Syria was the kind of dry-hot that left a person’s skin feeling like beef jerky. What used to be saliva had turned into some weird gummy paste inside Lars’s mouth. It made opening his mouth difficult.

Wasn’t like he needed to; there was no one here to speak to, even if he wanted.

Plus, he had other things on his mind. Like how he’d finally gotten a sight on his target.

It had been a long shot, him coming out here. So much so, he’d been given a direct order not to. But he knew the intel was good, if vague, and his company had been on the sidelines for too long already. He itched to get a move on, and if he could take out one of the targets on his hit-list, his superiors would surely forgive his lapse in obedience.

Well, that’s what he was hoping, anyway.

Fuck it, they should never have drafted him in the first place if they hadn’t wanted him going rogue. He’d tried warning them.

He let out a steady breath and spent a few seconds running through his calculations; wind speed, distance, caliber, the thickness of a human skull. Right through the third eye would be nice—that was his signature shot, after all—but with this guy, he’d settle for anywhere lethal. Maybe he could line up—

The target—a Syrian national with ties to a terrorist cell his company had been stalking for over three weeks now—came in sight of the open doorway of a clay house.

It was several hundred feet away from where Lars was; he’d found a niche in one of the rocky crags that surrounded this outpost and had wedged himself in nice and tight. With his sand-colored fatigues, he blended into the rocks like a chameleon.

Three steps led down from the hut. By the last step, he’d have a good idea where the man’s head would be.

He could probably get off two rounds, if he fired in quick succession.

Hopefully, he’d only need one. These Syrians were jumpy folk. If he missed, the guy would turn and high tail it straight back inside, no doubt.

The man took the first step, twisting to speak to someone behind him.

The second step.

The third—

“Lars!”

A bullet almost left his chamber. It was a close thing, and his entire body reeled with the almost-shock of not shooting someone he’d already imagined snapping back from the momentum of his shot.

“The fuck?” he hissed as loud as he dared. Sound carried in the desert, especially in a valley like this. He recognized the voice—Milo Finn, one of the assault personnel in his company.

But it seemed the man’s only goal had been to scare the bejesus out of him. He said nothing as he grabbed Lars by the shoulder and tried to yank him up.

“Fuck off,” Lars growled, tugging his arm free. He glanced at Milo over his shoulder. “The fuck you doing?”

“Have to leave,” the guy said mysteriously.

Was that what all the radio chatter had been about? Had something gone down? He’d specifically ignored it—getting into the right position could take up to an hour sometimes, and he’d wanted to be ready when his target showed his ugly mug.

Like he just had.

Lars spun back, but his target had moved around the back of the building and out of sight.

“Fuck!” he whispered fiercely. He swung back to Milo, who was busy shoving his gear unceremoniously into its duffel bag. “Lay off, you fucking Neanderthal. You’ll damage it.”

He rose—their position was slightly shielded by an outcrop of rock, so no one from the target site should be able to see them—and grabbed an empty water bottle from Milo’s hands. “I said, lay off!”

“Gotta move,” Milo said. The man had a deep bass of a voice which kinda worked with his massive frame. He would make a shit sniper though; too much muscle to try and hide from inquisitive eyes.

“Listen, I just finished getting set up. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

But muscle-man Milo wasn’t budging. He grabbed Lars’s sniper rifle from its stand and tossed—TOSSED!—it into the fucking duffel bag like it was nothing more than a bunch of sticks.

“You fuck head!” Lars fell to his knees beside the duffel, wrestling with Milo in an effort to get him to stop chucking his shit into the bag.

And then came the noise of someone nearby cocking a gun. It might have been easy to mistake for the metal grinding and chafing against itself inside the duffel bag, but Lars had excellent directional hearing when he needed it.

Milo turned to him, eyes the exact shade of the desert sky behind him.

Lars put a finger to his lips, and Milo let his head sag to the side as if to say, No shit.

They waited breathlessly, neither daring to move from their frozen tableau; Lars still gripping Milo’s arms, Milo with his hands inside the duffel bag.

