Once I’ve removed the sunglasses, we greet each other in mumbled phrases and wild gesticulations – his English is broken at best and my Dari is archaic – to tell each other we’re glad to see each other again. We begin our awkward dance of communication, his eyes darting over my shoulder frequently to Beaux and then back to mine in an anxious cycle as we fall silent.

I wait out the quietness until he motions me to come closer, and I realize he doesn’t want Beaux to hear. I step into him.

“Meeting organizing. Soon… like weeks. Village elders help.” He interlaces Dari with his English, and it takes me a few seconds to catch up. “Your men… watching. Top secret. When happens, I get you close.”

His words cause my blood to pump and adrenaline to surge. To be the only one on this story when everyone else is chasing their tails would be a major I’m back to the other reporters and a huge In your face, I’ve still got it to my bosses.

“Who else knows?” I murmur, hoping he says no one.

He shakes his head and puts one finger up and then points it at me. Sweet. “When?” I ask, pointing to my watch. “Who?”

He begins to speak at the same time I start to hear the click of the shutter. I’m so in my element, pumped with the promise of a killer story – one I know any military liaison would never let me embed on – that I don’t question it because Stella used to click away at the world behind me when I was on a meet, and I never had to worry. It’s almost as if for a moment in time, I forgot.

Concern washes across Omid’s face, and I can see his struggle over telling me anything additional. “It’s me, Omid. I’m not going to tell anyone else or get you in trouble.” In my primitive sign language, I make the lock-and-key motion over my lips.

His heavy sigh fills the silence, and I hate that since we’ve started this conversation, his eyes have mostly been on his fidgeting hands. It unnerves me, makes me wonder if I’m being set up now with his lack of contact. But if that’s the case, Omid deserves a damn Oscar because he looks just as nervous to be passing along this information as I am being here.

He finally begins to speak, stumbling over words that I can’t make sense of, when over my shoulder, clear as day, I hear a feminine voice speak in perfect Dari. Omid’s head whips up at the same time I turn around to see Beaux standing there, camera to her face, taking a picture of two little kids playing in another offshoot of the alley.

She lowers the camera, her head scarf falling off some, and looks straight at Omid, as if the fact that she speaks fluent Dari were nothing unusual. I swear I have to pick my jaw up off the ground, both surprise and disbelief fueling my unfounded anger.

Beaux is fluent in the native language and didn’t tell me? What the fuck? I’m partially thrilled because it means so many things will be easier with her here, and at the same time she didn’t tell me. I can’t give it much more thought, though, because of the riskiness of the situation. Things could go south at any moment.

I think Omid is just as caught off guard as me because when I tear my eyes from Beaux to look at him, I see the confusion and immediate wariness. He just stares at her, eyes flickering back and forth to me repeatedly. I put my hands up in an it’s okay gesture – palms facing him at my chest level – and just when I think he is starting to believe me, I hear the click of a shutter and see his eyes widen to epic proportions.

I turn around to see Beaux clicking the shutter, lens angled directly at Omid. Her disobedience of my rules causes rage to erupt inside me because I know how skittish this contact is and she’s now documented his face on record.

“What the fuck are you doing?” My voice is a quiet but harsh scold as the excitement over the information that was just promised me turns to disbelief. “Did you not hear a thing I said to you?” I don’t want to draw attention to us by yelling, but it’s pretty fucking hard not to when she just played every single one of her stupidity cards in a single hand.

Beaux’s eyes are wide and her face must look similar to the way mine did when I heard her fluency, but I can’t worry about her right now – I have to salvage Omid’s trust in me. The problem is when I turn around, Omid is gone.

My hands are fisted and my temper is raging. I’d love to turn around and throttle Beaux for her lack of judgment, for her disregard to the situation, for not following my set of rules.

And because she’s not Stella.

