Natches rushed the mile to the hole he had made the night before after Faisal’s shortwave coded message had hit his radio. He’d made the holes, prepared them, and then went after the girl the boy had seen hauled into the dump of a terrorist camp. A small enough camp, out of the way, populated by barely a dozen hard-eyed, fanatic bastards and one little American blonde.

Hell, who had been dumb enough to lose her? She was an agent, he could tell from the automatic stamina pushing her. She didn’t have the strength to crawl on her own, but her legs were moving and she was fighting to help him as much as she could.

Faisal was easily staying at his side, his dark face creased with worry at the sound of gunfire behind them. They were out of sight as they rounded the low, rolling hill, and the hole was just ahead, covered deep with stripped trees and wrapped with dead brush. A natural part of the landscape.

“Get in the hole.” He lifted the first cover and pushed Faisal into it with the supplies he would need in a smaller pack.

He threw himself and the girl into the second hole and jerked the secured covering over them as the sound of a helicopter began to hum from the direction of the terrorist base.

Of course, there had to be a fucking helicopter, he thought as he lifted himself enough to stare through the natural break he had created to see if they were followed. Fuck, he didn’t need this.

The hole was deep enough to sit in, the upper natural covering strong enough to hold a tank, maybe. They were secure as long as the bastards didn’t have dogs. It wasn’t very long, wasn’t very wide, but it was the best he could do on short notice.

“Do you have extraction coming soon?” Chaya rasped.

He glanced back at her and winced. She was curled against the dirt wall, eyes swollen closed, her lips dry and cracked. She looked vulnerable, but the woman had a spine of steel.

“I have a tracker on me. They’ll find me when they get in close enough. When I wasn’t at the first extraction point, they’ll have followed the beacon I have on me.”

Her lips twisted mockingly. “Are you sure? Collateral damage is the motto these days, you know.”

Fuck wasn’t that the truth. “Every good redneck knows you always have a plan B,” he assured her. His team was all the plan A or B that he needed. Most snipers worked alone, but on this mission, he was numero uno and he knew it. They needed him too damned bad to allow him to become damaged.

She breathed out wearily as he pulled a canteen from his pack and uncapped it. “Here. Drink slow.” He lifted the water to her lips, staring at her face as she sipped.

“I have some salve and bandages for your eyes,” he said. “Bastards always go for the eyes first, don’t they?”

She gave a small, bitter laugh. “At least second.”

He pulled out the medical kit, smoothed the salve over her eyes, then secured bandages over them. She had the face of an angel, he thought. Fine bones, delicate cheekbones, pretty sensual lips, he bet. Right now they were bloody and swollen.

“Old lady at home makes that salve,” he told her. “Bastards caught me last year, just about tore my eyeballs out before I escaped. When I went home on leave, she made the salve and made me promise to keep it with me.”

“Kentucky,” she whispered as the helicopter swept overhead.

“Lake Cumberland.” He gently touched the scratches on her face with the salve.

She was a slender woman. Dirt caked her hair and smeared her face, but he bet she was a beauty before Nassar and his men got hold of her.

“You’re New England.” He nodded at her accent. “Damn pretty area. Damned pretty girls.”

Her smile was tired. “There’s one less now.”

He sincerely doubted that. “Did they rape you?”

He was surprised at the fury that threatened to drown his common sense. Of course they raped her. They were known for it.

She shook her head and grimaced mockingly. “They didn’t.”

“Who did?” He smeared the salve over her swollen lips as he caught the emphasis.

“Nassar has some interesting toys.” She grimaced. “But he was tired of using them. His little buddies were going to do the deed when he left. Thanks for the timing by the way.”

Natches sat back on his haunches and listened carefully for noise outside. There were no caves in this area. The next hill over had several. The area he had chosen was no more than a flat, uninteresting gorge. Nothing but some scrappy foliage and dead brush. The perfect place for a hole. They would check the area, but they would be more eager to hit the caves a mile away.

“Faisal, your goat herder friend,” he explained softly. “He saw Nassar bring you in. He’s also got a handy-dandy military shortwave and an American Army sergeant for a buddy who taught him a little bit of code. That code caught me on my way back. I side-tracked to rescue you. All the guys at home are gonna be slapping my back for this one. I might even get a street named after me.”

Her smile was slower. Dazed. She was slipping away from him and he couldn’t allow that. “Faisal’s a good kid,” she whispered, her head nodding to the side.

“Wake up there, girl.”

“Chaya. My name is Chaya.” Her voice was soft, sweet. He liked her voice.

Damned pretty name for a damned pretty woman. He touched her cheek again.

“Talk to me, Chay. Tell me where you’re hurt. I need to fix as much as I can just in case we have to run.”

“Feet. Bruised ribs, possible concussion. No internal bleeding, no broken bones.”

She was drifting away from him.

Natches leaned in and touched her lips with his. Her head jerked back as she gasped. But her hands reached out for him, her fingers—slender, fragile fingers—clenching his wrists, tightening, as though she were afraid to let go of him, before she did just that. Slowly. Hesitantly.

