“I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to see if you can find her. You might not be able to convince her to leave the country, but I will. Finding her means nothing if we can’t get her on the helicopter,” she argued, but that tone . . . she wasn’t telling me everything.
“Those provinces are all in the north,” I said, ignoring her reasoning. Maybe it made me an ass, but I wasn’t against hog-tying Serena and throwing her over my shoulder if it meant Izzy got the hell out of this country. “If Samangan falls, that leaves Balkh Province—Mazar-i-Sharif—cut off. Do you understand that?”
“I understand that every day she stays there, she’s in danger of never getting out, so I did what I had to do.”
She changed the itinerary. I saw it in her frustratingly beautiful eyes. My stomach hit the floor at the same moment Webb’s voice came across the radio in my ear.
“Sergeant Green.”
I tapped the button to speak. “Green here.”
“Your departure has been pushed back to give the aides enough time to assemble, since the itinerary just changed, and they’re now meeting with leadership and a group of stranded Americans in Mez at noon.”
I didn’t take my eyes from Izzy’s. “And we think that’s safe, sir?”
“Orders are coming straight from Senator Lauren’s office. Apparently, she has constituents in that group, and we’re going to evac them.”
“Acknowledged.” Fuck. My. Life. I got off the radio and leaned into Izzy’s space. “You went behind my back.”
“Yes,” she whispered, dragging her tongue over her lower lip nervously. “But we’re saving—”
“No,” I snapped. “No excuses. You go behind my back again, and I’m done.” She was putting herself directly in danger, and it ate through my veins like acid. Serena would have done the same for her, but I wasn’t irrevocably in love with Serena. Just Izzy. Always Izzy. “You trust me, or this doesn’t work.”
I wanted the words back as soon as they left my mouth, because that’s exactly why it didn’t work between us to begin with. Not that there ever had been an us. What Izzy and I had been was undefinable.
“I just—” she started.
“You trust me, or this doesn’t work,” I repeated.
She nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll want to ditch the heels.” I opened my door and pointed to the hallway.
Two hours later, we buckled into one of four Blackhawks headed for Mez, accompanied by a Chinook.
“Won’t the Chinook hold us back?” Holt yelled over the noise of whirring rotors.
“They’re faster than we are,” Kellman yelled back, checking his charge’s belt. Naturally, three of the other aides had decided to come for the “fact-finding,” once the trip had been announced. Politicians never seemed to mind sending their underlings into situations they wouldn’t chance themselves.
Izzy belted herself in across from me, her movements smooth, with no hint of her fear of flying. The put-together woman in front of me looked nothing like the devastated woman I’d picked up off the floor this morning. This woman was a consummate professional, dressed in the opposite of her sleep shorts and tank top. Then she white-knuckled the seat cushions, and I saw the crack in her facade.
Leaning out of my seat, I slipped my AirPods into her ears again.
Her gaze locked with mine, and damn if my pulse didn’t quicken, because that look, the same one she’d had as we’d held hands during that crash ten years ago—scared and somehow trusting—made her feel like mine again. But that ring flashing in the sun was an eviscerating reminder that she wasn’t mine. If the way she’d reacted to that phone call yesterday was any indication, she belonged to someone named Jeremy. Apparently Jeremy was good enough for her. Stable enough for her. Rich enough to appease her parents, too, judging by the size of that rock.
I added Jeremy to my list of douchebag frat boy names, right up there with Chad and Blake. But douche or not, he was the one she’d chosen. I was just the one willing to fly into a combat zone for her. It didn’t matter how much time had passed; I couldn’t seem to let go. It wasn’t her fault that I still loved her. It was mine.
I handed over my cell phone so she could pick what she wanted to listen to.
You choose, she mouthed, handing it back, reminding me too much of those sun-drenched days in Savannah. Pressure settled in my chest, and I scrolled through my playlist, picking the song that fit.
The helicopter launched as I hit play on the acoustic version of “This Is Gospel,” and her eyes widened. She looked away right when the chorus would have hit, and I heard the lyrics about asking to be let go of in my own head as surely as if I’d had one of the AirPods in—that was how well I knew the song. It was another one of her favorites.
But I was the one who needed to let go.
“We can only wait another ten minutes,” I told Izzy as she looked over the emptying room we’d commandeered at Mazar-i-Sharif’s airport. The aching look of expectation on her face made my chest go tight.
“Ten minutes might be too long,” Torres muttered as he walked by.
I wasn’t going to risk taking her into the city, or farther than a two-minute run from the birds. The Americans and those who qualified for the SIVs had met here over the last three hours, discussing their evacuation needs while representatives of the leadership gave their reports to the congressional aides.
The few dozen who had their visas and wanted immediate evacuation were already loaded into the Chinook, and there were only a few stragglers left, picking up paperwork that Izzy and the others had brought to help speed up the visa process.
“And you won’t let me go out looking?” Izzy asked again, hope dimming in her eyes.
“Going out there and shouting Serena’s name from the rooftops isn’t going to get you the reaction you want.” I both hated and was grateful for her naivete. It meant I’d done my job keeping the horrors of war away from her . . . until she’d come seeking them. “According to the contacts we have here, she knows there’s someone who wants to see her.”
“But you didn’t say it was me?” Izzy’s gaze whipped from the retreating back of the civilian she’d just finished helping across the table to mine.
“You mean, did I advertise that an aide to a United States congresswoman was out here searching for a needle in a haystack? No, I did not. Because I like you alive.”
She stood and glared at me, her chair squeaking against the linoleum floor, and I noted the reactions of every person in the room who wasn’t part of my team or hers. There were only a few now, and they were headed for the door, since Graham had started shutting the place down.
“I’m not going to leave her here,” Izzy hissed, keeping her voice low.
I shot the interpreter at her side a glance, and he backed away, giving us space, but Torres hovered. He always hovered when he sensed I was about to blow.