Page 20 of Keeping Kara

The humor Chaos felt instantly faded. “If he finds you. Not when. And no way in hell would I, or any of us, let him get close enough to you in order to do something like that.”

“I know you’d try. But he’s sneaky, Arrow. I didn’t suspect anything. And I’m a pretty good judge of character. He’s able to fool people easily. Be someone he’s not. He scares me. Terrifies me, actually.”

Chaos felt helpless. He couldn’t do anything but reassure her that he’d do whatever he could to keep her safe. But she was right, if this Nolan guy figured out where she was, it was likely he’d find a way to get to her. He’d learned the hard way from his teammates’ experiences with their girlfriends that evil had a way of having its say, no matter how hard you tried to keep it at bay. He just had to hope that in the end, goodness would prevail, as it had in Penny, Zita, Mandy, and Laryn’s cases.

“I really want to give you a hug, but I don’t want you to think I have any ulterior motives,” Chaos whispered.

To his surprise, shock, and delight, Kara inched toward him.

He shifted so he was on his back, ignoring the pain it caused, and wrapped his good arm around Kara’s shoulders. She rested her head on his chest and sighed.

They lay like that for a couple of minutes before Kara’s breath hitched. His arm tightened around her, and she began to sob in earnest.

Chaos didn’t tell her to shush, didn’t give her any platitudes about how it would be all right. He simply let her cry. She was amazingly stoic and strong, but she’d been through hell. She needed the emotional release, and if he was the catalyst in any way, so be it.

She soaked his flight suit with her tears, but Chaos didn’t loosen his hold. He held on as she let out what had to be her last two weeks of terror, worry, and pain. He didn’t like that she’d obviously kept so many emotions bottled up, but he didn’t blame her either. Every day had to have been mental torture, and she must’ve been on guard every second she was locked in that cabin, trying to stay alive, to find a way to outsmart her captor.

When her tears finally stopped, she was limp against him.

Chaos couldn’t help but kiss the top of her head. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

He felt more than heard her sigh, but she didn’t try to pull away.

She fell asleep first, and the feel of her rhythmic breaths against him were mesmerizing. His admiration for this woman rose exponentially as he lay there holding her. He’d had the thought before, but now he was certain that she and the other women in his circle would mesh immediately. They’d each been through their own kind of hell, and now wore it as a badge of honor. They could get Kara to see herself through a different lens than she did now. That of a badass warrior woman.

But first…his team needed to freaking find them. Get them out of these woods. Back to civilization. He needed to get his shoulder looked at, and Kara needed a medical exam as well. Then she needed to make a police report, get pictures taken of her injuries to prove she wasn’t lying about what Nolan Colins had done to her.

It would be an uphill battle to get the man to court—once he was found—but Chaos mentally vowed to be by her side every step of the way. Men like him couldn’t get away with terrorizing women simply because they didn’t do what they wanted.

It took an hour or so, but eventually Chaos finally fell asleep. Before he did, he couldn’t help thinking that even though he was lying in the open, on the hard ground, hungry as fuck and with an infected shoulder, he was more comfortable than he’d ever been, with Kara secure in his arms.

CHAPTER SIX

Kara woke with a start. Terror swimming through her veins when she heard an extremely loud noise overhead and a searchlight flashing through the trees.

“Easy, Kara, it’s okay. It’s my team. They found us.”

“They did?” In her defense, she’d been startled out of one of the best sleeps she’d had in weeks. She hadn’t slept well, if much at all, while kept prisoner in Nolan’s cabin. He had a tendency to burst in on her at all hours of the day and night, and she’d never wanted to be vulnerable around him by sleeping when he came in.

“Come on, crawl out of there. I want to tear down our lean-to before we get out of here…leave no trace and all that.”

Kara was still a little foggy-headed, but she did as he asked and scooted out of their shelter. She helped him break it down and by the time they were done, the helicopter she heard minutes ago was hovering directly over them.

Her hair blew in the downdraft from the rotor blades and she couldn’t continue to look up because of the dirt flying in the air.

“We’re going to go up together,” Arrow said, shouting to be heard. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Kara. I know it’s easy for me to say ‘trust me,’ but I swear that I’ve done this so many times I could do it in my sleep. All you have to do is keep your eyes closed and before you know it, you’ll be inside the chopper and we’ll have a whole canteen of water to ourselves.”

She actually licked her lips. The idea of having clean water to drink was enough to almost make her salivate.

Arrow grinned. “Right? I’m hungry, but thinking about water makes me almost feral. Come on, step into this harness.”

Kara noticed for the first time that Arrow was holding a contraption that could’ve only come from the helicopter over their heads. She hadn’t seen or heard it being dropped from above, but it obviously hadn’t appeared magically out of nowhere.

Arrow patiently stood in front of her, holding the harness for her to step into. He didn’t seem fazed by the deafening noise of the helicopter or the windstorm it was creating all around them. But then again, he spent his life working in and around the machines, so he probably wasn’t fazed.

Kara had never been in a helicopter before, however, and she couldn’t help feeling nervous. But Arrow’s calmness went a long way toward steadying her nerves.

“Sorry, but I need to fasten the clips,” he said, a moment before his hands began touching her a little too close to her private parts. Kara stiffened, then forced herself to relax. Arrow wasn’t copping a feel. He was making sure the harness around her hips and chest was tight.