The Titan Series: Military Romance Boxed Set

by Cristin Harber

  Milking that hope was his only chance to survive and escape.

  Winters pulled the third tourniquet tight with his teeth and grimaced though the hot pain. His blood raced in a mad dash, but it wasn’t flowing into the grass anymore. He needed a slow breath in, slow breath out to ramp down his heart rate. The pain might lessen. His mind might clear. But most importantly, he’d keep more blood than he’d lose.

  The armed men slowed their pace from charging to a careful hustle. Tentative footsteps neared. Muffled arguments sputtered in Spanish. He almost laughed. They didn’t know what to do with him. It was his move to make. His only move possible.

  Surrender. It’d keep him alive.

  He rolled onto his back and slowly raised his hands, giving them the chance to take him alive. Damn, his arm throbbed. This surrendering shit sucked.

  Winters watched plumes of smoke drift through the air. The gunfight was over. The carnage ended. Titan would be far enough away. Mia was safe. That was all that mattered.

  An armed man approached, with an automatic rifle directed at Winters’s head.

  “Up. Up. Stand up,” the man shouted with a thick accent.

  God, Winters hated these fuckers.

  “All right.” He kicked his empty weapon away and rolled to his knees. Blasts of agony tore through his muscles. The tourniquets accomplished their goals, but he’d need medical treatment. Rapido, that was for damn sure. Chances were slim to impossible it’d happen.

  “Hasta. Up. Up.” The man jutted the business end of the automatic rifle into Winters’s chest. Better his chest than his head, though his vest couldn’t do anything about point blank rapid fire.

  His head spun, and his vision fought from fading to lights out. Bright explosions fired, and he saw stars. He closed his eyes tight against the splashes of color. If he passed out, he was a dead man.

  He gulped smoky air, tasting gunpowder, and pried his eyes open, snarling. He felt like a gutted animal. Shot up, cut open, and bleeding out. Pain bubbled. Blood seeped as he hoisted himself up to stand.

  Motioning to his loosening leg tie and fresh blood. “May I?”

  “Si.”

  They didn’t want him dead. At least this second. “Gracias.”

  Gracias? Gracias, assholes would’ve been better.

  He tightened the fabric ties, wobbling and bobbling. Stay up right. Stay clear-headed.

  The man jabbed him in the chest again, and his legs buckled against a loss of balance. Shit. Things were worse than he thought.

  The head asshole-in-charge motioned to two others, let out a string of commands, and turned away. Two men grabbed him under his arms, lifted him like a bag of shit, and hauled him along.

  Hell, this was far from ideal. His ties could handle only so much abuse. Their group moved through a gaping hole, where a front door once hung, and into the house. Smoke stained the walls, and blood soaked the carpet. It was silent except for their bump-bump-bump of boots beating over expensive flooring.

  They moved up the stairs. With each jarring step, his pain didn’t register. Fuck. That was a bad sign.

  Finally, they stopped. No words exchanged. No explanation, threats, or pat downs. A simple push into a black hole, then a lock scraped secure. He smacked the tile floor. His eyes screwed shut. Lightning strikes reverberated through his limbs, circling toward his nauseous stomach.

  After a long list of curses, the agony subsided, and he propped on his elbows. It was hellhole dark. He stretched forward, hoping to find a wall and define the room. After failed attempts, his fingertips found plaster, and he propped against a rough wall. With his uninjured arm, he found a switch and flipped it. A light glowed orange.

  A small room. A bed. Another door. He crawled toward the door with the energy required to run a marathon.

  It was a bathroom. With towels and a place to assess his wounds.

  He pulled up to the counter and tried the faucet. Success. Winters splashed water on his face and draped himself over the sink. The dim light burned in the bedroom, and shadows fell long in the bathroom. The plumbing leaked on the floor. The estate was old, and the plumbing didn’t have a chance. But the water still ran from the tap. Thank God.

  He soaked a towel, then wiped the debris from bloody wounds. His arm was only a flesh wound. It bled but didn’t need a tourniquet. He released the wrap and flexed his bicep. More blood leached. Pressure was still needed. A bandage. Some dressing. Anything to clot the hole in his arm. He grabbed a flimsy, threadbare towel, tore to the right size, and wrapped it around his bicep. Makeshift Band-Aid number one, complete.

