Duty to Defend

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  Jax’s guts tore. A wail rent his throat. He couldn’t do this again—lose someone he loved to an evil man’s attack.

  Loved? Where had that come from?

  No time for navel-gazing. The aerial assault had driven them to ground. The foot soldiers would be on the way.

  Jax grabbed his pistol and stuck it into his shoulder holster. He shoved his door open and climbed out onto the loamy-smelling forest floor. Eyes adjusting, he scanned his environment. Nothing but trees in sight, but by the sound of it, the chopper still hovered overhead. No doubt marking the spot for their buddies. The activity would draw the attention of law enforcement, too, but Daci and he couldn’t wait to see who arrived first.

  Jax hurried around the vehicle and pulled Daci’s door open. Her torso tumbled sideways into his arms. He caught her and wrapped his arms around her. A peach scent from her hair teased his nostrils.

  “Hang in there, sweetheart.”

  He reached across her lap, undid her seat belt and lifted her from the car, allowing her service pistol to thump to the ground. She was in no condition to use it anyway. Kneeling, he kept an arm around her head and trunk, but laid her lower body on the ground. His gaze sought for the source of the blood.

  There! A gash in the side of her head just below the temple. Not a bullet wound. Either a piece of flying glass had grazed her, or her head had slammed against the passenger-side window during their hectic descent into the ravine. Not a life-threatening injury, and the bleeding had already stopped on its own. The jouncing of her tender insides had probably done more damage than this small cut.

  She stirred in his arms and groaned. Then her eyes popped open. Those deep brown depths engulfed him.

  A trembling smile curved her lips. She lifted a hand and cupped his cheek. The touch sent rockets caroming around his insides.

  “Did someone call me sweetheart?”

  Nine

  Gazing into Jax’s concerned face hovering so near her own, Daci’s heart danced to a song her sensible mind was powerless to turn off or tune out. So what if falling for this man was a bad idea. Her tender middle and pounding head squawked about the recent abuse they had suffered, but surely one kiss from him would be like healing balm.

  His gaze darkened, and his face hovered over hers, drawing closer...closer. A thrill shivered through her. She shut her eyes, anticipating the touch of his lips on hers.

  In the distance, a twig snapped and they both jerked. Daci’s eyes sprang wide open. Jax’s head went up, nostrils flared, gaze seeking, like a stag that had been alerted to danger. Had an innocent animal made that noise or a hunter after human prey?

  “We need to go,” he whispered.

  “I know.”

  Did as much regret tinge her voice as lurked behind the gaze he turned upon her?

  His focus shifted, and he snatched something from the ground. Her service pistol.

  “I’m carrying this.” He tucked it into the waistband of his pants. “Are you able to walk?”

  “Watch me.” Daci gritted her teeth against the pain as Jax helped her to her feet. “We don’t have far to go. This way.” She pointed up the ravine.

  “Lean on me, then.”

  Walking quickly, sometimes stumbling against roots and stones hidden by the leaf mulch, sometimes stepping over fallen logs, they put distance between themselves and the disabled vehicle—the first spot pursuers would look for them. Daci’s ears sought telltale signs of that pursuit, but found only the swish of the breeze playing among the leaves and the pat-pat of their footfalls against the damp earth.

  Pain and exhaustion clouded her brain, but she shook them away. She had to remain alert.

  “There!” She leaned against Jax’s supporting arm and pointed to the side of the ravine.

  He stopped abruptly. She wobbled on her feet, and he steadied her.

  “There where?” His eyebrows went up. “I don’t see anything but a bunch of ivy creepers dangling off the end of a rock ledge.”

  “Good. I’m glad this spot hasn’t changed. That’s all our enemies will see if we slip carefully behind the veil of creepers, disturbing them as little as possible. Let me go first.”

  His arm tightened around her shoulders. “We’re not going to take cover behind a few flimsy vines.”

  “No, we’re not.” She grinned up at him. “Trust me again.”

  He groaned. “Do I have a choice, mystery woman?”

