TWO SHOTS RANG OUT.
His hand gripping my arm hard, dragging me down the plank off the ship, the asshole Javier stopped midstep and looked up.
A third shot fired.
Instinct kicked in, and I hit the deck.
Releasing my arm, Javier followed my drop. Gunfire erupted, echoing all around the port, and I panicked. Turning toward Javier, opening my mouth to tell him to cut my taped wrists so I could run, I fucking froze.
A bullet hole, dead center of his forehead, stared at me like a third eye.
“Ohhh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” Rolling, pushing with my feet, I scrambled backward, not even realizing I was heading back up the ramp toward the ship.
Heavy footsteps shook the plank, the vibration rattling my entire body before I lifted my head.
Then I was looking at a dream.
Callan.
My Callan.
A giant rifle in his hands, wearing beige camouflage pants and a tight T-shirt with a black vest over it, he slipped an arm through a shoulder strap on his gun as he rushed toward me, swinging the weapon to his back.
Without breaking stride, he scooped me up into his arms and was running back down the plank. Running.
The smell of forest, his forest smell, hit me in the chest, followed by metal and exertion and man, and I wanted to cry with the kind of relief that transcends joy, but nothing worked.
My mouth opened, but no words came out. My arms tingled, but I couldn’t move them. My feet dangled, hitting his thigh with every step he ran, but I couldn’t hold them still. Every muscle in my body on strike, I simply stared at my hero as he ran us into a maze of shipping containers.
Weaving in and out of the aisles, tilting his head as if he were listening to the gunfire, he didn’t stop until the sound of shots dulled, and I knew he’d put distance between us and the firefight.
Angled in a narrow space between two stacks of cargo containers, he paused to gently set me down and reach into a cargo pocket in his pants for a hunting knife. Anger contorting his entire expression as his eyes roamed over my face, he cut the tape from my wrists, then touched something in his ear and whispered, “I’m on the north end. I need medical supplies and clearance to the vehicles.”
I didn’t care about his expression. He could look as angry as he wanted to. He’d come for me. Oh my God, he came for me.
“Callan.” My mouth parched, my soul rejoicing, my voice broke. But I had to know about the other ones. “Did you get the other girls out? There were five more.”
Gunfire rained down in the distance like a bad movie set as he nodded once then put a finger to my lips.
Relief surged despite the cloying, oppressive heat that made the vile blood all over my body sticky.
Callan’s eyebrows drew even tighter together as his gaze drifted. “Repeat,” he whispered, a second before swinging his rifle around. Shoving me back with one hand, he used the business end of the gun to point around the side of the container and look through the scope.
A second later, Callan lowered his gun and stepped back as a dark-haired man who was a wall of muscle came around the corner, weapon drawn. When he saw me, he lowered his gun and frowned.
“Madre de Dios.” The man’s brown eyes scanned my length, stopping at my knees. “You seriously injured, chica?” Looking back up, he caught my chin and gently turned my head to the side. “How hard did you get hit?”
Before I could form the words to ask who he was, Callan grabbed his wrist.
The dark-haired man dropped his hand from my chin as another man came running around the corner.
Blond and muscled to hell, but not as much as Callan and the dark-haired man, the new guy had a rifle in one hand and a handgun in the other like he’d been double firing. Holstering his handgun and swinging the strap of his rifle over his shoulder, he stepped right up to me.
A grin that didn’t reach his eyes painted on his face, he winked at me. “You start the party without me, darlin’?”
Callan glared at him.
The blond man held his hands up. “All right, all right, nothin’ doin’, Cult Boy. Just checkin’ her out.” His expression turned deadly serious as he reached in a cargo pocket on his pants and came away with a bottle of water. Looking at my face, he uncapped the water. “Your teeth okay, darlin’? Can you still move your jaw?”
Callan knew these men? “I’m fine.” Were they from the compound? I looked to Callan for an explanation, but his expression was murderous, his jaw was locked, and he wasn’t saying a word.
The blond man chuckled. “Tough as nails, darlin’. No wonder Cult Boy here is so smitten.” He glanced over his shoulder at Callan. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of her.”
Before I could ask him who the hell he was and tell him he better never call Callan Cult Boy again, he dropped to a squat and poured water over my knees. The sting worse than when the asshole had slapped me in the face, I let out an involuntary half yelp, half cry.
Callan and the dark-haired man instantly moved at the same time. Quicker than I could blink, they both had their weapons drawn and were on opposite sides of the container.
