Bastian waited until Brie was in a deep sleep before carefully sliding out from beneath her. He pulled his combat uniform shirt from his pack—he hadn’t worn his ACU in the market—and slipped it under her head. She stirred but didn’t wake.

He circled the clearing at the top of the rise, scouting for danger. Their situation was so fucked. In a few hours, a Blackhawk would land at the rendezvous point, and they would be nowhere to be found.

He’d fucked up and lost the vehicle and the radio. This was all his own damn fault.

He paced and circled their hilltop refuge. Thank goodness the rain had stopped. He had a rain shelter but would only break it out when necessary. He had to conserve their supplies because getting to the village probably wouldn’t be simple, and if they had to go all the way to Juba, that could take days.

He pulled his knife from his pack and turned to the cluster of trees that ringed the hill. He needed to make a cane for Brie if she was going to be able to make the trek. He would also make sandals for her, using paracord and the insoles from his boots.

He found a sturdy branch and set to work.

As he whittled, his gaze repeatedly flicked to the woman who lay sleeping on the thin plastic sheet. He shouldn’t have kissed her as they lay in the muddy road.

He wasn’t even entirely certain who’d initiated the kiss, but there was no doubt it was not standard operating procedure for a Special Forces operator. The fact that she’d been stripped naked and sold to him just hours before made his actions even worse. Reprehensible.

Then he’d compounded his mistake by flirting with her, offering to let her study him anthropologically. He’d mentally justified it by telling himself she needed comfort after the horrors she’d been through. And that was true, but it was also self-serving justification.

He’d enjoyed flirting with her. Making her laugh.

And the truth was, he hadn’t been thinking about what she’d just been through when he kissed her. He hadn’t been thinking at all. There was no justification.

He should have recused himself from this mission so someone objective, who wouldn’t take advantage of her, was sent in to save her.

Ten years ago, she’d been queen of his fantasies. That alone disqualified him from being her rescuer. Then a month ago, he’d kissed her.

An outside observer might think he was taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, and he couldn’t deny it.

He wasn’t a nice guy when it came to relationships. He had sex and was out the door, but he was always upfront about it. There were those who felt his behavior was synonymous with asshole, but even he’d never imagined he was this far gone, that he could want a woman because she was the ultimate forbidden fruit, and act on the impulse when she was at her most vulnerable.

That was what this was about, right? She was forbidden because she represented the very things that attacked the fabric of his culture. Oil companies. Anthropologists.

Hell, she was a recovering addict just like his uncle, making her a risk he couldn’t afford.

If someone made a list of the worst possible women for him, Gabriella Stewart Prime would top it.

But the flirting had come so naturally. If he listed all the things she’d been through in the last forty-eight hours, flirting with her was just about the most inappropriate thing he could imagine. Except getting a hard-on was even worse.

He was so fucked. If his XO found out about any of this shit, he’d catch hell. Brie was the daughter of one of the richest men in the world. His CO, XO—hell, probably all of SOCOM—would believe he’d hit on her for that reason alone.

The idea made his skin crawl. Who her father was made his skin crawl. Everything about this situation could make him a spokesperson for eczema cream.

He scanned the horizon. With starlight undiminished by light pollution, he could see a fair distance. To the north were the oil fields that were grinding back into production in spite of the civil war. Some believed the oil companies supported keeping the war going because it meant less oversight, and more concessions. They paid smaller fees to the government because they had to provide their own hired army to protect their operation.

Armies that could protect a slave market?

A basic truth: countries in Africa were being used and abused by foreign corporations as much today as when slave ships had transported people to the New World.

He needed to keep his anger at Prime Energy front and center. Brie might not be part of the company—or even her family—anymore, but she was still a Prime. No matter what name she called herself these days. If he held on to that, it might prevent him from doing something stupid—like kissing her again.

Like caring for her.

“Bastian?” Brie whispered into the darkness, uneasy that she’d woken and found herself alone.

A moment later, he was at her side. “You okay?”

Relief flooded her. “Yes.” She sat up. “How long did I sleep?”

He glanced at his watch. “Nearly six hours. Go back to sleep.”

She rubbed her eyes. “No. I’m good. You should sleep now. You can get four hours, instead of only two.” Clouds had rolled back in, and the night was deep and dark. “We missed the rendezvous.” She’d known they would, but somehow, having the appointed time come and go felt more final.

“Yeah. But that’s not a bad thing. It means they’ll send a team to search for us.”

“Do you think…we should stay here? Wait for them to find us?”

He dropped onto the plastic beside her. “Fuck if I know. We had to take a different route through the grassland. We’re miles away from where they’ll start searching.”

