Jose resisted the urge to rub his five-year sobriety coin again.
Hyenas seemed to mock him in the distance as he trekked farther and farther from the compound, deeper into the night to keep Stella safe. Everything he’d bottled up steamrolled him. This day had been—hell. And it wasn’t over.
The weight of the student didn’t drag him down. He’d trained with heavier, once carrying hulking Bubbles for ten miles. But the burden of how close he’d come to losing Stella back there? That threatened to send him to his knees.
Damn it all, he should be celebrating getting her out. If things had gone according to plan, she would be in a doctor’s care being checked over and eating real food rather than a prepackaged protein bar. She should be in a safe compound, rather than in the wilds of Africa with the guttural growl of lions echoing in the distance. She should be heading off to sleep in a bed with fresh sheets—
He stopped those thoughts short. He would be better off not thinking about Stella and sheets.
She was alive. He needed to concentrate on keeping her that way until he could load her onto a rescue chopper. She had to be maxed out after her time in captivity. Shifting the student more securely over his shoulder, Jose shot a quick glance left to check on Stella. She marched alongside him, pale but steady as she swacked a stick ahead of her to check for warthogs and other African jungle beasties. To clear for scorpions and snakes. Vermin as lethal as her captors.
What exactly had she been through? What had she endured in the days before the surveillance cameras had been flown into her cell?
Bile rose in his throat again, and he pushed down the lurking question that threatened to drown him. Stella was a survivor. She had pocketed a small arsenal of weapons out of the artifacts. He had to focus on the survivor part of her, the professional part, because allowing himself to dwell on the personal… on the essence of Stella…
Hell. Back to the work side of her, the part that had carried her through this nightmare and whatever shook down. He’d always admired her dedication to her job. When they’d been dating he’d thought he found the perfect woman. One as tied to work as he was. She would understand his call to serve and he understood hers. But it turned out she wanted the one thing from him he couldn’t give.
So many regrets slammed over him, yet he couldn’t ignore the fact that today he could have lost even the comfort of knowing she was alive. Sure, it tore him up thinking about her building a future with someone else, but that pain was nothing compared to the hell of envisioning her dead. The crushing hell he would have lived with if he’d arrived too late.
Shit.
Bubbles slowed as they neared a muddy stream and stopped under the umbrella of a leafy higlo tree. “Time for a breather.”
“I’m good,” Jose insisted and he was—physically. It was his brain that was about to explode. “Stella?”
“I’m all right,” she insisted, then swayed on her feet.
“Damn it.” Jose shifted the student over to Bubbles in a flash.
His teammate assumed the burden without hesitation and settled the dude against the tree trunk. “We’re safe here for now. I’ll check over the student. You take care of Stella.”
“Jose?” Her whisper carried on the night air with the distant chirrup of a cheetah. Stella jolted. “We shouldn’t stop. I can do this. I don’t want to hold you back or make us a target.”
Dark circles stained under her eyes, but sharp attention sparked as she scanned past the tree to the wild dogs lapping from the shallow stream.
Even now, she was worried about him. Regardless of what she’d been through, the lack of food and sleep, she was ready to kick ass again with the help of a protein bar. She was every bit as incredible as he remembered, indomitable. And alive.
To hell with objectivity.
He gripped her shoulders, and without another thought, he hauled her to his chest. He held her vibrant and whole body against his. He buried his face in her hair that still held the barest hint of her eucalyptus shampoo in spite of the hellish few days.
“God, Stella, I didn’t think you were going to make it out of there.” His voice rasped in his throat, each word, every emotion grating through him like broken glass. Each word sliced him so tangibly he could have sworn he saw the starlight glinting off the shards.
“You made it in time.” She pressed her forehead to his chest, her fists gripping his survival vest.
“You called.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She trembled in his arms.
His body zeroed into just the feel of her against him and for a few seconds he allowed himself to forget she needed him to be a different kind of man. To forget they were in the middle of nowhere. To forget he still had tough questions to ask her.
A cleared throat had him pulling back. Even keeping a steadying palm on her waist, his arms already felt empty without her.
The injured student—now clearly awake—whistled lowly in the dark. His back against the trunk, Sutton Harper half grinned, despite his injuries. “I take it you two already know each other? Because if not, I’m feeling shortchanged on the post-rescue TLC.”
Jose shot a scowl at Bubbles for failing to alert him that their extra passenger was back in the land of consciousness. Bubbles shrugged. The trumpet of elephants blasted in the distance. The wild dogs twitched their satellite large ears before sprinting off in a streak of mottled fur.
Stella pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re awake. Thank God you’re all right, Sutton.”