Rescue Me by Cherry Adair

minute. You won't miss. When I come back I'll whistle like this." He whistled a sweet, sharp incredibly realistic bird call.Elizabeth hoped to hell no birds came to see
    who was calling them.
    "Wait—you're leaving me?"
    Screaming sounded more humane than aiming a gun and taking a life. The scream was again building in her chest. She tamped down the fear. She needed to think rationally and be alert. Being scared right now wasn't an option. She eased into a slightly more comfortable crouch bymillimeters .
    Now she heard them. Footsteps. Leaves rustling. Breathing. She wanted to plead with Sam to hunch down with her, to wait until whoever it was passed. But she knew he'd be proactive.
    He brushed a quick kiss across her nose, light as a butterfly's wing. "Stay low." One second he was right there, the next he was gone. She knew he'd left, not because he made any noise, but because she could no longer feel his presence beside her.
    "Be careful," she mouthed.
    The raucous sounds of the jungle closed in on her, as did the oppressive darkness. She'd outgrown her fear of the bogeyman in her closet long before her tenth birthday, but this darkness scared thebejesus out of her. The dangers here were very real. And imminent.
    Crouched uncomfortably in the thick, inky darknessElizabeth waited, her heartbeat sounding like thunder in her ears, her jaw clenched to prevent crying out every time something crawled over her bare hands, or some creepy critter brushed her face. She tried not to imagine what that was sitting lightly on her cheek, or what the weight was on the instep of her right boot. She bit off the scream that surged up her throat as a bird shot out of a nearby shrub as if catapulted. Dragging in a shuddering breath, she held it until her heart settled down. She was dammed if she'd have a freaking heart attack because a bird flew past her.
    Better than thinking about men tracking her with guns, mile-long centipedes, poisonous ants, poisonous frogs and, of course, a multitude of poisonous snakes.
    The only thing she had between herself and all those dangers was SamPelton . The thought was so wrongly comforting.
     
    Five men.Camo .NVGS . AK47s. Well trained. Cautious. And definitely tracking their missing doctor.
    There was no other reason for their presence. No nearby villages to pillage, and Sam doubted they were hunting forbushmeat .Thadiwe was too sophisticated to eat the local flora and fauna, and the compound was miles from anywhere. No. It was Beth thatThadiwe's soldiers hunted.
    Damn it to hell. He'd miscalculated, and they'd discovered her absence, and the hidden Jeep, hours before Sam thought they would. Removing the KA-BAR from histac belt with his left hand, Sam circled around, slipped in behind them. Matching his steps to the man bringing up the rear, hemaneuvered up close. With no warning he brought his forearm around and beneath the guy's chin. Pulling him back and off balance, Sam struck directly up, into the man's kidneys. It was a quick, silent death, the pain so intense the man couldn't scream before he died. Sam caught the soldier as he soundlessly collapsed against him, and lowered the body quietly into the bushes.
    Sam wiped the bloodied knife on the man's shirt. One down, four to go.
     
     
    Killing the soldier had taken all of three seconds. Didn't bother Sam right then, but later he'd remember why he'd gotten out of combat and into the training side. But for now he had absolutely no compunction killing as many people as it took to keep Beth safe.
    He took the second and third guys out the same coldly efficient way as he'd done the first. The fourth and fifth might have been slow on the uptake, but the second they realized that they were under attack they got with the program and both rushed Sam at once.
    Good. No weapons fired to draw the attention of any other hunters. The first guy came at him in a flurry of well-trained arms and legs. Sam blocked the first blow with his forearm, thenswiveled to kick