“Our military liaison is working on it, and —”

“Don’t give me any bullshit lines, Rafe. You’ve got me fucking handcuffed. I know I’m being watched here like a goddamn dog to make sure I play by the rules… and I am, I assure you… but if you don’t throw me a bone soon, I’m going to find one on my own, protocol be damned,” I say, lying to him with ease.

“How’s it going with you and Beaux?” The subtle change of subject tells me he heard me loud and clear and that he knows if he can’t make something happen for me, I’ll make it happen myself. We’ve worked together long enough that I know he can’t consent to my going against company policy by entering the danger zone on my own accord.

It’s my ass on the line. And I’m good with that. Too bad now my ass means Beaux’s too.

I grunt a nonresponse. “Don’t think I don’t see the setup here. The babysitting job you guys dropped on me because you think I’m unstable. I’ll do my job, Rafe, and I’ll do it damn well.”

“I never said that you wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t have to say it. I’ll be waiting for your call… and for your sake, she’d better be able to do her job.” I hang up before giving him a chance to respond, the range of emotions from this morning making me more bitter than normal.

Tossing my phone onto my unmade bed, I strip down, the hot water of my shower calling to my sore muscles. When I enter the bathroom, I look in the mirror and flex out of habit to see whether this morning made any difference in the definition of my abs and biceps. But when I draw my eyes up from the lines in my torso, I take in my dark hair, worn a little long, and the stubble I sport when on assignment so that I can fit in as much as possible with the locals. I’m already missing my clean-shaven face and hair trimmed off my ears like I prefer when I’m at home. When in Rome…

I look like shit. My violet eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep with dark smudges that look like bruises beneath them. I scrub a hand over my face and blow out a breath to shake away the ghosts I see hiding in the mirror and head for the shower. Productivity is my number one priority.

Chapter 6




“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?”

I look at Pauly through the steam of my coffee before answering him because his words are more true than I’d like to admit. “Of course it is… but isn’t that how it is here, always feast or famine? Weeks on end of waiting for something to happen and then riding that high when it does only for the boredom to hit tenfold until the next time. It’s just taking a bit of time for all of my sources to know I’m back.”

Pauly rolls his eyes and laughs. “Only you could think that you’ll return to this shithole and things will start happening.” When I raise my eyebrows with an unabashed shrug to remind him of all the times this has happened, he holds up his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, wonder boy. We all know you walk into a room and shit happens that only you know about.”

“It’s good to be me.” I flash a smirk his way before taking another sip of coffee. We’re sitting by the front windows of the hotel where we can watch life outside to pass time, but on the far left of us are some makeshift desks where a few reporters work on their laptops. To the right is the reception counter, and at the opposite end of the room, across from where we sit, is the bar. We’ve kind of commandeered that too – all sixty of us reporters and photographers from various agencies – and made it our second home since our rooms are so small and nothing beats boredom better than company.

There’s a crappy pool table a few of the guys found abandoned somewhere in the early days of the conflict. It was broken and battered, but in between air raid sirens and being confined in here for safety’s sake, they made it a mission to repair it with whatever they could find. It’s a patchwork quilt at best, but it works, and we’ve all spent endless hours playing on it, trying to pass time during lulls.

Pool’s not really my thing, though. Not enough action, enough adrenaline, not enough of anything really, but when I glance over to the table at the right of the bar, my pulse jumps. Because bending over the table, lining up a shot with her spectacular ass directed my way, is Beaux.

And even if I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of how those curves look without those ass-hugging jeans on, I’d still guess it was her from a mile away because bodies like hers are few and far between.

The crack of the rack of balls breaking up rings out across the lobby, and it’s only when she stands up to full height that her long mane of hair falls down her back. Damn it. I’m a sucker for women with long hair so when all of it falls to rest above the swell of her ass, I curse under my breath.

