Page 27 of Fighting for Ella

It always hurt her ears.

Now there was so much shooting that the bangs all joined together in one loud explosion of sound, and she cowered, curling in on herself, her panic growing by the second.

What were they going to do?

They were trapped. She was useless. It was Miguel against all of Raul’s guards. It was hopeless.

Now that they’d tried escaping, Raul was going to know that she’d gone there with ulterior motives. That meant as soon as his men got their hands on her, she was going to be tortured.

“Ella, come on, honey, you’ve been so brave, but I need you to hang on a little longer. Can you do that for me?”

Miguel’s calm, soothing voice cut through a little of her panic and she forced herself to latch onto it. Just like she’d placed a hand on his chest earlier and used it to mimic his breathing, calming herself and somehow pulling her back from the brink of hysteria, now she allowed his quiet tone to wash over her, cooling the worst of her panic. She had no idea how he was able to still be calm given their near insurmountable odds, but she admired it. If not for him, she’d have been raped several times over already, and now he was the only thing standing between her and death.

“I … I'm okay,” she forced the words out because the last thing she wanted to do was risk the life of the man who was trying to save her. If he needed her to be in control, then she would somehow scrounge up some control.

“I know you are. I know you’ve got this, you just have to know it, too.”

Again, the confidence in his tone managed to infuse just a teeny bit into her. But a teeny bit was all she needed to work with right now.

“I want you to jump down and run,” he ordered. “Don’t stop. I’ll come find you, just get yourself someplace where you can hide. As soon as you get off the fence activate the tracker.”

“But what about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just run and hide. And, Ella.” In the dark, she could see the circle of his face peering up at her evenif she couldn’t make out his eyes. “If you get caught, tell them who I am. That I'm a SEAL, that I was sent here to capture you because you're a wanted traitor. Tell them I took you against your will. That the guard in the bathroom was trying to save you and I killed him and kidnapped you.”

Ella gasped and shook her head vehemently against his words. “If I tell them that they’ll kill you.”

“If you don’t they’ll torture and kill you. Go. Now.”

As badly as she wanted to stay and argue against his words, protest that there was no way she could willingly sign his death warrant, Ella knew that the longer she stayed, the more she was distracting Miguel. The more she distracted him the less chance he had of getting away alive.

With tears tumbling down her cheeks, she dragged her other leg over the fence and avoided looking down. Heights were not her thing, and if she allowed herself to look at the distance between the top of the fence and the ground, and worry about all the injuries she could cause herself landing, then she was never going to be able to jump.

Miguel believes in you.

He needs you.

Don’t let him down.

Somehow knowing that their lives were tied together at the moment helped her find the courage to let go.

The fall felt like it went in slow motion, lasting several minutes, but really, she knew it was barely a couple of seconds before her feet hit the ground.

Because she was wearing the world’s most impractical pair of escaping shoes, her ankles both gave way beneath her as pain speared up through her feet and into her legs, hips, and torso, and she tumbled sideways.

There was no time to dwell on the pain. Gunshots were still firing at the fence, and she knew without needing to turn her head and look over her shoulder that Miguel was firing back.

Buying her time to get away.

Even at the expense of his own life.

Tears continued to fall down her cheeks as she took off into the jungle. The shoes were utterly useless, doing more harm than good, so she paused just long enough to kick them off before she kept running. The blisters littering her soles protested, but in reality, her feet weren't any worse off without the shoes. They’d cause their own blisters and do little to protect her from the sticks, roots, rocks, and other debris that littered the ground. Besides, wearing them while running through the jungle would almost guarantee a broken ankle.

Gunshots began to fade. The jungle was relatively quiet at this time of night, and for a second, she wished for the too-loud bangs of the guns being fired because at least that meant she wasn’t alone.

Now she was.

The silence was too loud.

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