Delta Force Rescue - Elle James Page 0,62
Antonio and the River Walk.
Ahead he spied the pert twitch of a female butt encased in hot pink running shorts and a neon green tank top. Her ass was as far from the dry terrain of Somalia as a guy could get. Wyatt focused on her and her tight buttocks, picking up the pace to catch up. She was a pretty young woman with an MP3 device strapped to her arm with wires leading to the earbuds in her ears. Her dark red hair pulled back in a loose ponytail bounced with every step. Running in the zone, she seemed to ignore everything around but the path in front of her.
Once he caught up, Wyatt slowed to her pace, falling in behind. His heart rate slowed, returning to normal, his breathing regular and steady. Panic attack averted, he felt more normal, in control and aware of the time. As much as he liked following the pretty woman with the pink ass and the dark red, bobbing ponytail, he needed to get back and shower before he met the coordinator of the International Trade Convention.
Wyatt lengthened his stride and passed the woman, thankful that simply by jogging ahead of him, she’d brought him back to the present and out of a near clash with the crippling anxiety he refused to let get the better of him.
As he put distance between him and the woman in pink, he passed the shadow of a building. A movement out of the corner of his eye made him spin around. He jogged in a circle, his pulse ratcheting up, his body ready, instincts on high alert. The scuffle of feet made him circle again and stop. He crouched in a fighting stance and faced the threat, the memory of his abduction exploding in his mind, slamming him back to Somalia, back to the dry terrain of Africa and the twenty rebels who’d jumped him and Dane when they’d been leading a training exercise in the bush.
Instead of Somali militants garbed in camouflage and turbans, a small child darted out of his parents’ reach and ran past Wyatt, headed toward the edge of the river.
His mother screamed, “Johnnie, stop!”
By the time Wyatt grasped that the child wasn’t an al-Shabab fighter, the kid had nearly reached the edge.
Wyatt lunged for the boy and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck as the little guy tripped. Johnnie would have gone headfirst into the slow-moving, shallow water had Wyatt not snagged him at the last minute.
Instead of thanking Wyatt, the kid kicked, wiggled and squirmed until Wyatt was forced to set the boy on the ground. Then Johnnie planted the tip of his shoe in Wyatt’s shin with razor-sharp precision.
Wyatt released him and bent to rub the sore spot.
Little Johnnie ran back to his mother, who wrapped her arms around the brat and cooed. Safe in his mother’s arms, he glared at Wyatt.
Wyatt frowned, the ache in his shin nothing compared to the way his heart raced all over again.
The boy’s mother gave Wyatt an apologetic wince and hugged her baby boy to her chest. “Thank you.”
A small crowd had gathered, more because Wyatt, the parents and child blocked the sidewalk than because they were interested in a man who’d just rescued a child from a potential drowning.
His heartbeat racing, his palms clammy and his pulse pounding so loudly in his ears he couldn’t hear anything else, Wyatt nodded, glancing around for an escape. Fuck! What was wrong with him? If he didn’t get away quickly, he’d succumb this time. Where was the woman in the pink shorts when he needed her? Some of his panic attacks had been so intense he’d actually thought he was having a heart attack. He hadn’t told his commander, or the psychologist assigned to his case, for fear of setting back his reassignment even further. He wanted to be back in the field where the action was. Where he was fighting a real enemy, not himself.
As it was, he’d been given this snowbird task of heading up the security for the International Trade Convention. “Do this job, prove you’re one hundred percent and we’ll take it from there,” Captain Ketchum had said. To Wyatt, it sounded like a load of bullshit with no promises.
Hell, any trained monkey could provide security for a bunch of businessmen. What did Ketchum think Wyatt could add to the professional security firm hired to man the exits and provide a visual deterrent to pickpockets and vagrants?
Wyatt had