“Drinks?” the waiter checked, looking surprised when all four of them ordered water. With the possibility of a rescue operation needing to be mounted at any minute, none of them would take the risk of ingesting alcohol until it was all over.
“So,” Hunter said cheerfully once the waiter had brought their water and a basket of bread rolls, “tell us about your girl, Captain.”
Jack almost snorted the water he’d just sipped back out through his nose, glaring at the other man. Hunter grinned back, unabashed.
“That smart mouth is gonna get you in trouble one of these days, Lieutenant,” Jack growled finally, grabbing a bread roll. He could see the two sergeants grinning in his peripheral vision and decided not to take issue with their good-natured teasing. The presence of the three experienced Rangers, all of whom he knew well and could absolutely rely on, improved the chances of success in the mission to retrieve Ariana considerably. If, that is, they were able to find somewhere to retrieve her from. Morosely, he crumbled the bread roll between his fingers.
“Are we wrong, sir?” Hunter asked after a few moments of silence. “Is she not your girl?”
Sighing, Jack let the remains of the roll fall to his plate. “She isn’t mine, no.” He looked up to meet Hunter’s eyes. “But if we don’t get her back, I’m not sure there’ll be much left for me to live for.”
“Got it, sir,” Hunter said with a nod, and Mostyn and Diaz both echoed the gesture. “We’ll get her back, safe and well… and then you can work on convincing Ms. Monterro that she does want to be your girl.”
“Quit while you’re ahead, Hunter.” Jack fixed him with a mock-menacing glare, which didn’t repress Hunter’s knowing grin in the slightest but at least quieted his teasing.
Their meals were delivered a short time later and the four men tucked in. Jack wasn’t hungry, despite the excellent quality of the meal placed before him, but he forced himself to eat as much as he could get down. He was nudging the last bite of steak around his plate with his fork, wondering if he could choke it down, when the phone in his pocket vibrated. He almost ripped the fabric dragging it out, but the message on the screen read only, no news. get some rest.
Jack’s jaw clenched. Shoving his plate away from him, he put the phone back in his pocket and answered Hunter’s quizzical look with a curt shake of his head.
“Hurry up and wait,” Hunter said, tilting his chair back on two legs. “Story of my life.”
It was the story of any soldier’s life. The waiting this time, though, would be worse than any Jack had ever endured, because his mind would not be silent, would not stop imagining what Ariana might be enduring at the hands of El Lobo Negro and his ruthless henchmen.
Jack knew the worst of what could happen. He’d seen it firsthand, and Ariana had too, six years before at their first meeting. He would never be able to forget the sight of Luisa Monterro’s bloodied, battered body as he’d carried Ariana out of that place, doing his best to shield her from the sight.
Chapter Nine
Huddled on the bed, arms wrapped around her knees, trying to pull herself back from descending into the throes of a full-blown panic attack, Ariana couldn't help but have her mind drift back to the last time she'd been kidnapped. It was supposed to be a wonderful family holiday in Anguilla, a relaxing week away from the pressures of her father’s new appointment to the justice ministry.
They had stayed at a private villa belonging to a friend, enjoying the beach and the warm limpid waters of the Caribbean. Raul had enjoyed a couple of fishing trips on his friend’s luxury yacht, and it had been while he was away on one such afternoon trip when the peaceful idyll of the villa was shattered. Guàlizean rebels, guerrilla fighters seeking to overthrow the government, invaded the villa and took Luisa and Ariana Monterro hostage.
Ariana remembered too much about that horrible afternoon. She had been certain that no help would be coming; Anguilla was a tourist paradise with little in the way of a police force, never mind paramilitary units with hostage rescue expertise. Some of the villa’s staff had escaped and would be raising the alarm, but what good would that do? She listened in despair as the guerrillas’ leader made phone calls to the Guàlizean President, demanding the release of convicted terrorists from jail, demands that would never be met no matter what the guerrillas did to their hostages.
Luisa had held her daughter tight, whispering in her ear that everything would be all right, when Ari knew very well that it wouldn't be. The hard, calculating eyes of the guerrillas as they watched her, their gloating smirks; the way their leader had run his eyes over her body had told her clearly that everything was most definitely not going to be all right.
She squeezed her eyes shut as the flashback hit. Her mother, standing up, pushing Ari back when one of the guerrillas had grabbed at Ariana’s arm. Offering herself in her daughter’s place, deliberately ripping her blouse open to show her still-lovely figure, telling the guerrillas that she wouldn’t fight them as long as they left Ariana alone.
“No,” Ari whispered, wishing she could deny what had happened. The fact that she'd been too frightened, too cowardly to move, as her mother let the men use her, one after another, Ariana huddling in the corner, eyes squeezed shut, wishing she could block out the grunts and gasps.
Until the gunfire started outside, the distinctive chatter of military-grade automatic weapons.
“The bitch has been delaying us deliberately!” one of the guerrillas shouted, and the first of a dozen knives pierced Luisa Monterro's flesh, her agonized screams echoing in her daughter's ears still, six years later.
Ari took a shaky breath. Pulled her hands down from her ears. No gunfire. No screams. No bloodied, dead body of her mother, sightless brown eyes beseeching her. She was alone. And this time, Jack wasn't going to kick the door off its hinges and throw a flash-bang grenade into the room.
* * *
Blinded and deafened, Ari had come back to her senses being carried out of the building by a huge soldier. Instinctively, she'd begun to struggle weakly.
“It's all right,” the man said in a deep, gruff voice. “You're safe, Miss Monterro. Your father sent us.”
She'd squinted around to see that they were surrounded by a group of heavily armed soldiers in combat fatigues and sand-colored berets. “Who are you?” she croaked out.
“Lieutenant James McAuley, Fourth Battalion, Sixty-Seventh Army Rangers,” he responded evenly, glanced down at her and smiled. “But you can call me Jack. Lieutenant McAuley's a bit of a mouthful.”
Had it been a youthful crush, or a bit of hero-worship? Ari wondered now. Whatever, she'd clung to Jack even once she was returned to her grateful, grieving father by the Rangers, who had flown in by helicopter from where they had been conducting training exercises on nearby Puerto Rico when the Anguillan authorities made a desperate plea to the US government for help.
And Jack had stayed with her; strings pulled to have him temporarily relieved of his duty, he'd guarded Ari diligently, at her side every waking moment, sleeping she knew not when, because more than once when she woke screaming in the night he was there almost instantly; coming in and telling her in his gruff voice that she was safe, that he wouldn't let anyone hurt her, while she clung to him as though to a lifeline, her tears soaking his uniform fatigues.