She stared at him, trying to rid herself of the woman who’d given in to temptation and lain down with her head on this unconscious man’s chest and had actually slept. Dorian nodded and walked out.

  Keeping low, noticing no activity down below at all, and seeing no vehicles, she quickly took care of business and headed straight back to the culvert.

  Scott had wanted her on the paved road by dawn.

  But with the quiet below, they should be able to head out. Get the baby to safety. And hopefully prevent yet another kidnapping at some other, as yet unknown birthing center.

  At the very least, birthing centers across the Southwest, and probably beyond, needed to be notified to beef up security, keep outside doors locked. Not allow anyone but immediate family inside only if their name was on a prearranged list and they showed ID.

  The doctor in her was in full gear.

  Couldn’t be said for any of the rest of her.

  Scott was sitting in the back of the culvert, right next to the sleeping baby, phone in hand, when she dipped into the cave.

  “I need to check the wound,” she told him. “You didn’t happen to save the cutoff pants, did you, so you can stay covered up?”

  Asinine. Completely ridiculous. She was a doctor. Saw nudity all the time.

  Growing hot, she forced herself to look at him, knowing that she’d just given herself away.

  She couldn’t look at his nudity and promise to remain professional.

  Where he was concerned, she’d been compromised.

  “I did,” he told her. “But only because I didn’t want to leave them out where anyone could find them. When we leave here, we need to get rid of any sign of our habitation, while leaving enough debris scattered around to make it look as though no one has been here.”

  Okay, good. He was on track.

  She reached for the first aid kit and medical supplies he’d brought back with him. Didn’t ask questions, expecting him to head out and change.

  Instead, he stood, unbuckled his belt, unhooked and unzipped the fly and let his pants drop.

  Everything in her froze.

  Heated up quick.

  And she saw the shirt that more than covered his groin area.

  Taking a deep breath, refusing to let herself panic over behavior so unlike her, she focused on what she did know.

  “I specialized in children’s medicine,” she told him. “But knowing we were forming the firm, I also certified in several other specialties and do regular rotations with top doctors from all forms of medicine specialties, which is what allows me to keep expert status in the field...”

  She was rambling. But it was working. Putting mental space between them. Allowing her to focus on the torn skin she’d managed to repair and, most importantly cleanse, very early that morning, sealing it with butterfly straps.

  “How deep is the bullet?” He remained standing. She didn’t suggest otherwise. If there’d been fresh blood, that would have been different.

  “I got it out,” she told him. “It was a flesh wound. Just nicked the muscle. It needs stitches, inside and surface, to heal without scarring, but the butterflies are sealing the wound tight enough to keep infection out. There’s no oozing.”

  She’d prefer that he be on antibiotics. And stay off the leg as much as possible. The salve she’d found in the supplies had been enough for the moment.

  Hopefully they’d get lucky.

  She bandaged his wound securely, but as sparingly as she could, needing to reserve supplies in the case of infection, or reinjury.

  Both of which were highly possible with the hiking they had ahead of them.

  She busied herself with putting away the supplies as Scott pulled his pants up. Checked on the baby, who’d eaten well, twice, and was sleeping soundly.

  “His mother’s milk will be coming in,” she said then, getting emotional when she shouldn’t be, as she assessed the even breathing. A distraught new mother, mourning her missing baby, fearing for him, desperate to find him, didn’t need to be dealing with breasts aching for a baby to feed.

  She cared about her patients. Felt empathy for them.

  But it didn’t ever get personal.

  “Come, sit.” Scott patted the pallet she’d made for him to lie on. And then had shared with him.

  For a second, she thought he meant to talk about that. To talk about them.

  As if there was a them.

  He’d woken up with her head on his chest.

  And she had no good or professional explanation to give him.

  She went forward anyway. Took the seat he’d proffered.

  Awkward or not, painful as it could be, she had to own up to her actions.

  They needed the air between them as clear as it could be if they were going to be a successful team.

  He’d pulled out his phone. Turned it on. The first thing she checked was battery level. It was crucial that they have enough to make one call when they were within service.

  His battery was almost full.

  And it hit her.

  He’d come back for her and the baby. Not because they were still on the run.

  The supplies...the battery...

  But his leg...

  “We can’t stay here,” he said before she could find words to articulate pertinent thoughts within the flying and wayward ones inserting themselves into her head. “But before we go, you need to know everything I know. In case you have to leave me behind.”

  Her gaze shot to his face.

  His gaze was glued firmly on his phone.

  “The vehicle you saw last night was one of the guards we’d seen earlier, coming back to find out why McKellips didn’t show up at plan B.”

  She studied his face, because what she was currently seeing on the phone screen that seemed to be mesmerizing him was just a bunch of groupings of letters, symbols and numbers that meant nothing to her. “McKellips?”

