Protecting Fiona (SEAL of Protection Book 3) (3 page)

Cookie had no idea if everything would work out all right, they were far from safe, she was far from being rescued, but he needed Fiona to know he was impressed with her. He wanted to convey so much with that one small hand squeeze. Cookie didn’t know her story, but he would soon. He just had to get them all out of here in one piece.

Fiona fought back her tears. Jesus, she had to get it together. His small sign of approval and encouragement was all it took for her to want to fall into his arms and never let go. She couldn’t do anything to distract or irritate this man. He was all that was standing between her and freedom.

She trudged behind him as quietly as she could as they crossed back to the hole in the corner of the room. Fiona flinched as her shoes made a
thunking
noise every time she took a step. Flip-flops weren’t exactly quiet. She began to shuffle her feet instead, and the noise quieted.

Fiona watched as the soldier lay on his stomach and scooted out the hole first. He’d told both her and Julie to wait until he’d checked out the immediate area to make sure it was safe. Fiona took the moment to sit on the floor and rest. Jesus, even the short walk across the room tired her out. She had no idea how she was going to make it out in the jungle, but she’d do her best as long as she could.

As if reading her mind, Julie leaned over and grabbed Fiona’s arm with a surprisingly strong grip and dug her nails in. “You better not screw this up for me. My daddy sent him for
me
, not for your sorry ass.”

Fiona jerked her arm out of Julie’s grip and scooted away from the other woman. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Every vile word out of Julie’s mouth was the truth and couldn’t be refuted.

Cookie found the camp much the way it was when he’d entered the building the women had been held in. No one was up and about; they were all still sleeping or passed out. They didn’t have much time before the sun started rising and they had to be long gone by then. Cookie headed back to the building and helped Julie slither out of the hole. He motioned for her to crouch by the wall, then he turned to help Fiona.

After both women were out, Cookie propped the boards back up in their original places. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but hopefully the kidnappers weren’t that smart and wouldn’t have any idea how their prisoners escaped for a long while, giving them a nice head start.

“Come on, ladies, let’s get out of here.”

Cookie watched as both women nodded enthusiastically, and they all headed off into the unforgiving jungle.

Fiona trudged along behind the soldier and Julie silently. She’d vowed not to do anything to hold them up, and she was doing her damnedest to keep that vow. It was still dark out, but the sun had just started to make its way above the horizon. Fiona could barely see Julie ahead of her. The other woman was holding on to the backpack of the soldier for dear life. Julie hadn’t let Fiona get anywhere near the man, she’d claimed him for herself.

He was setting a good pace and Fiona could hear herself breathing too hard and too loud. She’d stopped swatting at the bugs on her legs a while back, it was useless and pointless. As soon as she swatted one away, two more would land. Fiona knew she’d have bug bites all over, but she’d be alive. Her feet also hurt. She’d stubbed her toes more than once on the logs and other things on the forest floor, but she wasn’t going to complain. Fiona refused to bitch about it. She was out of that hellhole and she’d endure whatever she had to in order to get out of the country altogether.

Fiona
was
worried about the drug withdrawal she knew she was going into. Her body had started to shake and she knew it was only a matter of time before the craving for the drugs her captors forced into her system would get bad. She had no idea what the hell they were shooting into her body, but hated every second of it. The feeling of some mysterious cocktail being shoved into her veins was awful. She’d fought her captors like a wildcat every time they came in with another syringe. They’d just hold her down as they shoved the needle into her arm. Fiona had gone through withdrawal several times since they’d begun shooting her up, and her captors had just laughed at her. They’d watched her, waiting for her to beg for the drugs, but Fiona refused. No way in hell was she gonna beg the assholes to put more poison in her body. Finally they’d gotten bored of their little game, and injected the drug into her body regularly, not caring that she fought them every time.

Fiona had to take her mind off of the drugs and her body’s reaction…she did what she had done while chained to the floor…she started concentrating on counting backward from one thousand slowly. If she concentrated on the numbers everything else seemed to be better.
One thousand, nine hundred ninety nine, nine hundred ninety eight.

When Fiona had counted down to the three hundreds, the soldier came to a stop. The morning light was peeking through the trees now, heating the area up quickly.

“We’ll stop here for a break,” he told the women.

Julie immediately sat down. “Please,” she said in a whiny voice. “I’m so hungry, do you have any food?”

Cookie looked at the woman sitting at his feet. Of course she was hungry, but he’d wanted to get them as far away from the compound before stopping. He remembered back to the hellhole he’d found Julie in and thought about how she’d wanted to leave Fiona behind. He tried to hold back his annoyance. Julie
had
been kidnapped for Christ’s sake.

