Page 55 of Duty Devoted

“Overall, nothing that needs to be dealt with right now or will stop me from moving.”

“Do you want me to check you over?”

Did I want her hands on me even in that innocent way? Yes. “No. We need to?—”

Movement on the opposite bank caught my eye. Two men in tactical gear, assault rifles slung across their chests.

Silva’s men, no question. One held a radio to his mouth, gesturing upstream toward where we’d fallen in. Even across the roaring water, I could see his excitement. They’d found us.

My blood turned to ice. Fuck.

“Lauren.” I kept my voice deadly calm even as adrenaline surged through my battered body. “We need to run.Now.”

She followed my gaze, saw the cartel soldiers, and understanding dawned in her eyes. The exhaustion on her face transformed into something harder. We were blown. Mateo knew where we were.

And we were in no shape to fight.

“Run,” I repeated, hauling her to her feet. Pain shot through my ribs like a hot poker, but I ignored it. We had to move.Had to disappear into the jungle before those radios brought reinforcements.

We had ten kilometers of hostile jungle between us and safety, bodies that had just been put through a blender, and a psychotic cartel leader who now knew exactly where to find us.

Time to see just how much punishment we could take.

Chapter 18

Lauren

We’d been movingthrough the jungle for over an hour since our desperate river crossing, putting as much distance as possible between us and those two cartel members who’d spotted us from the opposite bank. My clothes had mostly dried in the humid heat, at least from the river water, but my boots still squelched with every step.

“How much farther to Puerto Esperanza?” I asked, pausing to catch my breath against a tree.

“Maybe five miles.” Logan was constantly scanning the terrain. “We’re making good time.”

That was when I heard it—voices carrying through the trees from somewhere ahead of us. Not behind, where our original pursuers might eventually follow, but from the direction we were heading. My blood ran cold.

Logan heard it too. His hand found mine, yanking me behind a cluster of broad-leafed plants. Through the foliage, we saw them. Three men in dark clothing, moving with purpose throughthe jungle. They carried radios and weapons, clearly searching for something—or someone.

Us.

“—confirmed, the two Americans crossed the river an hour ago,” one of them was saying into his radio in Spanish. “We’re searching the western zone now.”

Logan’s jaw tightened. The two men who’d spotted us at the river had radioed it in, and now every cartel member in the area was looking for us, just like he’d known would happen.

Logan studied their search pattern. “They’re moving in a coordinated grid, systematically covering ground.”

“Can we go around them?” I breathed.

“If we try to backtrack, we risk running into the others who are probably across the river by now. We’ll need to?—”

“There they are! The doctor!” A shout in Spanish rang out behind us, a fourth man separate from the others.

We burst from cover, running perpendicular to the patrol’s path. Behind us, more shouts erupted as we were spotted.

The jungle seemed to be working against us. Every vine threatened to catch my feet, every low branch seemed determined to slow us down. Logan moved through it like water, finding paths I couldn’t see, but I crashed along behind him with all the grace of a wounded elephant.

“Over here,” Logan directed, guiding me around a fallen tree that would have taken too long to climb over. His hand never left mine, steadying me when I stumbled, practically lifting me over rough patches of terrain.

I don’t know how long we ran. Way past the point where everything hurt, when Logan suddenly stopped, pressing us both behind a massive tree trunk. I bent double, trying to catch my breath without making too much noise.