“I will.” Rachel strode toward their makeshift base without looking back. She didn’t need to ask why. When night came, they’d have to be ready for anything.

Max watched her go. The water had turned her auburn hair nearly black, and the dark strands curled around her neck and face with careless abandon. Her face showed signs of a light burn from all the hours in the sun, but the skin on her chest and abdomen was smooth and creamy. An image of her oval breasts and light tan nipples rose in Max’s mind. She should’ve looked away, but she couldn’t. She’d been in the desert for months, and for years before that, she’d existed in the desert of her life—working, spending nights alone, letting her achievements fill her needs. She hadn’t touched a woman in almost two years, and she’d barely been present for that. After an OR party she hadn’t been able to avoid, she’d passed a few hazy hours of mutual desperation with a nurse who’d been flirting with her for half a year. Never mind that the nurse was married with two children, except, as the nurse was quick to point out, she and her husband were in the midst of a trial separation, so technically the sex wasn’t cheating. Max hadn’t asked for details. She’d had one too many drinks to hear the inevitable tale of disinterest, distance, and disillusion, and the nurse was not so drunk she couldn’t be responsible for policing her own marriage. There’d never been a repeat, although the nurse had indicated she would be more than willing.

Max could barely remember now what the woman looked like, if her breasts had been large or small, her stomach toned or full, her hips narrow or wide. She couldn’t recall the texture of her skin or the scent of her hair. Just a glimpse of Rachel had awakened all her senses, as indelibly as if they’d touched. Her fingers tingled with the glide of silky skin beneath her hands, her breath hitched at the firm press of a nipple against her tongue, her skin heated with the slickness of desire spreading over her thigh. She should have looked away, but she didn’t want to. Her body came alive when she looked at Rachel, and the sensation was so foreign and so exhilarating, she couldn’t let it go. Not yet.

The tent flap parted and Amina hurried toward her, a bundle of clothing in her arms. “Thank you so much. It’s so hot inside.”

Max did a quick scan of their surroundings. Nothing moved. Everything was quiet. “All right. Go ahead.”

“How long?”

Behind Max the water came on and she checked her watch. “Two minutes.”

“Two whole minutes! Oh, it’s so wonderful.”

After all Rachel and Amina had been through, a few minutes under a stream of tepid water seemed little enough reward. Max was used to going days without a shower, eating and sleeping in the dirt. The first thing she did when she got back to her CLU was take a long hot shower, hoping the steaming water would wash away the blood and mute the screams. It never did. Maybe Amina and Rachel would be luckier. She hoped so.

The water stopped, the wooden door squeaked opened and thudded shut. Amina’s breath was soft and regular as she moved about. Max was careful not to turn until Amina stepped up beside her, fully dressed. “All set?”

“Yes. I want to thank you—”

“No,” Max said. “You don’t need to. You’ve looked after Grif alone in that sweatbox all day. I owe you the thanks.”

Amina flushed. “Come back now. You need some rest and food.”

“You go ahead. I want to look around.”

“Don’t stay out too long or Rachel will insist on joining you again.”

Max grunted. “And I suppose telling her to stay inside wouldn’t do any good.”

Amina smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on. Let me walk you back.” Max escorted Amina to the tent and broke off to circle the perimeter one more time. The sun was down and the light was fading. Time to move the civilians to the bunker. By morning, this would be over.

*

The bunker Max had constructed was barely large enough for Rachel and Amina to stand or sit side by side after they piled the extra weapons, ammunition, food, and water at one end. The sky overhead, clear enough for a million stars to shine through the wisps of clouds, helped make the tight space seem less confining. Max had left gaps at irregular intervals in the rice-bag barrier to allow anyone inside to get a 360-degree view of the camp.

Rachel stood, body pressed against the dirt wall, still warm from the day, and peered out. Shadows played with her perception in the moonlight. The flutter of a tent flap became a man slipping closer, the flicker of starlight off hard-packed sand the glint of a gun barrel. For a moment she was five again, huddled in bed with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her legs to make herself small, staring into the dark corners of her room where monsters lurked. She’d stopped calling out for her parents to come. They’d told her she was imagining the long fingers and looming forms that glided across the ceiling above her bed.

Close your eyes and go to sleep, Rachel, her mother had said, there’s nothing there. But she’d known better.

