At the Edge

by Laura Griffin

  Ryan checked his watch. “Okay, we’re burning daylight. I want this girl found before nightfall. We’ve got footprints around the aircraft and a trail that disappears into the forest due east of here.”

  Ethan pulled out his GPS unit. “If we’ve got any hostiles on the island, they’re most likely camped out on the west side, near the natural harbor. From up on the ridge I spotted a couple of boats moored there.”

  Ryan leaned over Ethan’s shoulder to look. He’d definitely describe the island’s inhabitants as “hostile,” since they’d apparently shot the pilot. From the footprints, it looked like Emma Wright had headed toward the opposite side of the island. It was the best scrap of news they’d had in hours.

  Ryan looked at his men.

  “We’ll cover more ground if we search separately. Everyone goes in a different direction.”

  “I’ll head west toward that harbor,” Ethan said. “I got a bird’s-eye view already, so I have a feel for it.”

  “Jake, head north,” Ryan said. “Lucas, south. I’ll move east toward the shoreline there.”

  “We should stay off the radio,” Jake put in. “If we’re dealing with any kind of paramilitaries, they’ve probably got comms.”

  Ryan nodded. “We’ll reconnect at 1700 hours, regardless of what we find.”

  Jake frowned. “Here by the plane?”

  “No.”

  The plane was a beacon for looters and other troublemakers. Ryan nodded at a ridge over his shoulder just a few hundred feet below a hilltop that was the planned extraction point. “Top of that first ridge there. That gives us three hours of daylight. We clear?” He looked at the faces.

  “Check.”

  “Check.”

  “Roger that.”

  They slipped into the forest, instantly becoming invisible among the leaves and tree trunks. Ryan moved quietly but swiftly. This was no time for slow, deliberate steps. He had to work fast.

  Ryan pointed his footsteps downward and paralleled a rushing creek. Even dazed and confused, Emma Wright probably would have turned toward the sound of water. It was a survival instinct. And when people were tired or injured, they tended to move down, not up, letting gravity help them.

  So was this girl tired and injured? Ryan didn’t know. He only knew that she wasn’t on that plane, and the footprints in the dirt indicated that she’d survived the crash and jumped down from the fuselage. Maybe she was off somewhere hiding. He hoped to hell she hadn’t been grabbed.

  Ryan followed the stream, scanning the ground for any trace of human passage. The brush grew weedy and thick, and several times he had to backtrack to find a route. It wasn’t like he could whip out a machete and chop his way through, not if he wanted to keep his tracks covered.

  Within half an hour, he was soaked to the skin. Within ninety minutes, his socks were like sponges. Ryan glanced up at the canopy of leaves. He was losing daylight, and night came quickly in the rain forest. He should have turned around by now, but he had a better chance than anyone of finding Emma, and he couldn’t shake the certainty that she was out here somewhere.

  He stopped to drink. In this environment, his body was burning through at least two liters an hour.

  Ryan tipped his head back and guzzled water. He scanned the muddy banks of the stream, checking for footprints or handprints among the giant tree roots. A thick green pit viper slithered under a tree and disappeared.

  Another deep swig. Ryan glanced around. He slung his rifle onto his back, then crouched to refill his canteen and pop in an iodine tablet.

  The back of Ryan’s neck prickled.

  He eased his hand toward his pistol, but a low, raspy voice behind him made him go still. The words were in Tagalog, so he didn’t understand.

  But he understood the hard muzzle pressed between his shoulder blades.

  “Hands up,” the voice croaked in English now. “Slowly.”

  Slowly, Ryan lifted his hands.

  The muzzle dug into his back. “Who are you?”

  “Ryan Owen, United States Navy.” He paused. “And you’re Emma Wright.”

  FOUR

  * * *

  Her breath whooshed out behind him.

  Slowly, he turned around, and his heart damn near stopped beating.

  Holy hell.

  Her hair was a wild tangle. She was covered head to toe with mud, and only her lush pink mouth was recognizable.

  And the lethal weapon in her hand turned out to be a stick of bamboo.

  Fuck. When Ryan’s team found out, he’d never hear the end of it.

  “United States Navy?” She stepped back, wide-eyed. “I don’t—you’re American?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her gaze darted to the pistol in his thigh holster. He lifted his hands higher. She was definitely in shock, and he needed to quickly establish trust. He didn’t want her to bolt, and if she put up a fight, he’d be forced to restrain her.

  She stumbled back against a tree and slid to the ground. Tears glistened in her eyes as she blinked up at him. Tears of relief? Pain? He looked her over for any sign of injury, but it was hard to see past all the grime. He slowly lowered his arms as she stared up at him.

  She was unbelievably pretty, despite all the dirt. Or maybe because of it. She wore a V-neck T-shirt, and the mud in her cleavage had his thoughts zinging in some very hot directions.

  “How do you know my name?”

  He nodded as if it were a perfectly logical question for the moment. “They sent me here to get you.”

  ———

  “Sent you when?” she asked. Her head was still spinning. “I never even managed to get a call out.”

  “When your plane went missing.”

