She didn’t move.
“Then suddenly, the other Pedro exploded. Just erupted into flames. Debris from it nearly took us down. I hit the deck, and we spun away, and when we righted ourselves, the chopper and all the guys had hit the mountainside.”
And then, suddenly, he was there. The smoke choking him, and he was unable to breathe past the scream clawing through his chest.
“But we had to get to the SEALs trapped on the mountain, so we came back around. I kept thinking—just get out of the chopper. The shooters in the houses were raining down fire on us. Our gunner was firing back on the 50-cal.
“I’ve never gotten down a rope so fast in my life. I have to give creds to my chopper pilot. She held that thing in a hover, heavy machine-gun fire and rpgs tearing at the mountain around her.
“As soon as we landed, it was Happy New Year, Talis throwing us a party of everything they had, exploding around us. I scrambled up to the position where Ham and three of his guys were entrenched. Two had been shot. I got to Hicks—young guy, maybe twenty-five. His first deployment. He’d been shot in the gut, his intestines were everywhere. I was trying to shove them back in, trying to figure out how to pack him—my only priority was getting him into the litter, getting him back to base. Do what I’d been trained to do. And then—my world exploded.”
“Your knee.”
“Took me out, slammed me against the mountain. For a long second, I was just paralyzed, and then suddenly, Ham was there. He dragged me back into the cave.”
“Is that when you called in the danger-close air strike?”
He stared at her. She lifted her shoulder. “I heard about it.”
Oh.
“Not yet. They’d found an entrance to a cave, and we hauled ourselves inside, took up a position there. Ham was still trying to figure a way out.”
He looked up. The sky was dour and white, sifting snow into the crack. “Ham left a couple operators at the entrance—Royal and Thorne—and sent another guy, Gunderson, to find a way out. I did my best to stabilize my leg—wrapped it, then helped the two injured SEALs. One of them had a thigh wound. The other was Hicks, still holding in his guts. I wrapped him up the best I could. We sat there for what seemed like days but I think it was more like two hours until Gunds came back. And by that time, the Taliban had worked their way up the mountain. Ham called in the strike, then ordered Royal and Thorne to retreat, and that’s when everything . . . well, it was already the apocalypse, but then it turned into . . . I don’t know. As Royal and Thorne were e-vacking to our position, the entire cave collapsed. Between them, on them, we didn’t know. We just knew that a strike was on its way, and we were dead in the rubble if we didn’t move.
“I helped myself to my morphine, but my leg was wasted.”
He paused, his jaw tightening. Cut his voice low. “Ham had to carry me. He made a choice—me or his two buddies. Hicks died on the mountain. But I was sent to save him, so some rescuer I turned out to be.”
He drew in a breath, shook his head, still hearing Ham’s grunts, the dust and grit in his eyes, his ears ringing against the screaming inside.
“We climbed out into the night just as the mountain exploded with the power of two massive five-hundred-pound bombs.”
He shook his head. “The other guy we went in to get also died. I ended up in Germany, and it took me six months to walk again.”
A hiccup of sound made him raise his gaze and he frowned as Jenny pressed her gloved hands over her face.
She was weeping.
And not softly, either, because her entire body shook, her tears coming hard, her cries breaking through. She bent over into herself, took a breath, and her cries rattled out of her, her body wracked as if with grief.
“Jenny?” He froze, not sure what—
“I’m sorry. I’m just . . . so sorry.”
Her words dissolved as she took another breath, then began to cry again, this time harder.
What the—? “Jenny, it’s okay. It’s . . .”
She looked up at him, her eyes reddened, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.” She ran her hand over her face. “I’m sorry that happened to you. All those men . . .” Her breath caught. She shook her head.
Then she dissolved again, this time collapsing onto the ice.
Her words rang through his head. “I had a nervous breakdown.”
Not on his watch. Whatever this was, he wasn’t going to let her go through it alone. So he reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her to himself, tucking her under the jacket. He wrapped his arms hard around her and held her tight. And finally gave her the words, whether he believed them or not. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GET UP. Calm down. Keep moving.
The voices in her head thrummed inside Jenny, even as she bent over, gulping back her tears, her breaths.
Stop. Freaking. Out.
Because the more she unraveled, the more every cell ached to tell Orion, well, all of it. And that would be the worst possible thing to do, really. Because that’s the last thing they needed right now, her telling him that she was responsible for his terror, his friends dying, and of course the fact that he’d spent six months learning to walk again.
Especially since she was now tucked into Orion’s arms, the very man who should probably push her off the cliff. How she longed to just stop the lies. To let him calm her world.
Help her breathe again.
No matter what, she couldn’t let herself spiral out, couldn’t find herself in that place where she had no hold on anything.
Couldn’t go back to that moment when her world shattered before her eyes.
Because she’d been there, on the other side of the horror, listening as Orion and Ham’s team fought—and ran—for their lives. Heard Ham on the radio, calling in the strike.
Wanted to scream at the desperation in his voice.
She practically ran, a full-out sprint, back to her quarters, horrified.
And had woken in Germany herself, probably in the same hospital as Orion. Apparently, someone had found her wandering the camp, disoriented, incoherent.
She had no memory of any of it.
And clearly Orion had no idea that she’d been the cause of all his nightmares.
She pulled in her breath, holding it, fighting to tuck her emotions back inside.
“Jenny, it’s okay. You’re just . . . tired. And scared,” Orion said, still trying to soothe her.
No, she was heartbroken.
Keep moving.
Right. She couldn’t stay here, let it pour over her, pin her down. Trap her.
Push through. Look forward.
Get out of the crevasse.
She made herself push away from him. He released her.
“Jenny?”
She could weep at the worry in his voice. “I’m fine. I’m just . . .” She wiped her face and climbed to her feet, putting her arms through her jacket. “Sorry. I’m just . . . yeah, a little scared, maybe. We need to get out of here.”
She couldn’t look at him, so she looked up. Overhead, the world had turned white. In the distance, thunder rolled, probably more avalanches releasing in the whiteout with the accumulation. The entire mountain shook and tossed down snow.
Another slide might take out their perch, if it found its way into their crevasse. Barring that, however, their crevasse was an icy blue wonderland that could protect them from the elements.