He grunted and pushed himself up, leaning heavily with his good arm on the table. His eyes seemed a little clearer, and she hoped the blow to the head was wearing off some. Eleanor put herself under his other arm and tried to support him, though she honestly didn’t know if she was doing any good. Together, though, they moved down the hall he’d gestured to before. She could see the door he’d said to go through. Heath stumbled and pulled them off balance into the wall.
Eleanor pulled at him, getting him back to his feet again. Ten more feet and they’d be there, ready to go when his team came through for them.
Eight feet.
He stumbled again. Eleanor felt warm liquid running down her shoulder and it dawned on her that he was bleeding a lot more than she’d thought. Between that and the head wound, she didn’t know how he was moving.
Six feet.
She put her all into getting him down that hall to the door. She had no idea if his team would come in to find them if they drove by and they didn’t come out. Or maybe this was like the movies and if they didn’t make this pickup point, they’d have to get to another one.
She couldn’t get him to another one.
Heath slumped again and she let him go to the floor this time, leaning him against the wall and praying no one came back here and found them.
She ran the last few feet to the door and slammed it open before realizing that was stupid. He’d said to watch from the inside until his team came. She could just as easily stumble upon the men coming after her back there.
The alley was empty, though, and she looked back to Heath.
Damn.
She went back and grabbed him under the shoulders and tried to pull. That wasn’t going to happen. The man was all muscle and she was not.
She ran back to the door and looked out. An SUV turned into the small space and headed for her. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the headlights and prayed it was his team and not the killers.
“Please, please, please.” She looked back at Heath. He was pushing to his feet again, shaking his head. He took a stumbling step her way.
“Go Eleanor. It’s them. Go!”
There was nothing in his tone that gave her room to argue or hesitate. It was an order plain and simple. She opened the door wide and stepped outside praying to God he was right and it was his team.
And then the car doors opened and Jangles and Zip spilled out.
“Heath is hurt. He needs help,” she said, pulling back when Zip reached for her.
“Jangles has him. We need to get you out of here.”
Still, she resisted until she saw Jangles coming out of the back door with Heath leaning heavily on him.
The idiot was grinning at her. Grinning like he’d just had the time of his life. And as Zip pulled her into the car, Heath winked at her like he used to when they were younger. And her stupid heart did a flip just like it did back then. More than it did back then, if she was honest.
As they tore out of the alley, she let herself sink into the back seat of the car and closed her eyes.
And thought about that kiss.
Chapter 5
Heath cursed as Zip put the last of the stitches into his head. He’d hit his head harder than he wanted to admit to his guys.
“Want to tell us how the hell you know our principal, Woof? And why the fuck you didn’t think to mention this before the op?” Merlin was pissed and wasn’t bothering to hide it.
Heath didn’t blame him. He should have told them who Eleanor was the minute he’d recognized her picture. He wouldn’t apologize, though. They might have pulled him from the mission and he wasn’t going to trust Eleanor’s safety to anyone but himself. Hell no on that score. He owed her that much.
“We dated in high school. Not a big deal.” It was only a partial truth and he all but flinched as it came out of his mouth. These guys were his brothers. His team. They deserved the truth.
Zip snorted and Jangles was grinning like a fool. Duff looked about as amused as Merlin, which was not at all.
“Yeah that looked like a whole lot of no big deal the way you were rubbing her leg in the car.” Zip made kissing noises and rubbed his own leg. “Let me find an excuse to touch your body, Nori. Let me rub you all over, Nori.”
Heath growled. “She was hyperventilating, assclown.” The last thing he needed was Eleanor waking up and hearing this.
He looked to where she slept, her head leaning on the seat. He wanted to pull her over to lean on his good arm instead, but he couldn’t exactly pull that shit in front of his team now.
Merlin shot him a look in the rearview mirror. “You gonna be able to handle this without letting your past get in the way of the op?”
“Fuck you for asking,” Heath bit out.
Merlin raised his hands off the wheel in surrender for a minute before putting them back. “Had to ask. We can’t let you go into this if you’re compromised, if your feelings are going to fuck this shit up. We need to get her in and out of there in one piece.”
Heath’s stomach pitched and it wasn’t just because of the concussion he was walking around with. He didn’t like thinking of anything happening to Eleanor.
“Trust me,” he said, “I’m the last person who’s going to let anything happen to her. I’ve got this.”
Merlin was watching him and he could hear the weighted quiet in the back of the car, but it didn’t take but a minute for the men to let him know they had his back.
“Okay,” Merlin said. “Then we’re behind you. We’ll get her through this.”
Heath nodded, his teeth still locked together. They had to—there was no other option but to get her through this and get her back home to safety. And knowing his team was behind him on this, behind her, made all the difference in the world.
Eleanor was drifting in and out of sleep. She should be getting herself ready for the meetings she would have with Onur Demir. You didn’t walk into a negotiation with the head of a rebel guerrilla organization without being one hundred percent ready for any and all eventualities.
But her body had been pushed past all limits in the last twenty-four hours and she needed to sleep.
“She saved my ass back there.”
Eleanor heard Heath talking through a fog. The response from the driver’s seat was muffled.
“I was knocked out cold on the fire escape outside the building. If she hadn’t had the wherewithal to pick up my gun and be ready for them, we would have both been sitting ducks out there.”
“She’s pretty amazing,” Zip said beside her. “You think she can pull off this negotiation with Demir?”
“If anyone can, she can,” Heath said.
Eleanor made to sit up. They were right to be focused on the negotiation. She needed to be focused on that too.
She didn’t make it to sitting. Her eyes just didn’t want to open.
She heard the men begin to talk about how she and Heath had known each other in high school, but she didn’t hear his whole response. She tried not to drift off again into sleep as they kept moving through the quiet of the night, but her body had hit a brick wall and she was lulled into sleep as the sound of the car on the highway drowned out her thoughts.
“Eleanor.”
Someone was shaking her shoulder. “Wake up, Eleanor.”