Hot Zone (Elite Force 2)

But in all her preparations, she’d never taken into account one possibility.

Her hands slid over her stomach. Aiden would figure it out soon enough on his own. He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. He likely would have noticed the signs already if he hadn’t been so distracted by the adoption.

She loved Aiden, always had since she’d they’d met at Auburn University. After graduation, she’d opted to stay in the States rather than returning to the Bahamas. Her parents had died in a boating accident. She’d felt anchorless. So she’d followed Aiden to medical school, no great sacrifice, since she loved him.

And now she’d risked losing him. Tears burned behind her eyes for him, for herself, but mostly for Joshua, the child she already loved as much as the one she carried inside her. The child inside her that Aiden would never accept.

A hand settled on her shoulder and she almost jumped out of her skin. She looked back to find her husband standing behind her and she relaxed, sagging with relief. Aiden’s blond hair was spiked wildly from the hours of work and lack of a good shower. More than that, exhaustion carved strain lines in the corners of his pale blue eyes behind round glasses.

He was handsome in a lanky, rawboned kind of way of a man who forgot to eat. He didn’t have time for recreation, so his face was burned from their time in the sun here.

Concern dug trenches in his scorched forehead. “Are you okay?”

She smoothed a hand over his brow, his angular face so dear, so familiar. “I’m only tired. What do you need?”

“I’ve got some good news, finally.” He cupped the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her hairline as he’d done a million times. “They’ve found Joshua and Amelia. Alive.”

Tears rushed to clog her throat and eyes. Days of stress and grief exploding inside her as she finally, finally could let her emotions roll free. She started shaking and Aiden kept stroking, comforting. What was he holding back?

“How, Aiden? Where? What happened to them?” She shot to her feet. “We have to go to them. Now!”

His hands fell to rest on her shoulders, holding her still. “They’re at a makeshift hospital located in a school the next town over. He and Amelia both are listed on their admissions roster as patients. There aren’t any specifics on their condition, and it’s going to be tough getting past the roadblocks.”

“But they’re alive?” She grabbed his arms and held onto her anchor. Some called him emotionless, but she knew her husband better than that. He was just reserved. Stalwart. Strong. He had to be, to tamp down the horror she knew sometimes threatened to pull him under.

He squeezed her shoulders. “They are alive. And I promise you, nothing will keep me from our son and my sister.”

***

Hugh had the best rescue and survival training in the world, and still he wasn’t sure yet how the hell he would get Amelia and the child out of the back of this van alive. For now, he focused on minute-to-minute safety until a larger plan could form. He positioned himself closest to the front, with Amelia and Joshua on his other side, his arm locked around her shoulders. If he were alone, he could take out the man and woman. It might cost him a knife wound, or cause him to take a bullet, but the odds were good enough for him.

But having others in the line of fire was a game changer.

Apparently they didn’t want to risk stopping in the city. His guess? They would kill and dump him later. They’d already taken his cell phone, radio, and weapons. They’d tossed the phone and radio out the window into a bog, which ruled out anyone finding them through the GPS tracker on either device. Tandi had kept his pistol and knife well out of his reach, of course.

The thought of what people like these would and could do to Amelia, especially with the country in such a lawless state… He fought back the wave of blinding rage. He needed to stay clearheaded and calm, nothing clouding his instincts, to have even a chance of getting them out of here alive.

The van hit a pothole, jostling his shoulders against the metal side. Crates bounced and settled. If one of those fell from the top, it could do serious damage. He inched along the floor, doing his best to place his body between Amelia and any threat, but shit, everywhere he looked red flags blared. A knife. A gun. Fifty-pound crates tottering in too-high stacks.

And kidnappers with God only knew what agenda.

“How are you here?” Amelia whispered urgently. “I don’t understand how you found us.”

Part of planning an escape hinged on keeping Amelia calm, so he figured it was worth the risk to talk. “I heard you scream as I was leaving.” He pushed back the hellish memory of the moment he’d realized that cry of panic had come from Amelia. “There wasn’t much time to catch you. I was trying to pull a James Bond with my entrance, but that whole hanging-onto-a-moving-vehicle-and-punching-out-the-driver thing doesn’t work quite the same way in real life.”

Tucking the restless toddler closer to her, she managed a wobbly smile. “Looked like you accomplished more than anyone else could, outside the movie world.” She leaned closer to him. “They call each other Oliver and Tandi. They wanted to kidnap Joshua. I caught them trying to take him from the hospital.”

“Okay, that explains a lot. You’re doing good, Amelia. You’re doing good.”

He glanced at their captors up front, and while the woman kept her gun trained on them, she hadn’t tried to tie them up and she hadn’t squeezed off any more wild shots. They seemed more concerned on putting distance between them and the school. Actually the smarter plan, because if they’d stopped to tie him up, he could have disabled that person and gotten the weapon before the other could blink.

Meanwhile, he’d been taking note of the landscape as best he could out the front windshield to guess their location. Not much to go on, though. Just a sense that they were driving east, deeper into the jungle. The van wove off the road as Oliver steered around another fallen tree.

Pulling in his focus, drawing on training, Hugh stared around the crowded van at the supplies—water and juice. Took in Oliver’s uniform. He had some sort of paramilitary look to him, the patches in an indecipherable language. Eastern European, perhaps? Except he didn’t have an accent. From the look of the back of the van, it seemed they’d been able to enter the epicenter of the earthquake site by appearing to deliver supplies. The uniform had most likely been stolen.

Hugh inched closer to her, keeping his voice low. “Fill me in on the rest. Think in terms of details. Anything could be helpful.”

She jostled Joshua until the baby started to settle, his eyelids growing heavier, thank God. “After we uh… well, as I was walking back to Joshua, I saw a woman trying to sneak him out of the hospital. She claimed to be his biological mother.”