by Susan Stoker
Midas pressed his lips together. Slate was right. They’d even talked about this exact thing, coincidence, more than once. What were the odds he’d be sent in to rescue someone he’d known in his youth? Slim to none.
“What can it hurt to get her email?” Slate asked. “I don’t know if she has a phone, but if she does, exchange numbers as well.”
“She works for an international aid organization,” Midas protested. “It’s bad enough that my job takes me all over the world, but it’s not like I can move to Africa to be with her if we click,” he argued, doing his best to talk himself out of getting in any deeper with the intriguing woman upstairs.
“Excuses,” Slate said unsympathetically. “If she’s the one for you, she’s the one for you. You’ll figure out a way to make it work.”
“Fuck, you’re annoying,” Midas told his friend. “I can’t wait until you meet someone and come up with all sorts of reasons why you can’t be with her.”
“That’s highly unlikely. I’m a grump who sees the worst in humanity. And unlike you, I’m cool with keeping things casual with a woman I’m seeing. I’m not looking for some deep connection and wanting to immediately move a chick in with me and get married.”
“You meet the right woman, you might change your mind,” Midas said.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Slate told him.
“Hey guys,” Jag said as he walked toward them. “I’ve been trying to get you on our radios for a few minutes.”
“Dammit! These things are a piece of shit,” Slate said, shaking his head and tapping the receiver in his ear. “I knew we should’ve brought the longer-range radios.”
“Too late now,” Jag said.
“What’s up?” Midas asked.
“Looks like we’ve got about an hour before we’ll be heading out,” Jag said. “Dagmar’s physician finally gave the green light to move him.”
“We going to the ship?” Midas asked. “Or the airstrip?”
“The airstrip,” Jag said. “Magnus Brander finally got his way, and he’s paying a shitload of money to get his brother out of here. The helo will pick us up there and take us to the ship, then we’ll head home shortly thereafter. How’s Lexie?”
“She’s good. Sleeping upstairs in an examination room. I’ll wake her up in about forty-five minutes and we’ll meet you guys down here so we can head out. Any issues from the locals?”
“Not so far,” Jag said. “Pid and Aleck are keeping their eye on the neighborhood. I think we got Dagmar and Lexie inside before most people realized we were here.”
“I’m assuming not all the kidnappers were at camp,” Slate added. “We had intel that there were around eighteen people coming and going from the desert. We only took out about a dozen. We need to keep our wits about us until we go wheels up.”
Midas and Jag both nodded.
“Yeah, that’s why Aleck and Pid are keeping watch,” Jag said.
Feeling uneasy about Lexie being left on her own, Midas said, “I’m headed back upstairs. Let me know if the timetable gets moved. The sooner we’re out of here, the better I’ll feel.”
“Same,” Slate said.
Midas didn’t even tease his friend about his legendary impatience. Right about now, he was one hundred percent in tune with Slate. He gave his friends a chin lift and headed for the stairs.
He slipped into Lexie’s room, nodded at the nurse as she left, and was relieved to see Lexie right where he’d left her. She’d turned onto her side and the arm with the IV was hanging over the edge of the table. Her hair was mostly dry now, and even more out of control than it had been when he’d first seen her in the desert.
Midas smiled. He had no idea why he found her hair so fascinating. Maybe because it was wild and crazy, and she was anything but. It was an odd dichotomy.
He pulled a chair closer to the bed, putting himself between Lexie and the door, and stared at the woman on the table as she slept.
What was it about her that drew him so unexpectedly? It made no sense. He didn’t even really know her. But what he’d learned since seeing her lying on a thin pallet in the desert was enough for him to want to know more.
He gave some thought to how they might continue to get reacquainted, but everything his mind came up with seemed flimsy. He had no idea what she was planning to do once they got to the US Navy ship. He assumed she’d fly back to the States until Food For All assigned her another post. Midas didn’t know nearly enough about the organization to guess how many locations they might have around the world. Would Lexie head back to Africa? South America? The Caribbean? There were so many people who needed assistance, she could literally be sent anywhere.
And he’d be in Hawaii, where he was stationed. Paradise. Of course, there were people who were in need there too, but he didn’t imagine Hawaii was on Food For All’s short list for sending people to help.
Sighing, Midas shook his head. He couldn’t think of how in the world he and Lexie would ever be able to have a real relationship…not that he had any idea she’d even be interested.
Although…he’d seen the way she’d studied him earlier.
He couldn’t believe he’d been about to kiss her. Talk about inappropriate.
No, it wasn’t smart to keep in touch with Lexie after they got out of here. It was too complicated. He still had quite a few years in the Navy and he couldn’t imagine, after years of traveling around the world, that Lexie would want to settle down in one place. She’d be bored in a week.
Feeling depressed over a relationship that was ending before it had even started, Midas closed his eyes and scooted down in the chair so he could rest his head on the back. He crossed his feet at the ankles and did his best to turn off his mind.
A loud bang jerked Midas out of his catnap fifteen minutes later.
He bolted upright in the chair and cocked his head, trying to figure out what it was that had woken him.
