Page 71 of Welker

“A round to the vest,” she hissed mutedly. “Three bogies on my six. Fully armed, all with NVGs.”

“Keep your phone on. I’ll grab your coordinates. And Moira?”

“Yeah, Welk?”

“Don’t do anything stupid or heroic. I love you.”

Clearly, he didn’t care that his comm was on, and every single on of their team would hear. She could only match his candor.

“I love you too, Mr. Not-the-boss-of-me,” she added sassily, although it cost her. Moira cursed under her breath. She had to conserve energy for whatever was coming next.

Welker gave a wry snort, not privy to her compromised health. “You may have forgotten it, but out here I’m your LT, sweetheart.”

Moira closed her eyes. She liked that. Not that he was pulling rank, but that he was calling her by a pet name. It was a first.

She waited silently for him to find her coordinates.

“I’ve located you,” he finally came back. “I’m a quarter click out. See you soon.”

Moira wondered if she’d have the necessary time. She felt like she was fading fast.

Soon, she heard bad-guy footsteps moving closer to her position, and gave one last message to Welker, not risking more that would give away her precarious position.

“Going dark,” she responded before laying the phone next to her ear in case Welker would have anything else to impart.

Moira, not good at waiting, began doing math. It might take her mind off the pain, and the difficulty she was having, breathing.

A quarter click out would put Welker three minutes away. Or maybe less depending on how fast he could travel without alerting her pursuers. He’d been a SEAL, after all, so maybe he had some unique, speedy, ghost-like qualities. Moira sure hoped so, because the pricks sounded like they were going to get lucky and stumble upon her pretty damned soon.

Just as she was about to warn Welker that all hell was about to break loose, loud voices rang through the trees from the opposite direction from where Welker would be coming. The sounds were a pretty good distance away, so Moira couldn’t tell if they were good guys or bad guys, but if she’d been Welker…

Yup. Moira chose to believe her boss/lover had told the other squads to come in hot and loud, hopefully scaring her hunters away, possibly in his direction.

“Fuck,” one of the searchers growled. “You hear that? It sounds like an army.”

“I don’t care. Find that cunt,” another snapped, but he was sounding panicked as well.

“Moira,” Welk said softly over the phone beneath her ear. “I have a visual.”

That hadn’t taken him long. Either her math skills were off, or the man was a beast.

Welker continued. “If I take out the two on my left, can you incapacitate the third?”

“Affirmative,” Moira responded, knowing she had no choice. They’d be on her in a matter of seconds. “Ten feet and closing.”

“On my go,” Welk’s voice came back, calming her. “Three…two…go.”

Moira sprung up, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in her chest and the wonky dizziness in her head.

She focused. She aimed. She pulled the trigger, while at the same time hearing two additional reports.

Done.

She dropped back to the ground—as if her body was giving her a choice—and her vision blurred as agony seemed to rip through her entire torso. She barely managed to get her fingers wrapped around her phone again. “Did we get them?” she choked out.

Why the fuck was she in so much pain?

“We did. Great shooting, Annie Oakley,” Welker praised. “All three are down but not dead. I’m zip tying them, now, then I’m going to come give you the biggest kiss of your life. And I don’t care if the entire team is listening.”

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