  His legs burned, shaking when his weight pressed down. But he could stand and crawl. That ruled out bullet-shattered bones. And he was still conscious. More or less. So no major arteries were hit. He couldn’t complain about that luck.

  Winters examined his right thigh. A through and through. Both openings leaked. The tourniquet helped, but more blood loss wouldn’t sustain an effective escape.

  His left calf pulsed blood, despite the tie off. An entry hole but no exit. Shit. He looked around the sparse bedroom and bath. The accommodations sucked. No first aid kit, not that he expected one. He leaned back on the counter and rubbed the nape of his neck.

  A headache pounded, gaining violent momentum. First requirement to stay alive, he needed to hydrate. Drinking the South American water wasn’t high on his list of things to do. But adding dehydration to the list of shit gone wrong was futile.

  He spun the metal faucet handle, stuck his head under the stream, and drank. The water eased the unrealized flame in his throat. It reinvigorated him. He stood upright on throbbing legs. The room spun. No good. More water, then time to figure out how the hell to fix his legs.

  He sucked down another gulp and rose, slower this time. The bullet lodged in his leg had to go, and he had to patch it. His eyes darted around the cave of a room. Nothing would help.

  Get creative or die.

  Winters’s gaze landed on the bed, and he hobbled over to the cheap mattress packed full of lumpy filler. It had a subpar metal frame, little more than cross-hatched chicken wire. All the money in the world, and Juan Carlos Silva outfitted this dungeon for his captives.

  Winters wrapped his fingers around the frame wires and pulled. They dug into his skin. His muscles shook with effort. The wires mined into his flesh, threatening a laceration. He pulled again, summoning strength that he didn’t possess.

  Come on. He needed this like he needed to live.

  One wire sprung free.

  All of that exertion and a speck of progress to show for it. But he’d take specks. The woven wired started to unwind. He dropped to the floor and breathed in scampered gasps. This shouldn’t be so hard. Maybe he was worse off than he knew.

  Like pulling the string from a metal sweater, he used both hands to untwist each wire. The length of the wire loosened. Chain reaction. The next one did, too. The tension was gone. He was surrounded by a mess of medium gauge wire. Pliable but sturdy.

  This was going to be awful. On days like this, he needed a stuntman.

  He doubled over the end of a wire. Then again. A zee with a long end. Really a vee. It was the shittiest set of forceps a man could dream up. This was going to be really fucking awful.

  He struggled to the bathroom, wire forceps in hand, and looked for the remaining scraps of the torn towel, then turned the water on. He hoisted himself onto the counter, tore his tactical pant leg open, and shoved the remaining pieces of the towel in his mouth.

  He’d only removed a bullet from his muscle once before, and even then, it was under better circumstances. More apprehensive about the pain than he was about the act, he jabbed his finger into his left calf and felt for the bullet.

  Holy shit.

  He screamed into the towel. Sweat poured down his back and chest, down his forehead, and into his eyes. That goddamn bullet. It was there. Not too deep. But still under his skin, burrowed into the top of his muscle.

  He heaved breaths like a
woman in labor. One right after the other. No longer thinking. Just doing. Trying to breathe. His nostrils flared as he grabbed the forceps, roared, then pushed into the wound. Fiery explosions ricocheted. Spasm panged. His hands shook in his strangle grip.

  Slippery blood seeped, covering his hands. Metal found metal, and with a silent prayer, closed tension around the bullet. It surfaced and popped loose. Metal clanged on tile. Bullet and field-made forceps. He heard them plunk before he saw them in a puddle of his blood.

  Step one complete.

  This shit show was only half over. He took methodical, blood slowing breaths, and concentrated on his sky-high heart rate. Blood covered the rickety counter and tile floor. His splatter decorated the plaster wall and dried under his fingernails. Talk about a bad day at work.

  He lumbered off the counter, and the world swam. A quick catch braced him against the wall. Flashes of pain scorched him. He sawed his teeth together, as his healthy shoulder bore all his weight.