  Emma’s stomach clenched. She felt dizzy. “They’re dead,” she said. “All of them.”

  “I know.”

  He crouched in front of her then, getting much closer to eye level. She could tell he was trying to look nonthreatening, but everything about him looked the exact opposite. He had green and black greasepaint up to his dark hairline, and his shoulders were impossibly wide. He rested his muscular forearms on his knees in another attempt to be casual.

  “But who . . .” She still couldn’t get her thoughts straight. He’d been sent for her. “Is it just you or—”

  “Me and my team.”

  “How many—”

  “Ma’am, we’re going to have to postpone this conversation. We need to move now.” His gaze bored into hers, and his eyes were as green as the paint covering his face. She took a second to study it now, noting the harshly angled cheekbones, the strong chin. Everything about him screamed warrior, down to the nasty-looking machine gun slung over his shoulder.

  She pushed to her feet. He stood, too, towering over her. Good God, he was tall. Crouching beside the creek, he’d looked big, but now he seemed like a giant, and the stern look on his face made her nerves flutter.

  “Are you injured?” he asked.

  “I can walk on it.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” He knelt at her feet and tugged up the cuff of her pants. He studied her ankle and gave a low whistle. “That’s a beaut.” He glanced up.

  “It’s okay, really.”

  “Sit down.”

  It was an order, not a request. Emma sat down.

  He took out an olive-colored pouch from one of the many pockets on his vest. Then he pulled out a canteen—different from the one he’d been drinking from by the stream—and handed it to her.

  “When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Yesterday?” Or maybe the day before. Everything was a blur.

  She guzzled water as his big hands moved gently over her foot. She blinked down at his long, capable fingers touching her skin. A rush of heat went through her.

  “Definitely
sprained. Probably not broken, though.” He tore open a pouch and held out two white tablets that practically glowed against his grimy palm. “Aspirin. It’ll help with the swelling.”

  “Thank you,” she said with ridiculous formality. Her clothes were torn, and she was covered in jungle muck. She swallowed the pills down with a swig of water.

  “We’ll elevate it when we get to the meet point. Our corpsman will have something better for the pain.”

  She handed back the canteen. “Where’s the meet point?”

  “’Bout two clicks west, top of that ridge.” He nodded behind him. “Don’t worry, I’ll carry you.”

  She snorted. “I’m fine. I can walk on it, really.”

  His gaze met hers again. “Ma’am, we need to establish some ground rules. For your safety, I have to insist that you do what I tell you, when I tell you, without argument. Understood?”

  She stared at him.

  “We need to accomplish our objective as quickly as possible. Which means I will carry you.”

  She pursed her lips. He wanted to carry her two clicks? She didn’t know what a click was, exactly, but it sounded like a long way. And she was more than a little self-conscious about her weight.

  “Listen, I appreciate the chivalry.” She forced a smile. “But I can walk on it. Really. I’ve been doing it all day.”

  As if she hadn’t spoken, he picked up her hands and settled them on his shoulders, and she felt a flash of alarm. “Hold on to me. On three. One, two—”

  “Wait! I’m heavier than I look!”

  “—three.”

  He lifted her like she weighed nothing and heaved her over his shoulder, then clamped a forearm over the backs of her knees.

  “We good?”

  Emma couldn’t breathe. Shock had rendered her speechless, and his shoulder dug into her stomach. She blinked down from her new vantage point. His wide torso tapered into narrow hips, and she had a perfect view of his firm butt. His triceps rippled under a sheen of sweat, and Emma’s heart started to pound. His entire body was hard, sculpted muscle, and hers most definitely wasn’t.

  He adjusted her weight, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but thank God he couldn’t see. How far was a click?

  “Ma’am?”

  “We’re good,” she gasped. “And stop calling me ma’am.”

  ———

  He cut through the forest with a sure-footed stride, so quickly that Emma started to feel woozy. Or maybe it was the blood rushing to her head making her feel that way. She trained her gaze on the ground, trying to make sense of everything. Of the fact that this man had been sent for her. For them. A whole team of some sort of search-and-rescue badasses that had just . . . what? Magically appeared in the rain forest? How had they gotten here? And, more important, how were they getting out? The mere thought of any kind of flight nauseated her. She got a sour taste in the back of her throat and prayed she wasn’t going to puke all over him.

  Emma squeezed her eyes shut until the moment passed. She was being carried through the jungle. Carried. It was surreal. She was acutely aware of the hard knot of his shoulder pressing into her abdomen and the anchoring weight of his forearm against the backs of her knees. His breathing was rhythmic but not labored. He sounded like a distance runner keeping a steady pace.

  She hazarded a glimpse up at the back of his head. He had dark hair, longer than she would have expected for a military guy. Beneath the greasepaint covering his neck, she saw a strip of tanned skin. He darted a look over his shoulder.

  “You okay?”

  She managed an affirmative grunt and looked at the ground again. God, he wasn’t even winded. And they were moving fast. Much faster than she’d been going. This was definitely a more efficient way to travel, and it had the added benefit of giving her ankle a rest.

