Page 75 of Rescue Me (Tempting SEALs 6.10)

“You still with me?” he whispered against her hair and clamped her trembling body tighter.

Her response was a weak, “Um.”

He’d take that for a yes. They had to get out of here soon. Adrenaline had pumped their systems full of heat last night and kept them from succumbing to the cold. They’d been full of calories and carbs from their pasta dinner. Today, without the benefit of food to fuel them, they wer

e more vulnerable to the stinging cold.

Seth could no longer feel his toes. His thigh muscles ached like deep bruises. It was getting harder and harder to draw a full breath.

Finally, thank you, God, the sound of the chopper drifted away. He chanced a very slow turn of his head. Saw the bird disappear around a cliff face. And didn’t waste a second.

Willing legs that felt like dead stubs to move, he half waded, half stumbled toward the bank, dragging Elena with him.

“I know, I know, baby,” he crooned when they dropped like bags of sand on the shore. She moaned, her lips blue, her limbs stiff as posts. “Hurts like hell. We’ve got to work it out.”

His heart damn near broke when he rubbed her arms with stiff hands and she bit back a cry that told him she was hurting as bad if not worse than he was. An ache so deep filled his bones that it felt like the marrow had frozen. A follow-up burn sizzled like fire as nerve endings slowly reawakened and shot heat-starved sensation into extremities ravaged by the icy-cold Colorado.

“Hang in there,” he murmured, fighting his own pain and fumbling with clumsy fingers that alternately ached like they were broken and stung like they were ablaze. “Deep breaths. Breathe through it.”

Her body shuddered as she forced herself to comply.

“Still with me?”

A determined nod was his answer as she fought her way through the pain.

“Can you stand?”

She clenched her teeth, rolled to all fours and pushed herself to her feet. Where she stood on wooden legs and uttered not a single word of complaint.

It may have been a cliché, but from his experience on the force, Seth knew it was true that you learned a lot about a person when things got tough. His years as both a beat cop and as a detective had taught him that the true measure of a man came to light when he was faced with danger and in how he handled pain.

The men he wanted at his back or at his side sucked it up, stayed the course, got the job done—no matter how they felt about the plan of action. No matter the discomfort.

As they warmed under the heat of a blazing sun, and he helped Elena work her way along the river’s edge toward what he figured was Devine’s rendezvous point, he was satisfied that she could watch his six anytime.

She hadn’t been happy about his plan of turning the tables on the Devine crew. But she accepted that he was making the calls, and after her initial hesitation, she’d tucked away her doubts and protests and put her faith in him to know what to do to rescue her. Hell, to rescue both of them. She’d sucked it up against the pain from submerging herself in icy water like a pro.

Yeah. He’d want her guarding his back anytime.

Ever watchful for the two-legged predators intent on killing them, he pushed her relentlessly on toward the rendezvous point, hoping to hell he didn’t let her down and get them both killed.

“DO YOU SEE ANYONE?”

They were hiding behind a natural windbreak of coyote willows and cattails.

Seth shook his head. Scanned the sandbar that time and rain and the relentless flow of the river had carved out of the bank. The sandbar was a perfect landing zone for a chopper. Flat, wide, dry. A well-used put-in for rafter and kayakers.

“This bend in the river provides fairly good protection.” They had hiked about two miles downstream from the spot they’d first jumped in. “We can set up and wait for the bad guys here.”

“Protection? I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. Because right now, I feel about as exposed as a centerfold in Playboy. And do not take that as an invitation to capitalize on the image,” she added hastily, making him smile.

“Can’t fault a guy for wanting to visualize that one,” he pointed out, and got a halfhearted glare for his efforts.

She was playacting. Keeping it light, keeping it real for his benefit and maybe a little bit for her own. Their situation was grim. She knew it. He knew it. And, bless her, she was doing her part to keep them both calm.

He’d deal with the centerfold image later, though. At his leisure, he hoped. Right now, they needed to get cracking.

“I expect they’ll show up before long,” Seth said surveying the familiar walls of the Canyon and searching for a likely path the boys would have to take to get down to their level. He found it when he spotted an irregular cutout of stepping stones. That’s where they would come down. And that’s where he would set his deadfall trap.

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