  Too much blood loss. His head fell forward, rolled, and swayed. He was so close to finishing this off. Rallying energy he didn’t have, he staggered to the angry, red floor, and grabbed the torn towel. Each threadbare piece systematically rolled into fabric stoppers. He plunged one in each hole, stymieing the flow. Shutting down the blood loss. Giving himself the only shot he had to survive.

  He fell to his side, marinating in his blood. Each gasp sounded in the thickening gel. It was too much to handle. His delirious mind was strung tight as a trip wire. He was one misstep from kaboom.

  Sleep and survive.

  He wiped his face and led the charge back to the sorriest excuse of a mattress he’d ever seen. It’d be heaven if he could get to it. Half-dragging, half-overpowering, he struggled until he accomplished his goal, and schlepped himself onto it. He rolled, face first. No position alleviated the misery. He slouched sideways, unable to control his limbs, and his hand tumbled toward the floor.

  He didn’t touch tile or wire or blood.

  He touched clothes.

  His fingers danced across the soft cotton.

  Mia.

  She’d been here. And thank God she was gone. How long since he’d held her? He pulled the clothes to his face. Soft. And smelled faintly like her.

  He would get home to her. She’d do family. He’d do family. They’d figure it out. Her sweet kisses could wash away his hurt. Her embrace would ease the pain flowing like lava through his veins. Mia coaxed him to the black oblivion, lulling him to nightmarish sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mia woke up with her face cemented to the leather seat, drool crusted over the corner of her mouth, and her throat far past Sahara dry. She squeezed her eyes shut against the flashbacks. Colby’s orders. Jared’s arms. She lost her man.

  Screw them both. Mia excised her cheek from the seat and glared at Jared. He left Colby. Left him for dead. Why didn’t he get him? Wasn’t that what they did? Save people?

  “Hey, Jared, or whoever you are. Why are we sitting here?” Her voice rumbled, hoarse and desperate. Her question should have been why was he sitting here and not loading up a torpedo launcher.

  Jared gripped the steering wheel with enough strength she thought it might break. They weren’t flying through the thick jungle underbrush. The slapping echo of vegetation slashing against the windshield no longer drowned out the roar of the engine.

  “Mia.” He could crush asphalt with his voice.

  “Jared,” she said, both scared and angry, and fairly certain this was Jared.

  The dome light clicked on overhead. Jared jumped out as if he needed a calming stroll in the park, and he beelined to a small shack in a clearing. Wood boards hung gimp and gaped. Peeling paint clung to an occasional plank, while others were sun-blistered and bare. It was larger than her last shack, but that wasn’t saying much.

  Mia reached for the door handle to follow but instead whimpered. Everything ached. Her forehead to her ankles. And her arm, that was the killer. It was the first time she noticed the bandage.

  Vivid flashbacks again came at her like a skipping movie. Juan Carlos Silva, gruesomely dead. Her flesh wound. Colby propping her up and pushing her through hell.

  Jared could run away, but he couldn’t get too far. She pushed through the roar in her arm, opened the door, and set the stumbling pace of a discombobulated woman on a man-saving mission.

  Heat drenched her, humidity cloaking her in a jungle second. A wave of nausea smacked her clear across her face. Food. She needed something in her stomach. She tried to ease the stomach rolls.

  Nausea punched her again. No, food wasn’t the best idea. She’d just throw it up, preferably all over Jared. She swallowed against the queasy ripples. Water might be the prudent plan.

  With the concentration required for brain surgery, Mia placed one foot in front of the other, hobbling as close to Jared’s path as her stupor-slicked mind could manage. She stumbled through the egress into a gang of mercenaries, all who looked like they ate rusted nails for Sunday brunch and bent steel for fun.

  Her awful cartel-gifted sundress, splattered in blood and dirt, stood out as strangely feminine in the sea of muscles, guns, and testosterone. Mia fingered the scab from Silva on her neck. She apparently presented a shocking image. The room hushed soon as they caught a glimpse of her.

  A blond in a cowboy hat tossed her a package that crinkled before it went airborne. Somehow she caught it, unaware of what it was, and her arm hurt fierce from the motion. All eyes locked on her, then hers pinned on Jared’s.

