There was little chance he could hear her, but he swallowed with the next stroke of her fingers, so she continued the action. “A little more. I need you conscious and able to walk.” If necessary, she’d put his body against the tree behind her and kill anyone who came close, but he’d have a much higher chance of survival if she could get him farther from their pursuers.
It took time to finish the bottle and the chopper got close to them more than once. If it came too close, the heat-seeking equipment would capture their images and betray their location, but the rain pounded down again just in time, the wind even stronger. So strong that it howled through the copse of trees, tearing apart their hideout in a matter of seconds and scattering their supplies.
Chapter 8
ZAIRA TURNED HER back into the wind, protecting Aden’s face as the rain and the wind hit the leather jacket she wore. Realizing she couldn’t afford to lose body heat through exposure, not if she was to get Aden to safety before her own body gave out, she tried to search for the larger rainproof jacket and could see nothing in the darkness and the rain. It was only when she shifted to better protect Aden that she realized she’d accidentally knelt on the jacket.
Placing Aden’s head very carefully on her thigh and making sure his hood was on, his jacket zipped up, she pulled on her own. She had to fight the wind to do it, water running from her drenched hair down her spine. That wasn’t good, but hopefully the jacket would keep out the worst of it now. Pulling on her hood, she tied the drawstring under her chin tight before slipping on the gloves she’d stuffed into the pockets.
Three hours she’d been out. If Aden was going to be unconscious that long, she had to come up with plan B, find some way to protect him from this vicious weather. She’d have to dig, she decided. Use her hands to make a shallow indentation where—no, the water would fill that up. If she lost consciousness and didn’t keep his head up or keep the rain off his face, he could drown.
Unable to sense his pulse through her thick gloves, she bent her face to Aden’s, tried to feel his breath as she continued to consider and discard possible options. If only she could carry him, but he was too heavy. She might be able to create a litter, drag—
“Zaira.”
Jerking up, she looked down at his closed eyelids, wondering if she was having an auditory hallucination as a result of the fragmentation caused by the aloneness, but then he lifted the thick, curling lashes so unexpected in the otherwise clean lines of his face. “Out?”
She spoke against his ear so he’d hear her. “Yes, I got it out.” When he tried to sit up, she helped him, leaning his back against a tree. “Keep your head down!” she said into his face, the rain and the wind loud around them. “I’m going to see if I can find any of our supplies!”
“Line. Of. Sight.” It was ground out between his teeth, and she saw more than heard the words.
She understood regardless. “I won’t go far!” It’d be easy to become turned around in this terrain and weather, lose one another.
Crawling on her hands and knees in an effort to get below the wind, she banged her knee into the sharp corner of a metal object. The medkit. Immediately taking it back to Aden, she put it by his thigh. It held the implant he’d taken out of her head; Zaira knew it was critical they protect that. Even if she and Aden didn’t make it, if the squad found the implant, it would offer some answers.
She protected the medkit with her body as she opened it to retrieve the last tiny bottle of concentrated nutrient drink. “You need strength,” she said when Aden would’ve pushed it toward her. “I’m not leaving you and we need to move.” This group of trees had appeared strong earlier, but the wind was all but pushing them over now, revealing their dangerously shallow roots. “I can’t carry you. You’re too damn big.”
As if in a period to her words, a tree not far from them crashed to the earth with a sound so loud it cut through the weather, the impact reverberating along the ground. Another tree fell soon afterward, snapped in half like a matchstick.
“Quick,” Aden ordered, and took the drink.
Crawling forward again, in the direction of the wind, she found the now empty daypack plastered against a tree. The only other things she found were three solid energy bars trapped in the roots of a tree and, oddly enough, the penlight, which had become stuck against a large rock.
She put the items in the pack, crawled back to Aden’s side, and added the medkit to it. “Can you walk?”
In answer, he levered himself up and seemed to find his balance after a shaky start. Getting up, she rose on her toes as he bent forward so they could speak. “The energy hit helped,” he said. “My head’s pounding, but I can function.” Taking the daypack, he pulled it on, then slipped his arm around her waist. “Stay together!”
She gripped the back of his jacket. “Go!”
Another tree slammed to the earth only inches from them. It was no longer safe to stay here but heading out onto open ground left them brutally exposed to the elements. And those elements were in a punishing mood. Lightning lit up the sky in a jagged white-hot burst in the distance, thunder boomed, and each drop of rain hit like a tiny shard of ice, cutting at their faces and soaking everything not covered by the rainproof barrier of their jackets.
Her combat pants had some built-in weather protection but nothing designed to deal with this kind of a storm. She could feel water trickling into her socks, knew her feet would be ice-cold before long. Aden had to be in the same situation. Cold, however, was a problem they’d handle when it became an issue. Right now, it was about making it to safe harbor, any safe harbor. They could not stay expos—