“Maybe not now. But when you’re back in your normal life, you probably will.”

“My normal life.” Rachel said the words as if they were foreign to her. The intensity of her gaze heightened. “And what do you imagine that to be?”

Max had no idea. Rachel wasn’t anything like the privileged, probably slightly pampered and entitled woman she’d imagined when she’d learned they were going on a mission to extract her. What she knew of her was born of death and horror, unimaginable to most people. But Rachel hadn’t broken, not yet. She was fighting back. Hell, she was fighting Max when she had nowhere else to vent her anger. The answer to Rachel’s question suddenly seemed important.

Staring around the stark empty encampment that had until then just been a battlefield in her mind, Max tried to imagine the place bustling with aid workers rendering emergency care and simple human kindness to people whose language they couldn’t understand and whose lives and history must be foreign to their own. In order to do that in the midst of personal danger and unrelenting despair, they must have shared a common goal, a common passion. This had been a community, not just a group of strangers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“What?” Rachel asked, sounding breathless, almost stunned.

“Your friends. Everything you had here. I’m sorry.”

“I…thank you.” Rachel’s throat tightened, and to her horror, tears filled her eyes. After all the fear and terror she’d been battling to keep at bay, this simple bit of sympathy, of understanding, cut the legs out from under her. The horror of the morning rushed back to her. The gunfire, the hideous stench, the panic, the death. She closed her eyes, her head swimming. An arm came around her waist, and she was pulled close to a hard body.

“Easy,” Max murmured. “Come on. It’s a hundred and fifteen out here. You need something to drink. Some food.”

Rachel opened her eyes, feeling foolish and weak. Max’s face was an inch away, those impossibly blue eyes immeasurably kind. Her eyes were so fascinating, shifting from cold, hard calculation to unexpected compassion like the wind. Rachel’s heart beat hard beneath her breast, and she flushed, embarrassed at what it revealed. She wanted to pretend she didn’t need the comfort, but she did. Deep inside, in her primitive core where her instincts were to survive by any means possible, she was terrified, ready to claw and scratch and kill to stay alive. Terrified that the gunmen would return, terrified that she would be taken. Terrified of placing her trust in anyone, especially this woman whose embrace felt too natural, too welcome. Max de Milles might be a savior, but she was also a stranger, and anything Rachel was feeling right now was a product of the unreal world she’d been thrust into. Gratitude, comfort. That didn’t frighten her. But the desire kindling in the pit of her stomach did.

The hand pressed in the center of her back was warm and firm. Max’s chest armor, some kind of hard plastic shell, pressed against Rachel’s breasts. She was exposed, vulnerable, and Max was like a mountain shielded in rock. Rachel thrust a hand between them, pressed her palm against the armor. Pushed away.

“I’m all right.” I don’t need you to lean on.

“Come on.” A curtain dropped over Max’s eyes, her hand fell away, and she stepped back. “We’re sitting ducks out here. And we’ve still got a lot of work yet to do today.”

Rachel swallowed around the dust in her throat. “Yes. Right. What’s next?”

“First the cut, then some food.”

Max turned and walked away, leaving Rachel to follow. Rachel paced herself to Max’s long strides, her heart still beating way too fast. The center of her back tingled where Max’s hand had rested, and the heaviness in her pelvis throbbed. Her life was not her own, her fate was not her own, and now, even her body was betraying her. All she could do was pray this ended before she no longer recognized herself.

*

Max pulled back the edge of the tent, ducked under the flap, and slipped into the semidarkness. She heard Rachel come in behind her, sensing her presence as if they were still touching. Still connected. Even as she knelt by Grif’s side, she was aware of Rachel slumping down onto a cot that Amina must have brought out from the back. She needed to check Grif’s vital signs, see if the bleeding had stopped, but she kept remembering the color fading from Rachel’s face as she swayed outside in the heat, about to faint. Her instinct had been to pick her up into her arms, to keep her from falling. To keep her from harm. Nothing unusual about that. That was her job, to keep others from harm, to take care of them when they were injured. But she’d never experienced the wild sense of protectiveness she’d felt while holding Rachel.

