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He held her tight for far too long, relief and thanks rolling through him. “Are you okay?” he murmured into her hair. “Did those two boys do anything to you? Hurt you in any way?”
She shook her head against his shoulder. Her muscles rippled as she swallowed. “I’m fine,” she said. “Tired. Sore from climbing up and down the rocks. But I feel so much better now you’re here.”
His hands tightened on her, reluctant to let her go, then he forced himself to step away. They’d stood embracing for far too long. This wasn’t about Jase and Laila. This was about a member of the CIA’s SpecOp group extracting an agent from a dangerous situation.
“I’m not here alone. Dev Smith and Cody Parker are in a Humvee at the bottom of the mountain. We can’t climb down to them now, because the Taliban are gathered near where I think those boys left you. But once it’s dark, we’ll climb down the scree slope and join them in the Humvee. Head back to Kabul.”
She frowned as he spoke, and he wondered why. “What’s wrong with that idea?” he asked. “You know you can’t go back to that village. Not now.”
“I know that,” she said, her voice impatient. “But I’m worried about the girls I was teaching. Bahram told me the Taliban were coming to Al Kamen tomorrow. They don’t like it when girls are educated.”
“Their parents will protect them,” he said.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, inhaling Jase’s still-familiar scent. “I’m sure they’ll try,” she murmured.
Worry still nagging at her, she swallowed. Closed her eyes and stepped closer to Jase. Curled her arms around him. After a moment, he embraced her back, and it felt right. Like she was where she belonged. She tightened her arms around him, like she’d wanted to do so many times when he was training her, and breathed him in.
As he studied her, she drank in the sight of him. She’d thought of him so often during her stay in Al Kamen, and now here he was, come to rescue her from the Taliban.
His high cheekbones cast shadows on his face. The scar next to his left eye was lighter than the rest of his face. He’d crouched beside her easily -- she remembered how flexible his long, rangy body was. He had the physique of a marathon runner rather than the bulk of a weightlifter.
She’d assumed she’d never see Jase Conway again. She’d regretted that, but he’d been her trainer. That was all. There’d never been anything between them, other than that inconvenient pull of attraction. Even though he’d never made a move, and neither had she, she was pretty sure it had burned both ways.
Part of her had regretted not making that move.
He wore desert camo tactical pants and a matching shirt, and his camo backpack sat on the stone surface beside him. He had that M4A1 slung over his shoulder.
His scruffy, dark blond beard looked as if he hadn’t shaved for several days.
And since she was still in the cave she’d crawled into near dawn, he must have access to the data from her tracking chip. She touched her shoulder lightly.
“You said the Taliban are close by?” she finally asked.
“Yeah. About fifty men, gathered further north. We saw them when we arrived this morning.”
Laila exhaled and slumped against the wall. “Yeah. I’m sure they’re searching for me.”
He narrowed his eyes as he studied her. “You want to tell me what happened last night? How you ended up in this cave?”
She nodded once. Drew a deep breath. Told him about Bahram and Feroz. The doctored water and the food. “They said they’d be back either today or tomorrow. They promised to drive me to Baghlan, where I could get a plane to Kabul.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Black sedan? Teens with scruffy beards?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s Bahram and Feroz.”
“They just met up with the Taliban. They’ve probably already realized you’re not where they left you. They’re gonna search all these caves, looking for you.”
“Oh, God.” She sucked in a breath. “I... I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I had been, I would have kept walking. Gotten farther away. But it was getting close to dawn and I was afraid I’d be seen.”
“They’re gathered quite a distance away. If it was near the cave you started at, I’m impressed by how far you got. By the time you found this cave, you must have been awake for almost twenty-four hours.”
She shrugged. “Give or take.” She narrowed her eyes. “You must have been, too. You had to drive all the way from Kabul.”
“Part of the job,” he said with a shrug. “We’re used to it.” He studied her for a long moment. “You were smart not to eat or drink anything those punks gave you.”
“I didn’t even take the flashlight Bahram gave me.” She wanted to punch the kid for his betrayal. “You trained me well. I dumped the water out of the two bottles and left them and the food in the cave.”
Jase nodded slowly. “Good. But when they don’t find your unconscious body, they’ll search the adjacent caves. You made it far enough away that we have a little breathing room. But if they want you badly enough, and it seems that they do, they’re not going to give up and go away.”
