Chapter 1 #2
“I won’t bother asking if you’re US military.” The doctor’s dark eyebrows drew together, all her attention on the stitches she was putting in the outside of his arm. “Or what you’re doing here.”
“Good call. I’m Luca.” Saxon studied her Middle Eastern features and the casual adherence to cultural strictures. “British?”
She nodded. “Born in Iran, raised in England. Harvard Medical School, then straight to the Red Cross. I’m Kira Yassan.”
Nice to meet you sounded so lame. “That’s an impressive résumé.”
“You haven’t even seen what I can do with phyllo pastry.” She looked up for a second and winked at him.
Saxon pretty much fell in love right at that moment.
Hammer wandered over and said, “We’re going to do a quick sweep. Try to find him.” He squeezed Saxon’s shoulder. “We’ll be back in less than twenty minutes.”
When Hammer got that look in his eye, there was no point arguing with him.
“Understood.”
They were leaving the flash drive in his safekeeping and giving it one more shot to locate Namir. Saxon didn’t have any choice but to comply—at least, not until Dr. Kira Yassan finished stitching him up.
He glanced at her, about to say something corny like Do you come here often? Figure out how to maybe email her or something later. Get to know each other and see what happened after.
Except, when did that ever develop into something solid for a guy like him?
She snipped the edge of the thread with a pair of scissors. “Stitches are all done. I’m going to cover it with a bandage.”
He glanced at the front entrance to the tent, but his teammates had already left without him.
“The drug that I put in that syringe is going to knock you out for a couple of minutes.” She taped down the bandage. “I’m surprised you’re still awake. But you’ll be all set to go just as soon as you wake up.”
Saxon started to argue, but everything around him sucked down into darkness, and he passed out.
Dr. Kira Yassan watched Luca’s eyes roll back in his head. It really was easier this way. Apart from the fact that he seemed like a nice guy and he might actually be attracted to her, it was best that he passed out. Attraction wasn’t something that happened often in her world.
Actually, maybe that made this whole situation worse.
She glanced around to make sure no one else on the medical staff team was watching, then reached over and pulled out the flash drive that she’d seen him tuck into his pocket. The one his friend passed to him. The reason they were here, most likely, given how he’d safeguarded it.
She’d known what she had to do the moment she saw it. There would be just enough time before he woke up and his teammates returned. She needed to make a copy of the flash drive on her computer and then return the storage device to his pocket.
Kira ducked into the back, where a tall curtain that hung from a frame covered the area in the rear of the tent from view of the main room.
Back here, it was occasionally necessary to perform surgery on a patient or deliver a baby.
That or a hundred other things that occurred when people lived in such close proximity in horrible conditions.
Maybe she was growing jaded.
Kira sat on the stool and scooted up to her laptop, inserting the flash drive into the port on the side.
Passing along whatever was on this storage device had to earn her some credit with the government.
After the high-value target the Brits had been after had passed away on her operating table, they hadn’t been entirely pleased with losing their shot at intelligence.
Whatever the Americans were after with this thing, it had to be valuable enough for them to risk their lives to obtain it and the person who’d been carrying it.
She tapped her foot on the groundsheet tarp under her sneaker while the files transferred.
Didn’t look at the framed photo of her at age nine with her parents on holiday in Egypt.
She’d been so excited to see the pyramids, and in the months before they went, she’d read everything she could get her hands on about pharaohs.
In the end, it was the last time they’d ever had fun together as a family.
She leaned back on the stool and looked out at the soldier.
He really was a good-looking guy. Middle Eastern like her, but she’d guess from his features that he was Syrian.
How a man like him ended up in the US Army—or whatever branch of the American military he was in—she couldn’t even fathom.
So many who lived here would consider that a betrayal of all they stood for.
Luca Saxon.
He’d been self-assured enough that she knew he didn’t consider the life he lived as a betrayal of anything. More likely, Luca was one of those hero types who thought every mission was to right all the wrongs in the world and restore the balance of justice.
As if that was how the world worked.
Still, she had to admit that, without people like him, the world would be a pretty sorry place.
“Dr. Yassan?” Simon, one of their nurses who was originally from Australia, stuck his head around the curtain.
Kira tried to pretend he hadn’t startled her out of her skin. “What is it?”
“Dr. Chen is bringing in a family. All of them have fevers and nausea.”
“I’ll be right there.” She checked the file transfer and saw it was complete, copied the files to a password-protected drive that only belonged to her, and attached everything to an email she left in her draft folder.
Kira pulled out the flash drive, then tucked it into her pocket, leaving the surgical area and stepping back into the main room.
Luca was still unconscious, this soldier with his ropey arms and thick chest. Dark hair that was short and fell over his forehead in a way that begged her to brush it back and made her wonder what it would look like long and in need of cutting.
As if her life would ever be conducive to a relationship.
But then, that was the entire point of being here.
Because it was as far from the person she had been in the Western world as she could get.
Out here in the forgotten places of the world, giving all her sweat and tears to people that no one else seemed to care about.
She pretended to adjust his bandage, then wandered around the bed so she would be close to his pocket in order to return the flash drive. She glanced around again, ensuring no one was watching her, and slipped the flash drive back into the folds of his dark cargoes.
His hand whipped up and grasped her wrist. Those strong fingers squeezed the fine bones in her hand. “Who do you work for?”