“But they’ll see the flooded road…”

“All the roads are flooded now. They won’t know when we went off course. And they won’t find our truck. Won’t see our tracks. There was too much rain.” He looked up at the sky. “And there’s more to come.”

He was silent a long moment. “I think they’ll expect us to make our way to the main road. They’ll search for us along the corridor.”

“They won’t…assume we’re dead, will they?”

He shook his head. “No way would my team let anyone write me off.”

She smiled at his conviction. “I’m glad to hear that, because I’m pretty sure my family would happily declare me dead.” She was thankful for the darkness that hid the expression she couldn’t control in the raw wee hours of the morning. She didn’t want him to know that the knowledge that her half brothers didn’t care about her still hurt.

She didn’t want anyone to know she still longed for a family connection. There had been good times with Rafe and Jeffery Junior. When she was eight, she’d been certain she had the best big brothers in the world.

Unable to put weight on her foot, she abandoned the sheet for Bastian’s use and sat with her back against a tree. From there, she could see him stretched out on the tarp and keep an eye on a full one hundred and eighty degrees of hillside and swamp.

She was impressed by his ability to lie down, close his eyes, and instantly go to sleep. She couldn’t imagine the sort of training a person went through to be able to do that. That was some serious control.

She watched the even rise and fall of his chest as she attempted to process what had transpired over the last two days.

Watching Bastian sleep was a pleasure she hadn’t expected. His handsome face relaxed and didn’t look upon her with the disdain he’d shown at Camp Citron, or the pity he’d shown after he saved her. Best of all, he didn’t resemble the brutal façade he’d shown as a slave buyer.

More than anything, she’d like to forget how he looked in that role. But the image was burned into her brain. It hadn’t been him. It wasn’t his nature. She knew that. But still, he’d terrified her.

So instead she thought about the soldier she’d flirted with just before going to sleep. She’d guessed he was a player from the moment they met. And now from their conversation tonight, he’d confirmed her assessment, meaning they had a player history in common.

She’d always avoided serious relationships, even before she’d so badly used Micah and then found she’d begun to care for him. After Micah, she’d built a wall around her heart. She wouldn’t risk caring for a man ever again. It was too dangerous.

Four hours after Bastian lay down on the mat, his eyes popped open in an impressive display of the same body mastery he’d demonstrated in going to sleep. Dawn was breaking across the sky, which had clouded over with thick, dark storm clouds, casting the morning in gray light. They shared an MRE for breakfast, and then she tentatively tested her ankle, using a cane Bastian had fashioned for her in the middle of the night. The pain had eased somewhat, and with the cane for leverage, she could walk at a decent pace.

It would work.

But then, it had to.

They set out within fifteen minutes of Bastian’s waking, continuing down the muddy road on the path Brie had memorized while staring at the map. The road had drained somewhat after the storm abated, and only an inch or so of muck covered the slick surface. In addition to the cane, Bastian had also made sandals for her using the insoles from his boots, broadleaves, and paracord. The makeshift sandals worked well enough to protect her feet from sharp pebbles and other debris buried in the muck.

“We need to talk about the market,” Bastian said. “It’s important we go over it so you remember the details. The longer we wait, the more muddled your memory will become.”

She knew he was right, and saying it aloud would help set the memories. But damn, she didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to remember. But who knew what was important, what piece of information would help the CIA figure out who ran the market?

“How long were you inside the market before I showed up?” he asked.

“Two hours? Maybe three?” The time was hard to judge, because every minute had felt like a lifetime.

“We should probably go back to the beginning—like who grabbed you, for starters.”

She told him about the Nuer man who’d initially found and abducted her and sold her to the market. She went on to describe the men who examined her in the tent and told him about the one who worked for Druneft, who had worked for Prime Energy years ago.

“Did he recognize you?”

“I don’t think so. But maybe. I was a little shaken up in general. My impressions could be off.” She frowned. “But he’s not the only person in the market I recognized. One of the guards—the guy who fell on me after you slit his throat—his face was familiar. I think he was a toady for a former South Sudanese general named Lawiri. General Lawiri showed up at our facility about two months ago, full of bluster, trying to claim the food supplies to feed his army.”

“Whose side is he on, the president’s or the vice president’s?” Bastian asked, naming the two major factions in the civil war.

“That’s the thing. Neither. He’s trying to raise his own army. I heard his band was beaten back by rebel fighters and he fled the country.”

“Where did he go?”

“No idea. But I’m almost certain the guard whose throat you slit was one of Lawiri’s bodyguards.”