Beth Cornelison - Soldier's Pregnancy Protocol

She shook her head and several hanks of hair fell loose again. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Like he had room to talk. He’d almost kissed her. Stupid, stupid …

Slipups like that in the field could get you killed. Falling for a pair of seductive brown eyes or the temptation of a kiss was just the kind of mistake his enemies banked on. If he was going to find Daniel, he had to pull himself together.

Erin glared at him over her shoulder.

He gentled his voice. “You’ve had a serious head trauma, and you’re throwing up. You could have a concussion. You need a CT scan.” He gathered her loose hair again and re-tucked it in her shirt, painfully aware of the silky texture against his skin.

She rocked back on her heels and swiped her mouth with her sleeve. “All I need is some crackers or something to settle my stomach. I’ll be fine.”

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. He didn’t have time to argue with her. “You’re going to see a doctor.”

Erin twisted her lips in a frown of disagreement. Pushing to her feet, she dusted the seat of her jeans and, with a wobble, stepped toward the SUV. “Just take me home. Please?”

He shadowed her, ready to catch the stubborn woman if she toppled over. “I already told you why you can’t go back to your house. Especially now with your buddy Knife, as you called him, and his cohort on the loose again.”

“You really think they’ll come after me again?” She furrowed her brow and held a hand to the knot rising on her scalp.

An external knot. A good sign.

“You really think they’ll give up?” he returned.

Fear flickered across her face, and her shoulders drooped. “Great.”

Alec calculated which emergency room was closest and internally groaned at the three- to four-hour wait they’d likely have on a Saturday afternoon. He toyed with, then nixed, the idea of leaving Erin at the hospital. She was in no condition to take care of herself. Hell .

More delays. More time for the people on his trail to track him. More opportunity for Erin to be found, caught, used against him, perhaps killed when Knife figured out she’d duped him and he didn’t have Daniel’s letter. He’d have to stay with her. Rather, she’d have to stay with him….

His gut tightened at the thought. Could he risk taking her with him to the safe house in the mountains? And did he really have any other options if he was going to keep her safe?

Maybe if she weren’t in danger because of him, he could justify leaving her at the E.R. The staff at the hospital would take care of her injuries. But the staff couldn’t guard her from knife-wielding thugs the way he could. And Alec was certain the men who’d kidnapped her to force his hand would try again.

“Look, I appreciate your concern, Alec.” Erin’s face had more color, but she still visibly trembled. “But my head already feels better. It’s only a sharp throb now.” She tossed him a wry grin. “And I’m only sick to my stomach because I’m—” Her eyes slid closed, and she staggered. “Whoa, why is the ground moving?”

Alec caught her as she toppled. “That settles it, sweetcakes. You’re coming with me.”

“I don’t—”

“Stop arguing and get in the truck.”

While he helped her to the front seat of the SUV, Alec mentally ran down his list of contacts in the area, wishing he hadn’t tossed his cell phone quite so soon. He stopped at a small insurance office, parking the damaged SUV out of sight, and convinced the receptionist to let him borrow the office phone and call in a few favors.

Within minutes he was escorting Erin into a private, outpatient radiology lab. The facility’s owner was the brother of a former black ops teammate Alec had once rescued from a Honduran prison. Though the private lab was typically closed on Saturdays, the owner/radiologist met Alec to repay his brother’s debt. While Erin was in the back getting her scan, Alec took a seat in the waiting area and recalculated his plans, adding Erin into the mix. Inconvenient, but doable.

He pulled Daniel’s letter out and stared at the folded sheet. Erin had been lucky as hell the letter hadn’t been a bomb. He’d been waiting until he could dust the envelope for fingerprints, x-ray it and check for explosives before he opened the letter. Now there seemed no reason not to take his first close look at his only clue to Daniel’s whereabouts.

Carefully, Alec unfolded the stiff paper. Colorful artwork and old-fashioned script decorated the page. Dotted lines connected one small drawing to another, superimposed on a map of a fictional Caribbean isle. In the top corner, the skull and crossbones of a pirate’s flag smirked at Alec.

He frowned. Why would Daniel send him this child’s souvenir? Was his partner simply telling him he was alive or did the map mean something else?

“Good news.”

Drawn from his perusal of the pirate map by the radiologist’s voice, Alec hastily refolded the sheet and shoved it in his pocket.

“Your friend has only a minor concussion,” the radiologist said with a grin. “Chances are she’ll have a whopping headache for a few days, but I see no other damage, nothing that concerns me. She should be just fine.”

Alec nodded. “Can she travel?”

“Some, but she’ll need lots of rest. Keep tabs on her, especially for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Watch her pupils, her pulse rate. And wake her every couple hours and ask her basic questions about her name and the date. If her condition goes south, get her to a hospital immediately.”

A technician escorted Erin into the waiting room, and Erin glared at Alec. “If you have any humanity at all, you will stop at the first hamburger joint we see and buy me a large cheeseburger with fries. I was hungry before. Now I’m famished.”

Hypoglycemia , Alec thought, sizing up Erin’s glower. That’d explain her crankiness, too .

He drove them to a fast-food restaurant drive-through where he ordered himself a double hamburger, then watched in amazement as Erin put away her dinner in record time. After devouring her meal, she settled back in the seat with a satisfied sigh.

“If you’re sure I can’t go home …” Erin yawned. “Then drop me at a hotel. This has been a heck of a day, and I’m bushed.” Her eyelids drooped, and she nestled her cheek against the shoulder strap of the seat belt.

“Don’t worry,” Alec said. “I’m taking you someplace safe.”

Erin woke to a loud droning sound and a throbbing ache at her temple. The pounding headache she understood—Knife had clobbered her when he escaped. The noisy rumble confused her, concerned her.

She cracked open her eyes and surveyed the dim, confined space where she lay. This wasn’t the SUV. “Alec?”

“You’re awake. Good.”

She angled her head toward his voice and found him peering over his shoulder from a narrow seat at the front of the confined space. He wore a headset over one ear with a microphone at his mouth. The green glow of a control panel cast harsh shadows on his angular face and square jaw. “I was just about to wake you. Can you tell me who the president is?”

She did. “Now can you tell me where the heck we are?”

“North of Denver. At about 15,000 feet.”

The tiny space she was in jostled and dipped. Her stomach rose to her throat. “15,000 feet? In the air?”

“Don’t panic. I have hundreds of hours’ flying experience.”

Despite the hammering protest of her head, Erin struggled to sit up and take stock of her situation. “Oh God.”

She was in a small propeller plane from the looks of it. And Alec was alone at the controls. She fought the swell of nausea and anxiety that swamped her. “Wh-why am I here? Where are you taking me?” She heard the shrill note in her voice but didn’t care.