When a second boom quickly sounded, Midas moved. He jumped to his feet and was by Lexie’s side in a heartbeat.
“Lex? Wake up!” he said in a low, urgent tone.
Her eyes immediately popped open and she stared up at him. “What’s wrong?”
Midas was about to pull her to her feet when he saw the IV sticking out of her arm. He swore. “Stay still for a second,” he ordered.
Lexie nodded without hesitation. He had a moment to be grateful that she wasn’t asking him a million questions as he reached for the IV he’d put in not too long ago. She hadn’t gotten as much of the saline solution into her body as he would’ve liked, but it couldn’t be helped. He quickly slid the needle out of her arm and pressed hard on the small puncture wound with his thumb, even as he was pulling her into a sitting position.
He could hear yelling now. It was muffled, coming from somewhere within the hospital. He didn’t know how much time they had, but he guessed it wasn’t much.
“We need to get out of here,” he told Lexie.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Fuck, Midas was impressed. She wasn’t panicking. He could see she was scared—her eyes had dilated and she was breathing a bit too fast—but she was holding it together.
He picked up her hand and pressed it over the small wound on her inner arm. “It’ll stop bleeding soon, but for now, keep pressure on it.”
Lexie nodded as he took her free hand and headed for the door. He listened for a moment, then eased it open a crack. Hearing men yelling from the stairway, he immediately closed it again. Without a word, he towed Lexie toward the window.
“Midas?”
“Something’s wrong,” he said, stating the obvious. “I haven’t heard from my team, but I’m guessing the missing kidnappers figured out where you and Dagmar were taken, and they aren’t happy.”
“Do you think they’re okay?” she asked.
“The kidnappers?” Midas asked in confusion as he concentrated on opening the window and formulating an escape plan.
“No. Your friends. And Dagmar.”
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“They’re fine,” Midas told her. In actuality, he had no idea what was happening downstairs in the hospital. He wasn’t getting any intel through his radio, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He needed to get Lexie out and away from whoever was currently taking over the hospital. And he figured he had about three minutes, tops, before the men in the stairwell opened the exam room door in the search for their missing hostages.
Looking out the window, Midas was relieved to see a gutter downspout right outside the window. He turned to Lexie. “I’ll go first. All you need to do is stand on the small ledge outside the window, shimmy over to the gutter and then slide down. Okay?”
Lexie peered around him out the window, then looked back at him with huge hazel eyes. “Are you crazy?” she asked.
“No. I’ll be at the bottom to catch you and to slow your descent.”
“Midas, that’s not a fireman’s pole or anything. It’s a freaking gutter. There’s nothing to hold on to!”
Midas took her head in his hands and tilted her face up to his. “You can do this, Lex. You have to do this. I don’t know who those men are, yelling in the stairwell, but I’m assuming by the blasts I heard that they aren’t here to pass out lollipops and spread good cheer. Yes, I’ve got a rifle, but I don’t have unlimited ammo. We have to get out of here. I will not let them get their hands on you again. Understand?”
She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, then nodded.
“Okay?” he asked, trying not to be impatient, even though he knew every second counted. They needed to be out of here by the time the men in the hallway got to this room.
“Okay. I’ve always wanted to try pole dancing. This is kinda like that.”
It wasn’t, but he didn’t contradict her or laugh at her joke. “Watch me, then do exactly what I do. We’ve got this.”
She nodded, and Midas didn’t waste any more time. He hated leaving her in the room, but they couldn’t go out the window at the same time. He regretted that they were on the second floor, but at least if either of them fell, it wouldn’t kill them.
Ducking, Midas threw one leg over the windowsill and stepped out. The ledge was only about three inches wide, but that was enough space for him to quickly inch along and grab the gutter.
“Now, Lex. Come on,” he urged as he did his best to brace his boots against the slippery metal downspout.
He waited until Lexie was on the windowsill before letting gravity do its thing. He slid downward quickly, in a semi-controlled manner, until his feet hit the ground.
Immediately looking up, he saw Lexie doing her best to cling to the gutter. He mentally swore when he saw her bare feet. Fuck. She’d only had on a pair of flip-flops when they’d rescued her from the desert, but those would have been better than nothing right about now. He hadn’t even thought about grabbing them for her; he was too concerned about getting her out of the room.
It couldn’t be helped now. He’d find something for her feet later. First things first.
“Do it,” he called out in a loud whisper. The hair on the back of Midas’s neck was sticking straight up and he felt like a sitting duck. The exam room faced an alley, which at the moment was empty, but he knew it wouldn’t be for long. He and Lexie needed to get the hell out of there and find some cover.
Amazingly, Lexie’s bare feet were actually a good thing. Her skin helped her cling to the gutter, making her descent painfully slow. When she was within reach, Midas reached up and snatched her off the side of the building. He wanted to carry her—oh, how he hated to put her clean bare feet down in the dirt of the alley—but he needed his hands free to protect them both as they fled.
“Good?” he asked.
Lexie nodded.
Without another word, Midas hooked her fingers in the waistband of his pants and headed down the alley, away from the front of the hospital. Any second, he expected to hear someone yelling at them from one of the windows on the second floor, but miraculously, they made it to the end of the alley undetected.
