Page 71 of Winters Heat

Mia woke up with her face cemented to the leather seat, drool crusted over the corner of her mouth, and her throat far past Sahara dry. She squeezed her eyes shut against the flashbacks. Colby’s orders. Jared’s arms. She lost her man.

Screw them both. Mia excised her cheek from the seat and glared at Jared. He left Colby. Left him for dead. Why didn’t he get him? Wasn’t that what they did? Save people?

“Hey, Jared, or whoever you are. Why are we sitting here?” Her voice rumbled, hoarse and desperate. Her question should have been why was he sitting here and not loading up a torpedo launcher.

Jared gripped the steering wheel with enough strength she thought it might break. They weren’t flying through the thick jungle underbrush. The slapping echo of vegetation slashing against the windshield no longer drowned out the roar of the engine.

“Mia.” He could crush asphalt with his voice.

“Jared,” she said, both scared and angry, and fairly certain this was Jared.

The dome light clicked on overhead. Jared jumped out as if he needed a calming stroll in the park, and he beelined to a small shack in a clearing. Wood boards hung gimp and gaped. Peeling paint clung to an occasional plank, while others were sun-blistered and bare. It was larger than her last shack, but that wasn’t saying much.

Mia reached for the door handle to follow but instead whimpered. Everything ached. Her forehead to her ankles. And her arm, that was the killer. It was the first time she noticed the bandage.

Vivid flashbacks again came at her like a skipping movie. Juan Carlos Silva, gruesomely dead. Her flesh wound. Colby propping her up and pushing her through hell.

Jared could run away, but he couldn’t get too far. She pushed through the roar in her arm, opened the door, and set the stumbling pace of a discombobulated woman on a man-saving mission.

Heat drenched her, humidity cloaking her in a jungle second. A wave of nausea smacked her clear across her face. Food. She needed something in her stomach. She tried to ease the stomach rolls.

Nausea punched her again. No, food wasn’t the best idea. She’d just throw it up, preferably all over Jared. She swallowed against the queasy ripples. Water might be the prudent plan.

With the concentration required for brain surgery, Mia placed one foot in front of the other, hobbling as close to Jared’s path as her stupor-slicked mind could manage. She stumbled through the egress into a gang of mercenaries, all who looked like they ate rusted nails for Sunday brunch and bent steel for fun.

Her awful cartel-gifted sundress, splattered in blood and dirt, stood out as strangely feminine in the sea of muscles, guns, and testosterone. Mia fingered the scab from Silva on her neck. She apparently presented a shocking image. The room hushed soon as they caught a glimpse of her.

A blond in a cowboy hat tossed her a package that crinkled before it went airborne. Somehow she caught it, unaware of whatitwas, and her arm hurt fierce from the motion. All eyes locked on her, then hers pinned on Jared’s.

“Wet wipes,” Blondie said. “Like a soldier’s shower. Use whatever you need.”

She pivoted and looked at him. His face was painted in greens, grays, and blacks. Smudged and sweaty. Brilliant blue eyes beneath it all. Somewhat human compared to the others.

Mia cleared her throat. Her gaze stole back to Jared. The sinewy muscles in his jaw flexed, and he took a step toward her but didn’t open his mouth. Her chest felt tight, anxious energy flooded her fingers.

She had nasty things to say to him. Things to order him to do. But her mind couldn’t string them together. Threats loomed close to her tongue, but her mind didn’t comprehend reason or issue rhetoric.

Unable to complete menial oratory tasks, she rushed at him, fists balled, teeth cemented together, and slammed him dead center in his chest.

The impact was like she ran fist first into the side of a mountain. Sheer physics would have bounced her off and onto her butt if he didn’t grab her forearms. Other than his hands cuffed on her arms, Jared didn’t acknowledge her tirade.

What kind of assholes did Winters work with? Anger pulsed in her temples. Her molars hurt from gritting her teeth. She pulled from Jared, struggling and vibrating with rage. He loomed impenetrable. Not flinching. Not reacting. Nothing. Not a single expression.

“What’s your plan?” Finally, her vocabulary returned.

The steadfast boredom on his face stoked the embers of her irritation further. Red-hot anger choked her. Shit. She couldn’t breathe. Suffocating heat. Insufferable assholes. It collided into a stifling, strangling grip on her chest.

“Calm down, Mia.” His words were condescending. Patriarchal.

She’d calm down just to tell him to kiss her ass.

“Shove it.” In her mind, it came out like words launched from a flamethrower. In reality, she wheezed. But wheezed loud. That was something.

Again, no reaction from a void-faced Jared, but Blondie laughed so deep the shitty shack quaked. With focus like a laser beam, she drilled into him.

“Jokes.” She arched her brows and shook her head. “You think this is funny? Why don’t you take your face painted butt and get a move on, cowboy. Go find Colby.”

Blondie-the-Cowboy doubled over in near hysterical cackles. If she had the strength, she’d have stalked over and kicked him.

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