“No! I can’t leave him, Demon. I can’t. Please, you have to take him with us. He was protecting me,” I raged at him. He looked from me to Ted and back. He looked at Sinner.
“Bring him. Now, Zara, come on. We got the others. They’re alright. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I didn’t argue. He clasped my hand in his and led me outside. We raced through the trees. I had no idea where we were going. It seemed like forever before we came to a clearing and there were a couple of trucks. They quickly got in. Demon took me in the truck with him. He sat me on his lap and hugged me close. He kissed my face and neck.
“Jesus, Zara, I thought I’d lost you. Damn, I love you, baby, so much. You have no idea. When we get home, I’m not letting you out of my sight.” I didn’t bother to respond. I couldn’t.
I wanted to tell him how glad I was to see him. How I’d been planning to come back and settle our issues. That I was almost one hundred percent sure I believed his tale about Lucky. That I loved him. But the words wouldn’t come out. All I could do was stare over his shoulder at Ted’s body. Sinner had laid him in the back.
The image of his dead eyes wouldn’t go away. Sinner had closed them. I cried the whole time. I had no idea how long we drove. The guys were on alert. I was exhausted and didn’t care about anything. Demon kept begging me to talk to him, to stop crying, but I couldn’t. It was like a faucet had been turned on and there was no way to turn it off.
It was what I assumed was a couple of hours later that we came to a stop. I saw two planes waiting. Demon hustled me out of the truck and carried me to the plane. The only thing I said was I wanted Ted’s body on our plane. He’d given me a weird look, but he did it. We got strapped in and ready for takeoff. Demon never left my side. I sat there numb, staring at Ted, and wondering how I was going to tell Leslie. I’d gotten her husband killed. She’d never forgive me, and I couldn’t blame her. I’d never forgive myself.
Demon:
I watched Zara as we rode in the truck back to where the plane was waiting for us. She couldn’t stop crying or take her eyes off the body of the doctor in the back of the truck. What had happened this last week?
When I’d heard the shot and shoved my way through people to get to her, I was scared to death I’d find her dead. Instead, I’d heard her telling this man that she loved him. It had been like a knife through my heart. Had she really fallen in love with someone else in a matter of days?
She’d fought not to be taken away from his body. She wouldn’t let him out of her sight or stop the tears. I was at a loss as to what I should do. A part of me wanted to rage about the fact she’d obviously stopped loving me and switched to another man. If she could do that, then she must not have ever really loved me. Another part of me wanted to make her look at me and realize I was the man for her. That she had to forget the man in the back. It was petty, I know. He was dead. But I wasn’t feeling all that nice at the moment.
It took a little persuading to get her on the plane. We were trying to get out of here before trouble found us. While I hoped we’d gotten all the rebels, we couldn’t be positive. We’d quickly snapped photos of them, so we could help Anderson identify the guys later.
Gabe and his guys had made it back too. They were on the other plane. I breathed a huge sigh of relief that we hadn’t lost anyone—a few scrapes and nicks, but nothing serious. The other three doctors were huddled in their seats. They looked like they were still in shock. Who could blame them? They’d been taken hostage, God knows what was done to them, and then sat there and watched a colleague be killed. Unfortunately, the local women who had been taken, hadn’t been at either location.
“It’s all my fault,” I heard Zara whisper.
“What, baby? What’s your fault?”
“That Ted is dead. It’s my fault.”
“Zara, you didn’t kill him. The rebels did.”
“They killed him because he was protecting me from the one who was going to shoot me. I didn’t know he’d gotten in front of me. I’d closed my eyes. I knew I was dead, which was better than being sold like they planned,” she sobbed.
I adjusted her on my lap so I could see her face. “What do you mean they planned to sell you? All of you? To whom?” I could see the other guys listening with concerned looks on their faces. Was this bigger than some small-time rebels?
One of the other doctors answered me. From the information we’d gotten before we left, he was Dr. Diaz. “He did protect her. He got between her and the guy with the gun. She’d gotten loose and was trying to get the rest of us loose. The one guy noticed and was going to shoot her. If he did, they wouldn’t have gotten the big payday they were going to get.”
“For selling you guys?”
He shook his head. “No, for selling her. She was the only one we heard them talking about selling. I’m pretty sure the rest of us were going to be killed even if they did get the ransom. Jefe took a lot of joy in telling her what her fate was going to be. We can’t thank you enough for rescuing us.”
“Jefe?”
“Yeah, that’s what his men called him. I don’t know what his real name was.”
“Was he in the building when we rescued you?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe.”
“Where are we going?” the one I knew to be Dr. Thornton asked. He had a frown on his face. Out of the three, just looking at him rubbed me the wrong way.
“We’re going to be flying into Nashville. From there, you’ll be assisted back to your homes.”
“Who sent you? Are you with the military? It seems like you know Dr. Newton. How?”
He was asking too many questions for my liking. I cut him off from asking anything else. “We’re no one important. Just sit back and relax. We should be there in a couple of hours.” He glared at me but shut the hell up.