She didn’t sleep with the light on anymore, but she still distrusted what she couldn’t see. She wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, wouldn’t have slept if a platoon of soldiers stood between her and the jungle. As the dark closed in around her, she would watch for the enemy to slip out of the jungle and creep across the open yard. Max wouldn’t be sleeping, but she couldn’t trust everything to her. She did trust her, totally. Trusted her to stand for her and Amina and Grif, to stand between them and danger, but trusting her to do it all alone wasn’t fair. Then again, none of this was fair. Or rational. Everything about this place was totally insane. If she thought too long about the complete madness of being in the middle of a jungle waiting for someone to shoot at her, to kill her, she would lose her tenuous hold on her own reason.

“I swear to God you’ll be sorry,” she muttered to the monsters in the dark and gripped the rifle by her side.

“What is it?” Amina asked.

Rachel drew in a breath. “Nothing, sorry. Just venting.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Amina said. “It is better to shout than cry.”

“You’re right.” Rachel looked out through her portal again. A shadow coalesced into a figure. Her breath stopped and her mind went blank.

“American friendly,” Max’s voice whispered.

“God,” Rachel gasped.

Max leaned over the barrier and handed her a stack of blankets. “On the off chance there’s explosions out here, cover up with these.”

“Thanks.” Rachel didn’t even question the why of it—she was numb to the possibility of one more form of horror. She passed them to Amina and made room for Max to climb in, but Max turned away. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t leave Grif alone, and I’ll have a better chance of cutting off an attack from out here.”

Rachel understood the bunker now. Max wanted her and Amina out of the line of fire. She’d never planned to join them. What if there’s too many? What if they— “Max, what if they come in force?”

“You know what to do.”

“I’ll help you move Grif. He’ll be safer in here.”

Max shook her head. “I just checked him. His pressure is low, his heart rate is up. If he bleeds again I’ll lose him.”

“Then I’m coming with you.” Rachel pushed her feet into the toeholds Max had dug into the side of the bunker and reached up onto the wall to pull herself out.

“No, you’re not.” Max loomed over her, blocking her way. “You’ll be safer where you are. Out here, I can’t protect you.”

“I can help.”

Max squatted and faced her over the barrier. “Listen to me. This isn’t your war. You’re just caught up in the middle of it. You’re not a soldier. You’ve done great today, but this is my job. I won’t have you hurt.”

Rachel swallowed. Moonlight wreathed Max’s head. The camouflage paint had worn off, and the smudges of dirt disappeared into the velvet sheen of darkness. Her face was as smooth as carved marble. She was very beautiful. “I will be very unhappy if you go and get yourself killed. So be careful not to.”

Max smiled. “I’ll consider that an order.”

“See that you do.”

“Don’t worry. Chances are good we’ll have a quiet night.”

Rachel wanted to grab Max and pull her to safety, but she could no more do that than she could close her eyes against the monsters. Instead, she reached over the barrier and touched her fingertips to the strong line of Max’s jaw. “Keep your head down, Deuce.”

“Roger that.” Max pressed her cheek into Rachel’s palm for the briefest of breaths. “See you soon.”

And then she was gone, a shadow merging into the other shifting shadows. Rachel leaned hard against the wall, bracing herself on folded arms to steady her shaking legs.

“She came here for you, didn’t she?” Amina murmured.

“Yes.”

“We’re fortunate, then.”

“Yes, we are.” Rachel stared hard, searching for Max, and couldn’t find her.

Chapter Thirteen

Max flipped down her night-vision goggles, and the world morphed from black to shades of green. The jungle, lush and thick in daylight, flattened into a monochromatic wall several stories tall. Scanning slowly, she let her brain decipher the layers of overlapping images, much as she did when she looked into a wound and found the natural planes buried in debris. Order out of chaos. She steadied her breathing, centered her consciousness, let the night come close. There a flash of moonlight gleamed off a pair of close-set eyes peering from beneath the brush at the edge of the clearing. Hyena, maybe. Branches flickered lazily in an insolent breeze that did nothing but move the still-hot air over her sweat-slicked skin. In another few hours the temperature might drop enough to dry her sweat to a dusty, itchy film, but as with the gnats that clouded around her face and crawled along her lashes and into her ears, the constant physical discomfort had become the norm. Turning in slow increments, she checked for a branch that moved out of sync with its neighbors, the darting shadow of a predator startled from its hiding place, the coalescence of random forms into a recognizable human shape. She listened for the silence that signaled the ultimate predator was on the prowl, heard only the chittering of insects, the distant roar of a cat, the wild bark of a hyena.