Nellie slowly sat upright in the vehicle, as Corbin parked the vehicle in a garage, the door slowly lowering. Corbin was now out of the driver’s side door, running around to her side, telling her, “Go, go, go, go.” Corbin pulled her from the passenger seat, hustling her out of the vehicle and into the adjoining building.
“I thought we’d be safe now,” she cried out.
“No. It won’t take them too long to find us here. Now pick up the pace, and let’s go.”
“I was so grateful that you were on your way to rescue me, but now I could definitely change my mind.”
He looked at her and then laughed. “Too bad, but I’m what you’ve got. Plus, in my line of work, getting to safety means running through some fire, whether gunfire or a forest fire. So quit complaining and just move. Besides, your friend needs help. Remember?”
Nellie nodded, noting Jewel was already being carried into the building with them. “What’s up with coming here?”
“It’s a temporary safe house for us. My boss sent us here, so we have some time to regroup.” He looked over at her. “There are times to argue, and there are times to do as you’re told without hesitation. We learned that lesson early on in the navy. It’s saved my life many times over.”
She got the message. She stayed quiet, as he quickly led them into a hallway. As they got onto an elevator, he punched in a series of buttons which made no sense to her.
“How do you even know where you’re going?” she muttered.
“My contact on my phone is telling me.” He looked over at Aiden. “How is she?” Aiden carried the unconscious woman. “Did she get hit?”
“I think she’s basically okay,” Aiden said quietly, “but I need to do a full check.” He looked back at Nellie. “Do you know what happened to her?”
She shook her head. “She had just returned to our room. She was distraught because they just found a place for her child.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be going back in very quickly,” Corbin confirmed. “The plan is to rescue everybody.”
“The kidnappers must know that we’re missing—given the guns shot at us just now—so they’ll move everybody.”
Corbin nodded. “Yes, that’s a big possibility. We’ve got satellite coverage for the area right now. So we’re tracking all movement. If they move, we’ll know.”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
He smiled to hear such hope in her voice. “Yes, my boss is on it right now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, the cops have been called. You yourself did that, and we have an awful lot of resources at our disposal right now. I also have somebody else who wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” She stared at him, a dazed tone to her voice. All she could think about was maybe this nightmare would be over soon. The fact that they had found a way out of the kidnapper’s building on their own was huge, and then Corbin finding them? … It was almost too good to be true.
“Later. How did you get out?”
She shrugged. “I think one guard deliberately left the door unlocked for us,” she whispered. “I’m afraid they’ll kill him.”
He looked at her steadily for a moment. “That’s possible, but he’d have known that too.”
She swallowed. “I was hoping no one would have to die.”
“They’ve already killed one woman we know about so they could get full possession of her two children. And there’s a good chance that Jewel could have been the next one.”
She stared at Jewel in the other man’s arms. He wasn’t showing any strain from carrying the not-so-tiny woman. “I hope she’s okay,” she said anxiously. “She’s been through a lot.”
“Do you have any idea how many other women there are?”
She shook her head. “At least two more in the room beside us, per Jewel. She also spoke of one dead woman who had been there earlier.”
He nodded.
“I’m not sure the mothers were all killed though.” He raised his eyebrows at that statement. She shrugged. “I didn’t get any clarification on that issue. I so want to see Jewel get her daughter back.”
“We’re working on it.”
The elevator opened suddenly, and they moved rapidly down to another door. Corbin punched in a code, and a series of lights flashed, and the door popped open.
She stared at him. “I don’t know what you just did, but damn.”
He smiled. “Go on in.” And, with that, he let Aiden in, carrying Jewel.
Aiden laid Jewel on a bed inside the closest bedroom. “I’ll have to check her over. Give me a minute.”
With that, Corbin pulled Nellie back out, to give Jewel some privacy. “Come on. Let’s go into the living room.”
“But he might need us. I don’t want her waking up and freaking out.”
“You let him handle it. He’s a navy medic. And he’s damn good too.”
“Yeah, but a medic is not a surgeon.”
“He has done more surgeries than most surgeons,” Corbin explained. “Aiden is a surgeon in all but name. He chose to continue doing this kind of work instead of staying in the navy.”
She didn’t even know what to say to that. She held up her shaking hands.
He nodded, walked over, and didn’t even give her a chance to say anything but pulled her into his arms and just held her close.
