Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,12

be able to handle this without letting your past get in the way of the op?”

“Fuck you for asking,” Heath bit out.

Merlin raised his hands off the wheel in surrender for a minute before putting them back. “Had to ask. We can’t let you go into this if you’re compromised, if your feelings are going to fuck this shit up. We need to get her in and out of there in one piece.”

Heath’s stomach pitched and it wasn’t just because of the concussion he was walking around with. He didn’t like thinking of anything happening to Eleanor.

“Trust me,” he said, “I’m the last person who’s going to let anything happen to her. I’ve got this.”

Merlin was watching him and he could hear the weighted quiet in the back of the car, but it didn’t take but a minute for the men to let him know they had his back.

“Okay,” Merlin said. “Then we’re behind you. We’ll get her through this.”

Heath nodded, his teeth still locked together. They had to—there was no other option but to get her through this and get her back home to safety. And knowing his team was behind him on this, behind her, made all the difference in the world.

Eleanor was drifting in and out of sleep. She should be getting herself ready for the meetings she would have with Onur Demir. You didn’t walk into a negotiation with the head of a rebel guerrilla organization without being one hundred percent ready for any and all eventualities.

But her body had been pushed past all limits in the last twenty-four hours and she needed to sleep.

“She saved my ass back there.”

Eleanor heard Heath talking through a fog. The response from the driver’s seat was muffled.

“I was knocked out cold on the fire escape outside the building. If she hadn’t had the wherewithal to pick up my gun and be ready for them, we would have both been sitting ducks out there.”

“She’s pretty amazing,” Zip said beside her. “You think she can pull off this negotiation with Demir?”

“If anyone can, she can,” Heath said.

Eleanor made to sit up. They were right to be focused on the negotiation. She needed to be focused on that too.

She didn’t make it to sitting. Her eyes just didn’t want to open.

She heard the men begin to talk about how she and Heath had known each other in high school, but she didn’t hear his whole response. She tried not to drift off again into sleep as they kept moving through the quiet of the night, but her body had hit a brick wall and she was lulled into sleep as the sound of the car on the highway drowned out her thoughts.

“Eleanor.”

Someone was shaking her shoulder. “Wake up, Eleanor.”

Heath. It was Heath. Eleanor opened her eyes and blinked up at him. The sun was just starting to crest in the sky and she found she and Heath were the only two in the car now. His temple now sported what looked like very fresh stitches and a nasty looking purple bruise spread from either side of the wound. His bandage-wrapped arm was in a sling.

“You should be lying in a hospital bed,” she said, bringing a bark of laughter from him.

“It’s a scratch. No biggie.”

She shook her head. Tell that to her back. It would never forgive her for trying to carry a hardened operative on it.

“We need to get you inside. We’ve lost our tail and since we knocked out the tracking device they planted on you, they shouldn’t be able to pick us up again, but I’d still like to get you inside.”

Eleanor could see the rest of the team was standing outside the car, their backs to them. They were in front of a small roadside motel.

“Tracking device?” She shifted and slid along the seat following Heath outside the door.

“The guy who tried to grab you at the airport must have slipped it into your pocket as insurance. It was in the outside pocket of your jacket,” Jangles said.

Heath looked grim. “We should have found it earlier.”

No one on the team argued with him and Eleanor realized they were all looking pretty pissed off. She wondered if they were always this hard on themselves.

Her stomach growled, drawing another of those slow easy grins from Zip. The guy seemed to smile at everything. It would be annoying on some people, but on him, it worked.

“Come on. Let’s get you something to eat.” Heath pointed at a small restaurant across from