“There, awake now?” He moved to her feet, pulling one into his lap as he dragged the medical kit closer.

“Why did you do that?” She sounded shocked, but awake, aware.

“My kisses are potent,” he bragged shamelessly, desperate to keep her grounded and aware. “They wake all the girls up.”

He used a penlight to check her feet carefully, always listening, always tracking the sound of the helicopter overhead and the vehicles now moving through the ravines.

He peeked over the edge of the hole but couldn’t see anything moving near enough to be deemed a threat.

He smoothed the salve over her feet, then pulled his shirt and T-shirt off. He tore the T-shirt into strips, padded her feet, then wrapped them with stretch gauze.

“All the girls like your kisses, do they?” She still sounded awake.

“They beg for my kisses.” It was nothing less than the truth, but as he stared at this woman, so strong, so determined, he wondered at the women he had known before. Would any of them have found the strength to make it this far? And he knew they wouldn’t have. But this one, this one would never join in the Mackay games as the others had.

“Conceited.” Her smile was tired, and worry lashed at him.

She was sheet white, pain and shock setting in now that she was still and no longer enfolded in complete terror. He couldn’t risk shock. Not yet.

He dug in the med pack again and pulled free the potent pain pills he carried. “Take this.” He pushed it into her mouth and lifted the canteen to her lips again.

She sipped and then leaned her head back against the dirt wall behind her.

Silence filled the hole for long moments. Her breathing was short and erratic, and every few seconds she would flinch or grimace just enough that he caught the wary movements in her expressions.

He wanted to hold her. She was almost broken, maybe not physically, but mentally at the least. She had endured this far, he had to get her just a little further.

“The trucks are getting closer.” There was weariness in her voice, but no fear yet.

“They’ll search for a while. I’m good at this. Don’t worry.”

He checked on Faisal’s hole. It was silent. Faisal knew how to hide; it wasn’t his first time, probably wouldn’t be his last. He had everything he needed to stay secure as long as no one identified the hiding place Natches had made.

“How did they get you?” he finally asked her when she said nothing else.

“Dragged me out of my car outside Baghdad, threw me in a van, beat the shit out of me, and played with some torture.” She shrugged, but he heard the echo of horror in her voice.

“What do you have that they want?”

She was an American woman and she had enough strength to strip a dead man and get his clothes on in the time it took him to pop a few heads and get to her location. She was an agent; he knew that from the comment she had made about needing to let someone know about Nassar. That was going to take a few hours at least.

“I don’t have anything anyone wants,” she said tiredly. “I’m a relief worker. I was working in Baghdad.”

“Don’t pull no shit with me, sugar.”

“Then don’t pull none with me. You know how it goes.” She copied his accent exactly. “I have to get out of here.”

Yeah, he knew how it went. She couldn’t disclose and he shouldn’t be asking, but he was a nosy bastard and that was the truth.

“Won’t be long now. I’ve already missed my bus,” he stated. “When I’m not at extraction, they’ll send a team out for me. I’m important, you know.”

“Obviously more important than I am.” She sighed. “Can I take a nap?”

“No naps.” The helicopter was getting closer. He hoped Faisal had his deflecting blanket over his head. “Come here; we gotta hunker down.”

Fear flashed across her face for just a second as he unfolded the light, silver-backed blanket and pulled it over their heads, tucking it in carefully around them. So much as a foot sticking out from beneath it would allow any heat-seeking equipment to pick them up.

He had no idea what that helicopter was packing, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was wrapped around her like a possessive lover now, and he could feel her fear as easily as he could feel the heat building beneath the blanket.

“You know, if I was back home, the ladies would be purring at being here with me,” he pointed out to her as he smiled against her head. “They like my hard body. They think I’m sexy.”

A nervous laugh parted her lips as he rested his cheek against her hair.

“I can’t see if you’re sexy,” she reminded him, and he hated that quiver in her voice.

“Oh, you’re missin’ out.” He sighed pitifully, his voice whisper soft. “I’m damned fine, Chay. Green eyes and a nice tan. I got hard abs. Black hair. The women drool over me.”

He smiled, listened carefully, and was thankful to feel a small measure of the fear ease from her. He didn’t consider himself particularly handsome, but he knew what the ladies said. He had to distract her though, and this was all that mattered.

“Conceited, too.” Her hands were clenched tight around his lower arms, broken nails digging into his flesh.

“Hell yeah, I am. I’m spoiled as hell.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Playing? Escaping the marriage market?” He held her closer as the sound of the helicopter hovering overhead had her shuddering against him. The camouflaged top of the blanket, added to the dead brush secured to the narrow timbers above them, would hide them from sight. He had a moment to worry about Faisal, then pushed it away. If they were caught, they were probably dead anyway, despite the extraction team that he knew would be barreling its way to him.

He had pictures, layouts, troop movements, and hidden terrorist bases. He’d been out in bum-fucked nowhere for six weeks now after completing the primary mission he had been sent on to aid in the extraction of another captured agent.