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“I was supposed to be safe at this goddamned job, and here we are, stuck in these shitty woods. Helvete.” He kicked a rock, sending it scuttling over the ground. He grabbed clumps of his own hair while glaring mutely at the sky.
Despite their grumpy, silent détente, she managed to lead them forward for another ten minutes. Mark’s pace slowed, but suspecting the extent of his pain, Tess resisted pushing him any harder. Growing paranoid, she feared their captors were gaining and kept checking over her shoulder. The longer they slogged through the forest, wounded and hungry, the more her spirits deflated. The afterglow she’d experienced earlier had dissipated like steam into the air. At this point, she figured she’d hallucinated their entire sexy interlude.
A gunshot rang out and shattered the silence of the forest.
By instinct, Tess spun to search for the shot’s origin but saw nothing. A moot point, she reasoned, given the gunfire proved they were no longer alone. “It must be Alexi or Yuri. Run!”
With no option other than to delve deeper into the woods, she accelerated and hoped Mark could pick up his pace. The bushes grew denser, forcing them to trek single file to squeeze through tricky passages. The path ahead narrowed, and she gestured for Mark to lead the next section.
He reached for Sergey’s handgun, still tucked in the waistband of his trousers but didn’t withdraw it.
Alternating positions, Tess slipped in front of Mark and swatted her way through bushes and blackberry brambles, unable to see her feet. She beat out her exasperation on the branches by fighting every vine clogging her path like a mortal enemy.
When she stepped forward, the ground disappeared beneath her, and she plummeted into the steep ravine. Prickly bushes with thorns attacked her body from all sides before she landed with a thud. Something sharp punctured her leg. She screamed as warm liquid gushed over her ankle. Afraid to brave looking at the injury, she bit her lip until she tasted blood.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” Mark shouted from the ravine’s ledge.
“Yes, I hurt my leg. Bad.” Cursing, she sputtered in short bursts with ragged breaths. She glanced up the hillside, stunned to see how far she’d fallen.
“Hang on. Let me get to you.” Mark plowed through the bush. Using a broken cedar branch like a machete, he swept away spiky vines to make his way down the slope. Red lines of fresh blood crossed his hands and multiplied as the brambles grew denser. The steep ravine offered few footholds, and he used his hands to brace himself but careened the last drop. Landing with a clonk, he scrambled over the ground.
“Shit, get this thing out of my leg.” Flat on the ground with her ankle twisted at an unnatural angle, she gasped for air. Shielding her eyes, she peeked through her fingers and stole a glance at the wound. A jagged tree branch impaled the width of her lower leg, leaving her bone visible, and blood flowed freely. Dizziness seized her, and she hyperventilated.
Mark knelt on a flat patch of dirt. “First, slow your breathing. Take slow, deep breaths. I need to move you to solid ground.”
“Fine.” The pain made her groan, but she managed a nod while noticing his earlier robotic mood had disappeared, and he’d clicked into doctor mode, precisely what she needed. She struggled to extricate her torso from the tangled mess of bushes, and a blackberry vine covered in thorns caught on her bloody shirt and lodged against her chest. Without thinking, she yanked it away, puncturing her palm in multiple spots. Several thorns remained stuck in her décolleté, and tears slid from the corners of her eyes. “Damn it.”
Sweat drenched Mark’s face, and he lost his balance as he lifted her out of the brambles. Extracting her from the scrub brush and moving to a flat grove took multiple awkward attempts. With quick, light motions, he palpated her lower leg around the bleeding punctures and scrutinized the entry and exit points of the tree branch. “I need to extract this carefully. The stake could sever your artery, so please don’t move. Sorry, Tess, but this will hurt.”
“Just get it out. Fast.” Mad with pain, she tensed her body in self-protection and focused on keeping still at all costs. The expectation of more agony overwhelmed her with nausea, and she broke into a cold sweat.
“Take a big, deep breath. Ready?”
Worried their captors might lurk nearby, she covered her mouth to muffle the sound if she screamed and gave Mark a thumbs-up. She watched as he inspected both sides of the wound and placed his hands in position to remove the branch.
“On three. One, two…” In one twist, he extracted the thick, spiky branch.
Tess cried out into her hands. She rolled on her side to vomit but produced nothing but dry heaves, given her empty stomach. Clammy sweat coated her face, and her blood dripped off the ragged branch in Mark’s hand and fell to the ground. She groaned. “Damn it. You said on the count of three. Christ.”
“Sorry, but you experience less pain if you’re not quite expecting it.”
“Whatever. Still hurt like hell. Now, help me get up.”
“You’ve got grit, Tess Bennett, but don’t move until I stop the bleeding.” He ripped neat strips off the bottom of his shirt to create a primitive dressing, winding fabric around the injury and tying a series of knots.
“My leg’s going to be okay, right?” As she waited too long for a reply, she swore her thudding heart might break her ribs. The grim cast of his expression discouraged her. “Please say something.”
“You’ve got multiple, deep puncture wounds, and you need a hospital.” Avoiding eye contact, he drew his eyebrows together and studied her injury before tightening the cloth strips.
What Mark didn’t say out loud worried her more. The harsh reality was she wouldn’t see the inside of a hospital unless someone rescued them before Yuri's men reappeared. The vital need for rescue spurred her to ignore her pain, which bordered on unbearable. “We need to go. We need a new plan. Any plan.”
A wheeze sent Mark into a coughing fit. Clutching at his rib cage, he extended a hand to help her. “Lean on my left side, and don’t put any weight on your injured leg, period. I’ll find you a walking stick to help you balance.”
“Thanks.” Pressing up with her left leg, she wobbled to stand. Sweat trickled from her forehead, and dizziness kept her stomach swirling in protest, neither of which would help her find safety faster. Despite her stoic intention to conceal her pain, she shored herself against a tree to rest, huffing and puffing.
He searched the clearing and picked up a tree branch just over a yard long, which he carried over and placed in her hand. “Not ergonomic, but this will help you balance.”
Assessing the branch’s weight, she judged it light enough to maneuver. Tess planted the stick on the ground and took one tentative step, and her uninjured leg trembled. “I’ll be slow, but I’ll manage.” Without complaint, she limped ahead, but each step required laborious effort.
