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“You can and you will. Turn around and put your feet out first. Once you’re hanging, it’ll only be thirteen feet. The ground is soft. You’ll be fine.”
Lena’s fierce tone suggested she wouldnotbe fine if she chose to stay. Thinking of Mateo and the possibility that she might catch up to him, somehow, once she was out of the building, Grace mastered her fear the way Amos had taught her. She went to stick a foot out the window and kicked the desk lamp to the floor.
Lena gave a hiss of dismay, probably because of the noise they were making.
“Sorry.” Bracing her hands on the desk, Grace stuck her other foot out the window. She knelt on the windowsill a moment, summoning her courage, before she straightened one leg, then the other, putting her stomach on the sill. It wasn’t so bad when you couldn’t see what you were doing.
But it quickly became terrifying as she slid backward, letting the weight of her body take her down the exterior wall. She hung there, suddenly petrified. Her knuckles ached. She couldn’t stay like this much longer.
Lena’s head poked out of the opening above her. “Whatever you do, keep quiet,” she warned.
To Grace’s horror, Lena pried her fingers off the ledge. Grace’s fatigued hands gave way. She dropped like a boulder, swallowing her scream of terror. Her legs folded as she hit the ground—soft, my foot. But the backpack cushioned her spine and kept the wind from being knocked clean out of her.
To her credit, Lena remained at the window. “Grace!” Her whisper conveyed genuine concern.
Grace queried her body for injuries. Feeling nothing amiss, she sat up slowly while raising a thumb up at Lena. The woman immediately vanished.
“Now what?” Grace looked around. How on earth was she going to take on an army, let alone face the devil a second time and win?
* * *
“Well, hello.”
Ben’s intrigued tone had Amos cutting a look at the sprawled sniper. “What is it?”
“Someone just dropped out of the second-story window—a female. I think it’s Grace Garrett. What isshedoing here?”
Amos’s hopes surged as he aimed his scope at the window in question, then down at the ground where Grace was climbing to her knees.
“Looks like she’s okay,” Ben reported. “Oh, there’s Zorra!”
“Where?” Jake joined Amos in staring over the dune toward the warehouse.
“I just saw her face in the window, but now she’s gone. And it looks like the Nats are about to leave.”
Jake expelled a loud sigh. “Change of plans, men. We’re going in to get the women. No engaging with the enemy except in self-defense. Ben, you drop down fifty yards out and cover us. Stay low and fan out.”
Amos would have gone in whether Jake ordered it or not. He was the first one over the dunes, as they all sprinted toward the chain-link fence. It had worked! By some incredible miracle, Grace had seen and responded to his WhatsApp message, enabling the SEALs to recover her when they recovered Zorra.
Keeping one eye on her, he ran like the wind. Grace was here. But where was Mateo? The convoy was pulling away. Alarm trickled through Amos. Even with a hundred yards between him and Grace, he could tell by her body language alone that the boy had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
Over my dead body. Jake’s zero-engagement policy was about to go up in flames if that was the case.
The first to arrive at the chain-link fence, Amos freed the S-hooks that kept the span connected to the vertical post. As the span curled away, all four SEALs darted between the top and bottom rails, leaving the opening for their retreat.
Amos ran like he hadn’t run in years. Every strike of his heels jarred his spine. His heart hammered to keep pace. The future—his and Simon’s happiness—seemed to come down to this moment, for despite how little time he had known Grace, she was now the center of their world. If something awful happened to her…
To his alarm, he saw her stand up and start to limp toward the vehicles rolling away from the building.
“Grace!”
His hoarse whisper had her spinning around. When she recognized him, her astonishment made all the anguish she had put him through worthwhile.
“Amos!” She flung her arms wide, then gripped him fiercely as he crashed into her, spinning her around to absorb his momentum. He could feel her entire body trembling, a clear sign that all was not well. Amos pulled her behind the cover of a small, twisted tree at the rear corner of the building, where a Russian-made car was parked. “You got my WhatsApp message.”
“Yes, it saved my life.” Grace’s voice quaked. “But they’ve taken Mateo, Amos. He’s in one of those big trucks with a tarp over the back. We have to stop them.”
Amos peered around the tree. “How many trucks like that are there?” Given the rumbling motors, there could be a dozen.
