“Depends on what?” she said, not caring anymore about keeping her voice down. “Can I come out now?” She didn’t wait for his reply before digging herself out of the dirt. This time she sprung out, barking. “Declan, what are you talking about?”

“We’ll have to do a lot of walking,” Declan said. “So it depends on how far and how fast you can move on that ankle of yours.”

“It’s fine.”

“Fine for an all-day hike?”

Sophia was brushing the dirt off her clothes but gave up halfway. It was pointless. She was as dirty as the bits of makeshift almost gravesite she was flinging off her. “My ankle’s fine.”

Declan raised an eyebrow, the only change in his expression. It still pissed her off. “Fine for thirty miles in the next twenty-four hours?”

She got up to her feet, slowly, put careful weight on her foot. Fine . . . well, it twinged a bit, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She wanted out of here . . . out of this desert, out of this province, out of this country. She forced her body to cooperate. She placed more weight on the foot. On a scale of one to ten now, it was about a five. But it bore her weight without buckling. That was good enough for her. She could baby it later if she had to. Fine . . . Then a full step, rotating a little, flexing.

She looked at him, voice full of bravado, and said. “I’ll match you, mile for mile.”

“Well, I hope so,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s the point, or else we might not ever leave this fucking place.”

“Yeah, I think I want to leave it.”

It was amazing, for some reason, the smile that inched across his face. The way he could make her feel better and stronger even in the worst situations. It was amazing that she somehow felt good enough to crack a joke with him.

Were they really that close to finishing this? With one look at his smile, thirty miles felt like thirty feet. She could do it. Of course she could, with him.

Declan had been watching her, noting the change. “What are you smiling at?”

She was almost ready to do more than smile. She could feel it, a laugh deep inside boiling up and ready to burst through her throat and her face. An insane, love-drunk, cackling laugh that felt so good to release. The laughter of survival. Of escaping danger. Of life. The laughter bubbled out into the air as she took a step backward with it, back into the hole she’d just been hiding in, stumbling back until a sharp pain brought her straight to the ground.

It happened so much faster than the last time, the pain that much stronger. It was a sharp piercing pain that took her breath away. Sophia landed flat on her back, the breath knocked from her lungs while hot tears burned her eyes. No! No, no, no, no! This couldn’t happen! Not now, not so close to their getting out of this hellhole! She sat up and grabbed for her ankle, now burning with pain. She looked at Declan, staring wide eyed at her, and then the scowl formed on his brow, followed by a muttered curse.

No, this couldn’t be happening . . . she rotated her ankle, proving to herself that it was nothing, that she could—it throbbed, and she could barely move without another sear of pain.

This time, she couldn’t hold back the cry.

No one was laughing anymore.

Declan rushed over, knelt beside her, saying something sweetly that she couldn’t hear. He had come blindingly fast, but his hands, and his arms, and the soft concern on his face could do nothing to take the pain away. No, perhaps not soft concern. More like disbelief. Shock. He briefly closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed, low in his throat. That made her feel worse than if he had shouted at her.

Now it was time to panic. Now she definitely knew that the chances of their survival, or at least hers, had just dwindled to a sad, paltry reality.

Could she muster up the will to tell him through the pain: “Go on without me . . .”?

Would he even listen to that?

“How bad is it?” he said, finally, after allowing her little time to wail out the pain. “Think you can still walk?” He wasn’t smiling at all now. No hint of boyish joviality in his voice or his eyes. He looked almost scared. He crouched down in front of her, muscles tense, his jaw working, his gaze taking in their surroundings before glancing back at her. Then up again, constantly searching . . . no doubt for the men looking for them could come back any minute.

What had she done?

“Can you?” he asked again.

She didn’t even want to try. Just rotating her foot gave her enough pain to think about. She couldn’t imagine actually trying to move anywhere on it, let alone thirty miles.

“Okay,” he said, without her even answering.

“What?” she said, her voice rising. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

“Just like we did last time,” he said, nodding. The fear had already left his face. He looked hardened gain, desert-hardened. Battle hardened. He seemed ready.

She was ready, too, to believe in him.

“All the way?” she said, nodding, too.

“Mile for mile, over my shoulders.”

“Okay,” she said. And then something in her brain clicked. A sudden clear-minded view of what was or wasn’t physically possible. How could he really carry her that far?

“Wait,” she said. “No.”

“No what?”

“You can’t do the carry for that far. It’s insane.” It was. It was totally truly insane, even for a trained soldier like Declan.

“All I can do is try,” he said.

“But I can try harder. I need to.”

“You don’t,” Declan said.

“All this time, I’ve just been letting you save me. And now I might get us both killed.” She slowly rose to her feet, onto knees first, then the weak foot last. “I need to step up for us.”

