Page 41

The last time Amber had prayed like this was when she’d found Bryan in a pool of blood in his barracks in Afghanistan.

That night, she’d prayed for it all to be a nightmare. That life wouldn’t fade from his eyes as she held him. That the bullet wound was just a prank—something he’d decided in his drunken brain would be hilarious.

He whimpered as she held him. “Shh,” she said, stroking the side of his head. His blue eyes were wide and held hers. “I’ll call the medics, you just hold on, okay, Bryan?” She took her phone out, but he grasped her hand with his bloody fingers.

“Listen to me, babe… Major Jackson did this.”

Amber frowned and shook her head. She’d always known there was something strange about Major Jackson. The aura of all-consuming power around him, gossip on the base that he held poker nights and always won. Pretty much the whole base owed him money. When they were still in a relationship, Bryan had started weekly outings with Jackson to a teahouse in Kabul called Aman Safar. That was also around the time he became more and more irritable and started being rougher and rougher with her.

Yes, she knew Jackson was a bad man to mess with, but shooting an officer? And yet she could picture it. Jackson, all tall, square-jawed, with shoulders as broad as a tank, with a gun pointing at Bryan.

“Why?” she said through a clenched throat.

“He smuggles Afghani drugs into the US. I helped him because I owed him a lot of money. He owned me. But I just couldn’t live with it any longer. Just imagining how many Americans became drug addicts because of me… The guilt was eating me alive. I said I’d report him if he didn’t stop. I have proof… Aman Safar…” He swallowed hard. He was so pale. “He’ll be back soon. Run and hide, Amber. Run and hide…”

And then he stilled, and his body went slack against her. His eyes glazed over, and she knew he was gone. Run and hide, were his last words.

And that was what she’d done. Instead of standing up and fighting him. Instead of making sure the drug-smuggling bastard was behind bars.

The thunder of hooves rumbling next to her dragged her out of her memories.

“Dinna fash, lass,” Owen called, and relief flooded her in a warm wave. “Just hold on a wee bit longer. They think we’re going north to Inverlochy. We’ll go east to lose them. It’ll all be over soon enough.”

She was afraid if she moved the wrong way, she’d lose her balance and fall, so she nodded without looking at Owen. She had no idea what she was doing, and it felt like all that stood between life and death were her fists clenched in the poor horse’s rough mane.

Owen took her reins, and by some miracle, both horses turned right and continued their wild ride to the east. Amber didn’t know how long they went on like that. An eternity, surely.

Finally, the horses slowed down. The horse was wet with sweat and smelled like salt air mixed with freshly cut wood.

“I think she’s tired,” Amber called to Owen.

He was still riding by her side.

“Aye. Mine, too. They’ve galloped a long way.”

The horses slowed to a walk, and Amber breathed heavily with the animal.

“God, I can’t believe this is over,” she said.

They cleared the woods and rode over rolling hills, silver in the moonlight. “Aye. See there?” He pointed somewhere between the hills and Amber saw dark dots and squares. “A village or a small town. We may be able to sleep in an inn tonight.”

Amber exhaled. An inn sounded like heaven. She craved a bed and a shower, which wasn’t possible, of course. But if there was a bath…

“Really?” she said. “Are you sure they won’t find us here?”

“’Tis verra difficult to find tracks at night, and they’ll think we’re heading north.” His face darkened. “Thanks to Muireach, there are just two men after us. ’Tis unlikely they’ll find us tonight. They’ll have more men on the morrow, but we’ll be far away by then. And we’ll be much more careful.”

Amber’s gut squeezed at the thought of Muireach and his brave decision to stay and fight so she and Owen could escape.

“Maybe he managed to get away,” she offered, although she realized the hope of that was minimal.

“Mayhap,” Owen said, his tone suggesting he didn’t hold out much hope for that, either.

Amber’s chest tightened. Still, it was good to talk, to get distracted from the fact that by some miracle, she was still on the horse. Now that the animal walked calmly down the hill, it was much easier to hold on. They were approaching a village, and it looked bigger than they had initially thought.

“How do you think they found out we were gone in the first place?” she said.

“Mayhap someone saw the dead guards. Or mayhap the mad English prisoner cried bloody murder.”