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Prologue
Major Rafe Cross focused on the mission. Get in and get out. Fast. A quick extraction. That was all he needed to think, see, feel, and hear right now.
Not the blinding, bleached white sand.
Or the blood that was on it.
Not the piercing shouts for help. The cries of pain. The smothering smoke from the burning buildings. Or the stench of ash and debris whipped up by the Pave Hawk chopper that was waiting on him and the rest of the team to do their jobs.
But, of course, Rafe couldn’t shut out everything.
Especially that cold silence from his specific target.
She wasn’t crying out for him to rescue her. Wasn’t moaning. She wasn’t doing or saying anything that the other survivors were. She was just lying there on the bloody sand where she’d fallen after a chunk of stone from one of those buildings had bashed into her while she’d been attempting to do her own extraction.
Another rescuer had moved in to get the kid that she’d been going after. A boy, maybe twelve or thirteen. Both the boy and the rescuer were already on the way back to the Pave Hawk. But she wasn’t. She was still on the ground, and now she was his mission. He had to rescue the rescuer.
Rafe had to believe if he got to her, that she would somehow be all right. That he could breathe life into her or do whatever the hell else was needed to fix her and bring her home.
He ran, with the words knifing through his head.Get to her now!And his worst enemy wasn’t the IEDs or the ones who’d destroyed the building. Not even the ones who were coming for the team and the survivors.
No.
Time was the enemy now.
If he didn’t do his job and get to her, then…well, he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t even consider it.
He’d had the best training possible. This was his prime reason for existing in the military. He was an Air Force Combat Rescue Officer. Now, the bastard enemy of time had to cooperate and let him get to her.
But he could feel every one of those seconds ticking off.
The wind shifted, and suddenly Rafe couldn’t see shit. The wall of sand was swallowing him up, blurring his vision and erasing his visual of the extraction. And he figured he had less than a minute before the human enemies closed in. Before his entire team and the extractions all died.
His heartbeat was roaring in his ears now. His pulse was too fast, like those seconds that were ticking away. He’d done rescues like this nearly a hundred times but never with that warning punching him in the gut.
Get to her now!
Rafe pushed forward, his boots bogging down in the sand and his eyes burning. His lungs were on fire. But he finally saw her. Still there, still unmoving.
He didn’t check for a pulse or injuries. Not enough time for that. He scooped her up and started running, sprinting with her to the Pave Hawk.
Where she’d get medical treatment.
Where she’d be safe.
But that didn’t happen.
The sounds roared through his head, and the pain came. The God-awful, searing pain. And as Rafe fell with her onto the hot sand, he felt, tasted, and smelled his own blood.
----- ??? -----
Chapter One
Four Years Later
The grimy yellowing bones lay in the makeshift grave.
Rafe Cross stared down at them and fought hard just to catch his breath. He flat-out refused to have one of his flashbacks. Not now. He had to handle it. He had to deal with it, and he couldn’t let this sling him back to another place, another time.
