Page 39 of Her Faithful Protector

Nobody came over to her. Dammit, she had to get them away from Lisa.

“Help me, please somebody help me!” This time her words were in Spanish.

She heard the loud stomping of boots. Her head was pulled back with her hair, and fingers dug into her mouth, forcing it wide open.

“Uggrgh.” A rag was shoved into her mouth. She tried to force it out with her tongue, but it was impossible.

“That’ll shut her up. Did you do the same to the other bitch?” He was talking so fast in Spanish that Camilla was having a hard time keeping up.

“Yep,” came the voice from where Lisa was hanging.

“This is even better, we each get one,” the man laughed. Camilla couldn’t even remember if it was the first man or the second man talking. She tried to take in air, but she was starting to choke.

“Stop this, you fuck!” It was Travis.

The man holding her laughed. “If you say another word, I slit her throat,” the animal said in English. “How you like that? She dead because of you. You like that?”

Cami felt the knife at her neck while a big hand was reaching down under the waistband of her capris. She struggled wildly. She couldn’t say anything, she couldn’t make a sound. Listening intently, she tried to hear something from Lisa who was at the other end of the line, but there was nothing. All she could hear were the heavy pants of the man whose hands seemed to be everywhere on her. As she struggled, her injured shoulder jerked, causing the surreal moments of her impending rape to be interspersed with wild, lightning bolts of pain. Red mist swirled around her vision. She felt herself getting ready to pass out, but goddammit, she refused. There was no way she was going to stop fighting. She was not going to give up.

* * *

Nic had been running toward the clearing when Max’s voice stopped him.

“Hale, stand down!”

How’d he even know he was moving?

“Raiden, you’re in back of the church. Move to the prisoners now! The guards are getting ready to rape two of the women. I’ll meet you there. We’re going to stop them.”

Nic pulled up his rifle and used the scope to see instead of the binoculars.

It was zero three hundred thirty. Kane and his team were still thirty minutes away. He had a perfect shot—he could take out the man touching Cami without a problem—but then they would lose all hope of a surprise. Surprise was their only hope. God, if only he knew that Max and Raiden would be in time to stop it, in time to…

Both women struggled. The knife that had been at Cami’s neck was on the ground now and the man’s hands roamed her body. Her shirt was ripped open down the front, exposing her chest. One hand kept going from squeezing one breast to the other, back and forth. Nic couldn’t see the man’s other hand; it was behind her back.

Nic gritted his teeth and prayed.

Cami’s damaged arm flailed as she was kicking backward. Nic zoomed in so he could look closer at Cami’s face. He saw the whites of her eyes, then she narrowed them. Ah, God, was she in more pain? He strained to see. No, it wasn’t pain, it was rage. Pure rage.

He adjusted his focus again so he could see the whole scene. Where’s Raiden? Where’s Max? He knew they wouldn’t talk, not if they were going to be so close to the enemy. But where in the fuck are they? He widened his focus again to take in all eleven prisoners. He saw the other woman on the other end. She was not moving, a knife wedged under her chin. When Nic focused in on her, he saw tears running down her face. The man behind her was grinning.

Goddammit! What’s taking Max and Raiden so long?

He whipped the scope back to Cami. Nic’s gut clenched when he saw her slumped over. Then he realized that the man behind her was nowhere to be seen.

“Got my guy,” Max Hogan whispered. “The girl is alive. She wasn’t raped.”

Nic was trembling when he looked back over toward the other woman. Raiden was behind the man, slowly moving around until he stood almost beside him. It was pure poetry as Raiden slid his knife into the side of the fucker’s neck as he simultaneously pushed the asshole’s arm forward so that the man’s knife was forced away from the woman’s throat, then fell to the ground.

The woman remained upright as Raiden dragged the body backward into the gloom behind the church.

“Pulling my guy into the jungle,” Raiden reported. “My girl is alive,” was all he said.

Nic looked at his watch; the whole op had taken ten minutes, but it had felt like a lifetime. Twenty more minutes, then Kane and the others should be here. Twenty more minutes, then they could rain down hellfire like no one had seen before. Twenty more minutes and he could hold Cami and never let her go.

* * *

What had just happened? Am I losing my mind? Has the pain finally made me start hallucinating?