Page 57 of Protecting Maggie
Her head swung back and forth between the two men as if she were at a tennis match. Then what Shawn said sank in.
Russians?What the hell?
“We’ll hole up,” Shawn added. “The team’ll come back when things quiet down.”
“Smiley and the others are gonna be pissed that we’ve been left here,” MacGyver said, sounding as if he was merely discussing where to go out for lunch.
“They’ll be back as soon as they can. They can’t risk an international incident, and they know we can take care of ourselves,” Shawn said. He looked down at Maggie. “Come on, we need to get you up and moving.”
Maggie tried to stand, and immediately found that she was extremely weak and shaky. If it wasn’t for Shawn’s arm around her waist, she would’ve fallen on her face.
“Russians?” she asked, as she prayed to get some strength back in her body.
“Yeah. We’re in Ukraine. Come on, take a few steps, see if that helps.”
Maggie’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “How…what… I don’t understand.”
“We’ll talk after we’re safe. Because we are definitelynotsafe right now.”
The loud cracking sound happened again, and this time Shawn put his hand on the back of her head and urged her to duck down with him and MacGyver.
“You’ll have to carry her,” MacGyver said.
“Yep.” Shawn turned around. “Climb on,” he told her.
Maggie blinked. Things were moving way too quickly. She didn’t understand anything that was happening. She was in Ukraine? Thecountry?
MacGyver didn’t give her time to further process anything, he simply picked her up under the arms and placed her on Shawn’s back as if she were a kid. Instinctively,she tightened her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. One of Shawn’s hands went under her ass to hold her up.
“Go!” he said urgently to MacGyver.
The other man took off, with Shawn and Maggie at his heels.
The cracking sounds, which she now understood to be gunfire, echoed around them more and more. It felt as if they ran forever, and Maggie had to close her eyes as she was jostled and bumped on Shawn’s back. The water she’d guzzled threatened to come back up, but she refused to puke all over Shawn’s shoulder and chest.
The sounds of gunfire eventually faded as they continued to run. Maggie opened her eyes and saw they were nearing what seemed to be a city. Well, whatusedto be a city. Now it was mostly a pile of rubble. Everywhere she looked, there were destroyed houses and buildings on the outskirts. Burnt-out cars sat in the middle of what were once roads. The smell of death and destruction was thick in the air.
Once they entered the city proper, they didn’t stop, although they weren’t running anymore. MacGyver led them over piles of rock and debris as they picked their way farther and farther into the heart of whatever city this used to be.
Every now and then, Maggie could swear she saw a person duck behind a broken window of a dilapidated building or scoot around a crumbled wall, but she couldn’tbe sure. No one approached them, but maybe more importantly, no one threatened them in any way.
She was just about to beg to be put down—her feet were numb and she still thought she might throw up—when MacGyver approached what looked like just another pile of rocks.
“Wait here,” he told Shawn, before ducking under a huge piece of plywood and disappearing.
Shawn slowly lowered Maggie to her feet, and she could’ve gone to her knees and kissed the ground right then and there, but he turned, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her against his chest. She buried her nose into the space between his shoulder and head and hung on, as tightly as he was holding onto her.
One hand was at the back of her head, and the other was an iron band around her waist.
“Fuck, Maggie.Fuck.”
“You sound like Blink,” she muttered against him.
She felt more than heard him snort. Then he pulled back. “I’m sorry. I should’ve believed you without question.”
Maggie shook her head. She’d had lots of time to think about what had happened back in California. “No, you had plenty of reasons to doubt what I was saying.”
“Well, suffice it to say, I believe you now. We all do.”
