Which meant he needed a plan B.
Since they hadn’t known that Abigail was being held here they hadn’t been prepared for an extra victim, and even if they had known she was here they couldn’t have known that she was in such bad shape.
He would have to find them somewhere to hide out until his team could come back for them. There was no way he would make it to the extraction point in time, so there really wasn’t any other option. He’d find them a safe place, do what he could for Abigail, and pray that his team made it to them before she got any worse.
Heading off in the opposite direction to the lights, away from what might end up being lifesaving help, Spider prayed that he wasn’t about to let Abby down again.
It was their pattern.
He’d met her brother when he was ten, Abigail had been five, and he remembered the little girl with the unusual eyes who would follow him and Night around everywhere they went. Back then he loved to tease her, driving her crazy, and she’d quickly become like his little sister. He and Night would look out for her, make sure nobody bullied her, and any boy who showed an interest knew that if he hurt her they would hurt him.
That all changed the night of her high school graduation.
Ever since then, all he’d done was bring her pain, no wonder she didn’t trust him. If he was her, he wouldn’t trust him either.
If he got her out of here alive, he would find a way to fix things between them.
The thought caught him by surprise because he’d thought he had already made his peace with the fact that he could never be with Abigail. You didn’t have sex with your best friend’s baby sister, and you certainly didn’t fall in love with them.
Too bad he’d already done both.
Although he’d been surprised by his own decision to make things right with Abigail, he realized that he wanted to. Believing that he had made peace with giving her up had been nothing more than self-delusion. She deserved to be happy, and after a lot of therapy he had come to accept the fact that he deserved to be happy too, no matter what he had done in the past.
No more self-destructing.
Now he just had to remind Abby that once upon a time he had made her happy.
How he would do that he didn’t have a clue, but he was a SEAL and solving problems was his job. He saved lives, but the pressure of having to save Abigail’s life was nothing like he had ever experienced before. This was all on him, yes he had medical training, but no, he wasn’t a doctor, and Abby was slipping away. He could feel it in how still she was, in the soft wheeze every time she breathed, and in the way her whole body shivered.
“Hang on, Abby,” he whispered. “You can’t die until we get a chance to sort things out between us.”
He walked for at least an hour through the thick jungle, if he was alone he would have found somewhere to hide himself, but Abigail needed to be somewhere safe, and he needed her somewhere where he could treat her as best as he could with what he had in his IFAK.
A faint light up ahead caught his attention. It was different than the torches Perez’s men had been carrying, it was larger, stronger, and not moving. It had to be coming from a building.
Crouching, he slid Abigail off his shoulders, covered her much the same way he had last time, and prayed that she wouldn’t wake in another coughing fit and draw the attention of whoever was in that building.
With Abby tucked away he crept closer to the cabin, making sure to check for cameras or sensors as he went, anything that might be set up to alert the occupant of someone approaching.
Nothing stood out, and he advanced on the small wooden shack silently. He paused at the window, staring through the grime to see a single occupant in the one-room building. The man was sitting in a recliner, his pants were undone and he was touching himself, his gaze on the TV screen in front of him where several men were having rough sex with a woman.
For a second, bile burned hot in his stomach.
Was the woman in the video Abigail?
There had to be a reason why they’d kept her here for so long. Perez was a human trafficker, it would have made more sense that he would have sold her quickly. Abigail was stunning. Besides her bronze hair she had the most amazing eyes, she had heterochromia which would have been pretty enough in and of itself, but one of her eyes was a golden brown—inherited from her mother—the other was a silvery gray—inherited from her father. Those eyes alone would have been enough to get Perez a tidy sum of money when he sold her.
Unless he’d wanted her for himself.
He hadn’t had a chance to speak with Abigail yet about what had happened to her, but he knew once he got her out of here besides treatment for her pneumonia she would also need a sexual assault kit performed, and treatment for any STDs these men had given her, and …
His heart dropped into his stomach.
They would have to check to see if she was pregnant. Was that why Perez had kept her? Hoping that she would make babies with those same amazing eyes?
Fury fueled him, and he turned the door handle and covered the distance between him and the man in seconds. Grunting his release onto the floor, the man didn’t notice he was there until the blade of Spider’s knife pressed tightly against his neck.
“You’re dead either way,” he growled softly in the man’s ear, “you can either have a quick death or a slow and painful one. Understand your options?”
“Yes,” came the gritted reply.
“You’re one of Perez’s men?”
“Yes.”
“You’re keeping watch on this area of the compound. Or supposed to be,” he added with a nod at the TV.
“Yes.”
“How often do you have to check in?”
“Four.”
“Every four hours?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the codeword?”
The man didn’t answer.
Because Spider didn’t have long, he wanted to get to Abigail as quickly as possible, knowing she was alone out there had him closer to panicking than he should be in the middle of a mission, he didn’t bother to repeat his warning he simply whipped the knife up, slicing through half of the man’s ear before returning it to his neck.
The man squealed in pain, his breathing quickening.
“Codeword?” Spider bit out.
“Whore.”
“You earned yourself a quick death.” While knowing this man was in part responsible for what had happened to Abigail, might even have taken an active part in torturing her, she was his priority. So true to his word he dragged the man outside and slit his neck.
Leaving him to bleed out, Spider turned and ran back to get Abigail. Half expecting her to be gone by the time he got there, instead he found her right where he’d left her.
Picking her up, he brought her back to the cabin where he set her down on the bed. Rifling through his pack he pulled out his IFAK and got the ibuprofen. He didn’t have antibiotics in there so it was the best he could do to try to get a handle on her fever, and he had to do something because he wasn’t happy with her racing pulse or the way she struggled to drag in enough air.
If this didn’t work, how was he going to keep her alive?
If he failed her, how was he going to live with himself?
11:39 P.M.
“Abs, sweetheart, I need you to drink a little water for me and try to swallow this.”