Page 73 of Protecting Maggie
No. She wouldn’t.
Terror hit himhard.
“Artem—where’s Maggie?” Preacher asked sternly.
“Easy,” MacGyver warned. He’d picked up Yana and was holding her against his chest, his other hand on Borysko’s shoulder. The kids were safe, and his teammate was obviously relieved, but Maggie was still out there somewhere. Preacher wasn’t going to goeasy. Not until he knew where she was.
“She run. Soldiers run to her. She not let bad guys get her. No jail.”
Preacher’s mind spun. Artem was confirming his worst nightmare. She’d used herself as bait to lure the soldiers away from the church.
No. No, no, no!
Then he didn’t have a chance to say anything else as Artem took off, leading them through the bombed-out city he’d learned to navigate so well. Preacher wanted to shout out his anger and worry. Wanted to go back and find Maggie. It was all too possible that the Russians hadcaptured her already. Were even now beating her, the same way they’d done to him and MacGyver.
But getting himself caught again wouldn’t help her. She’d sacrificed herself to free him, and he couldn’t ignore that. It was an incredibly humbling feeling. Preacher expected that kind of sacrifice from his teammates. He’d do the same for them. But Maggie wasn’t a soldier. Wasn’t a SEAL. She’d already been through hell. And yet, she’d been willing to do whatever it took to save him.
Determination filled him as he ran. The second he had a chance to find out what the plan had been, he was going back. To find her. To chew her out for doing something so reckless—and kiss the hell out of her for doing it all the same.
Maggie was exhausted. In her previous life, she was anything but an athlete. Now, she’d spent hours evading the soldiers. They’d been way more tenacious than she or Artem had thought they’d be. They seemed absolutely determined to find her.
She’d done her best to hide from them, but every time she managed to find a place to catch her breath, the soldiers weren’t too far behind. Maggie figured it was because she was leaving footprints or something for them to follow, but even when she climbed up into a building that felt as if it was about to collapse at any moment, or shimmied across an electrical wire that thankfully wasn’tlive, into another building, the soldiers still found her trail.
She was dehydrated, terrified, and beginning to think it might be easier to just let herself be caught. But as soon as Maggie had the thought, she dismissed it. The soldiers hunting her werepissed. She had no idea what they were saying, but it was obvious they weren’t happy that she was managing to elude them.
Wanting to go west toward the field where she was supposed to meet up with the others, Maggie had actually turned east instead. The last thing she wanted was the soldiers accidentally running into Shawn, MacGyver, and the kids. But she was running out of places to hide, and she was shaky with the need for water and food.
“This sucks,” she whispered softly, simply to hear something other than the ominous creaking and groaning of the rubble around her…and the angry Russian words being yelled as she was hunted down.
Something hit her arm, and Maggie flinched, petrified. It happened again. Then again. Looking up from where she was crouched behind a burnt-out car…she realized it was raining.
The second she had the thought, the gentle rain turned into a deluge.
Smiling, she tilted her head up and opened her mouth. It wasn’t a lot of water, but it was something—and it tasted divine.
To her surprise, the shouts of the men looking for her disappeared.
Peeking out from around the car, she saw three of them running the opposite way. As if they were afraid they’d melt if they got wet. Maggie wanted to laugh. Wanted to collapse in relief. But this was her chance to get farther away from the soldiers. To work her way around the city back west. Toward Shawn.
She had no idea if Artem’s plan had worked, but she figured it must have, simply because the soldiers had been concentrating so hard on her. If they’d recaptured Shawn and MacGyver, or found them trying to escape, she thought their attention would be onthem, to make certain they didn’t escape again. Not on chasing her all over the city.
Being bait was way scarier than she’d thought, and things hadn’t worked out as easily as she and Artem had hoped, but thanks to the rain, maybe, justmaybe, things would turn out all right.
She slowly made her way through the city, taking short breaks when she could. Trying to stay on the outskirts, away from the church where the soldiers had made their home base.
She’d just crawled out from under another burnt-out car when she came face-to-face with a Russian soldier.
He was soaking wet, just like her, and he looked just as surprised as Maggie.
She froze. The rifle he held seemed more scary up close and personal. She held her breath as they stood there staring at each other in the pouring rain.
Then, to her shock, he said something fast and low—and pointed at the building behind her.
Maggie turned, trying to figure out what he was trying to say, with no luck. She looked back to find the soldier glancing almost nervously over his shoulder. He said something else and gestured to the building more urgently.
She took a step backward, toward the opening in the rubble, and the soldier nodded quickly and waved his hand as if to hurry her along.
Maggie had no idea what was happening, but she moved fast, ducking under the beam hanging precariously across the doorway and pressing her back against the wall once inside.
