“It’s going to take time to plan,” he heard himself say.
Noah closed his eyes, a sign that he recognized Cullen’s indirect agreement. “How much time?”
“A week. Maybe less. I have to be careful.” And wasn’t that just the understatement of the year.
Noah nodded. “I know you’ll do the best you can.”
Even his best might not keep him alive, but he held that thought to himself. “What kind of intelligence do you have?” Cullen looked down at the table and saw a map and several satellite images.
“Before we talk strategy, there’s something you need to understand about my daughter.”
Cullen looked back at Noah and waited. What could possibly matter when her life was on the line?
“She despises me.”
Cullen couldn’t stop his brow from rising.
“She has for years,” Noah continued. “Ever since she was old enough to think on her own.”
“I’m sure she’ll change her mind once she sets foot on American soil again, compliments of you.”
Noah shook his head. “You don’t understand. You can’t tell her I sent you.”
“What do you want me to—”
“If you tell her I sent you, she’ll find her own way home as soon as you get her out of Afghanistan. I know her. She won’t stay with you.”
“What am I supposed to say to her? I can’t tell her who I am, either.” What he did for his government privately had to stay private. No official could admit to asking him to do the things he did in the name of the United States. He couldn’t risk telling Noah’s daughter anything, especially knowing she was estranged from her father. And then there was the media hype to consider.
“Tell her whatever you want,” Noah said. “Hell, lie to her if you have to. Just get her to me. I’ll explain everything to her then.”
What was that? Had she imagined the sound? Sabine felt every heartbeat in her chest as she lifted her head from where her aching body lay curled on a hard cement floor. She tried to see across the small cell that had been her prison for more than two weeks. Blackness stared back at her. None of this was real, was it? So much horror couldn’t be real.
The rapid staccato of a man shouting something in Farsi convinced her well enough that she wasn’t dreaming. She pushed herself to a sitting position, her body trembling from lack of water and food and, more than anything, from fear, as she scooted to the wall behind her, away from the door. Strands of her long, dirty red hair hung in front of her face, shivering with the tremors that rippled through her.
The door creaked open and one of her captors stepped in, holding a paraffin lamp. Beady eyes leered at her above an unkempt, hairy face. The others called him Asad. He wasn’t their leader, but he frightened her nearly as much.
Glancing behind him, he closed the door. Sabine pressed her back harder against the cement wall as he approached, wishing it would miraculously give way and provide an escape.
Asad crouched close to her and put the lamp down beside him. He reached to touch her hair. Many of the other men seemed taken with the color, too.
Had Asad managed to slip away tonight? His presence this late and the look in his dark eyes said as much. Where was Isma’il? Would he stop him as he had all the other times?
She pulled away from Asad’s hand and scrambled along the wall until the corner stopped her.
Anger brought Asad’s brow crowding together. “Move when you are told,” he said in Farsi.
If she lived, Sabine promised herself she’d never speak the language again and forget she’d ever studied it in college.
Standing, Asad stepped toward her and crouched in front of her again. She turned her face toward the wall and squeezed her eyes shut as he took strands of her hair between his fingers. “I will know this fire,” he murmured, making her stomach churn.
“I’d rather die,” she whispered in perfect Farsi, a soft hiss of defiance that belied her weakened state.
He let go of her hair but pulled back his hand for momentum and swung down to strike her face. Sabine grunted with the force of the blow, her head hitting the wall and one hand slapping the floor to stop her fall. She spit blood.
Voices outside the door of her cell made Asad pivot in his crouched position. He watched the door. When it began to open, he straightened.
“Isma’il is asking for you,” a man said through the shadows.
Asad muttered an expletive and turned to look down at Sabine. Whatever he’d come to do to her tonight had once again been thwarted. She watched his anger flare with the snarl of his mouth. “The day will come when Isma’il will not interfere,” he said. “And then you will die just as your friend did.” With that, he picked up the lamp and turned to leave.
A shaky breath of relief whooshed out of her. Why was Isma’il protecting her? Terrorists would have no regard for a female captive. But who were they, if not terrorists? Were they holding her for ransom? Had they contacted Aden? Was he trying to save his contractors? Perhaps he’d lost some ground and that was why Samuel had been killed. She had no way of knowing. Her captors never spoke of their purpose in front of her and Samuel.
Samuel. She couldn’t grasp that he was dead. They’d tortured and killed him. And they’d do the same to her. It was only a question of when.
Her soft, defeated sobs resonated against the cement walls that trapped her in this hellish place. She didn’t want to die like this. Curling her body on the cement again, she stared through the darkness, trying to think of something to console her spirit. Fuel her strength.
Thoughts of her mother were too painful. She couldn’t reconcile the difference between this place and the quiet innocence of Roaring Creek, Colorado, where her mother had raised her. Mae O’Clery was as much a best friend as she was a mother. When Mae told her this contracting job wasn’t her calling, that she was doing it only to catch her father’s attention, she should have listened. That arrowing insight had annoyed her at the time. But now, after being kidnapped and facing a horrific death, she could see the truth.
Unrelenting. That’s how she had been when she’d gone after her college degree, and that’s how she was in pursuing her career. Nothing had stopped her from proving to the world that she was … what? Tough? Smart? That she was worthy of envy and respect? She didn’t like to admit that her relationship with her father had driven her to this moment, but it had. Amazing how his occasional visits to her mother had bled over into every aspect of her life. She wasn’t good enough just the way she was. She had to try harder. Always harder.
A sound outside the door made her stiffen, lift her head. Had Isma’il sent for her? Was tonight her time to die?
Her heart beat so fast it made her sick. A hissing noise followed by a sort of zap sent a burst of light through spaces in the door frame.
Surely her mind was playing tricks on her. Wouldn’t her captors use a key? Why was someone using