But they didn’t exactly blend in. Two white people, in a predominantly black neighborhood, stood out like a sore thumb. And the fact that he was dressed in desert fatigues and had a rifle slung over his shoulder didn’t exactly help matters either. Everyone they passed would be able to remember them easily, and tell anyone who might be hunting for them which direction they’d gone.
“This is two, anyone got ears?” Midas said into the mic of the radio as he and Lexie made their way deeper into the neighborhood around the hospital.
Silence greeted him. Shit.
They’d known these radios weren’t top of the line before they’d left the States, but no one had expected them to completely go tits up in the middle of the op. Midas wasn’t too worried. His team wouldn’t leave without him and Lexie, and they’d talked enough about backup plans to their backup plans to know what to do, but he hated feeling cut off from his friends.
Midas split his attention between where they were going and Lexie. The streets and alleys they were winding through were dirt covered, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t broken glass and other things that could cut her feet. He also hated that she hadn’t gotten as much of the IV into her system as he’d hoped. Fuck, the woman had just been held hostage for months, and now they were on the run from who knew what.
But Midas was sure that if they’d stayed in that hospital room, they’d both probably be dead. Those blasts he’d heard were explosions. And when he’d looked down the alley after descending the gutter, he’d seen smoke rising from the front of the building.
He prayed his team was all right, but his mission was Lexie. Rescuing her had been the objective from the beginning, and nothing had changed.
Midas stopped at the end of another alley and peered around the corner, only to swear under his breath and turn back the way they came.
“What? What did you see?” Lexie asked as she followed him.
“Nothing good,” he said grimly.
He’d seen half a dozen men coming down the street toward the alley. All six held semi-automatic rifles and didn’t look happy. There was more and more yelling coming from all around them, as well. It sounded like the men were riling up their neighbors. He had no way to know for sure if these were allies of the kidnappers, but Midas had no desire to face off against a bunch of armed men, for any reason.
He frowned as he tried to think of where to go, but the number of shouting voices around them seemed to be increasing by the minute.
This wasn’t good. Not good at all. The last thing they needed was to be cornered. Midas couldn’t help but think about Mogadishu once more. The visions of what mob mentality had done to the special forces men and pilots who’d been trapped in the city flashed through his mind.
As he rushed Lexie down another narrow alley, a door suddenly opened, and Midas came to an abrupt stop. He felt Lexie run into his back, but held his ground as he stared at the dark-skinned woman who’d opened the door.
He and the woman locked gazes for what seemed like an eternity before Lexie peeked out from behind him and said, “Astur?”
“Lexie?” the woman asked.
Before Midas could stop her, Lexie had rushed around him and was hugging the woman. “Oh my gosh! It’s so good to see you!”
The woman’s gaze flicked back to Midas’s and then down the alley, when they heard more men yelling.
Without a word, Astur grabbed Lexie’s arm and pulled her toward the door she’d come out of.
Midas wasn’t about to let the women out of his sight, and he followed close behind. He didn’t mind going inside, it would hide them from the growing mob in the streets—including the armed men he was more and more certain were hunting for Lexie—but he had no idea if they were jumping out of the pan and into the fire.
The door shut behind them, and Midas realized they were in the back room of some sort of store.
“Trouble you in,” Astur said to Lexie.
She scrunched her nose and nodded.
“Hide. Here,” Astur said.
“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Lexie said immediately. “If we can cut through your store and out the front, we’ll be fine.”
“No fine,” Astur said with a shake of her head. “More men. Look for Americans. Heard them.”
“Shit,” Lexie swore. She looked up at Midas. “What are we going to do? Maybe you should just go. They’re looking for me, not you. You can get back to your team and…” Her voice trailed off.
It didn’t matter what she was going to say. He wasn’t leaving her. No way in hell. “I’m not leaving,” he said sternly.
“Hide here,” Astur repeated. “I work at store. No one think you here.”
Midas studied her. He had no idea who this woman was. But he didn’t see any malice in her eyes. If anything, he saw concern. Not for him, but for Lexie. That didn’t surprise him.
She moved, pushing Lexie to the side and crouching down by the door they’d just entered. She tugged at the boards near their feet until a small space was revealed. It was some sort of storage space, most likely, and Midas could see a few stray cans and some flat cardboard boxes at the bottom, lying in the dirt.
“You hide here,” Astur said, standing and pointing into the hole.
Lexie looked up at him again, and Midas hated the uncertainty on her face. He wasn’t so sure about this either. He didn’t know this Astur woman; for all he knew, she was working with the men looking for them and the second they were in the hole, she’d go outside and lead the group straight to them.
More yelling sounded outside the shop in the alleyway, and Lexie’s eyes got wide. “I don’t think we’ll both fit in there,” she whispered.
“We’ll fit,” Midas said, making a decision. It would be tight, that was for sure. He wasn’t exactly small, and as the tallest man on the team, this was the least ideal situation for him to be in. But if it meant keeping Lexie safe, he’d do whatever it took.