were the odds that he’d run into her now—in this place half a world away from where they’d last met? Then again, his mother always said everything happened for a reason. Michael told himself he didn’t believe in that kind of divine interference—in fate. But maybe some of his mother’s superstition had rubbed off on him.
“We’ll want a full statement from you later.” Graham pulled out a pen and turned to a fresh sheet on his clipboard. “Right now, if you’ll just give me your name and tell me where you’re camped.”
“Abigail Stewart.”
Only when the others turned toward him did Michael realize he’d spoken out loud. Abby stared at him, too, her mouth half-open, a red stain coloring her previously pale cheeks. “How did you know my name?” she demanded.
He stood, forcing himself to relax, or at least to look as if he didn’t have all these turbulent emotions fighting it out in his gut. “Hello, Abby,” he said softly. “I’m Michael Dance.”
“I don’t know a Michael Dance,” she said.
“No, you probably don’t remember me. It’s been a while. Five years.”
She searched his face, panic behind her eyes. He wanted to reach out, to reassure her. But he remained frozen, immobile.
“You knew me in Afghanistan?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”
“There’s no reason you should,” he said. “The last time I saw you, you were pretty out of it. Technically, you were dead—for a while, at least.”
He’d been the one to bring her back to life, massaging her heart and breathing in her ravaged mouth until her heart beat again and she’d sucked in oxygen on her own. He’d saved her life, and in that moment forged a connection he’d never been quite able to sever.
Having a total stranger announce to a bunch of other strangers that you’d come back from the dead didn’t rank high on Abby’s list of experiences she wanted to repeat—or to ever have in the first place. From the moment she’d entered the trailer parked alongside the park ranger’s office, she’d felt the tall, dark-haired officer’s gaze fixed on her. She couldn’t decide if he was rude or just overly intense; she hadn’t spent a lot of time around law-enforcement types, so what did she know?
And what did she care? Except that the agent—Michael Dance—had made her care. He knew things about her she didn’t. He knew what had happened in the hours and days she’d lost to unconsciousness and trauma. That he’d seen her ripped open and clinging to life by a thread felt so personal and intimate. She both resented him and wanted to know more.
As for Michael Dance, he seemed content to keep staring at her, and when she’d agreed to take the officers to the body she’d found, he’d slipped up beside her and insisted she ride with him.
“You could ride with me and Graham if you’d rather,” Carmen, the only other woman in the room, offered, perhaps sensing Abby’s unease.
“No, that’s all right. I can ride with Lieutenant Dance.” Alone in a vehicle, maybe she could ask him some of the questions that troubled her.
But now, as they cruised along the paved South Rim Road through the park, she felt tongue-tied and awkward.
He took a roll of Life Savers from the pocket of his uniform shirt and held it out to her. “Want one?”
“Okay.” She took one of the butterscotch candies, then he did the same and returned the roll to his pocket.
“I’m addicted,” he said. “I quit smoking last year and took up the candy as a substitute.”
“Good for you for quitting,” she said. “I knew a lot of soldiers who smoked, but I never took it up.”
“Smart woman.” He settled back in the driver’s seat, gaze fixed on the curving ribbon of blacktop that skirted the park’s main attraction—the deep, narrow Black Canyon.
Abby tried to relax, too, but curiosity needled her, overcoming her natural shyness. “How do you possibly remember me after all this time?” she blurted. “It’s been years, and you must have only seen me for a few hours, at most.” Had he been an orderly in the field hospital, a medic or a pilot, or simply a grunt tasked with transporting the wounded?
“I was a PJ. We saw hundreds of casualties during my tour—but you were the only woman. And you were my first save. It made an impression.”
PJs—pararescuers—were bona fide superheroes. Members of the US Air Force’s rescue squadron swooped into the thick of danger in Pave Hawk helicopters, often under heavy enemy fire, to snatch wounded soldiers from almost certain death. They performed critical lifesaving procedures in the air, long before their patients reached the doctors at field hospitals. Abby remembered none of this, but she’d seen a special on TV and watched with sick fascination, trying to imagine what it was like when she was the patient, being patched together by young men she’d likely never see again.
“I...I don’t know what to say.” She plucked at the seat belt harness, feeling trapped as much by her own emotions as by the confining cloth strap. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough.”
“I was glad you made it. We lost too many soldiers over there, but losing a woman would have been worse. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it was—I won’t lie.”
She nodded. Though women weren’t authorized for combat roles back then, the army needed female soldiers to interrogate native women and to fill a variety of noncombat roles, from resupply to repairing equipment that constantly broke down. Women soldiers stood guard and went on patrol, and sometimes got caught up in battles, in a war with no clearly defined front line, where every peasant could be friend or foe. But for all the roles they filled, women made up only about 10 percent of the ground forces in Afghanistan. As a female soldier, Abby hadn’t wanted to stand out from her fellow grunts, but she couldn’t help it.
“I still can’t believe you remembered my name,” she said.
He winced. “I made it a point to remember it. Later, I tried to look you up—just to see how you were doing. I’m not a stalker or anything. I just wanted to know.”
“But you didn’t find me?”
“I found out you’d gotten transferred stateside, but that was about it.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel of the FJ Cruiser he drove. A second Cruiser followed a few car lengths behind, with Graham and Carmen; for all Abby knew half a dozen other vehicles full of more law-enforcement agents came after that. “But now I know. You look good. I’m glad.”
She resisted the urge to touch the scar. “Thanks for not qualifying the compliment.”
He frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Thanks for not saying, ‘You look good, considering what you’ve been through.’”
“People really tell you that?”
“Sometimes. I also get ‘That scar is hardly noticeable,’ which I know is a lie, since if it was so unnoticeable,