Arabic voices came next; low and urgent. Lars thinned his mouth and glanced around. There was at least one escape route—if Milo didn’t mind scraping some skin off his ass sliding down the other side of this rock outcrop. It would put them out of danger, but he hadn’t scouted that side of his position—it could lead anywhere or nowhere. Trapping them, or setting them free.

He waved at Milo, and abandoned his gear as he crept as silently as possible to a nearby cleft in the rocks. Milo followed cautiously. Because he didn’t trust him, or because he was worried of making a sound? Lars didn’t blame him—it was difficult enough keeping his slip of a body from brushing rocks, but for Milo it had to be goddamn near impossible.

He half-slid, half-clambered down the cleft in the rocks. When he glanced up, Milo was staring down the side of the small cliff with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Shit.

Lars beckoned him furiously, but Milo shook his head.

Seriously?

Lars made a spinning motion with his finger and then stabbed at the ground. Milo looked over his shoulder, and visibly steeling himself, began climbing down after Lars.

Jesus Christ, the guy was slow.

Lars waited impatiently, scanning the small rock passage they were in for the best route out. When Milo finally alighted beside him with a grunt, he cocked his head to the left.

They both cringed when someone called out in Arabic loud enough for it to echo down to them.

Lars led them through the rock passage. It took a sharp bend and then ended abruptly where a boulder had fallen down to block the path.

“Shit,” he whispered with feeling, and then started climbing up the side of the passage, trying to see if he could go over the boulder.

Behind him, Milo murmured something unhappily under his breath and then followed.

It took thirty minutes of intensely quiet climbing and creeping before Lars was convinced they’d lost their tail. They’d been heading at a gentle decline for the last ten minutes or so, with no sounds of pursuit.

Lars paused to wipe sweat from his forehead, and gave Milo a good hard glare when the man caught up to him.

“Milo, right?” he asked, trying to keep the snap from his voice and failing miserably.

Milo nodded.

“What, you fucking mute all of a sudden?”

This received a glare.

“What the hell was that up there? I was this close to getting him!” Lars held his fingers a cunt hair apart, but Milo wasn’t even looking at him. Those blue eyes scanned the towering rocks around them, the sky, anything but Lars.

“Hey, buddy, you deaf as well?”

“You hear that?”

Jesus, if he had a voice like that, he’d be saying shit all the time just to hear how it sounded. Milo’s words came out like weighted silk. Had he been a singer or something before this? He sounded like he could do one of those operas where you had no fucking clue what the guys were singing about, but you knew some hectic emotional shit was going down.

And now that Milo had drawn his attention to it, he could hear what sounded like the wail of a dying beast.

Or wind howling through a cave mouth.

“Cave,” Lars said simply, and then headed for it.

Milo followed; the sounds of his boots thumping on the rocks preceding him. It took them a few minutes and another short rock climb to reach it. Milo fell behind, but Lars was too curious to find out if he’d been right to wait for him. He went on ahead, loving the feel of his muscles burning as he hauled himself up and over the last ledge.

The cave was large, dark, empty. Lars stood at the mouth, squinting to try and make out anything from inside.

“Too obvious,” he said, turning back to Milo.

The man was nowhere in sight.

Shit, had he lost him?

“Milo?” Lars whispered, and then rolled his eyes when he realized how futile the gesture was. The cave was on an outcrop of rock—the wind was so fierce up here and it would drown out anything he had to say below a shout.

He waited for a few seconds, and then let out a huff.

The idiot probably hadn’t been able to scale that last climb. Maybe he’d gotten wedged in somewhere.

He knew he shouldn’t be smiling, but he’d been alone out here for a long fucking time. It was nice to have something to smile at, even if it was someone else’s misfortune.

He climbed down again, and retraced his steps.

Milo was right where he’d thought he’d be; stuck in front of that last rock climb.

“Jesus, you take any longer and I’ll be fifty before we get out of here,” Lars muttered. “What’s the problem?”

Milo gave him a long-suffering stare, and then lifted a bleeding hand. “You make it look easy.”

Lars laughed, and hurriedly cut it off, throwing a guilty look around. But whoever’d been chasing them had obviously given up somewhere along the way.

