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clicked with the telltale sound of an empty magazine. He cursed.
    Panic slammed through Gabby. The men chasing them were not about to run out of bullets—not with all the guns they had. Should she and Whit stop and lift their arms in surrender and hope they were not killed? Before she could ask Whit, he made the decision for them.
    He lifted her off the ground and ran toward the street. Gabby didn’t wriggle and try to fight free as she had six months ago. Instead of pounding on him, she clutched at him, so that he wouldn’t drop her. He leaned and ducked down, as if dodging bullets.
    Gabriella felt the air stir as the shots whizzed past. But with the way he was holding her—she wouldn’t feel the bullets. They would have to pass through Whit’s body before hitting hers. Again, it was bodyguard protocol, but she couldn’t help being impressed, touched and horrified that he might get killed protecting her.
    He ran into the street, narrowly avoiding a collision with a Jeep. The vehicle screeched to a halt, and Whit jerked open the passenger door and jumped inside. He deposited her in the passenger seat and forced his way into the driver’s seat, pushing the driver out of the door.
    The man scrambled to his feet and cursed at him. Then he ducked low and ran when the gunmen rushed up behind him, firing wildly at the vehicle. Whit slammed his foot on the gas, accelerating with such force that Gabriella’s back pressed into the seat. She grabbed for the seat belt, but there wasn’t one.
    “Hang on tight,” Whit advised.
    She stretched out her arms and braced her hands on the dash, so that she wouldn’t slam into it and hurt the baby. “Please, hurry,” she pleaded. “Hurry—before they catch up to us.”
    “Where the hell am I going?” he asked. “Which way to the orphanage?”
    Panic shot through her, shortening her breath as she thought of the danger. “No. No. We can’t—we can’t risk leading these men back to the orphanage.” Those children had already lost so much to violence; she wouldn’t let them get caught in the cross fire and lose their lives, too.
    “I’ll make sure we’re not followed,” Whit assured her. “But we have to hurry.”
    She hesitated. She’d been uncertain that she could trust anyone again, let alone him. But this wasn’t her heart she was risking. It was so much more important than that. Whit was good at his job. Charlotte wouldn’t have had the king hire him if he and Aaron hadn’t been good bodyguards. So she gave him directions, leading him deeper and deeper into the jungle.
    The Jeep bounced along the rutted trails, barely passing between the trees and the other foliage that threatened the paths. Gabby left one hand on the dash and reached for the roll bars over her head with the other, holding tight, so that she didn’t risk an injury to her unborn child. She also kept turning around to check the back window and make certain that they had not been followed.
    “No one’s behind us,” Whit assured her with a glance at the rearview mirror. “I’ve been watching.”
    She uttered a breath of relief that they wouldn’t be leading danger back to the orphanage. At the speed that Whit was driving, they arrived in record time at the complex of huts and larger wood-and-thatch buildings that comprised the orphanage.
    “This is it,” she said with a surge of pride and happiness, which was the polar opposite from the way she’d felt when she’d first seen the complex six months ago. When she’d accepted that it was really where Charlotte had sent her, her heart had been heavy with dread and her pulse quick with panic. “We’re here.”
    Whit stepped on the brake but didn’t put the transmission into Park. Instead he peered through the dust-smeared windshield at the collection of crude outbuildings that made up the orphanage complex.
    “This is it?” he echoed her words but his deep voice was full of skepticism.
    “This is it,” she confirmed. Now that she knew