my ribs.” Her injuries would fade. It was what she’d witnessed that would haunt her the rest of her life. The memory of Samuel.
She winced when he tested her ribs with his hands, unable to suppress a moan.
The furrow between his eyebrows deepened, and he pulled her T-shirt up to her breasts in a purely clinical maneuver. Only the tightening of his mouth revealed anything of his reaction to the expanse of bruises on her torso.
“Did your captors want anything specific?” he asked. “Did you hear any of them talk?”
“We never were told why we were being held,” she breathed through the sharp throbs in her ribs.
Dropping her shirt, Rudy stood and moved away.
She watched him reach into the rucksack and pull out a canteen. Wordlessly, he handed it to her along with two pills. She studied him as she took the pills and popped them into her mouth. Next, she took the canteen and lifted it to her mouth with an unsteady hand. He seemed to notice and crouched in front of her again. His hand covered hers as he helped her hold the canteen. She met his eyes while she drank, the striking gray of them momentarily capturing her. He didn’t have his helmet on anymore, and she realized she didn’t remember when he’d removed it. He had thick, dark hair. Something about it struck her as odd. Didn’t military men have close-cropped hair?
She wiped her mouth after she finished drinking, and he took the canteen from her.
“Who would want to keep you from leaving this place?” he asked.
The question gave her a jolt. Did he wonder if it could be someone other than her kidnappers? “I don’t know.”
“Someone must have. And it wasn’t your captors.”
She took a moment to absorb that. If not her captors, who would want her to die like that? Had they known she and Samuel were being held? And done nothing? Everything inside her rebelled against the idea. It was too awful.
“That helicopter wasn’t in any of the images I saw,” Rudy continued, his mouth a tight line of anger. “They knew we were coming.” And that missing piece of information had cost him three good men.
Who would go to such lengths to see her and Samuel dead? She didn’t have any enemies like that. Her father, but he had no reason to want her brutally killed. And if anyone had the means to orchestrate her rescue, it was he. She glanced at Rudy’s longish hair.
“Who sent you here?” she asked more briskly than she intended. “Who are you?”
His anger disappeared behind a guarded mask. He unfolded his legs to stand. “I’m bringing you home. That’s all you need to know.”
“Was it my father?” she asked anyway.
“No.” He turned away and went toward the cockpit of the helicopter, ending any further questioning.
Dust billowed into the air and the whine of engines drowned any other sound. Sabine hooked her arm over Rudy’s shoulder as he carried her to a waiting plane. The airstrip was crude and deserted. The plane was painted white with a horizontal blue stripe and no other markings. Rudy climbed some steps and took her inside. There were no seats and darkness filled the row of windows. He put her down and she sat on the floor, leaning against another metal-sided wall.
Rudy turned to speak to Dasher, who was apparently an accomplished pilot, since not only had he flown the helicopter, but also he was going to fly this plane out of Afghanistan. For the first time in two weeks, she felt her shoulders sag in relief. Soon she’d be home.
Home. That seemed like a foreign place to her now, where everything was normal. She felt anything but normal. She didn’t know the woman who’d survived what she had. How was she going to move on as though none of this had ever happened?
Samuel would never go home. He’d never see his wife again. The last conversation she’d had with him would stay with her always.
In the darkness of their cell, they’d talked well into the night. Sleep had been patchy and filled with nightmarish dreams. Like every other night.
Sabine had learned a lot about Samuel in the weeks they’d been held captive. He was steady and family oriented. He loved his wife to the depths of his soul and hated the time he had to be away from her; he wanted to build a house for her and the kids they’d planned to have. It was the reason he’d taken the contracting job.
Dasher headed for the cockpit. Once again, she was alone with the man who’d rescued her.
Rudy closed the door and the whine of the plane’s engines increased. He sat at her feet on the floor, leaning against the adjacent wall that divided this compartment from the rear of the plane. With his eyes half closed and his hands resting comfortably in his lap, he had an outward appearance of calm. Hovering alertness. Physical strength at rest but ready to move. And clever gray eyes. He was a dangerous man.
Her father wouldn’t have sent any other kind.
Sabine didn’t want to believe her father had sent Rudy. She didn’t want to owe a man like Noah Page for something as precious as her life, especially after almost losing it because of him. All those years she’d wasted striving to prove she was worthy of his respect had gotten her nowhere. It made her sick to think she’d allowed him to influence her like that, to know that, at least on a subliminal level, she wanted his recognition.
She closed her eyes. No. Her father hadn’t sent Rudy. This was a military operation. It had to be. Rudy didn’t want to reveal his identity because of the nature of his covert operations and the press her rescue would shake up once word got out that she was on her way home.
Exhaustion overpowered her worry, and she lay on the floor. She woke briefly when they landed for a fuel stop, then again when she felt the plane begin its descent for another. Moments later the tires touched the ground.
The plane slowed until it stopped. Like the last time they’d refueled, the pilot left the plane while Rudy watched from the doorway.
“Where are we?” Sabine asked.
“An airstrip in Egypt,” he said without looking at her.
Then his body went rigid as he peered through the door. Sabine pushed herself up to sit.
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Wait here.” Then he leaped from the plane.
Sabine crawled to her feet. The crack of gunfire sent her heart skipping faster. Someone was shooting at them again. Who? More gunshots exploded.
She stumbled toward the doorway, searching the plane for a weapon on her way. Seeing Rudy’s pistol sticking out of his pack, she slipped it free and leaned against the wall of the plane next to the door, breathing hard from exertion and fear. Peering outside, she spotted Rudy running back toward the plane, a man chasing him with a gun. In the distance, she could see a body lying on the dirt runway.
Forcing her fear down, Sabine lifted the pistol, aimed and fired. The man chasing Rudy dove for the ground, dirt spitting near his feet. Another man appeared in her view and fired at Rudy. She covered him as best she could, until he leaped into the plane, bumping her shoulder on his way. She stumbled as he slammed the door shut, then pounded it once with his fist.
Bullets hit the door. Sabine jumped back at the loud sound.
He turned and she saw the anger in his eyes before he hurried to the cockpit, his strides long and his feet thudding hard on the metal floor.
She followed, jumping again as bullets hit the plane once more. “Where’s Dasher?”
“Dead.” Rudy sat in the pilot’s seat and worked controls, his face tight with fiery emotion. “They were waiting for us.”
Again. How could it have happened again? Who didn’t want her to escape her captors?
Sabine clumsily fell into the copilot’s seat and fastened the shoulder harness. Darkness stared back at her through the window of the cockpit. The plane