Declan said nothing as she shifted weight on the bad foot.

She said nothing, either. Certainly no more screaming.

She willed herself silent, and willed the pain away, and suddenly there was the faintest wash of relief. She could this. She could stand. She could walk. Thirty miles could come later. For now, her baby steps meant the world, and she could see the relief in Declan, too. Of course, he didn’t want to lug her across the dunes.

“Good,” Declan said. “I’m glad you’re moving, but you still need help.”

“No,” she said. “I got this.”

“No, I got this. Hold on.” He turned back to the shrubs, and Sophia stood in place, with her weight on her good foot while she watched him start yanking branches off a deadened shrub.

Then he dropped those and found stiffer branches.

Sophia, feeling the need to do something, began pacing, practicing for her walk. She did her best to hide grimaces of pain. Every time she placed weight on her foot, it felt like she’d been electrocuted, a shaft of pain racing up her leg and into her spine, emblazoned in her brain. But it was really just to make sure that she could do it at all.

She could, slowly.

“Aha,” Declan said.

Sophia thought for a second that he was talking about her. When she turned, she saw that he had ripped a strip of fabric off his shirt. He used it to tie the branches together. Then another strip ripped off and tied around, tightening, strengthening. She liked watching how his arms flexed when he tightened them, her bundle-of-sticks-turned crutch.

When he finished, he walked over to her and fit it under her arm. “Try it out,” he said, deadly serious.

She tried it out, allowing her weight to go onto the crutch instead of through her ankle. She did as he ordered. She had to. It had to work. One tentative step, then another. The makeshift crutch might not last thirty miles, but it was a start. “Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah? It works?”

She sped up her pace, feeling a little more confident in both her crutch and her ankle. “Yeah, it works. It works great.”

“Great,” he said, grinning. “Anything to get you off my shoulders.”

“For now,” she said, “let’s stick to me being under them.”

He made a sound, almost like a laugh. Despite everything, the sound nearly melted her on the spot. It was the best thing she’d heard all day.

Now she was serious. “You’re amazing, Declan.” She said it while looking down at her crutch. It worked perfectly, as if made just for her. Well it was made just for her.

More confidence now, that he would be with her forever. Not as a crutch. But as the strip of fabric that tied her loose ends together. A tie that held both rigid and strong. A bond, forever.

His arm had slipped around her again, another tie to keep her close. They moved together at first, matching step for step. Declan adjusted his stride to match hers, while still moving as quickly as possible. He took much of her weight, Declan saying he wanted to make sure she could do it. But Sophia didn’t say anything. Instead, she just showed him as they moved in stride, together, and with actual pace.

“Good going,” Declan. “But it’s not a race.”

“Yes, it is.”

He chuckled and said, “Okay. But we have to have a pace that we can maintain, especially with your injury.”

“I’m fine,” Sophia said, the words coming out cold and focused. She was fine. She was rolling, not wanting to stop something good that had just begun.

“You’re damn right you’re fine,” Declan said in a mock sleazy voice. It got a little chuckle out of her. Anything at this point would make her laugh. Life itself, as insane as it had turned out to be, had given her no other option.

“I’m glad you can still laugh a little,” he said.

“You, too. I heard you a few times.”

“Just living in the moment,” Declan said. “One step at a time, right?”

“Right,” she said, taking her steps.

When they clambered out of the riverbed and up into the steeper terrain, her steps became a little more difficult. The change in elevation and pitch challenged her ankle, made it work a little harder and ache a little worse.

“You okay?” Declan said. He must have heard her quiet grunts.

She said, “Yeah,” under her breath, keeping focused on the movement, on the pace. Anything but the pain. But the changing terrain had made it difficult to even use the crutch. It would slide out from the sandy surface. She cursed under her breath, and Declan definitely heard that, pressing himself more firmly against her. He wrapped his arm around her again, this time lifting up and taking even more weight away from her.

“I could lift more if you’d like,” he said, walking her like an injured athlete helped off the field.

“Can you lift me off the ground, up in air and floating away in the atmosphere?”

“Like Superman?” Declan said.

“I guess,” she said. “Did Superman ever fly into space?”

“Is that where you want to go? Space?”

She knew he was trying to distract her from the pain, to keep her moving, to prevent her from giving up and sinking back to the ground as she longed to do. She played along.

“I’ll go anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”

Declan laughed at her and said, “Corn-dog.”

“A horn-dog, too.”

“Well, we won’t be having much fun in space. Unless we’re in space suits. And that sure as hell wouldn’t be very fun.”

“But it would be fun to not have all this gravity to worry about,” Sophia said, her ankle struggling again, the pain beginning to throb up through her leg. “Gravity is a bitch right now.”