  “Chuck McKellips is the man who killed your kidnapper.”

  “The man you knifed.”

  “I hit purposefully. Enough to disable him long enough for us to get away, but not hit any major organs.”

  She’d figured that much out when she’d seen the knife hit.

  Just as she’d applied expert pressure to knock out the man who’d had the baby, but not to kill him.

  When Scott hadn’t come right behind her back up the mountain, she’d feared the unknown baby carrier had gotten him. “I thought I got you killed by not telling you that the second guy wouldn’t be out all that long.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not my first rodeo, Doc.” There was a hint of teasing in his tone, and he finally looked straight at her. Meeting her gaze.

  She wasn’t sure what he was telling her. Knew that she had so many things to say that she didn’t want him to know.

  Scott looked away first. And she felt like a failure for not having had enough of her own common sense about her to have already done so.

  “They spread out to find us, two outside, one in. I managed to knock out the one inside, drag him out the back, leave him on a trail heading to the road and get back inside before the other two got back. Praying the entire time that they hadn’t found you.”

  “I was on my belly,” she told him. “Climbing straight up here.” Because...it seemed appropriate, letting him know that he could rely on her to make smart choices. As long as they didn’t involve her body close to his, apparently.

  “I was hiding when McKellips came inside, and when he didn’t find his underling there, he ran back out looking for him. He found him, and then took off up the road...”

  As Scott had obviously planned. The man was good at reading his enemy. And playing him.

  “I heard McKellips talking to the other guy outside a while later. They got the guy I konked into one of the vehicles and were both heading out.”

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  Scott glanced her way again. His eyes weren’t telling her anything she didn’t understand. They were filled with warning.

  “What?”

  “They were going to find another baby to fill the order. It was due this morning at nine. At a place they call the grocery.”

  Mouth open, she stared at him. Wanting to grab up the little one behind her and run as far and as fast as she could. “A store?”

  Scott shook his head. “My guess is it’s some kind of private residence.” And then he added, “They don’t know who I am. They think I’m some lowlife who was hanging around Duane’s place...”

  “Duane?”

  Those blue eyes met hers again. Almost as though they were holding her somehow. “I’m assuming he was your kidnapper.”

  “They think you’re a friend of his?”

  “They suspect I was. Trying to get in on the cut. But Duane didn’t know the drop-off points. He doesn’t know anything. He was just some guy McKellips knew in the past and recruited to do a few kidnappings.”

  “They figure me for having the baby, thinking I’m going to hold it over them, at least get some money out of it. They’re writing that one off. And you, too. They think you’re as good as dead. That now that I have the kid, I’ll get rid of you.”

  He was watching her the entire time he talked. She didn’t blink. Just kept holding on to him eye to eye and listening.

  “They’re alerting the squadron, whoever the hell that is, and everyone will know by now that if either of us are seen, we’re to be shot on the spot. They can’t let the general get wind of the mess Duane made of things. And they can’t risk losing the mission as a cog in the wheel. If it goes, so does their team. And the money’s more than any of them will ever see again in their lifetimes.”

  Sick to her stomach, she still held his gaze. And nodded. “That much.”

  Sucking in his lips, he turned back to the phone.

  “Not knowing who the squadron is makes our task much more difficult.” She put the obvious on the table.

  “I have reason to believe there might be law enforcement involved.” He dropped the words quietly, staring at his phone again.

  “Or that there could be,” he corrected himself. “I heard McKellips refer to someone by a series of numerals. Sounded like a police badge number to me. A small operation out of a municipality not far from Globe. I worked with them once, a few years ago. Recognized the numbers.”

  The man was smart. Focused.

  Things she currently felt lacking in herself.

  She proved as much by asking, “I’m assuming there’s no service in the valley?”

  He shook his head. “I found an office in the building...the place looked like some community center from fifty years ago, mostly decrepit and filthy, but there was an office in the back. Powered by a generator. After the two left to kidnap another newborn, I put my phone on a charger lying on the desk and went through the place.”

  “The supplies...”

  He nodded. “There was a closet with baby stuff. I grabbed what would fit. Our clothes were in plastic, shoved in a bottom drawer of an old dresser in a small janitor-type room. I’m pretty sure these guys didn’t even know they were there...”

  “They’ll miss the power bars. The baby stuff...”

  He shrugged. “They’ll know I circled back, is all. What’s going to piss them off the most are these...”

  Pulling his gun from his holster, he opened it, showing her fresh rounds. “Some not so bright person left them in the back of the bottom desk drawer.”

  He’d used his knife to pick the lock.

  “I’ve got a box of them,” he told her. “They wouldn’t fit in the satchel. I hid them just outside the culvert.” He glanced at the wall as that slipped out.

  Because she’d gone through his satchel. Knew what hadn’t been in it.

