“It’s me,” a familiar voice whispers. “Quiet though, okay?”
I nod. Can it be? My eyes fill with tears again, and I breathe in deeply, recognizing the citrus-and-mint body wash he’s used for as long as I can remember.
Slowly, his hand moves down from my mouth, trailing over my cheek and shoulder before dropping. It’s pitch-black in here until a sliver of light appears from a crack in a doorway leading outside.
It’s then that I see him.
Dylan.
My heart leaps with joy as hope spreads through me like wildfire. He’s here—and that means I’m okay.
“We have to move fast.” He takes my hand and pulls me out onto the street. Instead of his normal tactical gear for missions, he’s wearing a pair of board shorts and a white T-shirt. A baseball cap is pulled low over his face.
We begin walking, and he reaches into his pocket to withdraw a pair of dark sunglasses. “Put these on.”
I do.
“And this.” He pulls a rolled-up floppy hat from his back pocket and offers it to me. “Scoop your hair up and hide it beneath.”
Once again, I do as he says while he guides me toward the beach.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” I ask frantically.
“Don’t look behind you,” he says sharply. “Running is what they’ll be looking for. In order for the diversion to work, we need to hide in plain sight.”
“What div—” Before I can even finish speaking, a shrill scream rips through the afternoon. I start to whirl toward the shop, my thoughts on Felicity. What if they discovered she helped me? What if?—
“Stay focused,” he says as he slings an arm around my shoulders. It’s casual. Something he did countless times back when we were dating. But the shiver it sends through my body is entirely new.
It’s the most contact we’ve had since he came home.
“We have to go back for her.”
“We can’t.”
“Dylan, she’s my mother.”
“I know. But that’s not the plan she came up with, okay?”
Please, Lord, let her be okay. Please don’t let me lose her too. Her face swims into view, the tears in her eyes. She was saying goodbye—but for how long?
Dylan tugs me toward the water.
“I-I can’t swim, Dylan.” I begin to panic, the one incident at a lake when I was fourteen and nearly drowned pushing the fear of everything else aside.
“Emma,” he says softly, coming around to face me. “I won’t let you go, okay?” His hazel gaze pins me, and in those gorgeous eyes I know so well, I see the promise of his protection.
Lord, please be with us.
Instead of responding verbally, I kick my shoes off, and Dylan strips out of his T-shirt, abandoning it on the ground. I suck in a breath at the sight of the scars marring his muscled chest. I know what they did to him, but to see it?—
Focus, Emma. Running for your life here.
I start to remove the hat, but he stills me with a hand on my arm. “Leave it on until we’re in the water, okay?”
Unable to draw breath when my fear is at war with my desire to be close to him, I simply nod.
Dylan takes my hand and leads me into the water. He smiles at me, and the sight of it steals my breath yet again. For a moment, he’s the happy teen I knew all those years ago. A young man excited to go off and serve his country.
