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Ayla sat frozen after the men went inside the house. When she could move, she glanced at Rusty. His expression told her this situation was bad. Really bad.

She signaled for him to bend down. When he did, she breathed into his ear, “Help them.”

He shook his head, and every bit as quietly said, “My orders are to protect you.” Without another word, he stood, placing his body between her and the house. All she could see was his back.

Her heart pounded wildly, and Ayla took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. If she panicked, she wouldn’t be able to think straight. She might be mad as hell at Oz, but she didn’t want anything terrible to happen to him. Or for her baby to lose its father before it was born.

She took another careful breath.

She didn't know who those men were, but she was certain it was the Russian mobsters. There was an arrogance to the way they boldly parked on the street that spoke to men who didn’t care about what anyone in the neighborhood did. That definitely sounded like gangsters.

Her legs shook badly and Ayla could barely stand. Gripping Rusty’s arm, she went up on her toes. It put her mouth close enough that she could whisper and he’d still hear her. “Can Oz and Ski overcome ten men on their own?”

“Eight men,” Rusty corrected her. “It’s possible.” But his facial expression said it was unlikely.

“If you helped them, would all three of you get killed, or would your presence even the odds?”

There was a long silence before he whispered, “It would help. I’d be coming in behind the men. They’d be caught between the three of us, but the Wizard ordered me to guard you.”

“If I wasn’t here, what would you do?”

“I’d go inside.” There was no hesitation.

Ayla tried to come up with the right words. She knew time was short, that once those men realized they weren’t alone, things would go to hell quickly. How long could the guys hold out? Minutes? Less?

“I’ll stay here,” she murmured. “I won’t make a peep. If one of the mobsters comes over, I’ll hide. Please, I can’t stand by and listen to them kill Oz or Ski. Can you?”

Rusty scowled. “Oz will rip into me if I leave you.”

“Oz won’t be alive to say a word if you stay.”

The hesitation lasted a microsecond. “Don’t leave the clearing,” he ordered softly. “If you hear footsteps headed this way, retreat silently into the shadows. Don’t go back into the rainforest unless you have no other choice.”

“I will.”

“Ma’am, I expect you to defend me when the Wizard reprimands me.”

“I will,” she promised.

With one last shake of his head, Rusty adjusted the night vision thing on his helmet and headed out of the clearing. He disappeared into the shadows. Ayla had the binoculars to let her see in the dark on her own helmet, but she didn’t lower them.

She shook too hard to do anything except drop onto the stone bench.

Her pulse pounded so loudly she wouldn’t hear someone walk up to the clearing. She was a problem solver. Heck, it was even in the job description for a public relations specialist. Sitting, knowing she was a liability if she tried to do anything to help, tore Ayla up.

The argument she’d had with Oz replayed through her brain.

All I wanted to do was keep you and our baby safe.

Ayla had a new perspective on what he said now. Maybe she didn’t appreciate the lying, the subterfuge, but if he’d told her his plan, she would have ditched him and gone out on her own. Or tried to anyway. Because she hadn’t grasped how dangerous the situation was.

Oz knew. He had been trying to protect her by keeping her on the sidelines.

If he emerged from this alive, Ayla would tell Oz she was sorry. That she understood now. Sure, she’d been scared since she arrived in Puerto Jardin, but once she had him by her side, some of her fear subsided.

Enough that she underestimated the danger.

Gunshot! She’d never heard one in real life before, but she identified it easily.

Her stomach twisted, but this had nothing to do with morning sickness and everything to do with terror.

Taking a thousand airplane flights or parasailing would be better than going through this. Heck, she’d rather ride a camel in the Australian Outback.

Memories of all the things that left her scared, sitting at the hotel with one of her parents, while her sister went out on an adventure with the other, seemed so silly now. This was fear. Mule rides in the Grand Canyon, kayaking in Portuguese caves, hang gliding at?—

Another gunshot stopped her thoughts, and Ayla nearly called Oz’s name. She put a hand over her mouth to stop the sound.

If he died, she’d mourn for the rest of her life.

So many things she was afraid of, including taking a chance on Oz.

Maybe that was why she’d been so angry. Better to end their relationship than to risk heartbreak later. Not that she didn’t have a right to be angry about his manipulating her, but she’d done this with other men she’d been involved with. As soon as things got serious, she chickened out.

Pollita . Little chicken. That’s what she was. A chicken.

Not that Oz said he wanted more with her than co-parenting their child. She was reading too much into a night of sex. Okay, two nights of sex.

There was more shooting. Not just one shot at a time, like earlier, but this sounded like an actual gunfight.

Was there anything she could do that wouldn’t make the situation worse?

What would Io do? For damn sure her sister wouldn’t be sitting on a bench, wringing her hands while the man she loved and his friends were in danger of being killed. Her twin was inside that house. Ayla knew that in her heart even if she couldn’t sense Io at the moment.

Distraction.

She could distract the mobsters, couldn’t she? Something that wouldn’t put her at risk. Ayla looked around, but short of tossing rocks at the house, she didn’t see anything. Just thinking about Oz’s reaction to her getting close enough to get within throwing range made her rule that out.

Ayla blinked back tears. When it came to anything involving a risk, she was a failure. She shook it off. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself.

The cars! The mobsters left their cars on the street. What if she went through the neighbor’s yard? She could reach the vehicles and use one of them as a distraction.

