As time passed, Declan felt strong enough to sit up. His head throbbed and his balls ached. He could only hope that the other bastard’s balls ached as much as his did. He sat beside Sophia, neither of them uttering a word. Through the slightly lifted piece of paper taped to the window, Declan’s view of the desert around them offered little hope. On occasion, the van pulled over and the overhead lights were put on while the passenger studied a map. He looked out the window but realized he was looking at his own death, his own bloodied and miserable face reflected back. Then the light would flick off, and it got so dark he couldn’t see anything at all.

Eventually, the van slowed and pulled to a stop.

They had driven off the main road for at least an hour, maybe more, a much rockier and bumpy road with little sweeping turns. No lights anywhere, not even from the stars.

When they stopped, their captors stepped from the van, slamming the doors behind them. He heard Sophia catch her breath. He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze, hoping to instill some hope in her. The two of them were yanked out of the van, prodded again with rifles.

The moon emerged from behind some clouds, and Declan’s hopes faded still more. He tried to get an idea of where they might be. Some landmark that would seem familiar . . . but the land was flat. A hundred yards or so away, it rose to form a steep hill . . . a small mountain, really. Another ridge formed behind that mountain. In the side of that mountain, he thought he saw a dark splotch. An opening. A mine? Way out here in the middle of nowhere? He looked more carefully. An old, abandoned mine in the middle of the desert. It had to be. The entire side of the mountain was filled with openings to mine shafts on multiple levels. Before he could get too good a look, they were prodded in the opposite direction. Before them stood a small cluster of buildings. A former mining camp?

“Keep your eyes down,” one of the men said to him. “Stop looking so hard.”

“Fuck you—”

Another blow from the gun slammed between his shoulder blades. Sophia screamed. She must not have seen too many of these beatings. Declan, on the other hand, had almost hardened to it. Grown used to the occasional whack from the guards. He almost enjoyed pissing them off, and then showing no fear or pain when the gun or the club came. But how long could he keep that up? The mind was willing . . . the body, maybe not.

Their captors took both of them inside and before he even adapted his eyes to the light, they were separated. They took Declan into one room, Sophia into another. The interrogation began immediately after he was shoved to the ground.

“Who’s the girl?”

“I don’t know her,” Declan said, coughing up some sandy grit stuck in his throat. “We just met.”

“We’d believe you better if you knew.”

“What’s there not to believe me about?” he said. “I told you the last time you asked. You got hearing problems? I’m a photographer working with the U.S. Army.” The story was a good one, but he wasn’t sure they would buy it. Still, he continued. “I was taking photos of the bazaar when the attack came.” His two captors stared down at him.

“Where’s your camera?”

“How the hell should I know?” he snapped. “Probably broken into pieces by now by the IEDs or maybe one of your nice townspeople snatched it to sell on the black—”

“You’re lying.”

“If you say so,” he shrugged again. He had to keep them distracted. Angry at him and not at Sophia. But he also knew that sooner or later, they would turn to her. For now, they wanted to know his association with her. They were in a tenuous situation. Sophia was what they wanted to talk about. He knew that. He was only delaying the inevitable. Yet every moment he was able to delay was a chance. A chance that he might be able to distract them, to find a weakness, to find a way . . . he needed another distraction. Ideally a distraction long enough to think of a good excuse for why this fair-skinned, red-headed American art girl had been suspected of spying, something he wasn’t supposed to know anything about.

Finally, his interrogator began pacing the room and said, “So you’re nothing more than a photographer. For the army’s training exercises? To take photos of our lovely country for your readers? What? A magazine or a newspaper?” He shrugged. “We are not that naïve.”

He gestured with his hand and spoke quietly to one of his “associates.” The man disappeared behind the door and returned less than ten seconds later, dragging Sophia across the floor by the bound wrists behind her back. They had a strip of cloth tied around her mouth. Declan wished it was around her eyes so he wouldn’t have to stare at the fear he saw in them. He looked away, at the ground by his feet, at the little pebbles of sand and feeling just as small.

They dropped her down on the floor beside him like a sack of potatoes. She landed on her chest and face with a solid oomph.

“You guys are really good at beating up women, aren’t you—” Another blow to his head rewarded his comment.

They also didn’t take it easy, this time lifting her back up by her arms, yanking her hard until a quiet whimper came seeping through the gag in her mouth.

In seconds, the two of them had been forced to sit facing each other, a lantern lit in the corner of the room casting her face into pale light, ghostly pale, the fear evident in her eyes, and something else.

Wet, wide eyes, full of pain, but something else as well. Resolve. He knew then that she was a tough cookie. How tough she would be in the next few minutes, he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

“You’re working together,” one of their captors said. “The way you look at each other.”

Sophia muttered behind her gag, and the man reached forward and yanked it down. “You have something to say?”

Sophia glared up at him. “We don’t know each other, Sajad,” she spat.

“I look at her with compassion,” Declan said. So she knew her captor. From where? He kept talking, trying to delay the inevitable. “It’s nothing special, just the most basic level of human decency. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“So that’s what brought us all here tonight?” Sajad said. “Your human decency?”

“It’s what I’m doing here.” He stared up at the man. “And you? What are you doing?”

“Trying to get rid of you and your kind,” Sajad ground out. “You and your people take over the crooked business from the Taliban, make some money from the heroin trade, get your Caspian oil pipeline sent through, using us and the people. Using our resources. Using our weakness. Using humanitarian good will and “human decency” as the excuse.”

Even Declan knew the man was at least partially correct.