“It could be worse,” Declan said.

She had no comeback to that. The last few days had made Sophia aware of exactly how much worse things could be. She put her head down and kept moving.

The afternoon brought with it the heat of the Afghan desert, shimmering along the horizon, making the ground appear to undulate. The heat soaked into her now threadbare pajamas, prompting a stream of sweat to run down from her neck and between her shoulder blades. Her legs felt rubbery, but she forced herself to keep putting one foot ahead of the other. She felt tired, dead tired, and thirsty, and hungry, and . . . they had to keep moving. Declan swept his gaze around them constantly, seeking signs of movement. No dust trails, no signs of life in any direction. The hours dragged by to the point where every minute dragged on endlessly. Every second. She began counting steps, then gave up when she reached two thousand thirty-eight. What did it matter?

They stopped to rest only a few times. A sip of water. No more MREs, so she didn’t even have that to look forward to. Finally, the sun hung low over the western horizon, bringing with it cooler air. She marveled at how fast the desert cooled off at night. Nothing to hold the heat in.

The sun had disappeared quickly. It darkened and slunk below a distant mountain ridge. Directly in front of them, Declan and Sophia had their own peaks and valleys. And they were getting more extreme with each step they took closer to the extraction point. As they crested their latest, Declan had to offer the warning.

“We’ve got to be careful not to be spotted up here, at every ridge top. Especially at dusk.”

“What do you mean?” Sophia said, looking off into the distance.

“I mean try hunching down a bit, like you’re hiding.” He showed her, squatting low and hunching his shoulders as he walked. He checked her out of his peripheral vision and saw that she had followed suit. “In the business,” he said, “we call it silhouetting. That’s what happens when you stand up and stick out. Especially if we’re standing between them and the sun, we’d stick out pretty easily. They’re probably even watching for it.”

“I wish I could flip those fuckers off,” Sophia said, grunting the words as she hunched low over the crest of the ridge. “Or I’ll moon them and really give them something to see.”

Declan laughed. “Maybe you could just show me in private where it’s safe?”

“That won’t be safe around you,” Sophia said, getting some ideas about it now that they’d crossed over the ridge. But this downslope had been steeper than the rest, giving her ankle another reason to cut her jokes short. Taller and steeper, which meant an increased time putting a little too much pressure on her ankle. She tried to fight the natural urge to speed up, the force of gravity tugging her down and faster. The crutch came in handy for that, digging into the rocks and dirt in front of them. Now with the added pressure, she just hoped that it wouldn’t snap in half. She hoped her ankle wouldn’t do the same, though it felt even more likely. Too bad Declan couldn’t wrap his shirt bands around it and make it all better. Though, she supposed, he had certainly made it more than a little better.

“Going down sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes.”

“This time’s the worst.”

She evened out her pace, taking on the downslope on her terms. But it still hurt like hell.

“Damn,” Declan said, “you’re one tough woman.”

“You keep finding that out.” She was having two different conversations at once. One was talking toughness and putting on a brave face for Declan. The other, a tiny little voice in her head telling her to relax, imagine away the pain, put one foot in front of the other. Lean on the crutch. Lean on Declan. Crouch at the hilltops in case of what men in Declan’s business called silhouetting.

“Sophia.”

She turned to him. He’d stopped walking. Silence now with a cool breeze kicking up her hair. Out the corner of her eye, she saw that the sun was setting below the biggest ridge of all. Ideally, thirty miles wouldn’t take them beyond that.

“Sophia, you’re damn tough. And I’m so proud of you. So please forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?”

Without another word, Declan crouched down in front of her, taking her arms and forcing them over his shoulders while he backed up into her. With an involuntary uumph from Sophia, she fell forward onto his back, around him, grabbing hold of shoulders when she almost fell backward. He had stood with so much power, like he’d merely done a squat at the gym, Sophia lifting in the air high above her old line of sight but still seeing nothing but mountains and increasing darkness.

“Wanna carry the backpack?” Declan reached up with it, offering her the radio backpack. She threaded her arms through and slid it on her back very carefully, feeling scared at times that she’d fall off and injure the other ankle. Or break her neck.

“Piggyback,” Declan said.

“Hey, watch it.”

“Why, you thought I was calling you a pig?”

She just couldn’t respond to that.

Declan said, “I’m the pig. My back. It’s . . . a pig’s back.”

“Babyback?”

“Yeah,” Declan said. “You want your baby back?”

Sophia couldn’t decide if he was talking about the song on some chain restaurant’s commercial, or something obscure about getting back in the cave with him and having him again. Although it seemed delicious either way, she could feel that side of her spirit, the lightheartedness, slowly begin to fade. It had been such a grind.