Were men guarding them? Or were they so cocky that they didn’t bother?

Her money was on arrogant. Ayla stood, took a deep breath to calm the shaking, and moved. Gunfights didn’t last long. If she wanted to create a diversion, she needed to do it now. She thought of Oz, the way he took care of her, and she lowered the binocular night vision things over her eyes.

Oz was going to be furious that she took any kind of risk at all, but it was three men against eight. Ayla couldn’t stand by and let him and his friends die.

Or let her twin die.

As she crept through the carefully manicured yard of the other home, a memory surfaced. A news article she’d read.

Now that would be a distraction.

If she could pull it off and didn’t get caught.

If she wasn’t too late.

Oz took one side of the doorway, and Ski had the other. They were out of view from the hallway. They’d left Iona on the bed. Ayla would rip him a new one if she knew, but the sister was probably safer where she was.

Petrova wanted her alive. The same couldn’t be said for him and Ski.

“Eight men,” he heard across the comm system in the helmet.

That was Rusty. The intel was helpful. Oz guessed there were at least a couple of former Spetsnaz soldiers in the group.

Eight against two.

Grimness settled over him. Getting out of this was a long shot, and he knew a moment of regret that he’d never get to hold his child.

He shook it off. Not dead yet, and he wasn’t going down without a hell of a fight.

“I’m coming in,” Rusty whispered.

Oz went rigid. He couldn’t ream the kid out and order him back to watch Ayla. The situation was too precarious to speak, but he pressed the button on the mic, making clicking noises that any idiot should fucking know meant get your ass back to the clearing.

No response.

He thought about doing it again, but there was no point. If one time didn’t dissuade Rusty, a second round wouldn’t either.

Pushing aside the anger—and the fear over Ayla being left alone—he focused on the present moment.

Now he needed not only to survive to have a relationship with his son or daughter, he needed to survive to protect Ayla because that dipshit left her unguarded.

Rusty better fucking hope the Russians took out Oz.

Three against eight improves the odds.

Oz wanted to ignore that voice in his head, but it was right. Three improved the chances of survival and Rusty was behind Petrova’s team, not pinned down like he and Ski were.

If the kid didn’t fuck up.

A gunshot made his adrenaline surge. Oz tamped it down, harnessed it.

Petrova’s men reached the second floor, at least two of them. Oz heard them clearing the upstairs bedrooms in the same pattern he and Ski had used. Definitely Spetsnaz. The lackeys wouldn’t be as methodical.

Another shot.

Rusty? Maybe trying to draw off as many men as possible. It was a guess.

There was a salvo, multiple weapons firing.

Damn, he hoped the kid didn’t get himself killed. That was Oz’s privilege for Rusty leaving Ayla on her own.

The footsteps reached the room next to where he and Ski stood. That team wasn’t being lured away from their job by the shooting. Oz exchanged a few hand signals with Ski. They’d only have one chance to take out Petrova’s men when they entered.

The door to the room was slowly pushed all the way open.

If the dude turned his direction to clear the room, he belonged to Oz. If he turned the other way, he was Ski’s problem. It was the second man that caused issues. Whoever dealt with the first one needed to wait as long as possible so the trailer was at least partially inside.

He turned Oz’s way.

Oz waited. He knew the instant he was spotted and moved before the man could react. Knocking the pistol out of his hand, Oz took him down. Knee in the middle of his back, he used flex cuffs to secure his wrists and ankles. Standing, he returned to his position.

They had a problem now.

Dude two hadn’t been deep enough into the room when Oz was forced to take action. The enemy was in the hallway; he was armed, and he knew Oz was inside.

He also had six other men with him.

How much help was Rusty going to be? How long could the kid handle a team that large on his own? They might be flunkies, but they were still experienced and ruthless.

More gunfire underlined Oz’s concern.

The standoff with the hallway dude wouldn’t last indefinitely. While not yet shooting through walls, how long until he strategically fired at Oz and Ski’s likely locations?

Not long.

The first shot put a hole in the wall next to where Ski stood. Because of their positions, neither of them had an angle to return fire.

Another shot, this one even closer to Ski.

A slow screeching sound from outside caught Oz’s attention. What the fuck was that?

The crash reverberated through the house. It sounded as if someone had leveled a wrecking ball at the structure.

It didn’t deter the man in the hall. He took another shot through the wall.

“Drop the weapon. Put your hands up,” Rusty said in English. The man must have ignored him because the order came again in Spanish. A moment later, “It’s clear Wiz, Ski.”

Oz went around the corner and covered the man with his pistol. “I have him. Put the flex cuffs on him.”

When Rusty took care of it and the Spetsnaz dude was on the floor, Oz asked, “What was that crash?”

“A car came into the house.”

“What?”

“A car exploded through the front of the house,” Rusty repeated. “It allowed me to get those other men subdued and come up to help you.”

“I’ll get the sister,” Ski said from inside the room. He entered the corridor with Iona Desmond in a firefighter’s carry. “We need to get out of here. The car crash is going to have the neighborhood outside gawking.”

“Copy that,” Rusty said. Then, grinning, he turned back to Oz. “Your Pollita really sent that car flying. It was an awesome diversion.”

Oz scowled. “You and I are going to have a discussion about what orders mean.”

Walking past Rusty, he went to check on his woman.