  He made a short jump and landed on a new surface, some kind of rock-covered path. And suddenly they were moving even faster, skirting between trees and branches in what looked like a dried-up creek bed. He took a long stride, almost a leap, and she grabbed the back of his vest. She gripped the pockets there and tried to lift her chest away from his back. There was no chance he could feel her nipples through the layers, but the friction was driving her crazy.

  Ryan Owen, U.S. Navy.

  Her government had sent him. A tiny aircraft had gone down in a remote rain forest, and her government had sent an entire team of people to find it. That couldn’t be a usual occurrence. Of course, the tiny aircraft had been carrying some unusual cargo—the wife of a sitting U.S. ambassador.

  And suddenly it hit her. He was a SEAL.

  She didn’t know where the thought had come from, but she somehow knew she was right. Her government had sent a team of SEALs to find her. Or, more accurately, to find Renee Conner.

  But Renee was dead.

  Emma squeezed her eyes shut again, battling another wave of nausea as the memories tumbled into her mind—Renee’s high-pitched screams, her sunglasses flying off her face, her look of stark terror as the plane went down.

  The grip on her legs tightened.

  “Hold on,” he said, and his low voice was almost a growl.

  Emma clutched his vest tighter as he grabbed hold of something and hauled them out of the creek bed. And then they were on damp soil once again, thick with leaves and vines and rotting wood. His pace slowed as he picked his way over and around the obstacles.

  Emma closed her eyes and let herself drift. She was suddenly tired, so tired it felt impossible to keep her eyes open. She let herself loosen against him and focused on his rhythmic movements, on every stride, on every ripple of muscle in his strong body. He smelled good, like man and sweat and earth, and a warm sexual awareness spread through her. She was draped over him, and with each step she could feel his muscles bunch. And that breathing . . . there was something hypnotic about it. Something strong and disciplined, and she realized with a sense of awe that he’d spent thousands and thousands of hours training and working his body to be capable of this mission.

  She inhaled his scent again and felt a surge of giddiness. She wasn’t lost anymore. She wasn’t alone and hopeless with the impenetrable darkness closing in on her.

  Ryan Owen, U.S. Navy.

  Ryan.

  How on earth had he ended up in the shadowy patch of rain forest where her plane had gone down? She tried to think about the man holding her, tried to think about him only, about this present moment, instead of all the events that lay behind her and ahead of her. But her mind was stuck on replay, and her thoughts kept circling back to that first jolt and all the terrifying seconds just before impact.

  Breathe, she told herself, gripping his jacket.

  She focused on the reassuring rhythm of his movements, his breath. She tried to think about his easy strength and confident stride. He seemed to know the way, as though he’d been here many times before, although that seemed impossible. And yet he powered forward without hesitation, locked in on some unseen goal. She didn’t fully understand how he’d gotten here, but she wouldn’t let herself question it right now. She needed to focus on survival.

  A long stride, and then he stopped. Emma lifted her head.

  “What—”

  He gave the back of her leg a pat. “We’re here.”

  FIVE

  * * *

  Ryan got her settled against a tree with her injured foot propped on the sat-phone case. The others hadn’t shown up yet, so he got started on some first aid. He didn’t have Jake’s training, but he could handle the basics.

  He took her hand, and she looked up, startled. “You didn’t tell me about this,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything as he spread open her fingers. The cut at the base of her thumb was oozing pus. “It’s not deep, really,” she said.

  “Deep doesn’t matter.” He doused water over it. “It could get infecte
d out here, and then you have a problem.” He handed her the canteen, and she took a long sip.

  She froze, and Ryan went on instant alert. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  He followed her gaze to a nearby tree. “Giant tarantula.” He returned his attention to her cut, squeezing some antiseptic ointment on it. “Don’t worry. They’re venomous but not aggressive.”

  She bit her lip, and he tried not to think about those perfect white teeth against that pretty pink mouth. He rummaged through his kit, and she let out another gasp.

  “Is that a wet wipe?” She snatched up the package.

  “Antiseptic towelette.”

  She tore into it and made a soft, breathy sound as she closed her eyes and rubbed it over her nose and cheeks, a blissed-out expression on her face.

  “Oh my God, this is heaven.”

  Heaven. Right.

  “I haven’t been clean in days.”

  She got some of the dirt off, but nothing short of a full-on shower was going to get her clean. And great. Now he had that image to deal with, Emma Wright standing naked under a steamy spray. What the hell was he doing picturing her naked?

  He tried a different image, but the problem was that her clothes were good, too. She wore a V-neck T-shirt that had once been blue, tan-colored cargo pants, and canvas tennis shoes. The clothes made sense for the climate, but they were much too sexy to be called sensible. The cargo pants were definitely a woman’s style, stopping below the knee, and the back pockets accentuated a very shapely ass that he’d been trying hard to ignore ever since he’d heaved her over his shoulder.

  Ryan had hauled plenty of guys around in a fireman’s carry, but this was different. Just slightly. Having Emma Wright’s world-class breasts pressed against him was a little distracting.

  He hazarded a glance at her as he took out a bandage. Luckily, she still seemed intent on the spider. She hadn’t complained, though. He had to give her points for that.