I take deep breaths, trying to calm the tumult inside me. It’s no use even trying to find Omid – the man is a ghost in the wind right now – so I do the only thing I can. I leave. Without saying a word to Beaux, I walk right past her and head toward the end of the alley, not wanting to be in this dangerous part of the city any longer than I need to be.

As we emerge from the alley, I slow my pace and cautiously survey my surroundings before I walk into the flow of foot traffic and back toward our cab. I know Beaux is behind me. Only a deaf and blind man would not be able to sense her presence… or maybe I’m just a lesser man who has fallen under her goddamn spell even though I swore that I wouldn’t.

Despite being completely irate with her, I can still smell her perfume over the stagnant scent of destitution that blankets things here and hear the shuffle of her shoes against the dirt-covered cobblestone sidewalks. Beaux tries to strike up a conversation by apologizing disjointedly while she follows me at a quickened pace through the crowded streets, but I refuse to acknowledge her.

I’m more pissed than I think she even realizes. I’m angry over so many things that it’s better if I don’t speak to her right now; otherwise I know I’ll say a lot of things I’ll regret regardless of how fucking truthful they are. With each step we take, my displeasure intensifies over the many reasons I have to be angry with her.

When we reach the cab that is surprisingly still waiting for us, I open the door for her to get in and say only one thing. “Get us home.”

She scoots in and looks up at me, a thousand things running through her eyes, and the minute she speaks, I just slam the door shut, not wanting to hear her explanations. By the time I take my seat in the front passenger side, she’s just finishing telling the driver where to go.

First of all, there’s no way I’m attempting to communicate with the driver while she’s sitting back there laughing her ass off while I make a fool of myself. Secondly, who the fuck is this woman? She comes on to me, we sleep together, and now we’re in this predicament together and she just screwed me over with one of my biggest sources? I mean what kind of power play is she going for?

I’m all for dating smart women. Shit, intelligence is a major turn-on for me. But time and again I keep feeling like I’m being duped here even though her actions are not really one hundred percent her fault.

Or they are and she’s just smart enough to make me think they aren’t.

Fuck! This woman is driving me crazy. What the hell? I never doubt myself, always trust that gut instinct of mine, and yet right now she’s making me question so many damn things, it’s not even funny.

And then there’s her little show with Omid. First, shocking the shit out of both of us when she piped into the conversation in his native language so that even if he was trying to be quiet and only share information with me in the little bit of Dari that I know, she understood every single thing he said. Add to that she takes a fucking picture of him. A picture! My trust quotient with her just went down a whole helluva lot. She was freelance. Her stunt begs me to question if she still is, or maybe she’s trying to chase the story too and will break it first, steal it right out from under me, and get the notoriety herself.

The more I think about this scenario, the more each bump along the uneven pavement lodges the idea firmly into my psyche. Pauly said she was freelance for a few weeks before I got here. Was she freelance as just a photog or as a reporter too? Was she just biding time to find some sorry fucking sap she could mooch off and steal what she didn’t earn?

“Tanner.” Her voice calls softly from the seat behind me, my name an apology and a question all mixed into one.

“Don’t talk,” I growl, my head spinning a mile a minute. The man who never gets rattled is fucking rattled, and not because of a goddamn mortar strike or IED but rather because of this woman. The only thing she has going for her at the moment is that at least she listens and shuts up.

This time.

We make it to the hotel without incident. I pay the driver and am out of the car and striding into the hotel without giving her a second glance. I know she’s safe since we’re at the hotel but couldn’t care less what she does now. She thinks chivalry is dead… I’ll show her just how dead it is. Let her fend for herself in this godforsaken place.

Anger and theories fuel my every step as I stride into the alleyway at the rear of the hotel where I had the driver drop us off. We have to forgo a lobby entrance because making one would mean we’d have to pass by Pauly and the crew who would know something was up since we were out and about rather than locked in our rooms.

All I focus on is calming my temper, but the clipped sound of her steps behind me echoes off the walls around us.

“Tanner. Tanner.” More footsteps. “Wait. Please. Wait!”