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I’d been close.

So. Damn. Close.

Maybe I would have made my escape if Rico hadn’t bellowed with pain at the top of his lungs.

The man finally subdued me, and I screamed as he lifted his gun high over my head.

I knew what he was going to do, and I didn’t want to be that helpless when I was about to be sent to Ecuador.

Defeat flooded through my body, and a second later, my world went dark when the butt of his gun cracked against my skull with a sickening thud.

Chapter 4

Brock

Ifelt nothing but relief when we finally approached the site of the kidnapping.

We’d hiked a few miles once we’d left the helicopter to avoid detection.

The four of us knew our roles in this rescue, so we hadn’t talked much on our way here.

I’d find a way into the structure that was housing Jenna. Nate would watch my six from outside the holding area, and Gage and Seth would stay near the home that we knew was housing multiple people.

Jenna was alone in the holding facility, so I was going to retrieve her with as much stealth as possible.

I had no damn idea why I’d volunteered to recover Jenna.

I generally preferred to be the guy who watched everyone else’s six.

Person-to-person contact with the victim or victims was something I usually avoided.

I wasn’t exactly a people person.

I wasn’t really good at comforting people.

Honestly, none of us liked dealing with emotional situations, but Gage was better at calming hostages than the rest of us. He was usually the one who stepped up to do the personal interaction during our rescues.

I knew I had surprised my teammates by volunteering to go after Jenna, but they hadn’t questioned me. Thank fuck!

I really hadn’t wanted to explain why I had some inexplicable objection to anyone else touching her when she was vulnerable.

I couldn’t have explained it to my teammates when I didn’t get it myself.

“Location in sight,” I said in a low voice as I got a clear visual of the holding facility and the house.

“Got it,” Nate said in a clipped voice in my ear.

We had all the latest technology, and the small receivers in our ears were crystal clear.

Gage and Seth grunted an affirmative, too.

“Be damn careful,” Marshall growled into our ears from his location in San Diego. Marshall and his billionaire partners were always at the high-tech headquarters monitoring and guiding our operations. “There are more bodies than I’d like in that house, and I guarantee they’re all heavily armed. Get the woman and get the hell out of there.”

It was the same warning we always got from Marshall, no matter how many operations he’d run with us from headquarters.

We always knew our mission, but he constantly reminded us that bringing victims home was our priority. Last Hope operated by stealth. We always tried to get in and out without a shot fired, even though we carried several lethal weapons, including the rifle slung over my back.

We weren’t Delta anymore.