Rachel’s eyes sent so many messages—anger, defiance, grief, need—that called up feelings in her she couldn’t afford to have out here if she wanted them all to survive. She’d wanted to keep standing there with Rachel, immersed in those shifting sensations, and that kind of distraction could be deadly. She didn’t have time for tenderness, couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by sympathy. Or the other tangle of emotions simmering in her belly. She kept her back to Rachel. Grif needed her now.

“How’s he doing?” she asked Amina.

“His pulse is up a little bit,” Amina said. “I found one of our first aid kits in the back and took his temperature. He has a fever.”

Max’s stomach clenched. Not good. Not a damn thing she could do about it. She checked her watch. Headed for twelve hundred hours. “In another two hours we’ll dose him again with antibiotics. Have you had anything to eat?”

Amina shook her head, dark circles making her dark eyes appear larger, wounded.

“You think you can find something for us? Everyone needs to keep their strength up. And water?”

“We have food packs prepared to give to the displaced,” Amina said. “They’re stored on the supply platform out behind this tent. I’ll get them.”

“How far is it?”

“Just a few steps.”

Max picked up her rifle. She couldn’t let Amina walk around alone, even though she doubted a daylight attack. “I’ll walk out with you.”

“Thank you.”

Once satisfied the field was clear, Max left Amina in charge of supplies and came back inside. She checked Grif’s vitals, regulated the IV rate, and prepared another dose of antibiotics. After he was settled, she sorted through the supplies for what she needed to take care of Rachel and carried it to the cot where Rachel sat watching her with an unreadable expression.

“First I’m going to clean it out.” Max squatted and soaked a gauze pad in saline. “It’ll sting some.”

“I can do it,” Rachel said.

“It’s easier if I do.” Max dabbed the solution on the two-inch laceration below Rachel’s right eye. “Besides, you might ease up if it starts to hurt.”

Rachel half smiled. “And you won’t mind hurting me?”

Max laughed softly. “Nope. I intend to be completely heartless.”

Rachel shook her head slightly. “Somehow, I don’t quite believe it.”

“Maybe you should.” Max stopped what she was doing. Rachel didn’t know her, couldn’t know her, and now was as good a time as any to interject a little perspective into their situation. “Don’t mistake duty for anything else. I’m only doing my job.”

“Yes. I got that part loud and clear.” Rachel didn’t argue the point. Max had a right to her boundaries. And if she chose to keep people at a distance, that was no one’s business. Despite Max’s insistence on appearing detached and aloof, however, her hands were gentle as she cupped Rachel’s jaw in the palm of her hand and continued to clean the laceration. Rachel had nowhere to look except into Max’s face as she worked, and she found herself visually tracing the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She suspected she’d developed the same lines after weeks of squinting into the unrelenting sun. Those little imperfections only added to the attractiveness of the picture. Max had a beautiful face. Strong and elegant with a square jaw and high straight nose. Looking into her eyes was like looking into the sea—deep and fathomless one minute, stormy and gray the next. Her black hair was thick and shaggy, and the untamed look made her appear carelessly handsome. Even the smudges of grease under her eyes and dust shadowing her jaw accentuated the rugged appeal.

“Where are you from?” Rachel asked, needing to distract herself from thinking about Max’s face, or her hands, or the way Max had taken her into her arms as if she had every right to hold her.

“Djibouti.”

“I meant—before.”

For a second, Max looked confused, as if the question made no sense. Then a bit of color touched her pale cheeks. “Oh. New York City, I guess.”

“Not sure?”

“Well, I’m not really from there, but that’s where I live now. Where I work.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Buffalo,” Max said shortly. The way she said it, her past didn’t appear to be something she was interested in discussing.

“Big family? Only child?”

“Youngest of seven.” A shadow passed through Max’s eyes. “My father kept trying for a son. He never got one.”

Something there, Rachel thought, and moved away from the pain she hadn’t meant to stir up. “Married? Engaged?”

Max dropped the used gauze onto the small pile of litter by her side and opened the pack of Steri-Strips. “No and no.”

“Never and never?”

“Not even close.” Max tilted Rachel’s face to the side. “Hold still.”

Rachel waited while Max taped up her cheek. It seemed absurd, to be giving this tiny injury so much attention after all the horrible wounds she’d seen that morning. All the same, she was a little disappointed when Max finished. “Thank you.”