“So it’s gonna be all right?” he said, uncertainty thinning his voice.

Max dragged herself out of the desert, out of the jungle, and back to the brightly lit room. The dark receded with a howl and a promise to return.

“Yeah. It’s gonna be okay. First, we’ll put your hand in a basin with some Betadine and get this cleaned up. The nurses will give you something for pain before we get started. Then we’ll wash it out and clean it up a little bit and send you out on antibiotics.”

“So—how long will it be before it’s better?”

“Are you left-or right-handed?”

“Left,” he said, indicating the injured hand.

She wondered what he was thinking about holding again—a gun, a violin, a child? She didn’t know him, not like she’d known Grif and Rachel. The pain of remembering made an end run and she shoved it back again. They didn’t need her now. Grif was probably in a stateside hospital with Laurie holding his hand. And Rachel—Rachel was living her life far away from danger. Max regarded the anxious boy, her responsibility now. “The wound will be healed in a couple of weeks. You’ll be stiff and sore, but the more you use it once the soft tissue is healed, the better.”

“Yeah, okay.” He relaxed against the pillows and closed his eyes. “You do it, man. I’m good.”

“Yeah. You are.” Max went out to find a nurse to medicate him so she could irrigate and debride the wound and get it closed.

What was left of the night was uneventful, and at seven she met her replacement, a big man with the personality of a teddy bear, in the coffee room.

“So I saw the article in the newspaper the other day,” Ben Markowitz said after Max finished filling him in on the patients who were waiting for X-rays to be read, lab tests to come back, or for the OR to open up for their urgent but noncritical surgeries.

“Uh-huh,” she said, hoping that would be the end of it.

“Seriously, that was an incredible story. I…I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but I don’t know—I feel like I should say thank you.”

Max put the charts down and looked into his well-meaning face. His blue eyes were soft and compassionate, his broad, soft features gentle. A wave of anger passed through, surprising her with its heat. No one would have known what she’d done if Tom Benedict hadn’t written about the rescue, and he wouldn’t have known about that if Rachel hadn’t needed to bail her out. She spoke with measured calm. “It’s not necessary. I didn’t do anything that thousands of others haven’t done.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but your story makes it real, Max. To me, to a lot of people. And that’s important.” He leaned forward earnestly. “It’s important to put a human face on the cost of it all. That’s what makes it real.”

“Real,” Max murmured. She’d looked at the story, saw the pictures that Benedict’s photographer had taken at the end of the interview of her and Rachel posed together. She’d read the account of what had happened in the jungle, but the telling of it—no matter how accurate Benedict had been—sanitized the events. Even the descriptions of the dead were impotent compared to the truth of it. Rachel, she discovered in the article, was Rachel Winslow Harriman, daughter of the Secretary of State. That put the pieces together, finally, of why the Black Hawks had been deployed to extract the aid workers, particularly Rachel. Her father’s surprise visit to the Middle East was probably related to the timing. And now Rachel was traveling with her father while he toured the war zone, assessing the need for retracting troops or redistributing them or simply boosting morale.

Max hadn’t known any of that when she and Rachel had spent those hours together preparing for another attack. She hadn’t known when Rachel had come to her CLU and taken solace in her arms and pleasure in her body. The article didn’t make it real for her because none of that had anything to do with what mattered to her.

“Like I said,” Max said, “things like that happen all the time out there. There are thousands of heroes. I don’t deserve anything special.”

He nodded solemnly. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re back.”

She took a breath and said what he needed to hear. “Thanks. So am I.”

Maybe one day it would be true.

Max wished Ben a quiet shift, collected her gear, and walked out into the morning. She blinked in the sunlight, surprised as she always was to realize another day had begun while she had spent the night locked away in a world that might have been a galaxy away from the life that passed outside the hospital. She was forty blocks from home, but she liked the walk and headed in that direction.

“Max?”

Max stopped, not certain she’d actually heard her name. She turned and watched as Rachel handed money to a cabbie, picked up a suitcase, and walked toward her.

“Rachel?” Max waited, breathing slowly and carefully, afraid to disturb the air and dispel the apparition.

“Yes.” Rachel set down the suitcase a few feet from Max and pushed hair out of her eyes. Her hand shook. She was pale, circles under her eyes, weariness in the lines around her mouth. She looked thinner, haunted, like a ghost figure from one of Max’s dreams.