  A soft giggle left her throat, abruptly stilled by the sound of a dull thump and a snarled curse somewhere back along their trail. Another voice shushed the foul mouth. Definitely enemies, not law enforcement. Allies would be calling their names, not attempting stealth.

  “Methinks our hunters are more at home in the urban jungle than the real woods,” she whispered, and left the comfort of Jax’s steadying arms.

  Her aching middle begged her to crumple into a ball and hug it tight, but she ignored the inner whining as she stepped to the curtain of vines and parted them. A dank odor all but overwhelmed her, wafting from the black hole of a drainage pipe that gaped in the side of the ravine. Behind her, Jax’s sharp intake of breath said he’d seen the pipe, too.

  Before he could say a word, she crawled into the opening, giving him no option but to follow. The creepers fell together, encasing them in utter blackness. She crawled onward, who-knows-what squishing beneath her hands and knees.

  “What about wild critters?” Jax hissed as he stayed on her heels.

  “If there are any, they’ll have to get out of our way,” she murmured in reply.

  She suppressed a shiver, partly from the dank chill, but also from the thought of meeting some rodent or reptile. Happily, the enclosed space didn’t smell like skunk, so that possibility was remote.

  The sharp snap of a breaking stick carried up the pipe, and Daci went still. Jax must have done the same, because the darkness went stone silent. Then a rustle betrayed him shifting positions. A soft click raised the hairs on Daci’s arms. Beyond doubt he pointed a pistol, round chambered, toward the pipe’s outlet. If any of their pursuers parted the veil of vines, he would shoot first and ask questions later—provided they remained alive to ask any.

  Not-so-stealthy footfalls passed the pipe opening and faded away.

  “Let’s go,” Jax whispered.

  Without a word, she complied. The pipe began to incline upward, and soon faint light appeared ahead. They arrived at a flat spot where the metal tube turned upward at a right angle. Above them, the perforated lid of a manhole cover allowed a few rays of sunshine to dispel the darkness. The rungs of a metal ladder led up to it.

  Puffing and hugging her stomach, she sat huddled against the wall and turned her face toward the welcome light. Jax entered the upright pipe and stood to his feet.

  “Let me rest a minute,” she told him.

  He knelt before her. “Where will we be when we climb out of here?”

  “Believe it or not, we’re under a road that has a right-of-way through Marlowe property. The woodland acreage on this side is ours, as are the estate house and grounds on the other side.” She grimaced against a pang from her abused middle. “Good thing it isn’t raining today. When it rains, the water flows through the pipe so hard that the vines on the other side never get to bond firmly with the rocks and soil beneath the pipe opening, leaving a curtain of growth that is easily parted to access the tube. My siblings and I found this out when we were playing in the woods.”

  Memories unfurled in Daci’s mind. Happy ones. She smiled.

  “We’d pack lunches and spend all day out here. Our parents never missed us, and the servants didn’t care. We were out from under their feet. Eventually, nightfall would drive us, covered in dirt and the usual childhood scrapes and bruises, back to the toxic luxury of our home.”

  Daci basked in the tenderness flowing from Jax’s gaze. He reached o
ut and plucked something from her hair.

  She stiffened. “What was that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “A spider?” No doubt the little squeak at the end of the question betrayed her feelings about those creepy critters.

  He just grinned. “Like I said, you don’t want to know.” He glanced upward. “Are you able to climb the ladder? I’ll carry you if you like.”

  She shook her head. “No, you won’t. I’ll have to be up to the climb and a good sprint, too. You’ll want a firearm drawn, because we’re going to have to scurry across a small meadow and a half-moon driveway to the lych-gate.”

  “Lych-gate! We’re in America, not the British countryside. On this side of the Atlantic, even the graveyards hardly ever have those stone-covered gateways.”

  “The Marlowes do, complete with a private graveyard and a chapel on one corner of the estate grounds. We weren’t always an ungodly family. Our first immigrant ancestors came over not long after the Mayflower, with strong faith convictions that drove a wedge between them and their aristocratic relatives.”

