Page 4 of Fear No Evil

He’d never understood her need to defend democracy. Growing up in Venezuela, she’d seen firsthand what the fall of democracy looked like. Even so, Jake’s faith had always inspired her. She gripped the railing on her balcony and swayed. “So…I think I might need help right now.”

Getting no response and with no other choice, Maggie lifted a long leg over the railing, sat a moment, then heaved her other leg over. As she slipped off the rail to stand on the outer ledge, she pivoted to face her building. Remarkably, only mild discomfort accompanied her movements.

Next, she moved her hands from the railing to the vertical balusters, then lowered one foot to the bakery’s flat roof. Her ribs barely protested.Huh. Maybe I should pray more often.

Encouraged, Maggie crossed the roof to the fire escape on the other side. The last time she’d looked at the rickety ladder, some of the rungs were starting to rust through.

While climbing down the ladder backward, she anticipated the pain to return with a vengeance, but it didn’t. Her adrenaline must be kicking in. She dropped down into a quiet alley and then made her way downhill toward the mosque.

The unlit street kept Maggie wary. She’d never ventured out at night without a djellaba,the hooded robe most local women wore, and for good reason.

Furtive footfalls had her spinning around just as an old man walked up on her. He gasped in alarm at her disfigured face and gave her a wide berth.

She had to look frightful with one eye swollen shut and her lip oozing blood. Thank goodness the odds of Jake rescuing her a second time were slim to none. She wouldn’t want him to see her like this.

The last time Jake had rescued her, she’d been confident and still in one piece, not at all like now.

Maggie checked her watch. Only thirty minutes remaining, and she was just now reaching the mosque.

Arriving at a door thickly layered in gold paint, she used a buzzer to announce herself. Her lower lip throbbed as she waited. At last, the door popped open, and a dark-skinned imam dressed in blinding white robes swept her inside.

“I’ve been expecting you.” His English was perfect. “Can you walk?”

She clutched her side as she swayed on her feet. “Sure.”

“Good. The team is nearly here. We have to move quickly.”

He pulled her into a dim antechamber, through a side door, and down a hall to an alcove. A push against the back wall sent it rumbling inward, revealing the tunnel into which he ushered her, leaving it open and clicking on a penlight. A curve in thetunnel beckoned them down an angled floor of hard-packed dirt, which took them beneath the ancient city toward the pier where the team would be waiting.

They seemed to walk forever, though Maggie knew it wasn’t even one klick to the extraction point. Her pain was returning with a vengeance, shortening her steps.

“Just a little farther.”

The man’s encouragement kept her going.

Moisture now hung in the air, tinged with the smell of sea salt. When they came upon a door that marked the tunnel’s end, she swallowed a sob of relief.

It opened suddenly, and the silhouette ducking under the low lintel was identical to the one that had come bursting into the office in Venezuela. “Jake!”

“Lena!”

When he tacked on a phrase in Gaelic, she knew she wasn’t just imagining him. On a moan, she stumbled into him, letting him support her. What were the odds he would be sent to save her twice?

“What hurts?” He held her firmly but gently.

“Everything.”

He spoke over his shoulder. “Decker, pass me an auto-injector of morphine.”

Maggie dropped her head against his dense chest. She could hear his heart thumping with sure, steady strokes that proved he was really with her.

A jab in her arm sent morphine swirling into her bloodstream, smoothing the razor’s edge of agony, turning the world fuzzy. She’d made it to the exfil site. Jake would take it from here.

As he scooped her off her feet, carrying her like a baby, an explosion of semiautomatic gunfire filled the tunnel.

Jake moved so fast that she didn’t know what was happening; she only knew that someone had fired at them from farther up the tunnel.Farid. She’d led him straight to the extraction site!

“Relax!” Jake bounded with her up a run of steps. “We got this.”

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