Chapter 3
Russ
I’ve been shot at in six countries.
Blown out of vehicles twice.
Stabbed once.
Had a building come down around me in Syria and a river turn red beside me in Colombia.
And somehow, standing in the middle of a half-destroyed clinic arguing with a furious American doctor while gunfire cracks outside might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
“I’m not leaving,” Olivia Taylor snaps.
Up close, she’s even more dangerous than the photo suggested.
Not because she’s armed. Not because she’s trained.
Because she means every word.
Her blue eyes blaze, her chest rising too fast. A strand of hair sticks to the dirt on her cheek. Blood stains her sleeve—probably not hers.
She looks at me like if she had a scalpel, she’d use it.
Behind me, Miles leans into the doorway and fires two controlled shots toward the road. “Russ, little busy here.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Olivia points toward the children being rushed inside. “I’m not abandoning them.”
“You’re not helping them dead.”
“They need medical care.”
“And you think they get more of that if the regime puts a bullet in your head on camera?”
She flinches.
Not much.
Just enough to tell me that it hit where it was supposed to.
Good.
Maybe fear will do what common sense hasn’t.
Lucas appears at my shoulder. “We have three minutes before reinforcements hit this sector.”
Clay looks around the room, taking in the injured children, the panicked mothers, the overturned supplies. “Maybe less.”
Olivia plants herself between me and the hallway. “There are kids here who can’t be moved.”
I lower my voice, not because I’m calm, but because if I let the full force of my temper off the leash, I’ll scare everyone in the room.
“Listen to me carefully, Doctor. We were sent in here to extract three American nationals before the regime got to you first. They’re here now.
That means the mission changed. We are out of time. ”
Her chin lifts. “Then leave.”
For a second, I just stare at her.
Miles actually laughs from the doorway. “Oh, I like her.”
I don’t.
That’s the problem.
I should be annoyed. Should be focused solely on the job. Should be moving already.
Instead I’m standing there noticing things I have no business noticing—like the way she positions herself slightly in front of the nearest child even while she’s arguing with me.
Like how exhausted she looks without ever seeming weak.
Like the fact that somewhere along the line, courage and stubbornness became so tangled up inside her, I’m not sure even she knows where one ends, and the other begins.
“Dr. Bowers and Dr. Cole are moving,” Lucas says. “They’re ready.”
Olivia whirls. Hannah and Stephen stand near the back, both pale but determined, each carrying what supplies they can.
“Olivia,” Hannah says, voice shaking, “please.”
Stephen’s expression is grim. “We can’t stay.”
She looks wrecked for exactly one second.
The children notice it.
A little girl on a blanket begins to cry.
And that, more than anything, breaks the stalemate.
Olivia drops to her knees beside her, smoothing a hand over the girl’s hair and speaking softly in broken Farsi. I don’t know all the words, but I know comfort when I hear it. I know goodbye when it hollows out a person’s voice.
The girl clings to her.
Olivia closes her eyes.
When she opens them again, there’s fury there. And grief. And resignation so sharp it almost feels like another weapon in the room.
She rises.
“If I come,” she says, “we take as many children as we can.”
I look at Lucas.
He already knows what I’m thinking.
This isn’t the mission.
This complicates everything.
This could get all of us killed.
But then I look around the room.
At the burned little boy trying not to cry.
At the teenager fighting to stay conscious on a cot made from doors and blankets.
At the mothers who know exactly what men like the ones outside will do if they break through.
And I think about public executions. About mass graves. About headlines that never tell the whole story.
“How many can move?” I ask.
Olivia blinks. “What?”
“How many can travel without dying on the way?”
For the first time since I walked in, she looks at me like I’m human.
“Maybe eight,” she says. “Ten if we carry two of them.”
Miles glances back. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” I say.
Clay grins once, sharp and savage. “Now it’s fun.”
Lucas is already adjusting routes in his head. “We’ll need transport.”
“Then we steal some.”
The building shakes with nearby gunfire.
Decision made.
“Tell the mothers to choose the weakest who can still survive the trip,” I say. “Fast.”
Olivia doesn’t move.
I step closer. “Doctor.”
Her gaze snaps to mine.
And there it is again—that spark. That heat. That challenge.
Not fear.
Never fear.
“You’ll get them killed if this goes wrong,” she says quietly.
“Then it won’t go wrong.”
She studies me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m a liar or a fool.
Probably both.
Then she nods once and turns, instantly all business.
The transformation is something to see.