“Are you okay?” Max grimaced. “Dumb question. Sorry. I just didn’t expect to see you.” Ever.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Sorry about that. I’ve just spent eighteen hours on a couple of airplanes. Sorry to barge in on you like this. But—I had to see you.”

“I thought you were still in Mogadishu.”

People walked by, streaming around them as if they were an island in the midst of a fast-running river. Max feared Rachel might be caught up by the current and swept away at any second. She wanted to hold on to her—to keep her close.

“I was until last night. I couldn’t get away before then. My father—”

“Yes, I saw in the paper about his surprise visit to the forward bases. You traveled with him, it said.”

Rachel’s gaze roamed Max’s face. “Part of the trip. He wanted me along. PR. I don’t suppose I need to explain.” She winced, shook her head. “Well, not that at least. A lot of other things.”

Max slid her hands into the pockets of her black cargo pants. “Rachel, you don’t need to explain anything to me.”

Rachel’s eyes looked older than Max remembered. Wounded in a way they hadn’t even in the midst of all the terror. She wanted to brush her thumbs over the bruises below Rachel’s eyes and whisper them away. She wanted to heal her the way she sometimes healed others, only this need to erase the pain touched her so much more deeply than ever before.

“Please, Max.” Rachel took a step closer and clasped Max’s arm, her fingers warm and soft. “I know it’s not something you even want to hear, but if you would just let me explain—”

“You’re not going to do any explaining until you’ve eaten and slept.” Max couldn’t bear the sadness in Rachel’s eyes. She cupped Rachel’s jaw. “How about I make you breakfast.”

Rachel smiled and made a small sound that was half laughter and half sob. “Are you still taking care of me, Commander de Milles?”

Max picked up Rachel’s suitcase. “As much as you’ll allow, maybe.”

“I could have gone home,” Rachel said, not moving. “My apartment is uptown, but I came here because it’s the only place I knew you might be. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“No, neither have I. Let’s get a cab.”

“All right,” Rachel said.

Max stepped to the curb, waved down a cab, and as it pulled over, returned to Rachel. She hefted the suitcase and slid her arm around Rachel’s waist. Holding her was the first thing that felt totally right since she’d left Djibouti. “My place okay with you?”

“Perfect.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

The cab bumped along in the stop-and-go morning traffic. Rachel caught herself about to lean against Max’s shoulder, knowing she shouldn’t, couldn’t…but she was so very tired and Max was there. After so long, after what felt like forever, Max was there. She hadn’t really expected her to be. She’d thought when she arrived at the hospital, Max would be gone. That when she asked for her, the people inside would say they’d never even heard of her. As if Max was all an illusion, born out of terror and hope and desire. If Max hadn’t been there, she would have dragged her suitcase back out to the street and gone home. She would have pulled down the shades, crawled into bed, and prayed that when she woke, her world would have righted itself. That when she woke she would be in control again, that her heart would have stopped aching. That she would know how to find Max.

She could smell her. Different than before. The earthy, sun-drenched scent was gone. In its place was a hint of spice—shampoo, maybe, or hand soap—and the underlying bite of something medicinal and stark. Her hair was a little longer. She needed a cut, but the shagginess suited her all the same. A little defiant and wild, like Max. Her maroon scrub shirt hung outside her black pants. Her black boots laced up, like combat boots, and she still wore no jewelry. The chain around her neck was gone, but the dog tags might as well still have been there. Max was still on duty, maybe still at war.

“You’re just coming from work,” Rachel said, her brain functioning again. “You must need to sleep. This is a bad idea.”

Max shifted on the seat until her knee touched Rachel’s and their eyes met. Max’s eyes hadn’t changed. Still that electric blue deeper than any Rachel had ever known. She’d expected anger or distance or cold dismissal, but Max’s eyes were tender, the way they had been the first time the two of them had touched on the edge of the jungle. Absurdly, Rachel wished they were still there, standing under the hot sun with Max’s hand on her waist, steadying her, Max’s eyes gentle and warm. When had she become so desperately needy? She tried to escape the pull of Max’s gaze, but she couldn’t. Not when she’d come so far to be near her.