Visions of wrapping that hair around my hand and pulling her head back as I’m burying myself into her from behind fill my head instantly. It’s one thing to push a woman out of your head when you wonder what someone feels and tastes like, but it’s almost impossible to do that when you know those truths from personal experience. Images from that night flash through my mind: her tits bouncing with each thrust, her lips parted with want, that small strawberry birthmark on her hip bone.

When Pauly clears his throat, the sound pulls me from my thoughts to realize I’m blatantly staring at Beaux. I turn my head toward him to find his eyebrows raised and tongue tucked in his cheek. “Must be a pain in the ass to look at that sight all day.”

And fuck, I can deny it all I want, but Pauly will think I’m full of shit and assume more, so I might as well tell partial truths. “It’s brutal, I tell you,” I say as he groans when she positions herself perfectly in his line of sight across the table for a shot.

“I mean the lengths you go to for your job, Nanny Tanny…” His voice fades off as we turn our heads to watch her maneuver around the table.

I choke on my sip of water. There’s no way I heard him correctly. “What did you just say?”

“Nanny. Babysitting…” He shrugs. “Nanny Tanny.”

“Dude, that’s so wrong.” I laugh.

“You can be all kinds of wrong because I bet with a body like that, she’d fix it with all of her kinds of right. Man, I’d tap that in a heartbeat.” He’s all talk, but I laugh with him anyway. “On our next supply run, you should probably stock up on lube… Wouldn’t want you getting calluses unnecessarily now, would we?”

I just shake my head and laugh, grateful for the camaraderie but not willing to go into detail about how complicated the situation already is between the two of us. “Perfect in theory, my friend, but I don’t quite trust her yet.” And of course now I have his interest piqued. I should have kept my mouth shut.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t understand why she came here telling everyone she was freelance when she had the job. Why not just tell the truth?” I hope my quick thinking pays off and Pauly doesn’t sniff out my lie. What was I supposed to tell him? Oh I slept with her and she didn’t tell me she was my new partner, but she denies that she knew?

He nods his head as he mulls over my comment. “Yeah but you weren’t here yet. Wouldn’t you have been pissed if you showed up and she was buddy-buddy with everyone and used your name as a way to get in with everybody?”

“You’ve got a point there,” I murmur, hoping the resignation in my tone helps bring the topic to a close.

“But you’re still going to tell me you don’t like her, right?”

He knows me too well. When I glance over to the pool table, Beaux’s chalking up her cue stick, but her eyes are on me. Her ears must be burning over the discussion I’m having. She stares for a moment, brow furrowed, but the minute she realizes I’ve caught her staring, she looks away.

“It’s not that I don’t like her per se, but it’s the babysitting job Rafe’s assigned to me that I hate. Since when does he get to judge if I’m okay or not?”

“So long as you do your job, it shouldn’t matter.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I take another drink of my coffee. The scalding liquid burns a path down my throat at the same time my phone buzzes on the table in front of me. In a move so practiced it looks natural, I slide my cell off the table and rest it on my thigh just below the line of sight.

I comment to Pauly about something random, keep the conversation going so that he forgets the little vibration my phone gave, while at the same time it feels like an ember burning a hole in my goddamn leg. If there’s a lead sitting here and I react, he’ll know and want me to share it. We may be friends, but all’s fair in friendship and getting the first wind of a breaking story.

Shifting in my seat, I glance down and see Omid’s name on my screen. The ember becomes a damn wildfire at the sight of my most elusive but most trusted source’s name. It takes everything I have to keep myself from pumping my fist in the air, because I feared he had disappeared on me while I was gone.

Or even worse in this land where someone who is your ally one day may turn on you the next, pledging his loyalty and allegiance to the terrorist just to save his own life. The possibility that Omid has been found out and turned against me is never far from my mind.

The familiar adrenaline rush hits me like a first fix to an addict. The rest of the message consumes my thoughts as Pauly drones on about nothing of importance.

“Ah, shit,” I say as I make a show of looking at my watch, causing him to narrow his eyebrows. “I’m gonna get my ass chewed. I missed a conference call with Rafe.” I scoot the chair back as Pauly laughs.