Free Protecting Fiona (SEAL of Protection Book 3) by Susan Stoker

traveling in. Cookie’s teammates in the chopper began laying down cover fire. They signaled to Cookie and he urged Julie and Fiona toward a small opening in the trees. It was going to be tricky. They had to climb onto a lowered ladder and be hauled up. The chopper couldn’t land, and they were going to be sitting ducks while they were being hauled aboard.
    Julie went first. Cookie and Fiona kneeled down in a patch of thick bushes. Cookie was firing toward where he thought the drug runners were hiding in the jungle around them. He’d taken off his pack to have better range of motion.
    It was taking a while for Julie to grab a hold of the ladder. Fiona wanted to scream in frustration. Why didn’t she just grab the damn thing and get the hell out of there? Cookie was running out of ammo, he didn’t have an unlimited amount of bullets. They both knew if he had to stop firing, Julie could be injured.
    Cookie was surprised, but supposed he shouldn’t have been, when he heard Fiona say, “Here,” and thrust his original pistol at him, fully loaded again. She’d loaded it while he was firing his backup. Cookie didn’t say anything, simply grabbed it and started shooting again.
    Fiona re-loaded the pistol Hunter had just emptied. Her hands were shaking badly, so it was a tough job, but she knew Hunter had to concentrate or else they were all dead. She knew how to load and shoot pistols because in her world back in El Paso, she’d decided she needed to be proactive for her own self-protection. She lived alone and wanted to be sure she could handle a gun to protect herself. She’d taken gun safety lessons and actually owned a pistol herself. That simple decision she’d made so long ago was certainly paying off now.
    Finally Julie was up safe in the chopper. Fiona hadn’t watched her go up; she’d been concentrating on loading the bullets into the gun. It was probably a good thing. If she’d watched, it might’ve scared the crap out of her.
    Suddenly it was Fiona’s turn. Without a word, Cookie went to push her forward to take her turn, when suddenly he fell backward.
    Fiona looked down in horror. Hunter was lying still on the ground with blood coming from somewhere around his upper chest. He’d been shot!
    Fiona looked around quickly and made a split second decision. Hunter was going to live, dammit. He certainly didn’t deserve to die out here in the fucking jungle. He’d risked his life for Julie, and for her, and she wasn’t going to save herself and leave him here. Fiona knew she’d never be able to live with herself if she just up and left Hunter bleeding on the ground. She’d watched how Julie had to strap herself onto the ladder and figured she could do that with Hunter…but she had to have his help. She couldn’t carry him.
    She frantically shook him. “Get up, Hunter, get up!” After a few more times of her yelling at him, he finally stirred, groggily.
    Fiona continued to try to get him up and moving. “Hunter, we have to get to the chopper. I need your help.” She appealed to the soldier in him, in the side that saved people for a living. “Please, help me get to the ladder,” Fiona begged, hoping the desperation she could hear in her own words would break through to him.
    It did. Hunter staggered to his feet, with Fiona’s help, and with her arm around his waist, he stumbled along beside her to the dangling ladder. Fiona tried to steady Hunter with one hand, while randomly firing his pistol with the other. She knew she wasn’t hitting a damn thing, but she hoped the bullets flying would maybe make the bad guys think twice about coming out of hiding. Hunter’s teammates in the helicopter were frantically shooting around them, trying to suppress the gunfire from the drug runners as well. Fiona hoped they were as good a shot as she’d always heard. She’d hate to end up dead from a stray bullet after everything she’d been through.
    After what seemed like forever, but was really probably