Page 57 of Duty Devoted
A gunshot shattered the quiet.
My whole body jerked at the sound. Just one shot. What did that mean? Was Logan hurt? Dead? Had he taken out one of them?
I couldn’t just sit here. Every instinct screamed at me to help, to do something. Logan had asked me to trust him, to stay hidden, but what if he needed me?
Another gunshot, then sounds of impact—bodies colliding, grunts of effort. Fighting.
I eased out of my hiding spot, moving as quietly as I could toward the sounds. Through the trees, I caught glimpses of movement. There—Logan, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one man while two others lay motionless on the ground. His pistol was several feet away, knocked aside in the struggle.
Even from a distance, I could see his training in every movement. The remaining attacker had a machete, swinging it in wide arcs that Logan dodged with practiced ease. Logan ducked under a wild swing, drove an elbow into the man’ssolar plexus, then swept his legs. The man went down hard, the machete flying from his grip.
It was brutal and efficient and terrifying to watch. This was what Logan had trained for, what he’d meant when he said he was good at his job. Not just good—lethal.
But where was the fourth man?
My blood turned to ice as I scanned the area. Three men fighting Logan, but there had been four following us. Where?—
Movement to my left caught my eye. The fourth man, circling wide through the trees. He had a gun, was raising it, aiming at Logan’s back while he was engaged with the other attacker.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the heaviest branch I could find and ran.
The man must have heard me coming at the last second. He started to turn, and my medical training kicked in.
The pterion—that vulnerable spot at the temple where the skull bones meet. The middle meningeal artery ran right beneath it. A solid impact there should cause immediate disruption and possible epidural hematoma.
I swung with everything I had.
The branch connected exactly where I’d aimed. He staggered badly, gun wavering as his balance failed. The temporal impact had done its job; I could see the disorientation in his unfocused eyes.
But even dazed, his training was evident. As he stumbled, his finger found the trigger. The gunshot was deafeningly close, and fire traced across my left side just above my hip in the fatty part of my waist. A graze—I could tell by the burning line of pain rather than deep impact—but enough to make me gasp.
I didn’t let it stop me. Adjusting my grip on the branch through the pain, I swung again, this time catching him squarely in the same spot. His eyes rolled back, and he dropped likea stone, the gun clattering away across the jungle floor with a moan before he fell silent.
“Lauren!” Logan appeared at my side, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles. His eyes went immediately to the unconscious man, then to me. “What happened?”
“I left my hiding spot. He was going to shoot you.” The wound burned like fire, and I could already feel blood trickling into my shirt, although it was hidden by the dark color. Tangential gunshot wound—the bullet had torn through skin and subcutaneous tissue, probably nicked the external oblique muscle. Painful and bloody but not life-threatening.
“We have to keep going. Really push. I’m sure there are more cartel soldiers coming. Puerto Esperanza should only be about three miles. We need to leave everything and run. Every second we wait, the harder it’s going to be to survive. It won’t be long before they have as many of their men out here as they can get.”
I grabbed a spare shirt from my medical bag—what was left of it—and pressed it against the wound as discreetly as I could. The bleeding wasn’t arterial, but it wasn’t nothing either. I wasn’t going to tell him about the wound. There was nothing that could be done at this second, and he needed to focus his attention on making sure we weren’t caught.
He took my hand again, and we ran. Every step sent fire through my side, but I gritted my teeth and kept pace. Three miles. I could do three miles. I had to.
The jungle blurred around us as we moved, Logan choosing paths that avoided the worst of the terrain. My shirt grew wet with blood and sweat, but I kept running. Kept breathing. Kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Because Logan was right—more would be coming. And next time, they might not care about taking us alive.
Chapter 19
Logan
I didn’t wantto scare Lauren, but we were probably in worst-case-scenario territory. Now that Mateo knew where we were, it was just a matter of him sending as many of his men as possible into this location. Every minute we were out here, we were a minute closer to being caught, and it would just continue to get worse.
“Keep moving,” I said, pushing aside a low-hanging branch. “We can do this.”
Lauren stumbled behind me, her breathing ragged. She was dragging. For the first time since we’d left her village, she was not going as fast or giving as much effort as I thought she should.
Now. Right when we needed most to dig deep.
