Page 56 of The Woman Left Behind

Whump!as she collided with the shooter.

Sick shock reverberated through her. Voodoo had likely been hit, maybe killed. The shard of sorrow that pierced her gut was unexpected. Voodoo was an asshole—but he belonged to her the way the other guys did. He was a part of the whole.

The impact of the collision rattled her teeth, jarred her bones—twice, because she hit the guy at full speed, bounced off, then hit the ground flat on her back. She landed on the equipment bag, knocking her breath out.

The shooter staggered sideways, swung around to face the unexpected attack. She saw slanted dark eyes, a mop of matted, dirty black hair, bad teeth, his weapon coming up, and she knew she was dead. The realization was staggering and brought a sort of numbness with it. Then there was anothercrack,this one from behind her, and clots of red sprayed out of his chest. He staggered back, still bringing his weapon around toward her, and a second shot hit him square in the forehead. He went down like a rag doll, falling across her feet and legs.

Jina gasped for breath, too much happening in a couple of seconds for her to process. She couldn’t get her lungs to work, or her brain to move faster than wet mush. A body lay heavily across her legs, brain matter leaking out of the massive exit wound on the back of his head. She couldn’t push it off, couldn’t even sit up.

Jelly ran up. Keeping his weapon aimed, he hooked his foot under the shooter’s armpit, rolled him over, mostly off Jina’s legs but with her left foot still trapped. His expression was grim and set, no sign of the incorrigible team joker on his face now. He slanted a fast glance at Jina. “You all right?” he asked, then snapped his attention back to the guy’s body.

No. Maybe. She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. All she could do was move her lips like a guppy, trying to somehow get air into her lungs. Her brain said she was okay, she’d just had the wind knocked out of her, but her body was in a panic and the two were miles away from agreement. She totally took back the thought that air was overrated, because she couldn’tbreathe,and all of a sudden that was damn important.

She had a confused sense of being converged on, the rest of the team surging around, weapons drawn and ready. She saw Voodoo, not only alive but evidently unhurt, though she wasn’t sure how that had happened. Levi’s face swam into view, his expression so savage she’d have run if she could. Fat chance of that; she was dying here, lying on the forest floor with damn bugs crawling on her, and they were too busy tonotice. But he stood astride her like an avenging angel, holding an HK MP7 instead of a flaming sword, his head on a swivel as he looked for additional threats. Snake slid in beside her, as if he were a runner stealing second and she were the base; before he could do anything, Levi must have realized what was wrong because abruptly he leaned down and grabbed the waistband of her pants, jerked her up and shook her, let her drop—and blessed air rushed into her lungs.

Thathurt. For a minute all she could do was suck in deep, shuddering breaths. Awkwardly she rolled to the side as much as she could, what with Levi still standing astride her, Snake on her left, and the dead guy still lying across her foot. She was surrounded by men, and none of them were doing anything helpful—well, except for Levi practically body-slamming her to the ground and knocking the air back into her. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. Her right ear rang.

She coughed, gagged, then managed a groan.

“Are you hit?” Snake was asking urgently, when she could pay attention to something other than her body’s desperate need for oxygen.

Still unable to make a sound anywhere resembling an actual word, she coughed some more while she vehemently shook her head.

“What the fuck happened?” Levi snapped. “Ramirez, is this another one of the Restrepos?”

Ramirez crouched by the dead man, examined the face distorted by the head shot, then shook his head. “No. I don’t recognize this one. This means it isn’t just the three of them, they have others with them.”

Jina needed to sit up, so she could cough and gag more efficiently. She tapped Levi on the knee. He didn’t move. She felt as if she was going to choke to death if she didn’t getup,but no one was paying attention. She glanced at Snake, but he was busy keeping surveillance on the forest around them, now that he knew she hadn’t been shot.

Damn itall. She punched Levi on the knee as hard as she could, then shoved at him. That predatory gaze swooped down to her; she shoved his leg again and understanding flashed. He stepped over her, releasing her from the cage of his stance, and leaned down to grip her forearm and haul her to a sitting position.

“Thanks,” she managed to say, though the word was so strangled it sounded more like “hgnsks.” She coughed violently, bent over from the waist, but finally her lungs and diaphragm and throat were all on the same page and air was moving in and out, and her brain decided she wasn’t in danger of dying. She’d seen football players get the wind knocked out of them before, but she hadn’t realized how weird and awful it felt. In retrospect, she had a lot more sympathy.

“I repeat: what the fuck happened?” Levi’s tone sounded like the first step into hell, with worse awaiting.

Jelly said, “Babe all of a sudden kicked into high gear. I didn’t see the bastard until she hit him broadside. She looked like a fucking linebacker—alittlelinebacker, but still. He had Voodoo square, if she hadn’t plowed into him when she did. She bounced off him, hit the ground. He came around on her and I plugged him in the chest, then the insurance tap to the head.”

Eight men looked at her. Jina wiped her watering eyes. “It was an accident,” she croaked, and tried to get up but the dead guy still had her left foot trapped. Annoyed, frustrated, she half yelled, “Would someone get this dead guy off me?”

Maybe she should be more upset that she’d just seen someone killed. Maybe she should be in hysterics that the guy’s body was lying across her foot. Maybe in an hour or two shewouldbe upset, but right now Voodoo was okay and no one else had been hurt—her included, because for that frozen moment when everything happened she’d been sure she wouldn’t survive—and all she wanted to do was get up and punch a tree or something.

Boom and Ramirez rolled the dead guy onto his back, off her foot. Freed, she pulled her knees up and rested her head on them, breathing hard and trying to get herself back. Being on the team was no longer an adventure; even though she’d known in her head that people could get killed, actually seeing it happen was something else entirely. She gave herself maybe five seconds, then set her jaw and rolled to her feet. Like before, the gunfire would bring anyone in the area down on them, and they needed to get moving.

She settled the equipment bag back into place and hoped Tweety and the laptop had survived her landing on top of them. “I’m ready,” she said, though she wasn’t certain of that. Her chest still ached, and her emotions felt numb.

No one moved. Levi still looked like a thundercloud. “Youtackledan armed man?”

“No. I ran into him; big difference. I told you, it was an accident.”

They didn’t believe her. She could see it in their expressions, incredulity blended with something else she couldn’t read. She shifted uncomfortably and said, “Let’s go.”

Crutch said, “I dunno, Babe. Maybe instead of tackling the guy you could have whistled, or something, to give Voodoo a heads-up?”

Oh, for pity’s sake! Angry, upset, and growing more hostile by the second, Jina shouted at them, “I’m a girl! Girls don’t whistle! We don’t spit or scratch our balls, either. Those are guy skills. Now can we get the hell out of here before I throw up on someone?” To her chagrin her eyes began burning, and she turned away before the burning became actual tears. It didn’t help that she really couldn’t whistle, and Jordan and Taz had teased her relentlessly about it when they were growing up. Even her baby sister, Caleigh, could whistle. It was dumb for such a little thing to surface now and upset her, especially given that she knew Crutch was teasing.

“You heard her,” Levi snapped. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

So they did, falling into line and resuming their sprint through the green hell. She noticed Voodoo checking over his shoulder a couple of times, as if making sure she was still in sight. That was so unlike him it unnerved her, especially given that she knew her speed was slower than before. Her energy level had dropped, and she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Even worse, Jelly was sticking closer to her than before, too. She didn’t want them babying her, because that might undermine her fragile self-control.

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