Just as the blond man lifted a finger to his lips, gunfire started plunking against the container we were standing behind.
Callan and the dark-haired man started firing back.
“And we’re outta time, darlin’.” The blond man handed me the rest of the water, pulled a roll of gauze out of another pocket and made quick work of wrapping my knees. “Where else you hurt?” He was squatting in front of me, casually asking the question like there wasn’t a gunfight going on around us that sounded like mini explosions every time a bullet hit one of the containers.
“I’m good, I’m good.” I tried to brush his hands away but flinched when I bent over. My back still smarting, I breathed through my teeth. “I’m fine.”
His eyes narrowed. “Back or ribs?”
I stood upright, barely, and gulped the last of the water. “Both. But I’m fine.”
Without permission, he gripped the ripped hem of my dress, turned me, and lifted the material in one fell swoop. Humiliation reddened my cheeks as I cried out in protest.
I could feel Callan’s gaze cut to me, but I couldn’t look at him. Horrified, violated on so many levels, I wanted to hit the blond man standing behind me, but tears welled and every muscle in my body went on instant strike.
And that pissed me off.
I’d survived being drugged and kidnapped and thrown in a damn cargo container. I’d escaped a rapist, being sold, and I’d seen two dead bodies in the span of a single day. And now I was going to cry over my stupid dress being lifted up while some man who clearly had a medical background pushed gently on my bruised ribs and back?
“You took quite a beatin’, sweetheart, but nothin’s broken.” The blond-haired man carefully lowered my dress.
Tears dripped down my cheeks, and all I could think was, What the actual fuck, Emily? Bullets were whizzing by, three men with guns who had come to my rescue surrounded me, God knew what kind of psycho sex traffickers were trying to kill us, and I was crying over my dress being lifted to my stomach?
“Talon,” the dark-haired man barked. “Cover me.”
Quick, efficient, the blond man, Talon, swung his rifle around, knelt at the end of the container and laid down fire.
The dark-haired man glanced at Callan. “Anders, I’ll cover from the top. Take her and get out. The others made it out with the other women, but our vehicle’s compromised. Back entrance to the port has a parking lot. You know how to hot-wire a car?”
Callan fired another shot then nodded once without taking his eye away from his scope.
“Good. Twenty seconds, then go.” The dark-haired man jumped up, grabbed the top of the container and pulled himself up with sheer strength.
Callan didn’t waste a second. Ripping his black vest off, he shouldered his rifle and reached for me all in one swift, graceful movement. Fitting the vest over my head in one second flat, he fixed the Velcro straps tight against my chest.
Then he was picking me up again.
I didn’t have time to protest. Not that I saw much of an option unless I wanted to run barefoot, but the bottom of my feet were a scraped mess from digging my heels in when the asshole Javier was dragging me off the boat.
One of Callan’s arms snaked under my legs, the other behind my back, and we were moving again. Except this time, he was sprinting across a paved road, heading for an open field with low vegetation.
My hands free, I wrapped my arms around his neck. But without the shock of seeing him as a buffer, every pounding step he ran, his arm bit into my sore back.
“You are in pain,” he clipped, not even out of breath.
“I’m fine.” Realizing I was holding myself rigid, I tried to relax my muscles. “You came for me.”
“Yes.”
I waited for more. The how, the why, the where, but that was all he said. “Thank you.” Two words weren’t enough, not even close, but as he ran through a field carrying me, that was all I had.
A burst of gunfire made me glance behind us. I almost wished I hadn’t. A half dozen men with automatic weapons were closing in on where we’d left Talon and the dark-haired man. I didn’t know them, or even if they were Callan’s friends, but I didn’t want them to die because of me. “The men we left, the shooters are closing in on them, and they’re outnumbered.” I didn’t want to go back. I wanted him to keep running, God, I wanted him to keep running, but I couldn’t not tell him.
“André Luna is a skilled marksman. Javier Estevez’s guards are no match.”
He knew the man’s name who’d taken me? “You know the kidnapper’s name?”
“Yes.” Grinding the single word out, his muscles bunching, his thighs carrying so much more than his weight, Callan sped up and leapt effortlessly across a small ditch.
When his feet landed on the other side, I bounced in his arms and my back jarred as my ribs smarted.
Biting down to keep from crying out, I tasted grime and filth and blood on my tongue and fresh tears sprung. Trying like mad not to cry again, I clenched my jaw and breathed through my nose, keeping the distant parking lot in my sights.
Callan held me closer. “Almost there.”
A distinctive whistling noise sailed past our heads.