Chapter Twenty-Seven
Seb tugged frantically at the alloy rope still tethering one of his arms to the post, just about breaking his damned wrist. But a few broken bones didn’t matter when Lawler had Jenna down, and all he could see was blood.
With a final vicious yank, the rope came free from the post, but still hung from his right hand. Scrambling to his feet, fighting the dizziness from blood loss and long hours of inactivity, he staggered across the few short steps separating them and then threw himself onto Lawler’s back. But it didn’t stop the traitor from plunging the knife downward for a third time. Seb shoved more of his weight into Lawler at the last second, causing him to lose balance and the blade to miss Jenna completely.
He clamped one arm around Lawler’s neck, and with the other, reached across to grab the alloy rope still trailing from his wrist. Lawler bucked beneath him, but even though the man succeeded in unbalancing him, Seb had a grip on the rope, and pulled hard around Lawler’s neck.
Everything shifted, like he was disconnecting from the reality of the moment—as though someone else tightened their hands on the rope, someone else got to their knees for more leverage and locked every muscle, simply pulling tighter as Lawler struggled against the cord cutting into his neck.
“Seb!” Jenna landed next to him, cradling her injured arm, but grabbing his biceps with the other hand. “We won. We’re both okay. You don’t have to kill him. He’ll spend the rest of his life rotting in the bottom of a UEF military prison.”
“I can’t.” The words wrenched out of him, low and ragged. “I can’t take the chance he’ll escape again. He has to pay for what he did.”
“He will.” Her fingers dug almost painfully into his upper arm as she put herself in his line of vision. “If I have to check on him every day to make sure, I will. But if you kill him like this in cold blood, you won’t ever come back from that.”
His gaze crashed into her, like an asteroid caught in the gravitational pull of a moon. And, despite the rage still slashing through his system, his grip loosened and he dropped back, landing heavily on the hard stable floor.
Jenna produced a pair of cuffs and secured Lawler’s wrists before unraveling the alloy rope from around his neck. He was barely conscious, but definitely still alive. The bruises Seb had inflicted were a lot less than what the bastard deserved.
Turning her back on the groaning traitor, Jenna shifted over to Seb. Her gaze sweeping over him, no doubt cataloging every cut, scrape, and bruise, not to mention the state of his clothes. It was like he had a huge neon sign flashing on his chest, detailing every indignity Carrie had forced onto him.
Jenna reached out, and he flinched, shocking himself almost as much as her.
“What did they do to you?” Her uneven words weren’t much above a whisper, and though he knew she only wanted to help him, it only made him feel worse.
“I didn’t tell them anything.” His tone was unreasonably defensive and angry. On some level, he was aware of it, but he was still on edge. It was going to take a while to come down.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if you did.” This time when she reached out, it was more slowly, like he was a skittish animal. Probably an accurate description of his current state.
“Yes, it would have. I’d endure anything to protect you.”
“Well, isn’t that just beautiful.” The scathing, acidic voice of Carrie came from just behind him, making every muscle in his body clench on a wave of apprehension and revulsion.
Measured footsteps preceded her as she moved into view, gun pointed at where he and Jenna were sitting on the ground.
Jenna shifted, as though she was going to launch upright. “Stanton—”
“Is dead.” Carrie focused her sights on Jenna, making her go still. “That jackass always underestimated me and today didn’t prove to be the exception. I would have been far more effective in the field than you ever were, but he could never see that.”
“Yeah, except for the part where you’re a traitor,” Jenna muttered.
Carrie grinned, as if the fact that she was a double agent was genuinely funny. “Yes, apart from that. But once I’ve disposed of you and your stick jockey here, no one will ever find out. It’s a pity, though. Your pretty-boy was so much fun to break. Maybe I’ll keep him as a pet.”
Carrie shot him a smile, making the fire of rage in his blood clash into an icy surge of loathing.
“You bitch.” Jenna was on her feet and throwing herself at Carrie before Seb could even think about grabbing her. She gripped Carrie’s wrist, forcing the gun outward. Still, it discharged, and he ducked as a spray of stray ammo cut through the stable. The gun stopped firing, only to almost immediately discharge again, and Seb rolled, nearly catching a blast in the leg. He planted himself behind a haphazard stack of barrels as the two women continued grappling over the weapon.
But Jenna seemed to have sheer enraged strength behind her and she managed to get the upper hand, propelling Carrie back into the hitching post he’d been tied to earlier. As Carrie lost her balance, Jenna wrenched the gun out of her hand and tossed it away. Even though she half went down, Carrie was scrambling right back to her feet, driving herself into Jenna. She lost some footing, but a surprise punch to Carrie’s midsection forced the other agent to back off for a second.
Seb got to his feet, listing a little from the continued dizziness, and lurched toward where the gun had landed near a dusty sack. When he was halfway across the open space, Carrie spotted him and came charging forward. She reached him as he got hands on the weapon and started to turn, using his left arm to fend her off and push her back. There was a cry of agonizing pain, and his heart plummeted into his guts, thinking Carrie had succeeded in hurting Jenna.
But when he swung around, gun held in shaking hands, Carrie was sprawled in a pile of moldy hay, prongs of a pitchfork protruding obscenely through her middle. Jenna backed up a few unsteady steps, half stumbling on a bucket before gaining sure footing.
