With no time to overthink his moves, he launched over the edge of the cliff and into the inky-black abyss. He crawled through air, reaching for a lifeline. The seconds took too long. Without the ropes, he knew death was certain. A free fall down into the rocky mountain spikes meant lights-out for good.

Gravity took over, and momentum lost. Jared’s weight began a rapid descent. His skin prickled as he splayed his fingers, reaching—hoping— for success.

One hand fisted the rope, his wounded arm taking the brunt of his body and gear poundage. With a grunt and heave, Jared growled up to a second handhold. He had two hands tight on the rope, and Jared looked over at Roman. Swaying in the obsidian night, Roman screamed, “Hoorah!”

Crazy bastard.

His heart screamed, punching his bruised ribs. The jump was the best damn adrenaline rush he’d had in a long time. Jared took a painfully deep breath as the helo pulled up hard and swam off into the sky.

***

The devastating sound of the chopper leaving brought tears to her eyes. Gunfire and battle cries in a language she didn’t understand screamed into the chilly night. Her saviors had come for one of them, but not both. It didn’t make sense. They hadn’t tried to find her. She heard them show up, create hell, and leave after finding her counterpart—the only other American in this camp.

They have no idea I’m here.

That was worst case scenario because that meant they weren’t coming back. Big time bad news. Maybe she should have listened, stayed stateside, and handled her work headache differently. But, no, she needed an adrenaline rush. Needed to get her mind off everything at home that she wanted to avoid. And when a Middle East gun-tracking assignment popped up through black-op back channels, she’d hopped on a plane without even telling her friends.

Not that they would let her pull a stunt like this. Because… well, she would’ve been captured.

Hanging out with the elite gun-slinger types was problematic. Even if she was decent on the trigger, she wasn’t elite or even as good an operative as she thought. Her background was intelligence gathering. She was only a former ATF agent with a desire for something bigger and too much time on her hands. Pathetic. All she had was an ego that rivaled the size of this goddamn mountain, and—

Sugar. Shut. The. Hell. Up.

She shook her head, then rubbed her eyes. “You will survive. You are that good. Who the hell needs a military rescue?”

It’d been more than forty-eight hours since her dumbass partner had stumbled into enemy hands and she’d tried to rescue him. That hadn’t worked out according to plan, and she was tossed into a makeshift cell and given nothing more than dirty water and rock-hard bread. As a foreign woman, they could’ve done much worse to her—and that threat still loomed. But I can handle this. She could kill each one of her captors and walk off that mountain before she had any more woe-is-me thoughts.