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now!”
    Was he suffering from combat trauma because of their time here in the compound? The student cycled with his feet, hiking boots sending pebbles and rocks spewing across the path.
    Onto the land mines.
    Ah hell.
    She covered her head a second before…
    The explosion shook the ground. Ripples concussed the air, slamming her back to the rocky earth. Bubbles flew through the air and landed on his back with an “oof.”
    And Jose? Oh God, where was he? She squinted, peering through the dust poofing upward. A shape took form a hand’s reach away, familiar, rangy, and masculine. Alive and already rolling to his feet again. The downed fenced lay just at their feet, only inches shy of crushing them.
    Relief sang through her as loud as the ringing in her ears. She cradled her head in her hands and fought vertigo. She swallowed hard, trying to clear the pressure crackling, popping.
    Damn it. She sat up straighter, pushing through the pain to listen.
    Gunfire echoed in the distance—backup for them or the separatists?
    Jose pressed his hand to his headset. Listening? “No more time. The chopper has to bail—and so do we.” His face went dark as he tapped the earpiece. “I’m losing contact. Damn it.”
    Sutton sat holding his head. “What do you mean?”
    “Chopper’s gone. They’re taking fire. They can’t wait any longer and risk everyone else on board. That’s all I got before the headset shorted out.” Jose hauled Sutton to his feet. “We run and evade until they can come back.”
    The chopper was gone? Her stomach lurched, her heart rat-tat-tatting like the gunfire.
    Sutton swayed, his knees buckling as his eyes rolled back in his head. Jose tucked his shoulder into the injured student’s gut and hefted him into a fireman’s carry. Sutton’s arms hung limp, his whole body slack with unconsciousness.
    Jose turned to his teammate. “Bubbles, lead the way.”
    “Roger that, Cuervo.”
    Not even wincing at the extra hundred and sixty pounds of unconscious student, Jose picked his way around the rubble toward the gaping hole in the fence—the only blessing from the explosion.
    Gunfire grew louder, closer. The outer realm of security was engaging. Jose was right. They needed to bail. How ironic that she’d always been the one pointing out the logic, the reasons they were perfect together, and how their future fit. He was the wildly impulsive one. The romantic.
    Yet here and now, he was keeping his cool, completely in the moment. She wanted to lose it, to scream over the danger she’d put him in.
    And yet she’d done what she had to in order to get the innocent students out. She would do the same again.
    If only she’d had time to learn more about the group’s agenda.
    Local government officials had pleaded with the UN for help. Intel on the warlord indicated he wanted control of an already unstable region. They had pirates on their side operating as rogue mercenaries, funding their operations and splitting the profits. If they gained control, the area would be at the mercy of a brutal totalitarian regime where the rights of children and women would become nonexistent… There were so many horrific scenarios for what they could have in mind and she’d only begun to scratch the surface.
    But if she’d been there longer, she would be dead. She had to focus on one thing only now: keeping her head on straight and staying alive.
    ***
    Jose resisted the urge to rub his five-year sobriety coin again.
    Hyenas seemed to mock him in the distance as he trekked farther and farther from the compound, deeper into the night to keep Stella safe. Everything he’d bottled up steamrolled him. This day had been—hell. And it wasn’t over.
    The weight of the student didn’t drag him down. He’d trained with heavier, once carrying hulking Bubbles for ten miles. But the burden of how close he’d come to losing Stella back there? That threatened to send him to his knees.
    Damn it all, he should be celebrating getting her