“After what you’d been through? Your mind was doing all it could to protect you, to keep you alive. You can’t blame yourself, bella.”

Laura didn’t seem to hear him. “It was terrible. The pain was tearing me apart. I was sure I was dying. I begged Zainab to help me. I asked her why she had poisoned me. She called me stupid.”

Javier didn’t know much about women having babies beyond what he’d heard his mother and sisters say. The thought of Laura going through that much pain without medical attention or so much as a loving hand to hold was horrible enough, but to know that she’d been so brutalized that she’d had no idea what was happening to her . . .

He wanted to hold her. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted somehow to take all of this away from her. But he couldn’t. Nothing could.

* * *

NAUSEATED, LAURA COULDN’T bring herself to look at Javier’s face, fighting to put her worst nightmare into words. “I felt like my insides were being torn apart . . . like everything inside of me was being ripped out. And then . . . I heard a cry. I lifted my head, saw Safiya holding something in a blanket. The blanket moved. Until that moment, I’d had no idea I was having a baby. It almost didn’t seem real.”

She could still remember her confusion, her shock, the rush of adrenaline that had jolted her to a momentary awareness.

Javier’s warm fingers stroked hers. “You can finish telling me about this tomorrow after you’ve had some sleep. You’ve been through—”

But Laura needed to get it out. “They took her from me. I tried to get up and follow, but there was so much blood. I . . . I fainted.”

Laura told Javier how she’d almost bled to death, how she’d lain there on that bloodstained blanket for days, desperately thirsty and barely able to hold her head up, how she’d asked about the baby, only to be ignored.

“My breasts swelled and ached and started to leak milk.” The discomfort had been almost unbearable. “When I asked to see the baby, to nurse it, they told me I was crazy, but I could hear it crying. Then they said my baby had been stillborn. After a while, I began to wonder whether I had just imagined it all. My doctor says it was traumatic amnesia. When I was strong enough to walk, I tried to get close to her, tried to see her, but they wouldn’t let me, saying she was Safiya’s child and that I was unfit to be a mother.”

“How do you know it was a girl?”

“Angeza told me. She was the only one of Al-Nassar’s wives who was ever kind to me. She was Afghan. Her father had given her to Al-Nassar to settle a debt when she was only fourteen. I think she hated the others as much as I did. She said Al-Nassar had named the baby Yasmina. I call her Klara.”

“What happened to the baby, Laura? What happened to Klara?”

Laura shook her head, her pulse ratcheting. She stood, crossed the room, and gazed unseeing through the window onto the rooftops of a sleeping city. Why had she started this? Why had she told him? “Oh, God.”

Javier came up behind her and rested his hands gently on her shoulders. “It’s okay, bella. I’m right here.”

But it wasn’t okay.

It wouldn’t be okay until Klara was free and safe.

And once Javier knew the truth . . .

“About two months after the birth, the SEALs rescued me. I heard them speaking American English, and something in me woke up, some part of me that remembered who I was and why I was there. I wanted to survive, to escape. I didn’t mean to forget her.”

Oh, Jesus!

“Your baby was left behind.”

Laura whirled about to face him, knowing what he must think of her. How could she explain it? There was no explanation, no excuse. “I didn’t think . . . I didn’t remember . . . Something inside me just snapped. I had to get away. I didn’t mean to leave her there. I didn’t mean to leave her. I didn’t even remember she was mine.”

“How soon before you remembered?”

She looked away. “The doctor at the hospital in Germany did an exam. Afterward, he told me that it looked like I’d recently given birth. And then it all crashed in on me—all the memories. But it was too late. It was too late.”

She looked up, expecting to see disgust or anger on Javier’s face.

Instead, he drew her close, held her tight, whispered to her in Spanish, words she didn’t understand, his voice not angry but soothing.

She resisted. She didn’t deserve this. “What kind of mother leaves her baby with terrorists? What kind of mother does something like that?”

Javier drew back and caught her face between his palms, forcing her to meet his gaze, his expression fierce. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. You’d been brutalized, violated, terrorized. You had a baby alone and almost died. They never even let you hold her. Then some men with guns drop from the sky and offer you a way to survive and come home. How could you expect yourself to remember she was your baby in the middle of that chaos?”

