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Brax’s satellite phone rang. It was Gideon.

“Jenny’s alive. She’s passed out, but Nolan’s pumping her full of fluid and antibiotics.”

“Good. That’s good. But we’ve got a problem. Jase has been hit. It’s not looking too good. We need Nolan.”

Brax calculated that it had been half a klick back from where he had turned the SUV around. Before that he’d driven in reverse for maybe three klicks. This time, he could drive forward.

“I can get him to you in thirty minutes in this rain.”

“We’ll meet you halfway. We’re in the van. Then we’ll follow you.”

“I need someone else to drive this when I go back to work on Jenny.”

“Understood. It’ll be Ryker.”

Brax blew out a breath of relief. Ryker would be his choice of driver.

“Good. I’ll get there as fast as I can,” Brax told his second in command.

He put the SUV in reverse and sent up a prayer for Jase. Nothing could happen to him. Nothing. Not now that his friend was married to Bonnie and had two kids.

Not now, God. Not now.

As soon as he saw the break in the road that gave him more space, he yelled back. “Brace!” Then he made the three-point turn and skidded forward. Hopefully, whoever was driving the van with Jase in it had found another spot to turn around that he had missed.

“I’ve got your position,” Gideon said over Brax’s phone. “You’re seventeen hundred meters ahead of us. Start slowing down.” Gideon always had a lock on all of them. Their second in command tracking the members of Omega Sky had saved their asses on multiple occasions.

He heard Gideon yell at Ryker to slow down as well.

Brax took it easy. Now that he had built up a good speed, he didn’t want to have the SUV skid again by hitting the brakes too hard.

Were those headlights ahead, or was he dreaming?

“Twelve hundred meters, Brax. You keep coming, we’re backing up. We saw a place for you to turn around about a klick back.”

“Can he wait that long?” Nolan asked from the back.

Now that they were within range of one another, their comm system worked, and the men with Gideon heard his question.

“He’ll have to. We’ve got a tourniquet on his thigh. It just missed his femoral artery. But he still lost a fuck-ton of blood. He’s shocky.” That was Linc talking.

Brax closed his eyes for a second. They didn’t have plasma with them, but they could definitely do blood transfusions. “Everyone’s with you, right?”

“Right,” Gideon answered.

Brax blew out a breath as he continued to slow down. There. There were the headlights. They were still backing up. He caught up and stayed at their speed.

“How’s she doing?” Brax asked Nolan.

“Not conscious. She needs to rest, but at the same time, I need her to clear her lungs.”

“How?” Brax asked.

“In addition to the saline drip, she’s got to drink water. Lots and lots of water. That’ll thin the sputum and help clear her lungs. That plus the broad spectrum antibiotics should do it for her in the next six hours before we get to Chattogram. But her fever is at one-oh-three and her blood pressure’s in the basement. I’m worried about sepsis.

“Jeez.”

“How close are we to Jase?”

“You better start packing up your kit, but leave behind what I need for Jenny. I’m going to be taking care of her when Ryker comes up here to drive.”

“Gotcha.”

One-oh-three. That was not good. When he’d picked her up in the shack, he could barely feel her. She felt lighter than his backpack.

“Stop,” Kostya said through the comm link. “Nolan, get over here now.”

Nolan already had his poncho on, and he was jumping out the tailgate before the vehicle stopped. As fast as Nolan was running toward the other vehicle, Ryker was running to Brax’s. Brax gave himself a shake and got the hell out of the driver’s seat then shuffled his ass back to Jenny, making sure the tailgate was securely shut.

“You good back there?” Ryker yelled as he dropped into the driver’s seat.

“We’re good. Get this turned around and us out of here.”

“Yes, boss.”

Brax rolled his eyes. That was Ryker, always irreverent no matter the situation. Brax held onto Jenny so that she didn’t slide around. As soon as Ryker had the SUV turned around, he yelled, “Incoming.”

Brax looked up in time to catch his pack with one hand.

“What the fuck?”

“It’s got most of our water. Figured she needed as much as you could get her to drink before we got to Chattogram.”

Brax grinned as he looked down at the woman who was tucked in close to him. Ryker was right, he needed to wake her up.

“Jenny, I need you to wake up.”

The leaves were beautiful. She loved fall in Appalachia. Especially when she could carve out a day to go hiking. Just her and nature. The hickory and maple trees were her favorite. Not just the color of their leaves, but their smell.

She took a deep breath. But she couldn’t. It was like her head was covered by a plastic bag. She opened her eyes and saw a man looming over her.