  And she frowned. “Why did you do that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Scott?”

  His silence didn’t fit the hours they had ahead of them. “We can’t do this without complete truth. And trust.” She told him what she’d already decided for herself if he asked about that head of hers on his shoulder.

  Or the kiss which she’d given him when he left the night before.

  “I was...not doing all that great,” he told her. “I fell. The box slid a couple of feet. I somehow thought it was the bullets or me getting back to you and I chose me.”

  Oh.

  Oh! Her heart leaped.

  And she said, “Do you remember where they are?”

  “Yep. Already found them.” Lifting his pant legs, he showed her a pair of socks stuffed full of bullets. “I’m not going to be unarmed again.”

  She wanted to argue. To talk about his wound and the extra weight.

  Didn’t trust herself to get it right.

  And Scott, who’d turned back to his phone, didn’t seem open to anything she had to say on the matter.

  They were just going to have to trust each other with some things left unsaid.

  Chapter 14

  Scott didn’t admit to weakness. Ever. Just wasn’t his MO.

  Instead, he worked through it. Took care of what ailed him on his own and moved forward.

  So what in the hell was he doing, giving Dorian even a hint of the hell he remembered as his last moments before unconsciousness the night before?

  Scrolling with his thumb on his phone screen, he came up with an answer he could live with. Accuracy not confirmed.

  She was his doctor, tending to the bullet wound he’d received in battle. She’d need to know details in order to diagnose him, in the event of possible complications.

  And to that end, she was also his partner over the next hours. There were things she had to know.

  Landing on the screenshot he needed first, he handed her his phone.

  She took it. Gave a cursory glance at the sequences of letters, numbers and symbols and shook her head. “What is this?”

  “Those are confirmation of previous kidnappings and deliveries of babies for illegal adoptions.” He swallowed. “I know this because of a site I found on the dark web several months ago. Your Hudson was going to work on it the night you were kidnapped. Those markings are code for dates and times.”

  “I’m guessing the yin yang symbol means the deal was executed successfully?”

  He nodded. And then, weighted with the same gravity that had hit him the night before, he pointed to the four different intricate symbols that separated date and time in every single line.

  “Are you familiar with those?”

  She nodded. “Ancient Chinese, right? Guardians of the directions?”

  He nodded. “Dragon means east. Bird south. Tiger west. Turtle north.”

  “North is actually the Black Tortoise...” She stopped. Handed back his phone. “They’ve got at least four drop-off locations,” she said then. “This place—” she nodded downward “—is only one of them.”

  “And we don’t know if it’s north, as in Northern Arizona, or west as in Western United States...”

  “Could be south, because it’s down in the valley...”

  Once again, she was on track with him. “Exactly.”

  “We have no idea what kind of scope this organization spans...”

  He nodded.

  “Did you find anything on the general?”

  He shook his head. “But it’s clear that McKellips, who is one tough dude, is intimidated by him.”

  He felt her shiver. Struggled to resist the urge to put an arm around her. Pull her close to his warmth. Even if only to give her enough false assurance for a moment of respite.

  Which made no sense.

  He wasn’t a coddler.

  And she wouldn’t appreciate being coddled.

  After effects from the gunshot wasn’t quite out of his system yet, apparently.

  He still hadn’t shaken the initial rush of pleasure he’d had, waking up with her head on his chest. And he damned well didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with that.

  He got it. She’d been exhausted. Had taken care of the baby, of him. Built a cradle, a pallet for him—all in the dark. Building a second pallet would have taken energy she couldn’t afford to expel. And she’d only had one satchel to use for a pillow.

  For all he knew, she’d lain her head there to keep track of his heartbeat and exhaustion had just overcome her.

  It all made sense. Except the way he couldn’t get past waking up with her there.

  Dorian stood, almost as though she could sense his growing desire for her, his awareness of her at the very least. Went back to check on the baby.

  Giving him a breather.

  That didn’t last long enough.

  She was back, sitting beside him on the pallet. Handing him a power bar. Unwrapping one of her own.

  “We’re going to need every ounce of energy we can muster,” she said then, as though she had a plan in mind for them to head into.

  “The minute we step outside this culvert, we’re hunted targets,” he told her. He’d sworn to himself that he’d get her safely home.

  He couldn’t change the facts.

  “Sounds like we’re hunted no matter where we are.”

  Yep. She got the full picture. He’d known she would.

  Finished his bar in less than a minute, and rose. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.” Her lips said one thing. The stark look in those brown eyes gave another reply.

  “We have to head to the road,” he told her. “Our chances of making it back over the mountain, and then down without being caught, are slim. McKellips clearly knows that side of the range. My guess is that he either lives there, or has a place in the area, at the very least. He’ll probably have traps set...”

  “We have to head to the road because with your leg, and a baby, our chances of making it back the way we came are lower.”