Page 117 of Fighting With Light

“Oh,” Aelia says and looks over her shoulder at me.

Well if that doesn’t scare her away then maybe nothing will.

It doesn’t take long for us to catch up to Emerson and the women following him. Some of them don’t have shoes. But we can’t stop for me to give them mine.

We urge them forward, moving as fast as humanly possible. I catch a woman teetering on her legs, and Aelia helps hold up another woman. They look like they are on the verge of passing out.

The further we get away from the compound, the quieter it gets. We can’t drop our guard, not until we leave this country. We keep checking and helping the women and kids make our way to the truck.

Adrenaline is the only thing fueling us to keep running. We run for two miles straight, keeping the women going even if they think they can’t.

One more mile to go, and one of the women who responded to Emerson’s Russian drops to the ground.

Aelia runs to her and checks her pulse. “I think she just passed out.”

I pick the woman up, lifting her into a fireman’s carry. She can’t be more than a hundred pounds as I lift her across my shoulders.

“Go on, princess, keep going, we’re almost there.”

She nods and goes to the others.

We move as a team, jogging as fast as we can until we make it to the truck. We clear it and load all the kids and the woman who passed out into the back cab.

Kai and I hop into the truck bed helping the four others and Aelia into the bed. I direct the women to put their backs to the cab of the truck and rest against it. Emerson starts the truck and we take off into the night. Kai and I hold on to the headache rack mounted against the back cab window and keep scanning the area around, just in case someone followed us. Once we’re a couple miles away Kai and I drop back down into the bed and sit on the wheel wells.

I reach for Aelia and grab her chin. She still has blood splattered across her face, and I pull my glove off and try to wipe it off.

“It’s dried. I’ll have to get it off later,” she says.

Her hair has fallen out of her ponytail and blows in the wind. I lean forward, pressing my lips to hers. This woman is a warrior.

“Thank you,” she says against my lips.

“For what?”

“For saving them.” I nod once.

She doesn’t need to thank me. It doesn’t matter if she was here or not, my brothers and I would have done it, anyway.

“We can’t bring them back to the US,” Kai says.

I glance at Kai, and Aelia grips my arm, making me wince. Aelia pulls her hand away, and her eyes widen.

“Oh, whoops,” I mutter.

“Liam,” she gasps, reaching for my arm.

“It’s fine, I’m sure it’s just a graze. I’ll just need some stitches.”

Aelia yanks back the fabric of my jacket, grabs a handkerchief from my pocket, and pushes it on my arm. “Ouch, Aelia, dammit,” I mutter.

“Shut up and take it,” she says quickly. She looks at me again, and it’s so dark it’s hard to see her eyes but she doesn’t seem happy.

“I know where we can take them,” Aelia says, brushing a tear from her cheek. “We need to find one of the churches. They will take them and help them.” I tap the glass of the back window. A kid opens it, and I tell Emerson. Pulling the map from my chest pocket I find one close to the airport.

We ride in silence all the way back into the valley. Before we reach the city limits, we hide our guns and tell the women to lie down in the bed just in case.

“I told the pilot to be ready for us within the next thirty,” Kai says.