get your shrink. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
Elizabeth’s head turned to see Flynn scoop Cecelia into his arms. “Hold on, Cece,” he told her softly. “Things are about to move fast.”