“I don’t need that,” she said, trying to get free. But that huge expanse of comforting chest and the fact that he’d been the one to rescue her and that she was finally safe, altogether was obviously magical because she burst into tears and buried her face against him. He held her closer. When the tears finally dried up, she lifted her head and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
He smiled, brushed her hair off her face. “What for? Being human? For going through a horrible ordeal and now being safe? Somebody who’s in shock and still trying to deal with the changes in her life? You’ve been a kidnap victim for how many days now? You don’t have anything to be sorry for or to be ashamed of, and I’ll bring it up once, and then I won’t bring it up again. You are pregnant, so it’s a well-known fact that hormones will play a huge part in your reactions.”
She stared at him and smiled. “I’ll try very hard to not get too emotional on you.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that. I know that you’ll do the best you can, but Baby here”—and he gently patted her belly—“will play an important role too.”
She stared down at her stomach, wrapped her arms around it, curled up against his chest, and whispered, “We both thank you.”
“You’re both welcome.”
She didn’t move; she didn’t do anything but cuddle closer, knowing she was finally safe. “I don’t know what the hell happened to my life. I’m just so damn grateful that stage is over.”
“Did you recognize anything or anyone while you were there?” he asked.
“No, nothing. I just woke up in this locked room. Like, one minute I was on campus, and the very next? I was in that locked room. One of the men was really a decent person, and, I know it sounds terrible to say, but the other one was a piece of shit.” She shuddered. “But this one nice guy, I’m pretty sure he deliberately or accidentally didn’t secure the door, so that we had a chance to get free. My gut says that he did this deliberately, and I don’t even know how to explain it.”
“No explanations necessary,” he muttered. “It’s possible that he realized that he had to do something—perhaps seeing a pregnant woman pushed things for him too far, or it’s possible he didn’t realize the other woman had been murdered.”
She stared at him. “You found her?”
He nodded.
“That confirms what Jewel said too. That terrified me. I stayed compliant, so I didn’t end up the same way.”
“Exactly. You’re alive. You’re well, and Baby is doing okay. Granted, we’re not clear and free of danger yet, but we are in a whole lot better scenario than we were twenty minutes ago.”
She smiled, looked around, then back to Corbin. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”
“I’m Corbin Wallace, US Navy. A special division, black ops,” he said quietly.
“You are a long way away from America.”
Corbin nodded. “I got to travel the world with my parents when I was younger. Now, with my navy connections, I still get to travel.” He smiled. “And, yes, as I’m sure you already understand, your father had something to do with this.”
She winced. “Of course he did. I’m grateful, even though things aren’t great between us.”
“That’s between you and him.”
She stared at him and smiled. “Meaning, you don’t want to get between us?”
“Meaning that, whatever disagreements you had,” he said calmly, “probably are no longer valid, given what you’ve just been through.”
“That’s a sobering thought too.” She shook her head. “Believe me. While I was a captive, all I could think about was the fact that my father wouldn’t know how absolutely sorry I was. I know he was worried, and I kept pushing him out of my life, instead of finding another way to handle him.”
“And I’m sure he’s going through something similar too,” Corbin murmured.
She laid her head back down against his chest. “Do you do this for all your rescued damsels in distress?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that.” He gently rubbed her back, his chin resting atop her head. “That would keep me pretty busy.” She lifted her head and looked at him. He shrugged. “I’ve been blessed to have a hand in some pretty amazing rescues.”
“And that sounds like stories worth telling, when we have time.”
“Maybe. Right now we’ll keep you safe, and we’ll do our darnedest to get you back home.”
She leaned back slightly, so she could look up at him. “That would be an absolute miracle right now, but we have to rescue those kids and the other women. I’m seriously worried about them.”
He nodded. “I get that. Believe me. Even as we speak, a full-on raid is being planned to rescue them all. Even if they don’t catch the kidnappers, the satellite will track them. They won’t get away with this.”
“No.” She took a deep breath; then she voiced the fears that were choking her. “What if they decide that all the women and children aren’t worth this and kill everybody? What if they decided to cut their losses and run?”
Contemplating such an option, Corbin looked up to see Aiden standing in the open doorway to the sickroom. “She’s awake and asking for you,” Aiden said, studying the two of them with interest.
Immediately Nellie broke free of Corbin’s arms and asked, “Oh, my goodness, is she okay?”
“Well, she certainly isn’t feeling better, but the fact that she’s free helps. She’s worried about her daughter.”
“Yeah, me too.” Nellie made her way to the bedroom.
Corbin got up and headed over, so he could see the reunion between the two women. Jewel opened her arms, and Nellie fell into them, both of them crying.
When Jewel had a moment, she looked over at the men, and her eyes widened. “Oh, my goodness.” Her gaze traveled from Nellie and back to Corbin. Then she chuckled.
“Look at that. He really did come to our rescue.”