He lay on his belly and held out an arm. “Come on. You get up to that little ledge there, and I’ll haul you up.”

Milo looked incredulous at this statement. Lars was having second thoughts himself; Milo wasn’t just large, he looked heavy. Muscles stretched against his fatigues and made the hems of his standard issue t-shirt look like it was about to split.

“Okay, I’ll help you up,” Lars rephrased, giving Milo a rueful smile. “Come on.”

Milo glanced around and tried scaling the rock wall again. Lars could clearly see his mistakes—he didn’t know how to spot natural defects in the rock and kept going for only the most obvious rocks butting out. And those were too far away from each other, leaving him spreadeagled and stretching for each grip.

“You’re doing it wrong, genius. See that teeny little crack there? Get your fingers in there.”

Milo glared at him, and then hesitated before grasping for the slit in the rock. Surprisingly, he got it in his first try and held on like a barnacle.

“Good. Now a foot to the left and a little up…see that little shelf? Try to grab it—” Lars cut off. “Good. Now you’re getting it.”

Milo’s only response was a grunt. He reached for another small cleft in the rock, and Lars gave a grudging pout. He was a fast learner, this one.

He stretched out his arm for Milo when the man came within reach.

Which was right about the same time that the sound of pounding feet echoed hollowly through the rock passage behind Milo.

The man’s eyes went wide, and flickered up to Lars. They stared at each other for what felt like minutes, but couldn’t have been longer than a split second.

In that time, Lars could feel the man’s panic. Stuck halfway up a rock wall, he could fall down and possibly injure himself on the way. Or, he could try to make it up the rest of the way.

Either way, those approaching feet were many and hurried—they would probably reach him before he could hide.

Lars flicked his fingers. There was less than a foot of air between him and Milo.

“Come on,” he whispered furiously. “Jump.”

“Jump?” Milo looked down, behind him, and then back up at Lars. “I’ll pull you down.”

“Nuh-uh,” Lars said, without knowing if this was as much a fact as he was stating. “Come on, buddy. What are you, one sixty? One eighty? I can handle it.”

“Two ten,” Milo muttered. And then jumped, as if he didn’t want to give Lars a second to reconsider.

Lars wrapped his fingers around Milo’s wrist and the man clenched his wrist with a steel grip that made the muscles beneath ache.

Again, those blue eyes pierced through him. Lars kicked back, gritting his teeth as he tried desperately to haul Milo closer to the top of the ridge where he could get a hand hold.

But his left knee encountered a patch of dry sand, and whatever grip he’d had, he lost.

They both slid two feet over the side of the ridge, Lars’s stomach scraping hard against a serrated strip of rock. It stung, and he knew it would be bleeding. He managed to grab the ridge with his free hand, clinging on for dear life.

When he found Milo’s eyes again, a quiet resolve filled those blue irises.

“Run,” Milo said.

Then he let go.

Lars tried to hold onto him, but both their arms were slick with sweat, and he just didn’t have the grip to keep a two-hundred-fucking-sixty pound man with one hand. Not unless he grabbed him with both, and that would mean losing the only grip he still had.

Milo scrabbled for purchase against the rock wall, but found none. He landed with a twisted, muffled cry on the ground below.

Surprisingly, despite the approaching footsteps, Lars heard one of his bones breaking.

He flinched, and darted back as a troop of Syrians rounded the corner. Flattening himself against the rock and doing his best not to breathe, he squeezed his lips together as he heard Milo bellow in pain.

They were dragging him away through the dust.

He shouldn’t have let them, but he did. Because he’d counted a rough ten men before he’d kicked back to hide. All armed. All looking pissed off as hell.

It would have been suicide for him to show his face. He’d left all his weapons back on that rise; most Milo had chucked unceremoniously into his duffel bag not an hour ago.

So he cowered there in the dirt, smelling his own blood and sweat as Milo’s wide eyes mocked him. And, minutes later, when the sound of his thumping heart had died down, he could hear the wind again.

This time, it sung to him. And it sounded like Milo’s deep, melodious voice saying, “Run.”

Over and over again.

Run…run like the coward you are.