  “Wet wipes,” Blondie said. “Like a soldier’s shower. Use whatever you need.”

  She pivoted and looked at him. His face was painted in greens, grays, and blacks. Smudged and sweaty. Brilliant blue eyes beneath it all. Somewhat human compared to the others.

  Mia cleared her throat. Her gaze stole back to Jared. The sinewy muscles in his jaw flexed, and he took a step toward her but didn’t open his mouth. Her chest felt tight, anxious energy flooded her fingers.

  She had nasty things to say to him. Things to order him to do. But her mind couldn’t string them together. Threats loomed close to her tongue, but her mind didn’t comprehend reason or issue rhetoric.

  Unable to complete menial oratory tasks, she rushed at him, fists balled, teeth cemented together, and slammed him dead center in his chest.

  The impact was like she ran fist first into the side of a mountain. Sheer physics would have bounced her off and onto her butt if he didn’t grab her forearms. Other than his hands cuffed on her arms, Jared didn’t acknowledge her tirade.

  What kind of assholes did Winters work with? Anger pulsed in her temples. Her molars hurt from gritting her teeth. She pulled from Jared, struggling and vibrating with rage. He loomed impenetrable. Not flinching. Not reacting. Nothing. Not a single expression.

  “What’s your plan?” Finally, her vocabulary returned.

  The steadfast boredom on his face stoked the embers of her irritation further. Red-hot anger choked her. Shit. She couldn’t breathe. Suffocating heat. Insufferable assholes. It collided into a stifling, strangling grip on her chest.

  “Calm down, Mia.” His words were condescending. Patriarchal.

  She’d calm down just to tell him to kiss her ass.

  “Shove it.” In her mind, it came out like words launched from a flamethrower. In reality, she wheezed. But wheezed loud. That was something.

  Again, no reaction from a void-faced Jared, but Blondie laughed so deep the shitty shack quaked. With focus like a laser beam, she drilled into him.

  “Jokes.” She arched her brows and shook her head. “You think this is funny? Why don’t you take your face painted butt and get a move on, cowboy. Go find Colby.”

  Blondie-the-Cowboy doubled over in near hysterical cackles. If she had the strength, she’d have stalked over and kicked him.

  “Man, this explains everything.” He leaned up enough to extend his dirty hand. “Mia, I’m Cash.”

  She cut him off. “I
don’t care who you are.”

  Were those tears in his eyes? What was so funny? She’d knock sense into them all. After they helped Colby.

  “Oh, honey. I know you don’t.”

  He was laughing so hard he had tears. Now, it was his turn to gasp for breath. This was ridiculous. These lethal warriors needed to march their behinds back into danger.

  Jared and two others watched her watch Cash the Cowboy. Blondie. Whatever his name was, the jerk. They were all jerks. God, this was frustrating.

  “Honey, we’re going after your boy,” Cash said. “But we don’t want to get killed doing it. Give us a minute to strategize. There are a helluva lot more assholes with automatic weapons set to rapid fire rock-n-roll than we’d planned to tangle with.”

  Silence ticked by, one second after the next. The sweltering Colombian heat made the air heavy. All their eyes bore down on her.

  She crossed her arms, trying to make sense of their assumptions. “This explains what?”

  “What?” Cash asked.

  “You said this explains everything.”

  “It does.”

  “Stop screwing with me, cowboy.”

  He laughed. “There you go again. The only woman who Winters could ever fall for would be one who tries to push around Ballbuster McGee over there, then strut around, calling men cowboys and shit.”

  “He hasn’t fallen for anyone.” She smirked at Cash, then to each of them, one by one. “He’s just…important.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard that one before, hon. You’ve got him so wrapped up in you, he doesn’t know his asshole from his elbow.”

  Eyes narrowed, she looked at them again. Jared still showed no expression.

  “I, uh…I don’t know what to say to that.”

  Jared cleared his throat. “There’s nothing to say. But we need your help. Recount everything you saw, everyone you met.”

  “Let the girl clean up or something,” Cash said. “Jesus, dick.”

  “You can do two things at once. Three.” He grabbed a bottle of something red. “Hydrate. Now.”