Page 78 of Too Broken to Love

Hudson’s body lurched to the left. The familiar force, like a helicopter whipping into a turn, drove his hope into tight focus. He jerked again as the General maneuvered the vehicle into the traffic flow. “Please tell me that signal is Frank.”

“It is.”

The General’s resolute answer clamped Hudson’s jaw tighter. Growling, he braced as they whipped onto a dark road skirting a wooded jogging path.

“Tessa.” Hudson breathed her name again as the taillights of a dark van came into view.

Tessa jerked the left side of her body in a disjointed, snapping rhythm. The painful ruse that Frank had made her practice for half an hour each day when she’d been a kid came back as easily as picking a pocket. Heart pounding so fast she prayed nobody heard it beat against the metal floor, she forced saliva through her open lips.

“What’s going on back there?” The driver veered the van to the right. “Do I need to stop and help you two control one woman and an old man?”

“Keep driving.” Shadow shot his leg out and kicked her in the ribs. “Wake up.”

The blow drove hundreds of knives through her torso. Her whimper wasn’t fake as she spasmed her body toward the door.

“She can’t wake up, you idiot. She’s having a seizure.” Frank’s voice shook as violently as Tessa’s limbs. “Air helps her come out of it.”

“What happens if she doesn’t come out of it?”

Tessa barely heard the tremble in Shadow’s voice over her convulsions.

“Don’t you know anything? My daughter could stop breathing and die.”

Shadow cut off the driver’s protests. “Just fucking pull over. We need to deliver her alive, or we’ll be dead too.”

Every muscle in Tessa’s body ached from her act. Her ribs hurt and her head pounded, but she convulsed harder as the van slowed and the door slid open. Cold air rushed in with each metallic click. Blissful darkness beckoned her to run, but she needed to wait for Frank’s signal.

He brushed hair off her cheek and whispered. “Now. Tessa.”

At Frank’s command, she rolled and flung herself out the door.

Hudson bit his tongue so hard it bled as he saw a body roll out of the van. Without waiting for the SUV to stop, he yanked open the door and jumped out. His feet hit the pavement. He absorbed the impact and rolled.

He tapped on the earpiece the General had given him as he lurched to his feet. “Going after Tessa. Secure the van.”

Without waiting for a response, he raced toward a tall, broad figure running in the direction of the body. It had to be Tessa who’d rolled out of the vehicle. The piece-of-shit smugglers wouldn’t run after Frank. He was disposable. The woman he loved was not.

Hudson cursed as the smuggler disappeared down the dark embankment into the trees. Tires screeched behind him.

“The van is fleeing,” the General said in his ear. “Taking pursuit.”

“Go. I got this.” Running at an angle, Hudson charged down the hill. The feral rush sharpened him into a weapon with one purpose—reaching Tessa.

The clouds shifted, as if the unharnessed power coursing through his body tore a hole in the sky. A sliver of moonlight caught the smuggler as he careened down the hill toward the tree line. Hudson raised his weapon again and fired.

The smuggler’s body jerked. The man grunted and grabbed his upper arm. Pitching forward, he disappeared behind a picnic table.

A gunshot jolted the gangly branches above Tessa. Reverberations shuddered down the trunk she’d crashed into and fractured through her prone body. The faint scent of bourbon slid into the cracks and gathered in her nostrils.

Hudson.

She opened her mouth to scream his name, to yell at him to forget about her, but no air moved in or out of her lungs.

Hudson had come.

He’d found her.

Risked his life because he truly loved her.