“Of course, Julie. I’ve got some granola bars.”

Julie snapped, “That’s it? Only granola bars? Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had any kind of
real
food?”

Cookie paused in the act of reaching into his pack and simply stared at the woman. He was getting pissed. Was she serious? Of course she was. He tried to stay civil.

“Yes, that’s it. You’ll be away from here soon enough and will be able to have a full meal then. It’s not a good idea to eat a big meal right now when your stomach isn’t used to it. You’ll want to start out slowly and get used to regular sized meals again. I’ve also got some water. You both,” he continued, including Fiona in his gesture, “will need to be sure to drink some.”

Fiona’s mouth watered uncontrollably. She stood off to the side of Julie and the man, leaning against a tree. She hadn’t wanted to sit down, knowing she might not be able to get up again. Besides, as sore as she was, it felt great to stand fully upright, something she hadn’t been able to do for a while. The chain around her neck had prevented it. Her back hurt from the walk and unaccustomed exercise, but it felt so good to be in the fresh air and upright, she wasn’t about to complain about it.

And granola bars. God. It’d been so long since Fiona had eaten real food, just as Julie had said. Of course
her
“long time” was quite a bit longer than Julie’s had been. Sometimes her captors would bring her some potato chips or something, but usually they’d just throw in a piece of hard bread. Fiona wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d had something that wasn’t moldy or stale.

And fresh water? She was in heaven. It was amazing how the little things meant so much more when you didn’t have them. She’d been drinking crappy water for longer than she remembered. At first she was sick as a dog from drinking whatever her captors brought to her, but eventually her body got used to the bacteria and whatever other organisms were swimming in the water. Her stomach still hurt sometimes from the parasites Fiona knew were probably coursing through her body, but at least she wasn’t constantly sick anymore. Fiona wanted to jump the man, grab the food, and stuff it in her mouth as fast as she could. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know how much food he had brought, and she was extra baggage. Fiona figured she’d waited this long, she could wait a bit longer to get something to eat if there wasn’t enough…maybe.

Cookie walked over to where Fiona was leaning against a tree. If he thought she looked bad before, in the light of the new day he could see she looked worse than he’d thought. He hadn’t been able to see her very well in the building, and they’d been walking in the dark since then, but now that Cookie had the chance to really look at her, he wasn’t sure how she was still standing.

The metal collar was partially hidden by his black T-shirt, but he could see Fiona’s skin around the top of it was red and painful looking. Cookie couldn’t see any blood, but it wouldn’t surprise him if she was bleeding where the collar dug into her neck. Her legs were filthy, and he could see they were covered in welts from bug bites. Her feet in the flip-flops were absolutely disgusting, covered in mud and caked with black stuff up to her knees. She’d pulled back her hair at some point and secured it with a vine from one of the trees they’d passed. It was stringy and limp and badly in need of some soap. Her face and hands were also covered in dirt and she had rivulets of sweat running down her temples.

She was also very skinny, too skinny. She’d obviously not had enough to eat in far too long. Cookie held out a wet-wipe that he’d pulled from his bag and offered it to Fiona without a word.

Fiona looked at the man and at the wet wipe he held out. She wanted to snatch it up and revel in the cleanness of it, but she hesitated.

Cookie saw her hesitation and said softly, misunderstanding her reticence. “I know it’s not much, but until we can get further away, we can’t risk a full bath.” Fiona nodded. It was silly, but she didn’t want to be partially clean. It’d just bring home to her how awful the rest of her felt and smelled if she cleaned just a part of her.

As if he could read her mind, the gorgeous man in front of her said, “At least your hands, Fiona. Then you can eat without worrying about germs.”

Fiona laughed without humor. “I don’t think I have to worry about germs. I don’t want to take your last one,” she told him being honest.

“I have plenty,” Cookie told her, still holding out the cloth.

Fiona finally reached out for the wet wipe slowly, embarrassed at how badly her hands were shaking. She tried to smile at the man, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Of course he did.

“Are you okay?” Cookie said softly, narrowing his eyes, “Your hands are shaking.”

Fiona concentrated on rubbing her hands and wouldn’t look him in the eye as she tried to scrub three months of crud from her hands. “I’m good. I’m just really ready to get out of here.”

Cookie watched the woman in front of him. Holy Hell. Where did she get her strength from? He knew of a lot of men that could endure great pain and had awesome endurance. He’d seen it time and time again with his own teammates. But standing there, watching this woman nonchalantly try clean her hands and ignore her hunger and the fact she’d just escaped after being held captive for who knew how long… Cookie thought she had to be one of the most mentally strong women he’d ever met, and that included Wolf’s woman, Caroline.