  “Just when I think your family can’t get any more surprising, you tell me something that proves me wrong.” Shaking his head, Jax pulled out his phone. “I’m going to call Rey—have him tell the team stationed at the estate to lay down cover fire and open the gate for us.”

  Daci put a hand over his phone screen.

  “What?” He blinked at her.

  “If we’re mistaken about the source of the leak, or if it hasn’t been plugged yet, issuing orders through channels could be letting the bad guys in on our location.”

  Jax groaned. “It absolutely stinks not to be able to trust anyone.”

  “Except each other.”

  The words blurted out Daci’s mouth with a burst of emotion so intense it shook her physically. The number of people she had ever totally trusted she could literally count on one hand—her siblings and her grandmother. Now, since Jax had entered her life, she would have to use a finger on her other hand for the tally. His gaze bored into her as if he’d heard the wonder and terror in her realization that the protective walls around her life had been breached by an outsider.

  She yanked her focus from him, reached into a pocket of her shirt and pulled out a key. “Given the determination and resources of whoever is after me, I suspected we might need to stage a surprise entrance. This will unlock the gateway that is set into the high wall around the estate, and then we will be in the graveyard outside the chapel, which is part of the larger estate property. Once inside, we’ll be safe from ground fire. If the chopper tries to swoop in, we can take cover in the chapel until our guys deal with it.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’m going first,” Jax said.

  “You’ll have to.” She tucked the key into her pocket. “At the moment, I don’t have the strength to move that manhole cover.”

  Steeling herself against the distraction of pain and a soul-deep weariness that urged her to collapse, Daci clung to a rung of the metal ladder while Jax shoved at the metal cover over their hidey-hole. Was she up to the sprint that would take them to some measure of safety? She couldn’t guarantee it, but she had to try.

  With a soft pop, the cover came loose, and Jax scraped it to the side. A waft of fresh air blew a little of the fog from Daci’s brain. A distant whump-whump-whump let her know the helicopter was still up there, searching for them. Her pulse throbbed faster.

  Gritting her teeth, she started up the ladder while Jax pulled himself to the surface in a low crouch. No gunfire greeted his appearance, and Daci’s breathing eased marginally. Jax turned and helped her from the hole until she stood steady on the tarmac.

  Sort of. She was nearing the end of her endurance. Willpower alone held her upright, and that could fail at any moment. If Jax was forced to carry her, he would be left defenseless. She couldn’t let that happen.

  “This way.” She motioned toward a tall hedge of lilac bushes that lined the side of the road opposite the woods.

  In the years since she’d last been this way, the bushes had become overgrown, a matter she’d see to remedying if she survived. Hopefully, the spot where she and her siblings used to sneak through remained less entwined than the rest of the hedge. She and Jax couldn’t afford the delay of trotting up the open road to one of the entrances to the half-moon drive that swung by the lych-gate.

  Daci hurried toward the runt of the bushes that marked the weakness in the living barrier. Yes! They were going to get scratched, but they could force their way through. Ducking her head, she plowed forward. The fulsome scent of blooming lilacs dizzied her mind. In a moment, she burst free, rubbing fresh scratches on her bare arms and entered a small meadow carpeted with blue and yellow wildflowers. A mere twenty yards or so distant, a stone gateway flanked by vine-covered walls beckoned.

  She started forward only to be snatched backward by a strong arm and swept into the embrace of the lilac bushes. Pain streaked through her middle, but her outcry was absorbed in the sturdy shoulder that cradled her face.

  “We’ve got company,” Jax whispered in her ear. Overhead, the helicopter thundered near. “Unless they outright land, they shouldn’t be able to see us.”

  Wordlessly, Daci nodded against him. He smelled like an oddly appealing mixture of damp soil, rotting leaves and his sophisticated, woodsy soap—a truly insignificant detail to notice in this critical moment, but inhaling his scent was like inhaling comfort and security. And if this turned out to be their last seconds on earth, what better way to spend them than here in his arms? She relaxed against him as a great lethargy seeped through every cell of her body.

