So here he stood, making sure he knew that Albert was a stand-up guy. Making sure he wasn’t so far off the deep end emotionally and mentally after his ordeal that Jess wouldn’t be safe with him. And making sure he had an impression of the man to remind himself that Albert had Jess first, so he would always remember where his place was.

He overheard Albert and the nurse speaking. Sensed Albert’s distress when he’d asked about the Pashtun woman, Rabia. After observing the two of them together in the back of the truck and then in the Stryker, Ty could see there were very close ties between them. What kind of close he wasn’t even going to speculate. She had saved his life. He’d depended on her for his very existence for months. They’d been through a lot together. Now she and her father were homeless, and Albert got to add guilt to the pile of things he needed to deal with.

The nurse slipped out of the room, gave him a quick smile, and headed silently down the hall in her soft-soled shoes. Not long after, footsteps brought his head around to see Nate Black escorting the Pashtun woman toward Albert’s room.

The hospital staff had helped her clean up and given her a pair of scrubs and a scarf to replace her dirty clothes. Her head was down, but he could see enough of her face to know she looked drawn and exhausted. In shock, no doubt. She’d been through a firefight. She’d lost her home. Now she was going to lose Albert. Regardless of what they meant to each other, everything in her world had turned upside down in a few hours.

“You’re relieved, son.” Nate nodded to him. “Go find Reed to replace you, then get someone to look at your back and get some shut-eye. As soon as the base commander and the medical staff release him, we’ll see Albert the rest of the way home.”

It wasn’t exactly relief Ty felt as he nodded and walked away.

It wasn’t exactly anything. Physically he was in pain. Emotionally, he felt numb. He felt as if his body and his mind were operating on two separate planes. And it felt as if his heart was back home in a cabin by a lake, in a big log bed where he would never lie with the woman he loved.

TY FOUND REED, but instead of finding a doc or bunking down, he located the commo room, talked someone into letting him use a SAT phone, and dialed Jess’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Ty. Thank God.” It hurt to hear her voice, expectant, scared, relieved.

“We found him, Jess. I wanted you to hear it from me before you got the official word. We found him. He’s coming home.”

“I’LL BE RIGHT outside the door, ma’am.”

Rabia acknowledged the man named Nate Black, who had been so kind to her and her father. Then she walked slowly into Jeffery’s hospital room. Wanting to see him. Needing to see him. Knowing it would be the last time.

Her heart squeezed tightly at the sight of him lying in the bed, tubes coming out of his arm, intricate machines with pulsing lights making soft swishing sounds. He looked so pale. His eyes were closed, and he lay so still she did not know if he was awake or sleeping.

Then, as if sensing her there, he opened his eyes.

She walked hesitantly to his bedside. When he lifted his hand, she folded it in both of hers. “How are you, Jeffery?”

“I’m fine. Just… weak as a damn baby.”

She knew well how difficult it was for him to have his strength desert him. “You were very ill. The ride… was difficult for you. But I am told you are stable now.”

“Are you OK? Are they taking care of you and your father?”

She nodded, focused on their joined hands because she could not look him in the eye. “Yes. Yes, we are fine. They have treated us well.”

“Is your father still angry?”

She managed a small smile. “I could not say that he is happy. But he has accepted. What did you say to persuade him to come with us? I could not hear your conversation.”

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I told him he had to think of someone other than himself. That he had to think of you. I told him that he was the sun and the moon to you, and without him in your life, your days would be as dark as your nights.”

Tears filled her eyes. How could he have known so well what was in her heart? Could he possibly know that he also was the sun and the moon to her?

“Come with me, Rabia. Come to the States with me. Shh.” He raised their joined hands and pressed a finger to her lips when she started to protest. “You can return to teaching there. There’s a huge Muslim population in the States. We’ll find a mosque you and your father can attend. You can live in peace.”

This hurt so badly. But she must be strong. “We will be fine, Jeffery. Family in Kabul will make my father soon forget why he ever wanted to stay in the village. I will go back to my job.”

“What about the Taliban? They lost a lot of fighters last night. They lost a lot of face. They’ll retaliate. They’ll search for you. They’ll know when they return to the village and find you gone that you were the one who hid me.”

“How will they know? People abandon homes all the time. Salawat is a poor village. Many families leave to seek work in the city. It is not an unusual occurrence.”

“It’s unusual to have your front and back door blown off,” he said desperately. “They’ll know you didn’t leave because you wanted to. They’ll question your neighbors. Someone will have seen what happened. They’ll talk.”

He was right. And she knew she was in possible jeopardy. But she had no choice. “Kabul is a large city, Jeffery. They could not find you in a tiny village. They will not find us among three million people.”

“But they’ll search. They won’t quit.”

“They will search, yes. But they will not find us. There are many, many people named Kakar in Kabul. They do not know what I look like. And they will quit. Kabul is not Kandahar. The Taliban are not welcome there. You do not need to be afraid for me.”

He closed his eyes again, and for a moment, she thought he had fallen asleep. Then he squeezed her hand hard. “Please come with me. Please.”

Would life always be about loss? Would Allah continue to test her? Would she never be allowed to keep something—someone—so close to her heart that the thought of living without him left a huge hole inside her?

She must not question. She must only do what was right. She must do the only thing that was possible.

“You know that cannot happen. I cannot go with you. Even if it were possible to persuade my father, I cannot go.”

“You can.”

It physically hurt to look into his eyes and see her own pain reflected there. “Jeffery. Did they not tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She searched his face through a blur of tears and knew what she had to do. She had to tell him what she had overheard Nate Black tell the American doctor.

“Jeffery. You have a wife waiting for you to come home.”

Chapter 28