“She fell on it.”
Carrie made a gurgling gasp, and then fell silent.
Seb released a harsh breath, as though he’d been holding too much air in his lungs for days, and let the gun drop, his arms going weak, quickly followed by the rest of his body. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, but he couldn’t say he was sorry it’d ended this way for her.
He lowered himself to the ground, every single wound on his body deciding to make themselves felt.
“Seb, oh my God.” Jenna rushed over, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Just hang on, I’ll call in a medi-evac. We’re not that far from the border, they’ll make the run.”
He shook his head, letting some of his weight sink against her. “I’m okay, I’m not seriously wounded.”
But she had her comm out. “You’re not the only one who needs immediate medical attention.”
“I know, your arm. It’s a nasty gash.” He reached up, touching her elbow and examining the slash across her forearm.
“That’ll repair easily enough. I’m talking about Lawler. He took stray fire.”
He glanced over at his former best friend to see he’d been shot at least twice in the midsection. His heart twisted. Even after everything, what that bastard had done still hurt, and a lingering echo of the friendship they’d once shared made him almost concerned for the guy’s injuries. But he pushed it away with a reminder Lawler had been a traitor.
“He’s secured. Leave him. We’ll send a team once we’re back at base. If he’s still alive, they can decide what to do with him.”
Maybe it made him a bastard—a completely mercenary one—but Lawler had brought this on himself and would have killed him if Jenna hadn’t arrived the second she did.
He got to his feet, wincing at the aches rippling through his body.
“Seb. What Carrie did…”
Something in Jenna’s tone made his heart thump. “She had her own special brand of torture that makes me feel sick thinking about it. I promise one day I’ll try to tell you everything. But she didn’t break me. I didn’t tell her anything. I’m not damaged goods.”
Her hand came up to rest in the middle of his chest, right over his pounding heart. “Even if you were broken or damaged, I wouldn’t have given up on you, and it wouldn’t change the way I feel about you.”
He didn’t have any words to respond, not any that would adequately convey how she made him feel. He cupped her face and though he still felt like hell—from the physical wounds, to Lawler’s betrayal and doubts about his own reliability as a fighter pilot—he could see the way back to himself. And it started and ended with Jenna.
“Jenna, I love you.” The words tumbled out before he’d even realized he was going to say them. “I have no idea what’s going to happen after today. I only know that I love you.”
A smile spread over her face like the sun after a week of cloudy, rainy days. “It doesn’t matter what happens, because I love you, too, Seb.”
He brushed his lips briefly over hers. But he didn’t let himself sink into it like he wanted, not when he was hurting all over and acutely aware they still needed to get back to friendly territory before they were really safe.
“Okay. Let’s get you back to the base.” She stepped to his side, then brought his arm over her shoulder. “Bren and Alpha will be glad to see you… I may have told them you were dead.”
“You did what?”
“For the record, I thought you were dead, too.” She paused to stare up at him, too many emotions in her gaze for him to read.
“Christ, Jenna. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that you got kidnapped and tortured? Explain to me how that’s your fault.” She dropped her gaze and shot an angry glare at Carrie’s lifeless body.
“You stopped me from killing Lawler so he would face justice. I only wish the same could be said for Carrie.”
She returned her attention to him. “It’s unfortunate, but watching the stupid cow fall on a pitchfork seems like a good end to my career as a CI agent.”
He tightened his arm around her. “What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged as they started a slow shuffle toward the door, every muscle in his body protesting with a symphony of aches. “Being a fighter pilot seems pretty badass.”
From the smile she sent him, he got the sense she wasn’t serious…probably.
“We couldn’t work together, it’d be impossible.”
“Why not?” She looked indignant.
“Because flying a jet into a firefight takes a huge amount of concentration. I’d hear your voice on the comms and then I’d start thinking about what we were doing the last time we were together, definitely naked, and then boom! Missile exploding in my face.”
She gave a short laugh. “Well, it wouldn’t be my problem if you couldn’t keep your thoughts on the job.”
“I could make it your problem,” he muttered, earning another laugh as they made it outside.
Jenna stiffened as they crossed the weed-choked yard toward the shuttle, where Stanton lay sprawled in the hatchway.
When they boarded the ship, she took a minute to check her former handler, but it was apparent from the vicious wounds Carrie had inflicted that the senior agent was dead. Though Seb wasn’t much help, he gave Jenna a hand shifting the body inside the atmospheric doors. She took a second to drape a tarp over Stanton, and the two of them headed for the controls.
“I’m sorry.” As the ship lifted off, he reached over to take Jenna’s hand.
She squeezed his fingers gently in return. “Stanton was my one constant for the past few years, but we never had anything more than a working relationship. He could be stubborn, and a complete ass sometimes, but he didn’t deserve an end like this. Betrayed by someone he should have been able to trust.”
He didn’t have a reply for her, instead he kept hold of her hand and settled back in his seat, taking the moments of quiet before the turbulence set in. There’d be debriefing upon debriefing and too many questions to answer. Plus, he also had that issue of leaving the Knox without permission hanging over his head.
But as long as he had Jenna at the end of it all, he’d endure the microexamination of the last few days without a complaint.