right through their territory?”
“Pretty much, but that may actually be our best chance. The hybrid leader sent a lot of his men south toward the border, so going that way would be too dangerous. East’ll take us deeper into the Talamanca mountain range, which would slow us down to a crawl and keep us in the jungle for weeks. We’re not left with a lot of options and I’d rather do the unexpected and go where they don’t think we’ll go. With so many of them going south, the hybrids in the northwest will be spread thin. If we’re careful, we should be able to slip through without them knowing.”
“Being careful means going slowly,” she pointed out. “It could take a week or more to get back to civilization. Can we make it that long on our own?”
“I’m hoping we won’t have to. Tate, Brent, and Gavin are already out looking for us. We just have to hold on until they find us.”
Kendra didn’t say anything for a while, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft. “How do we know they even made it out? Our helicopter got hit so fast, I never had a chance to see what was happening with the other one. What if they went down, too?”
Declan’s chest tightened. He’d been teamed with Tate, Brent, and Gavin since he started working at the DCO, and they were more like his family than his real family. They weren’t dead. He’d know if they were.
“They made it out. I know that in my gut,” he told Kendra firmly. “They’ll find us.”
Kendra sighed. “Okay, we have a plan. All we have to do is sneak right through the middle of a valley filled with vicious hybrids, not to mention the regular soldiers they had with them. Then we somehow have to let Tate, Gavin, and Brent know where we are. Once we do that, it’s just a simple matter of the five of us fighting our way out of the jungle against a hundred bad guys. Doesn’t sound hard at all.”
He chuckled. “Exactly. You know what they say—the simplest plans are the best plans. Now get some rest. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours to stand watch.”
She must have been pretty beat, because she didn’t even try to argue with him. Instead, she snuggled closer to his chest and fell asleep.
Declan closed his eyes, carefully listening for the sounds of hybrids sniffing around, but he didn’t hear anything. He still couldn’t believe they hadn’t smelled him and Kendra in the stream. Thank God they had a crappy sense of smell like him.
But at the moment his nose was working just fine. Unfortunately, the only scent he could pick up was Kendra’s. Even sweaty and dirty, she smelled good—too good.
He ground his jaw. Why the hell was it so hard to ignore her scent? He wasn’t even attracted to her anymore.
Okay, so that was a lie, at least as far as his nose—and other parts of his body—were concerned. This close to her, he couldn’t deny it, not even to himself.
Declan shifted a little to get some separation between them, but Kendra only groaned and wiggled closer. Thank God she was asleep. It would be damn embarrassing if she asked him what the hell was poking her in the ass.
Of course, thinking about what his hard-on was poking just made it worse. Shit, this was irritating. He’d worked hard over the last few months to mentally distance himself from her. Now, here he was with a nose full of her scent driving him crazy and an erection that had a mind of its own.
The really sad part? If she woke up right then, she’d move away from him in disgust and continue to ignore him. Because even if he was the last non-hybrid creature in the jungle, she still wouldn’t be interested in him.
He bit back a growl and moved again. She shifted with him.
Damn, this is going to be a long freaking night.
Without the DCO director’s clout, Angelo was convinced they’d still be sitting on their rucksacks back in Washington right now instead of standing in the middle of the camp where Tate and his team had set up. Not only had John arranged to have a fueled C-17 waiting for them at Bolling, but he also had two trucks of ammo and supplies waiting for them on the runway in Costa Rica. The rest of the op should go as smoothly.
Unfortunately, Tate and his