answer. Unconscious, again. Crap, how was she going to do this? She heaved him upright, cradling his back against her chest. She sensed his head slumping, and caught him as he tipped sideways. Her foot grazed his thigh, searing pain up her leg. She adjusted under his weight, her arm muscles burning as she guided his head back onto her shoulder. Man, he had to weigh two hundred pounds. Help me out here, buddy.
Grunting with effort, she closed her arms around his torso and twisted the cap off the bottle. It couldn’t be a good idea to pour liquid down his throat. She splashed a little water into her palm and lifted it to where she guessed his mouth was. She got his prickly chin, instead. She tried again, a little higher. When her palm touched his dry lips, she eased the water into his mouth. He moaned and straightened a little, relieving the pressure on her muscles. On her next attempt he darted out his tongue and licked her palm, shooting fissures of awareness up her arm.
Well, if he was strong enough to do that... She brought the neck of the bottle to his lips and raised it. Water trickled down her arm but his throat made swallowing sounds. She flinched as something warm and rough closed over her fingers—his hand, guiding the bottle to a better angle. She couldn’t bring herself to extract her hand. Maybe he was a hallucination—her isolation and fear playing on her subconscious—but whatever he was, whoever he was, calm spread through her for the first time since her translator had slowed for that damn roadblock near Hargeisa. Hell, she’d take any relief she could get.
He released her hand. “Beaut,” he gasped.
Beaut? Was that French? Something about the accent was familiar—something that didn’t fit this picture. When he’d said “water” in English, he hadn’t used the French R. He’d trailed off with no R at all.
“Can’t...see. Eyes...”
Definitely not a French accent. Was he English? But why the French words earlier? A multilingual local? Or maybe his accent was just messed up after too many years away from home, like hers.
“Nothing wrong with your eyes. It’s pitch-black down here—I can’t see anything, either.”
His back collapsed against her chest and she fought to catch him. Conked out again? She laid him down and extracted herself. She found the graze on his elbow and dabbed and dressed it. It couldn’t be healthy to leave him on the dirt—at night the cold seeped up through it. The mattress was filthy and scratchy but it provided a couple of inches of insulation and comfort.
Well, if she couldn’t take him to the mattress... She felt her way across the cell and shoved the squab up against him. Screwing up her face, she rolled him onto it. He shuffled and settled, with a sigh that might have been gratitude. After checking he was lying clear of his wound and breathing okay, she let her shoulders slump. God, it felt good to not be alone. The chances of him being a psycho killer had to be low, right? This compound already contained more than its fair share.
So where would she spend the night? No way was she taking the floor, not when there’d be a little space right in front of him she could just fit into. If he was sedated he was likely to sleep soundly, and she probably wouldn’t sleep at all—she’d dozed off only a few times in the long days and nights she’d been locked up. By the time he returned to his senses in a few hours she’d have disentangled herself. In his current state, he was no threat to her—or anyone else, unfortunately.
After gulping some water, she crept to the top of the mattress and slipped down into his outstretched arms as if sliding into a sleeping bag. One heavy forearm weighed down her waist. She wriggled until his other biceps pillowed her head. Was this a little creepy of her? He’d understand, surely.
Arrested by a thought, she trailed her fingers down his rough, corded left arm and over his knuckles. No ring. Not that that proved anything—plenty of married military guys didn’t wear them, much less abide by them—but at least she might not be taking advantage of another woman’s semiconscious husband. Just a regular semiconscious guy. She curled her legs around his bent ones. He mumbled and pulled her closer, burying his face in her hair and sliding a hand down her outer thigh. Uh-oh—he wasn’t about to have some drug-addled wet dream, was he?
She held her breath but in seconds he relaxed—with her firmly in his grip. And, hell, that felt good. She dared to press her nose to his arm and inhale. Gravelly. Tangy. Real. His sweat probably smelled a damn sight fresher than hers.
Still no dusty beam of gray spilled through the cracks overhead—she couldn’t even see the boards. Dawn had to be hours away. She yawned. If these were the last hours of her life, at least they’d be comfortable ones—even if the relief was stolen from an unwitting stranger.
Don’t you dare die on me, soldier.
* * *
Flynn leaped to his feet, blinking to clear the fuzz from his brain. What the fuck? A dim bunker. No door, no window. Underground? A woman, pushing herself up from a mattress—not naked, at least. Christ, his head thumped like a drum solo. He brought his hand up to it. Bandaged. Not a hangover, then.
“What the fuck?” They were the only words he could get his mouth around. He cleared his throat. It felt stuffed with acacia thorns.
The woman straightened to full height, which wasn’t much, palms upright as if calming a snorting bull. Her face registered somewhere deep in his mind—young, hot, in a pointy-jaw tough-girl way. Even in near darkness her eyes shone blue. Was he delirious?
“You’re okay,” she said.
“This doesn’t look like okay.” Except for her. She was a damn sight more than okay.
She shrugged. “Relatively.”
“What is this?” He swept an arm around, blinking moisture into his eyes. This, meaning: What the hell was this place, what the hell was he doing here and who the hell was she? He patted his pockets. Empty. No holster, no pistol, no knife, no tac vest, no utility belt. No helmet—had he been wearing one?
“You’re Australian?”
“You’re American.” He swore as his brain caught up. “You’re that missing journalist.”
So this was what deep shit looked like. He shut his eyes tight and pinched the top of his nose. The dressing pulled at his scalp. Think. His unit got ambushed, right? The last memory his brain could locate was of running through a village—goats scattering ahead of them, Angelito shouting commands, the thuck-thuck-thuck of enemy fire. They dropped back behind a concrete hut. Levanne went down, in the open. Flynn dashed out to help him. Then, a crunch—hot pain in his skull, bullets zipping around, fabric smothering his face. No, no helmet—just his useless beret. He’d been chucked onto a truck bed or something, fighting to breathe, retching on a chemical smell.
He gagged at the thought. He’d been captured—by al-Thawra, seeing as he was with the reporter. What was her name—Newell, right? Tess Newell. A big deal in the States—her kidnapping had been all over CNN. She didn’t look it now, with blond hair pulled back and dirt smearing her face. Pain twisted behind his eyes. He winced, which made it worse. What’d happened to Angelito and the others? So much for their routine patrol.
“I have painkillers.” She limped past him and unzipped a bag. “Only over-the-counter stuff, but it might take the edge off. Here.”
He took the offered trays and popped out four, for starters. She zipped away her first-aid kit and passed him a fresh water bottle from a plastic-wrapped stash in the corner. He slugged back the pills.
“You