One moment furious woman ready to fight me with her bare hands. The next, battlefield doctor issuing crisp instructions, triaging children, choosing who can move, who gets the last antibiotics, who needs to be wrapped tighter against the cold night air.
I watch for half a second too long.
Miles catches it, because of course he does.
“You’re staring again,” he mutters.
“Shut up.”
He smirks. “You met her, what, ninety seconds ago?”
“Not the time.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely the time.”
I’d like to shoot him myself.
Instead, I move to the shattered window and scan the street. More vehicles. More men. The ridge won’t hold them long.
Lucas appears at my side. “North alley gives us the best shot. There’s a supply truck behind the grain house.”
“Drivable?”
“If not, Clay will make it drivable.”
Clay, overhearing, says, “I feel so seen.”
Within two minutes, we move.
Children wrapped in blankets.
Two mothers are coming with them.
Hannah and Stephen carrying medical packs.
Father Nabil refusing to stay behind until Lucas practically orders him back.
Olivia shoulders her own bag and reaches for a little boy with burns along one arm.
I take the child before she can.
She freezes. “What are you doing?”
“Carrying him.”
“I can carry him.”
“I know you can.” I adjust the boy against my chest. “You’re slower than I am.”
Her mouth opens.
Shuts.
Then she glares like she hopes I choke.
That’s fine.
I’ve been glared at before.
The difference is, for some reason, hers gets under my skin.
We slip out the north side under the cover of darkness and smoke.
The alley is narrow, choked with debris, the air thick with dust, diesel, and fear. Somewhere behind us, shouting rises as the regime forces realize the clinic isn’t theirs yet.
Miles takes point.
Lucas and Clay bracket the group.
I stay near the center with Olivia and the child in my arms, every nerve tuned to threat.
Twice we have to stop and press into shadows while trucks roll past.
Once a flare goes up and turns the sky blood-red.
The children don’t cry.
Not one of them.
That’s the worst part.
Children should cry.
They should make noise and fuss and complain.
Silence in children is something war creates, and I hate it with a violence I don’t know where to put.
We reach the grain house just as the first sirens begin in the distance.
The truck is old, dented, and missing part of the passenger-side mirror.
Clay yanks open the door, hotwires it in about six seconds, and grins when the engine coughs to life.
“Told you.”
We start loading fast.
One child at a time.
One heartbeat at a time.
Olivia climbs into the truck bed, arranging blankets, checking pulses, whispering to the mothers. She’s all focus now, all fire directed at survival.
Then headlights sweep across the far end of the alley.
Everyone goes still.
A black SUV turns in.
Too close.
Too fast.
“Contact!” Miles barks.
Gunfire erupts.
Lucas drops to one knee and returns fire.
Clay throws himself behind the truck door and empties half a mag with terrifying accuracy.
I shove the last child into Olivia’s arms and move to cover the tailgate, firing twice, then twice more as the windshield of the SUV explodes in a spray of glass.
The driver slumps.
But the passenger door flies open.
A soldier spills out, rifle up, screaming something in Farsi.
And Olivia—
God help me—
Olivia starts climbing down from the truck.
I grab the back of her jacket and haul her against me just as bullets rip through the space where she’d been standing.
She slams into my chest with a gasp.
For one single insane second, everything narrows.
The smell of smoke in her hair.
The heat of her body against mine.
Her hand braced against my ribs.
Her furious breath on my throat.
Then I shove her back toward the truck. “Stay down!”
“I was helping!”
“You were about to get killed!”
She points toward one of the mothers, who is struggling with a terrified child. “She needs—”
“I know what she needs!”
I fire over the tailgate, hitting the soldier square in the chest.
He goes down.
The alley falls silent except for the truck engine and ragged breathing.
Miles scans the street. “More will come.”
Lucas jumps into the cab. “Then we move now.”
Clay slams the rear door shut. “Everybody in!”
I climb onto the back step as the truck lurches forward, one hand gripping the rail, the other still on my weapon.
Olivia is crouched among the children, staring at me.
Not with anger this time.
Not only anger, anyway.
Something else has joined it now.
Recognition maybe.
Or shock.
Or the first unwilling flicker of the same thing punching through my own chest.
I don’t know.
I just know that when the truck tears into the dark, with war at our backs and half a miracle in the bed behind us, I can still feel the imprint of her against me.
And I have the sudden, unwelcome feeling that rescuing Olivia Taylor might be the least dangerous thing about her.