Page 30 of Her Faithful Protector

“Divest away.” His grin was devilish.

8

Three hours of shut-eye had been three hours too many as far as Nic was concerned. The good news was that Zed figured they were only about four hours behind the students.

“In two hours were going to come to a fork in a road, if you can call this a road.” Kane pointed to the piss-poor drone image on his tablet. “Both ways end in villages, both with about the same size populations and both equally poor. It’s a crapshoot which way they’ll go.”

“Is there anyone we could send out to each village?” Nic asked. It was a long shot, but he had to ask.

Max looked him dead in the eye and shook his head. “Sorry, Nic, I made the call all the way to your dad. Nobody could get here in time. It’s all us or the local federales.”

“Fuck them, we never know whose side they’re on,” Cullen bit out.

Most everybody on the team nodded. Unfortunately with the way the Mexican economy was going, more and more of the government was on the take.

Nic was sick of this shit. All he cared about was getting Cami home, safe and alive.

Once again Zed took point and Nic was in the rear. This time Raiden was his babysitter.

“You doing okay?” Raiden asked.

Nic sent him a sideways glare.

Raiden held up his hands. “Hey, didn’t mean to suffer the wrath, just asking a question.”

Nic settled, just a bit. Raiden was one of the coolest members of the team. He was the only one he had told about Alice and Mimi. Not the part about spending time with them when he said he was out chasing skirts, but he had told Raiden about helping his cousin out. He’d wanted advice. Yeah, Raiden was the best.

“I’ve been better,” Nic answered. “I can’t fucking believe that my Cami is one of the ones who has been kidnapped.”

“Yours?” Raiden asked quietly.

“She was mine through junior and senior year of high school, then the summer we graduated. Years might have passed, but I guess in my heart she’s always been mine. How fucked-up is that?”

“The heart wants what the heart wants.”

“Is that some kind of quote?” Nic asked.

“I think it’s Emily Dickinson, but I might have gotten it wrong. I figured I should quote her since we were talking about high school love.”

“Raiden Sato, you’re a pain in my ass,” Nic said with a half-laugh.

“Got you laughing though.” There was a glint in Raiden’s black eyes. “So why aren’t there little Camis and Nics running around right now?”

“There were supposed to be. Silly woman wanted to get married after we graduated, but I sure as hell wasn’t on board with that. I knew how rough my first couple of years in were going to be. I didn’t want to end up divorced. What’s more, she’s a bona fide genius, she had scholarships up the ass. Her parents both had or I should say, have Ph.Ds.. They wanted their princess to go to Ivy League, but then when she got the full ride to MIT, all bets were off. That’s where they wanted her to go for her math degree.”

Raiden whistled.

“Yeah, right? That’s the woman who was so in love with me, that she wanted to drop everything and be a sailor’s wife. Can you imagine?”

Raiden didn’t respond for half a klick. “Yeah, I could imagine. How did you break it off with her?”

Nic snorted. “How do you manage to crawl into my head?”

“Practice. So how did you break it off? Were you sneaky or up front?”

“God, it was tough, but I was up front. I loved her. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to be anything but truthful with her, she deserved my utmost respect. Of course, she totally blew me off. She was tighter than a tick,” Nic laughed as he thought about how she was. She’d been magnificent.

“What?”