Cookie almost forgot he’d brought her a granola bar, but finally remembered. “When you’re done, be sure to give me back the wipe. We don’t want to leave any sign we’ve been here.” He watched Fiona nod, still not looking at him. “Then you can eat your granola bar and we can be on our way.”

Cookie watched as she did finally look up at that, not at him, but at the food he held out toward her. Fiona’s eyes were locked on the food in his hand as if she blinked, it would disappear. He could almost see her salivating. The muscle in her jaw ticked as she ground her teeth together and Cookie could see her swallow several times. She might outwardly act like it didn’t matter if she ate anything or not, but he could see in her eyes how desperate she was for the little piece of food he held out to her. Her breathing had increased and he could almost see her heart beating in her chest. She swallowed twice more, struggling with herself.

Fiona wanted that granola bar more than she’d ever wanted anything before, well maybe not more than getting out of this jungle. She dropped her eyes and shrugged, trying to look disinterested. She looked back down at her hands, now absently rubbing them, and told him, “It’s okay, I’m not hungry, you can save it for later.”

Cookie barely kept his mouth from dropping open. The woman was skin and bones, he knew she was hungry, starving in fact, and she was refusing the food? What the hell?

“Fiona, you need the strength to continue. You need to eat.”

Just as Fiona opened her mouth to respond, Julie interrupted. “I’ll eat it if she doesn’t want it.”

Fiona swallowed hard and tried not to cry. Her stomach rebelled at the thought of giving the granola bar away, but she controlled herself and forced herself to whisper to Cookie, “Julie can have it. I’ll just have some water.”

Uh, no. Cookie took Fiona by the arm and led her a bit away, saying sternly over his shoulder to Julie, “We’ll be right back, stay put.”

“What is
up
with you?” Cookie asked Fiona with little patience in his voice. He didn’t have time for this. This was why he didn’t have a steady girlfriend. He’d never understand the games women played if he lived to be a hundred. “I have to get you both to the extraction point. I need you to walk, I can’t carry you
and
her at the same time,” Cookie scolded bluntly. “I can only carry one of you at a time.”

“You won’t need to carry me. I told you I won’t slow you down. I know I’m extra baggage you didn’t expect. I won’t get in your way, I won’t slow you down and I won’t eat the food so that there isn’t enough. You only planned for two, you didn’t plan for me.” 

Cookie calmed down. So that was it. She wasn’t trying to play him in any way, she wasn’t playing games, she was trying to fly under his radar. He didn’t want to burst her bubble, but it wasn’t working.

“Look,” Cookie tried to reassure Fiona, putting a hand on her shoulder briefly, “it’s not that far to the extraction point. I have plenty of food for us all, even though I didn’t expect you. Eating one granola bar will not deplete my resources. I was going to wait to tell you both this at the same time, but I obviously need to let you know now. I’m part of a Navy SEAL team that was dropped here to get Julie out. My teammates are nearby. We’ll meet at the extraction point and get the hell out of here. No more talk about being ‘extra’ okay? Now, please, you need the energy and the calories, Fiona. Take it.”

Fiona didn’t look like she believed him, either about the help coming or about the amount of food he had for them, but she was literally starving. Cookie almost chuckled at the obvious indecision on her face, but he saw the moment she made her decision.

Fiona couldn’t make herself reach out for the granola bar when he again held out it out to her, but she knew she needed it so she’d be able to continue. She looked up at the man, not knowing how her eyes pleaded with him to take the decision out of her hands.

Cookie reached out and gently took one of her shaking hands and held on when Fiona would’ve jerked it back. He waited until she looked up at him. “I swear to you, Fiona, you are
not
extra baggage. Yes, we were sent here for Julie, but I would’ve come by myself if I had known you were there. I would have come for
you
.”

Fiona just stared at him, willing her tears away. After not hearing a kind word in so long, his words felt like balm to her blistered soul. He’d never know how much what he’d just said meant to her.

Cookie wanted to say more. He wanted to say that he admired her, that he was amazed by her, but he knew it wasn’t the time or the place. He dropped his hand and Fiona was left holding the granola bar. Cookie watched as she tried to open the snack. She fumbled with the thick plastic and couldn’t grip it hard enough to rip it open. Cookie took it and tore it open for her, then handing it back to her without the wrapper.

Fiona took a small bite and closed her eyes. It was the best thing she’d ever eaten,
ever
. She tried to savor the flavors and not chew too fast. She finally finished the first bite, swallowed, and opened her eyes again to take another small bite and met the man’s eyes. Fiona turned away in embarrassment. God, she was such a dork. She should just eat the stupid thing and be done with it, but it’d been so long, she wanted to savor the granola as long as she could.