CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NATHANIEL
Kabul, Afghanistan
August 2021
“You going to hide in here all morning?” Torres asked, leaning against the door with one ankle crossed over the other.
“It’s only seven a.m., and I’m not hiding.” I turned the page in my book and ignored him, leaning back against my headboard, my legs stretched out in front of me.
“Looks like hiding to me.”
I wasn’t hiding. I was already dressed, armed, and ready. I just wasn’t on shift. Graham was, and he was fully capable of handling a little shadowing while Izzy and Dickface ate breakfast.
“Don’t you have something better to do?” I asked Torres, picking up the highlighter from my nightstand and marking a line, pausing halfway through. Not that I was ever going to give the book to Izzy. There were at least a few dozen of these already, all marked up and boxed. Old habits die hard and whatnot.
“Hey, I’m only in here because apparently you can’t get your shit together.” He shrugged. “Otherwise, you’d already be out there, trying to talk her out of going to Kandahar.”
“My shit is just fine.” I read the same paragraph twice before I gave up and closed the book. “And I’m realizing that it’s not my job to talk her out of anything. She has someone for that.”
Dickface. She was marrying Dickface. After everything he’d put her through, she’d still said yes to him, still put his ring on her left hand.
I rubbed my chest, right above my sternum, and felt my little good luck charm shift on the chain against my skin. It was far past time that I left it at home, that I recognized it for the bad omen it really was, but every time I took it off, I put the thing right back on.
“Yeah. Looks like you’re squared away.” Torres rolled his eyes. “Swear to God, nothing fucks you up more than that woman.”
“She’s not fucking me up.” I turned the page with more force than necessary.
“Maybe that’s the problem, then.” He pushed away from the door and walked across the room. “When’s the last time you two were in the same space and didn’t wind up in bed?”
I put my book down on the nightstand, since reading was futile when Torres got into my head like this. “New York.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you need to bring Jenkins in to take over?”
“No.” As pissed as I was, as disappointed as I was that Izzy had settled, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to see the mission through, or put her in a position where she could be hurt.
Someone pounded on my door.
I muttered a curse and swung my legs off the bed as I rose to answer it. When I pulled the door open, Graham stood on the other side.
Torres slid out, walking into the hallway. “Good, now he can deal with your moody ass.”
“There’s new intel,” Graham said, his face tight. “We’re briefing.”
“Let’s go.” I slung my rifle over my shoulder and closed the door behind me. Guess it was time to face reality and Dickface.
Maybe I had been hiding.
A half hour later, we were briefed, and I stopped avoiding Izzy and sought her out instead. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t blink over being in a rapidly deteriorating country where my only mission was to get out as many Americans as possible.
But these weren’t normal circumstances. I had Izzy to think about.
I walked through the crowded foyer of the embassy and stepped into the conference room the congressional teams had commandeered, passing by Parker, who stood guard at the door. It took me all of two seconds to find Izzy in the organized chaos of the room.
She stood in the far corner, a telephone held between her shoulder and ear as the assistants moved files at the edge of the long table. One of them nearly knocked a laptop off the surface. Guess we weren’t the only ones on edge.
After making a quick sweep to make sure Dickface wasn’t on premises, I headed toward Izzy. She was dressed in navy-blue slacks and a blouse that was a lighter shade, her hair in a low bun that looked like it might survive a helmet.
Because wearing a helmet was the only way I was letting her out of this building.
“Of course it’s no bother,” she said into the phone, double taking when she saw me approaching. “You’re the one up in the middle of the night.”
Her eyes were slightly red, and not the I-stayed-up-all-night-being-brought-to-orgasm-again-and-again variety of red I was achingly familiar with when it came to her. She’d done a good job with her makeup, too, but the skin beneath the brown orbs was swollen. She’d been crying. She tilted her chin and held my gaze, as if she was daring me to say something about it.
“Absolutely, Senator Lauren,” she continued.
“We have to talk,” I said, keeping my voice low so the senator wouldn’t hear.
Izzy sighed. “I think there may be some security concerns,” she said into the phone. “The head of our detail needs a word with me.”
I nodded.
“I’ll ask.” She covered the microphone. “Is today’s mission at direct risk?”
“You being in this country is a risk. Three more provinces fell yesterday.”
Her eyes widened, and her knuckles whitened on the phone.
“Not Balkh Province,” I reassured her. “Mazar-i-Sharif is still standing.”
She let out a breath of relief and uncovered the microphone. “Senator, we seem to have an issue. If you don’t mind holding, we’ll get to somewhere more private.”
Izzy motioned toward the door, and I nodded, leading her out of the conference room and into a nearby empty office. I cleared the room with a quick look, then locked the door behind us as Izzy set her phone on the cluttered desk, tapping the speakerphone button.
“We have you on speakerphone, Senator Lauren, but it’s just Sergeant Green and me in this room,” Izzy said, folding her arms across her chest. Something was off about the motion, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Sergeant Green, I understand that you’re my team’s security lead?” the senator asked, her voice surprisingly alert for it being nearly midnight in DC.
“I am, ma’am.”
“What can you tell me about the safety of Isa’s planned trip to Kandahar today?” she asked.
For a split second, I pretended that the woman in front of me wasn’t Izzy, that she was just another aide on just another mission. But she wasn’t. “Kandahar is concerning. The city’s been under siege for months, and hasn’t fallen yet, but all civilians were asked to evacuate six days ago, and the airport is under constant threat. I’m not in favor of taking Ms. Astor into that kind of environment. The team’s visas are here, and as far as I know, the plan is for them to be evac’d tomorrow by the Afghan Air Force. I see no reason for the trip, honestly. Yes, it would be a great photo op, but she can take the photo tomorrow, once they arrive in Kabul. Delivering the visas in person places Ms. Astor in unnecessary danger.”