She loosened her grip on the flash drive, moving her hand away from his pocket. He didn’t let go of her wrist. Those dark eyes of his bored into her. She wanted to tell him everything. Just open her mouth and unburden her soul on someone—anyone. But he wouldn’t understand.
“Answer the question.”
“I’m not your enemy.” She forced the words from her mouth, trying to figure out how to explain this without incriminating herself.
His dark gaze assessed her, just a hint of betrayal in his eyes. And why would that be? They didn’t even know each other. They wouldn’t ever see each other again.
“Saxon!” Someone called out from by the entrance.
The other three men on his team rushed into the tent, moving fast. The one in front with the light-brown beard covering the bottom half of his face came first. The leader of this team. “Gotta go, we have incoming.”
The man’s gaze swept across Saxon holding her wrist.
A second later, she had been released. Saxon sat up on the bed and swung his boots onto the floor.
She wanted to step forward, help him steady himself as he stood.
He’d lost a lot of blood and hadn’t eaten anything.
But instead of supporting him, she folded her arms across her chest. She had what she wanted, and now it was time for him to leave.
Outside the front entrance of the tent, gunfire sounded in quick succession.
All four of the men shifted, a deadly intention overwhelming their body language.
“We can’t get out that way,” one of the men said. “They’ll kill us before we even step into the light.”
Kira cleared her throat. “You can leave out the back, if you want.”
Her patient turned to her. “And walk right into unfriendly fire?”
“I told you I wasn’t your enemy.” She lifted her hands, palms up, and then let them fall back to her sides. “I’m just a doctor.”
Saxon’s gaze narrowed, the skin around his eyes contracting. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
“I don’t think you have time for anything else.” Kira lifted her chin.
The team leader tugged on Saxon’s good arm. “Let’s go.”
He clearly didn’t want to, but he complied with the instruction from his boss. The group of four men moved to the rear of the tent, where they would find the back exit. He didn’t even look back. None of them did.
A second after they disappeared behind the curtain, two men strode into the medical tent.
Rifles across their bodies and sweat-soaked hair on their foreheads.
She knew the type. Had seen them in the shadows every day since she got here.
The kind of men who showed up when danger happened and capitalized on the suffering of others.
She crossed to the center aisle and stood in their path, her palms raised as she had done with Saxon. But this time Kira was certain her life was in danger. She used the language her father had taught her, speaking in their native Arabic. “This is a place of healing. You are not welcome here.”
The man on the right, the older of the two, though not by much, replied in the same language, “We go where we please. The will of God Almighty will be done in this place, as it will be done everywhere in the coming days.”
Now there was a terrifying thought. Was this all about some impending attack? She would have to ask her contact at MI6 if they’d heard anything.
“What do you want?” She needed to delay them as long as possible, giving that American team as much of a head start as possible. “You cannot steal our supplies. There are people here in need.”
“We do not want the kind of hope you offer, that only weak people are willing to accept. Our cause is just. We will kill the infidels who invade our country.”
And they’d do it caring nothing for the people in their way. Innocents they viewed as nothing but collateral damage.
“There haven’t been any of those people in here.” She shook her head, playing the dumb female they considered her to be—or someone with too much to lose if she spoke the truth.
But what did she have to lose? Everything she valued was on her person. There was nothing for her anywhere else in the world other than here.
The thought struck her with something a lot like grief. But it was the loss of something she’d never had.
A dream she had long since given up on.
“I have patients coming in who need to be treated. You both need to leave.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
The older of the two muttered something that would have made her gasp if she wasn’t already on high alert. She couldn’t give away that she was anything more than a doctor in a war-torn country.
He crossed the space between them in a second and brought his gun down on her temple. She swung her arm up to block the blow, but it was far too late to do anything about it. Pain exploded in her skull, and she started to collapse.
A gunshot went off inside the tent, so loud it sounded like fireworks. The pain felt like it was fracturing her head, but she couldn’t get up.
The man who struck her fell to the ground, his lifeless eyes staring at her from where he had slumped. His friend turned and didn’t even take one step before more bullets slammed into his back. He tripped and landed on the ground.
Someone in the tent started screaming, the sound far too close to her splitting head.
Kira was rolled to her back. She tried to focus on the person over her and managed to discern Simon’s features. Saxon knelt on the other side of her. Both of them stared at her with similar expressions on their faces.
“That looks bad.” Saxon glanced at Simon.
The nurse palpated the edges of the wound on her forehead. Kira screamed at the pain that whipped around inside her head. “It’s bad,” Simon said. “And our X-ray machine is on the fritz. I’ll have to call for a medevac chopper to take her to the hospital.”
She felt moisture run from the corners of her eyes.
“Sax, we have to go. There’s a change of plans.” The other man came over, his face swimming into view. “That was a brave thing you did.”
“More like stupid.”
“Sometimes those two things look the same.” The team leader grasped the collar of Saxon’s bulletproof vest and tugged. “Come on. Time to go.”
“Not until I know she’s going to be okay.” He was tugged all the way to his feet, whether he liked it or not.
The team leader said, “Right now, we have to go save someone else’s life. Someone who doesn’t have a medevac chopper coming for her.”
Saxon knelt again quickly. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”
Kira tried to think past the pain.
Strong fingers squeezed her hand, and then he was gone.