“Listen,” Sajad said, “listen to me. You’ll have to give us some answers, and quite soon.”

“Answers about what?”

“About what it is you’re doing here.”

“I’m currently held, tied up, and beaten.” He smirked. “I told you why I’m here. I am a photographer. I don’t know much about your heroin trades or your pipelines. I follow orders, go where I am told to go, take pictures—”

Another man walked up and slapped him across the face.

The other, more civilized member said, “And it will get a lot worse than that if you don’t answer our questions.”

“Well, then go ahead,” Declan said, spitting blood. “Ask your Goddamn questions.”

He looked at Sophia. Her eyes had already cleared up. No more shine. No more tears. Her whole face seemed resolved to a steady perseverance. It gave him just a little hope . . .

Sajad stood, paced a minute, then turned back to Declan with a question: “When did you first meet Ms. Sophia?”

“Well, let’s see . . . what time is it?”

“Answer the question.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I met her just a little while ago. Like I told you. You got a hearing problem?” He looked at her again, and this time she almost nodded imperceptibly to him. Eyes even stronger. She was working, she was trying. She was on his side. He continued. “I was taking pictures of your bazaar. During the attack, I ran for cover. Then I saw her running out of some building. Running and screaming and scared. I know in your culture that’s okay, but in mine, I’m hardwired to do something about it. So, I did.”

“And what did you do?”

“Come on,” Declan said, “you know.”

“What did you do to make yourself so proud, to make yourself this perfect human being?”

Declan looked at her and said, “I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“And was she?”

“You tell me. It was all your doing.”

“Yes, but you tell me exactly what you were doing. You tell me how you made her okay.”

Declan shook his head and sighed. “I can’t describe this basic human emotion, not to someone who doesn’t understand such emotion.”

“Because it’s socially constructed.”

“Empathy isn’t,” Declan said. “Helping and protecting women. It’s some hang-up of yours.”

“What you call a hang-up, I call a way of life.”

“You’re right. I’m in hell.”

Sajad finally smiled. “And you will suffer in hell accordingly.” He grinned. “Nothing personal. And same to you, Sophia. We’ll talk to you next, it’s nothing personal. We just like to take care of business in our own backyard. That’s what you Americans can’t seem to understand. You bring your business to our backyard, and you expect us to do nothing about it? There are a lot of things we can do.”

“I’m sure,” Declan said.

“Yes, you’re sure,” Sajad said. “And Sophia will be sure, too. Very soon.”

The sickness crawled inside Declan’s gut, turning to rage. He said, “You touch her and I’ll . . .”

“We’ll touch her, Declan. We’ll touch her.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

“We’ll just be following orders. Kind of like what you and your fellow American soldiers say, just following orders when a drone strike hits an innocent wedding party and kills hundreds. Just following orders when they commit war crimes. I’m just following orders.”

“Your orders are fucked.”

“You seem to be missing the point.”

“I don’t care what the point is,” he said. “You touch her, and I’ll kill you.”

“We’re going to do more than touch her. Trust me on that. Right, Sophia?”

She didn’t say a word.

“So,” he said, “a photographer . . .”

Declared stared hard at the man, trying to see this man’s soul. He saw nothing in his eyes. No compassion. No humanity. “Don’t touch her. Please.”

“We’ll touch her, everywhere.”

Could blood really boil? At that moment, he believed that it could. His heart pounded as his fists automatically tightened, wishing more than anything to feel his knuckles bust that bastard’s nose, to smash it deep into his brain. He wanted to cut his balls off, castrate him. Was that what they planned for him? He feigned bravado. It was their only chance.

“You touch her, and you’ll be very sorry.”

“We’re already quite sorry. This whole situation is terrible. For you and her. She’ll see it soon enough, just how terrible life can be.”

Then he motioned to the guard, and they dragged her away, Sophia struggling against the carry, squirming, trying everything she could to break free but then just going loose and limp. Giving up. It broke his heart.

“Of course,” the captor said, “we can forgo all this if you just tell us what the hell’s going on.”

“What do you mean? I’m a photographer! And then this happened.”

“Yes, but what exactly is this?”

“How the fucking hell should I know? Kidnapping? Being held for ransom?”

“You give yourself too much credit.”

“How so?”

“The ransom,” he said. “Do you really think someone will pay for you? And her?”

“Someone will pay,” Declan said. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, or why, but someone will definitely pay for this.”

There was no answer. No more interrogation. Instead, they dragged Declan from the building and toward the steep hill, mountain, whatever the fuckers called it out here. They took him inside one of the dark openings, into a narrow tunnel lit by lantern light. They wound this way and that before he was suddenly shoved to the ground in a small alcove.

And there, they beat the shit out of him, demanding answers to questions he dared not answer, no matter what they did to him. No matter what they did to Sophia, which he couldn’t do anything about at the moment, dammit.

They tried, God they tried, to get him to break, to admit that he was no photographer. To learn what he’d really been doing back there in town. How he’d met Sophia. What she was doing. In between the blows, his mind raced, sought a way to escape. These tunnels. It might be possible, if he lived through this beating. A blow to the back of his head had him seeing stars as he fell once more to the ground. A kick in his ribs elicited a pained grunt, but he wouldn’t give them more satisfaction than that. He ground his teeth together and closed his eyes, fighting the pain, fighting his fear, hoping they would knock him unconscious before he reached his limit. He focused on his surroundings. The musty smell of the dirt, the scent of rotten wood beams shoring up the sides of the deserted mineshaft. The coolness of the night air against his bruised skin . . . the high-pitched scream of a bat in the distance as they disturbed his slumber . . .