Laura heard his words, saw beyond the intensity on his face to the sympathy in his eyes, but some part of her couldn’t accept the absolution he offered. “She was my baby, and I left her behind.”

“It’s not your fault, Laura. You didn’t leave her. She was taken from you.”

“You . . . really believe that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

Tears Laura had held back for what seemed an eternity poured from her, grief and regret as sharp as pain cutting through her. Strong arms lifted her up, carried her to her bed, held her together until pain gave way to numbness and numbness to exhaustion—and sleep.

* * *

UNABLE TO SLEEP, Javier lay in the darkness, feeling gutted, torn between his need to do all he could to help and comfort Laura and a bitter rage that simmered in his chest. Memories of the night they’d raided Al-Nassar’s compound moved through his mind frame by frame. Al-Nassar lying almost naked in the dirt. Women huddling together with their children, some holding babies. Laura looking fragile and pale in the helo.

Now he knew why she’d seemed so weak. She’d been only about eight weeks away from having had a baby and hemorrhaging.

What he wouldn’t give to go back in time and have the presence of mind to ask her if anyone else was being held captive. He’d take Laura’s baby and get them both safely on that Hercules. But that was just a fantasy. He’d barely had time to rescue Laura as it was. Had he delayed any longer, the combatants who had fired those RPGs would probably have hit them and brought them down. But what kept him awake was wondering what had happened after they’d left.

Where was Laura’s baby now?

* * *

JAVIER JOLTED AWAKE to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He opened his eyes to find Laura snuggled up against him and still asleep, clearly exhausted. He reached for his phone, saw that it wasn’t yet oh-dawn-hundred. He hadn’t even had three hours of sleep. Then he saw the number.

Shit.

He’d known this was coming.

He muted the phone, slipped from the bed, and walked out into the hallway, shutting the bedroom door behind him. “Hey, Boss.”

“Want to tell me why I saw you on prime-time news last night playing bodyguard for Laura Nilsson?” Lt. O’Connell sounded pissed. “Word is all over base—hell, it’s all over town. I just got a call from the commander, who was out for his four A.M. run and wants an explanation.”

How in the hell was Javier going to explain this?

He decided to keep it simple. “Laura and I are old friends. I was in Denver to hang with Nate West, and when that car bomb went off, I just had to help her. I was there when the shooter opened fire and was able to save her life.”

“Let me get this straight. You violated OPSEC by fraternizing with a civilian you rescued while part of a classified mission, then you made matters worse by exposing yourself in the media when you decided to moonlight as her bodyguard. They’re going to drag you in—”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t what?”

“I didn’t violate OPSEC. I knew Ms. Nilsson long before that rescue mission. To this day, she has no idea that I’m the one who pulled her out of there.”

“You expect me to believe you haven’t told her?”

Six years on the Teams together, and O’Connell had the nerve to talk to him like this? “Have I ever lied to you, man? Have I ever lied to you?”

Not that Javier hadn’t wanted to tell Laura. Last night, he’d had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her that he’d been there, that’d he’d carried her out, that he’d seen how terrified and confused she was. But he’d upheld OPSEC and kept his mouth shut, even when he’d known that telling her would have helped her forgive herself.

“So you’re friends with the Baghdad Babe.”

“Don’t call her that, man. I fucking hate that. I really do.”

“More than friends, maybe. That’s the kind of thing a guy might tell his buddies, especially given how famous she was.”

“Some guys, maybe, but not me.”

“Did West know?”

Everyone knew that Javier and Nate were best buds. “Not till this week, sir.”

“Now I understand why you were gunning so hard for Al-Nassar.”

“That mission went off without a hitch.” No one could say that Javier’s feelings for Laura had compromised that op in any way.

“Did you know she was alive?”

“If I’d even suspected she was alive, I’d have raised hell to get her out of there long before that mission.”

“How did you get mixed up in her shit? You’re supposed to be recuperating, preparing yourself for a return to active duty, not starring in the latest episode of Celebrity Bodyguard.”