CHAPTER 147
The cramp hit me again, sharper this time, and I had to bite back a gasp of pain. Through my earpiece, I could hear the guys coordinating positions, but their voices seemed distant, muffled by the sudden fear that I might be losing the baby I'd only just discovered.
"Skylar?" Harry's voice cut through my panic. "Your vitals just spiked. What's happening?"
I'd forgotten about the backup monitor Lucas had installed in my gear after I'd turned off the primary one. There was no hiding my physical distress from them now.
"I'm fine," I lied, raising my rifle despite the tremor in my hands. "Just adrenaline."
"Bullshit," Jax said through the comm. "That's not adrenaline. That's medical distress."
Webb's voice boomed through the warehouse again. "Having second thoughts, Ms. Mitchell? Perhaps your famous tactical mind is finally grasping the hopelessness of your situation?"
Another cramp, this one accompanied by a wave of nausea that made me sway on my feet. I pressed my free hand against my stomach, trying to will my body to cooperate for just a few more minutes.
"Skylar," Lucas's voice was urgent now. "Whatever's wrong, you need to tell us. We can't help you if we don't know what we're dealing with."
I looked at the pregnant girl chained to the chair, her terrified eyes pleading with me to save her and her unborn child. Then I thought about my own secret, the life growing inside me that none of them knew about.
"There's something I need to tell you," I said quietly into my comm, knowing Webb and his men could probably hear everything.
"Now's not really the time for confessions," Harry replied, but I could hear the concern underlying his tactical focus.
"I'm pregnant."
The silence on the comm channel was deafening. Even Webb seemed to pause, as if he hadn't expected this particular revelation.
"What?" Jax's voice was barely a whisper.
"The pregnancy test was positive this morning. That's why I've been acting strange, why my vitals are spiking. I'm having cramps, and I think the stress might be causing complications."
"Jesus Christ, Skylar," Harry breathed. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because I knew you'd try to stop me from coming on this mission. Because I knew you'd want to protect me instead of focusing on saving those girls."
"Of course we would!" Lucas's voice cracked with emotion. "Of course we'd want to protect you and our child!"
"Our child," I repeated, the words hanging in the air. "Because that's what this is, isn't it? Ours. All of ours."
Through my scope, I could see Webb smiling, clearly enjoying the emotional chaos he'd unleashed. But his satisfaction gave me an idea - a way to turn his manipulation tactics back on him.
"Well, this is unexpected," Webb called out. "Pregnant women rescuing pregnant women. How poetic. It also makes my decision much easier."
"What decision?" I asked, though I dreaded the answer.
"Originally, I was planning to kill you quickly. Professional courtesy, if you will. But pregnant slaves are worth significantly more than dead federal agents. I think I'll be keeping both of you."
The rage that flooded through me was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Not just anger at Webb's threats, but a primal, protective fury that came from somewhere deeper than conscious thought.
"Over my dead body," I snarled.
"That can be arranged. But first, let's see how your boyfriends react to the knowledge that they're about to lose both you and their child."
Through my earpiece, I could hear movement - the guys shifting positions, preparing for an assault that would probably get us all killed.
"Don't," I said urgently. "Don't do anything stupid because of this."
"Stupid?" Harry's voice was cold with fury. "Skylar, he just threatened our family. Our child. There's nothing stupid about killing him for that."
"There is if it gets you killed in the process," I replied. "There is if it means our baby grows up without any parents."
Another cramp, stronger than the others, made me double over. When I straightened up, I could taste blood where I'd bitten my tongue.
"We need to get you out of here," Jax said. "Medical attention, real doctors, somewhere safe."
"Not without those girls. Not without stopping Webb."
"Skylar, please," Lucas's voice was pleading now. "Please don't make us choose between the mission and protecting our child."
I looked around the warehouse, calculating angles and distances, weighing impossible odds against unacceptable losses. Webb had positioned his men perfectly to prevent any conventional rescue attempt. But he'd made one mistake - he'd assumed that learning about my pregnancy would make the guys more cautious, more defensive.
Instead, it had made them absolutely lethal.
"You want to know what I've learned about family?" I said, loud enough for Webb to hear. "I've learned that when you threaten one of us, you threaten all of us. And when you threaten our children..." I smiled, feeling the familiar cold calm settling over me. "You make enemies you can't afford to have."
"Touching speech," Webb replied. "But you're still outgunned, outmanned, and out of options."
"Maybe. But you made one critical error in your planning."
"Which was?"
I triggered the smoke grenades Lucas had planted around the warehouse perimeter while we'd been talking, filling the space with thick gray clouds that turned the carefully planned kill zone into chaos.
"You assumed we came here to rescue those girls," I said as gunfire erupted around us. "But we really came here to kill you."
As the warehouse erupted into a three-way firefight between Webb's men, Indonesian special forces who'd been waiting for our signal, and us, I felt another sharp cramp that sent me to my knees.
Through the smoke and gunfire, I heard Harry's voice shouting my name, felt strong hands lifting me, carrying me toward what I hoped was safety.
But as consciousness began to slip away, I had one terrifying thought: what if saving those girls had cost me the child I'd only just learned I was carrying?
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