“Get it off,” she begged.

She tried to tear it off herself, but her arms wouldn’t work.

She gasped for breath, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t breathe. Then she started to cough. Deep painful coughing that started in the middle of her body and spread throughout her limbs to her fingers and toes.

“That’s it baby, cough out the nasty.”

She felt herself being gently rolled to her stomach. Someone was carefully keeping her from touching the ground.

“Spit it all out, Jenny.”

She kept coughing and coughing, and soon her body began to rattle, and she coughed up phlegm, and spit it into the towel that was below her face. All the time she’d been coughing, she felt a warm hand stroking her back. She was shivering so hard that the heat felt good.

“You done?” The voice asked.

Jenny nodded.

He rolled her back so that she was in his arms as he knelt. She looked around. She wasn’t in a forest. Nope, it was the car. She was out of the shack. Looking up, she remembered this man. He was the one who had carried her out of the shack and then passed her onto another man.

“Who are you again?”

“Brax.” He smiled.

“Where are we?”

“We’re close to a village called Silchari. Hopefully we can stop there and get gas, a couple of blankets and maybe some more medical supplies before heading to the hospital in Chattogram.”

She frowned, trying to remember a town called Silchari. It didn’t ring any bells. Chattogram was one of the major cities in Bangladesh, so that city she’d heard of.

“Here, drink this.” Brax rested the top of a bottle of water against her lips.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Doesn’t matter. You have a fever and you’re dehydrated. Now drink.”

She tried, but could only stomach four small sips. “That’s all I can handle. Any more and I’ll throw up.”

She almost could smile as she watched him grimace.

“What? You can handle all my gross spitting but not my puking?”

“Your spit doesn’t stink.”

This time she did smile. “Good point.”

All the time she’d been in his arms, the SUV they were riding in had swerved and bumped. In one small way it reminded her of that first hellish ride in the butcher truck. But just in a small way. Being held by Brax made everything much better.

“You said I had a fever. What’s wrong with me? Do you know?”

“Our medic thinks it’s because you have pneumonia.”

“Could it be because of another type of infection?”

He frowned down at her. “What other kind of infection?”

“When they first captured me, they threw me into the back of a butcher truck. There was animal blood all over the floor. I was tied up and thrown in, face down. It got all over my face and in my mouth and I inhaled some. I was pretty out of it to begin with.”

Brax hit the mic on his comm unit. “Nolan, we’ve got a problem.”

“Nolan can’t answer now, he’s working on Jase. What’s your problem?” Kostya asked.

“Jenny thinks she inhaled animal blood on the first day of her kidnapping. She’s worried that might be the reason for her fever.”

“Gideon?” Kostya asked.

“I’ll do research,” Gideon replied. “Nolan won’t be able to talk for a while.”

“Shit,” Brax answered. “How bad is it?”

There was a long pause. Finally, Kostya answered. “It’s not good.”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” Gideon said.

Brax looked down at Jenny. “They’re researching the problem.”

“You said ‘how bad is it’. They must know something.”

“They were talking about my teammate in the other SUV behind us. He’s been shot. He’s alive, but Nolan is working on him.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping Nolan?” she asked. “I’m fine. I’m just sleepy.”

Brax gave a tight grin. “Honey, they have all the men they need over there. I’m right where I want to be. As for you ingesting animal blood, one of my teammates is researching that, and he’ll call back.” He glanced up at the bag hanging from a hook. It was half empty. “You’ve got a full dose of medicine in you and some saline.”

Jenny relaxed. At least she might know soon what was going on. Now that she was finally out of the hut, there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to let herself die.

“What the fuck? Stop that! It hurts!”

Brax winced, then smiled. At least she wasn’t sounding all weak and pleading. If she had the strength, he’d bet his coveted first edition, signed copy of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein that Jenny would have taken a swing at him.

“Honey, I’m sorry it hurts. I’m doing something called percussion. I’m just tapping on your lower back so it will break up the mucus in your lungs.”

“Well, fucking stop it, you asshole. I thought you were one of the good guys.” She tried to shrug his hand off her back, and as soon as she did, she started to cough. The loud, deep, grating coughs made him wince. The coughs had to hurt, but they were just the thing she needed to do to help her get up the mucus.

The SUV started slipping and sliding as Ryker tried to maintain control as he stopped the vehicle. “We’ve got a problem,” Ryker said into his mic from the front seat. “There’s a couple of trees down, and they’ve dammed up the water. They’ve damn near created a lake.”