  “Go!” Jax abruptly pulled her out from the shelter of the bushes and began running toward the gate, half-carrying her with one arm, wielding his pistol with the other.

  Daci fought to keep her feet under her. She had to contribute to this sprint, not be an anchor, but the effort was a losing battle. Her world faded to a gray blur. Shouts and gunshots rang out. Then nothing.

  * * *

  The moment Daci went limp, Jax dropped his pistol and swept her into his arms. Hugging her close, protecting her with his body, he lengthened his stride straight for the door in the wall. No time for evasive maneuvers. They’d either reach safety or they wouldn’t.

  From somewhere on his left flank, a man’s voice hollered, followed by a gunshot. Then a second shot sounded—different caliber firearm—and someone yelped. Defenders against assassins? Who fired which shot and who was hurt? Couldn’t concentrate on that now.

  Just—get—to—that—door!

  Overhead, chopper noises closed in again. Then a second aerial buzz saw joined the mix. Then a third. The din filled the atmosphere, yet seemed distant. Inconsequential. Jax was in his own cocoon with the rasp of his breathing, the rush of his pulse in his ears and the warmth of Daci’s body hugged to his chest.

  Only a few more yards!

  A bullet blew a chip off the stone wall to his right, and a sharp pain grazed his ear, but they had made it to the wide wooden door. With his precious burden, he huddled into the gateway’s overhang. Holding Daci against him with one arm, he sought for the key in her pocket with the opposite hand.

  There!

  He thrust it toward the keyhole, but the door suddenly sprang open. A pair of PD uniforms rushed past them, guns drawn, even as a set of arms attached to a familiar face yanked them through the portal.

  Jax stood under a stone archway, breathing hard and clinging to Daci’s limp form. His gaze scanned the thoroughly British churchyard and chapel that lay before him. Gravestones, some of them quite ancient looking, dotted the lawn between him and the small building. A few more seconds outside the estate walls, and he and Daci would likely have been slated for headstones themselves.

  His gaze fell on the man who’d pulled them to safety. “Noah, what are you doing here?”
>
  “I live here when I’m not globetrotting. When we heard you two dropped out of sight on the run, I knew this entrance was where Mamasis would head.” Face grim, he reached for Daci. “How badly is she hurt?”

  Jax cuddled her closer, and the other man dropped his arms with a lift of his brows.

  “She hasn’t been shot again,” Jax told him. “The blood is from a scrape when we crash-landed in the woods, but it’s nothing serious. The real problem is that the chase was too much. She passed out. We need to get her some place where she can rest and be examined by a doctor.”

  “You, too.” Noah pointed to the side of Jax’s neck.

  He hadn’t noticed before, but warmth trickled down the side of his neck into his shirt line. “It’s nothing. Just a nick.”

  Daci’s journalist brother waved him to follow and set off through the churchyard. Stepping into the open, Jax’s gaze swept the sky above them, but chopper sounds had grown distant. Only pristine blue, airbrushed with wispy clouds, filled his eyes.

  A group of law-enforcement personnel rushed toward them—judging by the uniforms, a mix of PD and Marshals Service personnel.

  “We’re clear,” the lead man said. “Our choppers are in pursuit of the suspects’ bird, and two assailants outside have been apprehended.”

  Surrounded by defenders, Jax carried Daci across a broad, manicured lawn dotted with bushes and flower beds. Ahead, a brown brick Federal-style mansion ruled the landscape sprawled at its feet. Noah led them onto a cement patio and then through a pair of French doors into a large room furnished like a combination office and sitting room. The space left the impression of understated elegance, but there was no time to admire any decor as Daci’s brother led them onward into a wide hallway and then to an immense foyer and a sweeping staircase.

  Jax followed the leader briskly up the stairs, down another hallway and into a bedroom that screamed Daci with its color scheme of blues and browns. Tenderly, he settled her onto her bed and brushed strands of hair from her face. Her face was pale and drawn, but her chest rose and fell evenly.