Clay snorts. “Sounds like she’s going to love you, Russ.”
“I’m not there to be loved.”
Miles grins without humor. “That’s good, because from the sound of it, she’s going to want to stab you.”
The meeting shifts into movement after that. Routes. Comms. Gear. Timing. The things that keep men alive when plans go bad—and over there, they will go bad. It’s just a matter of when.
An hour later, we’re wheels up before dawn.
The plane is dark except for red overhead lights and the faint glow from a tablet in Lucas’s hands. Clay is asleep like a man who can shut off danger with the flip of a switch. Miles is cleaning a sidearm with careful efficiency.
I sit with my forearms braced on my knees and Olivia Taylor’s file open in my hands.
I shouldn’t still be looking at her photo.
Shouldn’t be wondering what kind of woman stays in a war zone when everyone else is trying to run.
Shouldn’t be replaying the way she looked at that child.
But I am.
Because there’s courage, and then there’s recklessness.
There’s selflessness, and then there’s the kind of stubborn that gets people killed.
I’ve spent enough years in hell to know the difference.
Miles glances over. “You keep staring at that picture, she’s going to start charging rent.”
I shut the file. “Mind your own business.”
He chuckles. “That bad, huh?”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s what worries me.”
I lean back in the seat and close my eyes for exactly two seconds before the image comes back anyway.
Dust on her cheek.
Defiance in her eyes.
The kind of face a man remembers even when he has no business remembering anything at all.
“She stays, we drag her out,” Lucas says quietly, still looking at the map.
I open my eyes.
He isn’t asking.
He’s reminding me what the mission is.
And he’s right.
We aren’t there to debate.
We aren’t there to admire her conviction.
