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CHAPTERONE
Eleven yearsago Mary Elise McRae had expected to fill a hope chest for a future with Daniel Baker. But she’d never thought she would fill a box quite so literally.
Her body currently folded inside a five-by-five-foot wooden crate, Mary Elise hugged the two small boys closer. The rough-hewn box jostled on the back of the flatbed truck, jarring bony little elbows and knees against her. Hard. Not that anyone dared do more than breathe in the cedar-scented darkness.
A lone horn honked along the stretch of desert road in their escape route from Rubistan. The truck jerked to a stop. Was a goat blocking the way? Or a cow? Either animal would be slow when Mary Elise needed fast.
Headlights from the truck behind them shone through the tiny slits between the boards, an unrelenting reminder that a Rubistanian guard from the embassy was tracking them. She’d heard his voice as the crate was loaded onto the truck. Procedure didn’t allow him on the U.S. government’s vehicle, but those ominous beams sparked fear inside her as surely as if he’d been sitting alongside puffing away on one of those cigars he favored.
Would he use this delay as an excuse to ambush them? Cause an “accident?”
The diesel engine’s growl increased and the truck lurched to life. Mary Elise exhaled her relief in the stifling enclosure. Only another half hour, max, until she delivered Trey and Austin safely aboard a U.S. military cargo plane. Then she would say her tearful farewells to the two children being smuggled out of the Middle-East in the back of Captain Daniel Baker’s C-17.
Danny.
His name echoed in her mind amid the grind of changing gears. What would Daniel say when he saw her for the first time in eleven years? If only he had advance warning she would be with the boys, but she’d expected to stay at the embassy, not be in this sweltering wooden container.
With any luck, they would be too rushed to talk. She would pass over her young charges. Thank Daniel for answering the emergency SOS she’d anonymously routed through the economic attaché. Then haul butt off the airstrip, back to her tiny apartment in Rubistan’s capital, back to her teaching post at the American embassy school.
Back to her solitary life.
She wouldn’t let memories of Daniel make her yearn for anything more. She’d worked too hard for her pocket of peace away from Savannah, Georgia. Peace bought with the help of Daniel’s father. Trey and Austin’s father, too.
And today she would repay that debt.
“Mary ’Lise?” Austin whispered from under her chin. “Wanna get out. Gotta go pottie.”
“Shhh,” she urged as loudly as she dared. “Soon, sweetie. I promise.”
She hoped.
Sweat trickled down her neck, caking sand to her skin as she willed Austin silent since a crate of “computers” didn’t whisper for a bathroom. Sure, a diplomatic pouch was immune from inspection—a pouch being U.S. government property of any size from the embassy. Totally immune. Unless that “pouch” starting talking.
Her arms locked tighter around thin, preschooler shoulders on her left and the more substantial nine-year-old frame on her right. At least Trey was old enough to follow instructions, his shoulders pumping under her arm with each heavy breath. Little Austin, however, was a wild card.
Bracing her feet against the other side to combat jolts, she suppressed the illogical bubble of laughter. Definitely a card. Wild. Precious. And looked so much like his adult half-brother Daniel.
So much like the baby she and Daniel might have had if not for the miscarriage.
Of course she hadn’t been able to turn away when Austin had pumped out tears at the sight of the crate. He’d begged for Mary ’Lise to crawl inside with him instead of his twenty-one-year-old nanny, a pale and wide-eyed nanny who’d seemed all too willing to bow out.
The truck squealed to a stop. A tiny hand tucked into hers and clutched tight with chubby stickiness. She pressed a silent kiss to Austin’s brow.
“Well, hello there, gentlemen,” the masculine bass rumbled.
Danny.
Even with eleven years more testosterone infused into deepening his voice, she would recognize that hint of a Southern drawl anywhere. No rushing. Even in the middle of an unstable country, on a darkened runway where threats lurked in countless shadows…Danny didn’t hurry for anyone. Life followed him. He never followed life.
His ambling lope thudded closer. Could they hear her heart thump outside the box?
A second set of footsteps sounded. Faster. Cigar smoke wafted through the thin slits between boards. The distinctive scent of imported Cubans favored by the Rubistanian guard from the embassy snaked around her.
The slower bootsteps, Daniel’s, stopped. “How downright neighborly of you to offer an escort, but my folks here can handle things now.”
“We have procedure to follow in my country, Captain,” the guard clipped out.
“Lighten up there, Sparky. I know all about your procedure. The paperwork’s pristine…well, except for some ketchup on the edge there from my fries. Now back on up so my loadmaster can finish the transfer.”
