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Tension wound tighter inside her. If it affected her men, she needed to know. Dev was out there. Along with Jase and Cody. Trying to save Laila.
Mel’s mind drifted over her last conversations with Laila, and she closed her eyes as she scrolled through her memory for something unusual. Out of the ordinary.
Paused.
The memory of Laila describing the stranger who’d arrived in Al Kamen, his shiny teeth and non-farmer’s gait. The way she’d felt something off about him.
Huh.
Probably not related to this op. But the stranger had been recruiting for the Taliban, so there might be some connection. An Afghani from one of the cities? A man who was a bureaucrat and not a farmer? Even the Taliban needed bureaucrats.She’d felt something, too, when she’d seen those grainy pictures. She probed for a possible connection to this op but couldn’t come up with one.
Maybe when the guys got back to Kabul with Laila, she’d get more information from her agent. Until then, nothing she could do.
Mel sighed and turned back to her phone. Opened it to see if she’d received a reply from Dev.
Nothing.
Which meant: SNAFU.
Her grip on the phone tightened. She really needed to talk to Laila, but she didn’t dare call right now. Even the buzz of a vibrating phone made a slight noise. Mel couldn’t take the chance that her phone call might reveal Laila to the Taliban.
Gnawing on her lower lip, she set the phone on her desk where she would see an alert as soon as it arrived.
* * *
Jase neared the end of the tunnel, almost back to Laila. The dim glow of Laila’s flashlight lit his way. But suddenly the light disappeared, leaving him in thick, heavy darkness.
He heard nothing from the tunnel in front of him. Was Laila afraid he was one of the Taliban? As he pushed his rifle in front of him, he wished he’d left it for her. Just in case.
But if he’d left it for her, he would have been unarmed except for his handgun. And that wouldn’t have helped a hell of a lot if he’d encountered the Taliban.
“Laila?” he whispered as he reached the opening of the tunnel.
The light flashed on again. “Jase,” she said, her voice low. Strained. “Thank God. I hoped it was you, but I needed to be sure.”
Jase edged his way out of the tunnel, drew his legs beneath him and stood up. Reached for Laila immediately. As if he needed to know she was alive and safe.
As soon as he touched her, she wrapped her arms around him. Clung tightly, her face pressed into his neck. “I was so scared,” she murmured into his skin. “I sat here imagining all the awful things that could happen to you.”
He stroked his hand down her back, over and over. Soothing caresses, as much for his own sake as for Laila’s. “It was just a recon sortie,” he said. “I wouldn’t have engaged with them unless they were right in front of me. And they weren’t, thank God.”
She eased away from him. Studied his face. “How far away are they?”
“I’m not going to lie to you. Ever,” he said. He tightened his grip on her. “They’re two or three caves away from ours. Close enough I could hear them speaking.”
He pressed a kiss to her neck and felt the ripple of muscle as she swallowed. “Did you hear anything they said?”
Jase smiled. “They weren’t happy with the two kids who left you at the original cave. They found the empty water bottles and assumed you drank them. They’d expected to find you close by, unconscious. Easy pickings.”
He smoothed a hand down her hair. “Instead, they’ve been climbing over scree all day, and they’re damn pissed off. I’d feel sorry for those two kids if they hadn’t betrayed you. Now? The Taliban can have them.”
She stared down at his chest, and he couldn’t read her expression. “I know one of those boys,” she said quietly. “Bahram. He’s the brother of one of my students.” Her breath shuddered in and out. “He’s only fifteen or sixteen years old.”
“He shouldn’t have hooked up with those barbarians,” Jase said immediately. “He has to know what they do to women. Has to know what would happen to you if they got their hands on you. But he gave you up to them anyway. He gets no sympathy from me.”
She touched his face, her hand cool. Trembling a little. “Thank you for taking the chance to figure out where they were. What do we do now?”
“We douse the flashlight.” He reached down, picked it up and shut it off, plunging the cave immediately into complete darkness. Laila stood in front of him, so close that her breath feathered over his neck and chest, but he couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see any damn thing.
