They’d been making good time, but with some difficulty. Every step grew harder than the one before it, but he kept pushing. He had to. For his sake and Sophia’s. They couldn’t quit now, no matter how tired he was. Muscles trembling with fatigue, he clenched his jaw and pressed forward. He heard every breath she took, matching her exhaustion, and his. He had to be the strong one, had to be the one who refused to stop, even when she implored him to. The extraction team couldn’t wait around forever. They had to reach their destination as soon as possible. No excuses. They either made it or they wouldn’t.

With the sun well up in the sky, Declan finally gave her the signal to stop—tilting his hand to his face, drinking an imaginary water bottle, too tired at the moment to even mumble the words. Standing a few seconds later, the imaginary bottles were replaced with the real ones Declan had found back at the mine. After a few swigs, with Declan watching her the whole time, he capped his off. Sophia could read that signal, too, although it was perhaps the one she’d had the most problem with.

He felt like the biggest asshole in the world, Sophia not having the mental training for water rationing—which had always turned out to be much harder than anyone could realize. And as an art curator in New York, she didn’t have Declan’s heat acclimation, either. Sure, summers got hot in the city, but a desert valley in Afghanistan was about as far a leap as an art curator planting listening devices in the estate of one of Kabul’s most influential businessmen.

But she was holding up. And after drinking far less than she’d probably liked, Sophia capped the water without a second thought. Declan appreciated her growing discipline. Perhaps it could be something they could explore in the bedroom of some apartment in some city they might settle on. He wanted to settle together. He wanted together, no matter where.

“How do we look?” she said, her voice background to his mental map check. He’d been looking for landmarks that would direct them to the target area, a location where they’d ideally intercept a mixed unit of Marines and DARC Ops agents. At this point, he’d be ecstatic with meeting any type of friendlies, but seeing his actual friends would be a pretty sweet reward. He thought of their reward as they continued.

“We’re past mile twenty-five,” he said. “Moving pretty good now.”

Sophia explained how she’d found her rhythm through the pain. A slow and steady rhythm that Declan was more than happy to accustom himself to.

“I thought we’d be at twenty-two,” she said. “Finally, a nice surprise.”

“Maybe we’ve got more on the way.”

“Like what?”

“Like Jackson and his crew, in a limousine with champagne and pizza.”

“And ice cream,” Sophia said. She was always talking about ice cream. Banana splits, in particular. “I just don’t know how well a limousine would handle the sand,” she said.

“Better than a twisted ankle.” He frowned. Her expression of pain had grown steadily with the miles they covered. At least she hadn’t broken it. His jaw tightened at the thought. Even through his makeshift bandage, the bruising and swelling were obvious.

“I thought you said I was doing good,” she said, groaning as their course took them downslope once again.

“You’re doing beautifully, Beautiful.”

Declan wanted to think that her groan was out of disgust rather than pain. Then her groan turned into a chuckle midway through the step. Then a chuckle to a word: “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“But I don’t feel too beautiful,” Sophia said. “I don’t even want to know how beautifully I smell.”

“I bet you smell as beautiful as I do,” he said. No time for breaks now, water or otherwise. They were too close. Anywhere within five miles he was told to keep his eyes open, and that’s what he was doing. And now he was doing it with the help of Sophia.

She pointed to something off in the distance and said, “What’s that over there?”

He looked over, following an invisible line from her hand to the mystery object on the horizon, whatever it was, wherever it was. Then finally, still squinting, he had to say, “Where?”

“Two clicks from that pyramid-looking rock thing on the . . . the ridge.”

“Two clicks?” Declan said with a grin.

“Yeah?”

“Clicks?”

She just stared at him. “I watch movies, you know.” Then she said, “Miles?”

Declan said, “Clicks are kilometers.”

“Two whatever; what’s that? Is that something moving?”

He couldn’t see it. Instead, Declan’s eyes were tracking a now-emerging dust trail on the opposite end of the horizon. It was moving fast, what must have been a convoy of vehicles. “Were you talking about that?” Declan asked her, pointing to his own target, the dust rising high and disappearing in front of the sun. “Let’s take cover for a minute.”

Without a word, Sophia took a knee, and then just rolled onto her side in a big sigh.

Declan stayed on his knee, trying his hardest to squint out what kind of vehicles had been driving by. The American unit would be on foot, with perhaps an Assault Breacher Vehicle with them. A heavy armored tank with a plow on the front. But that kind of vehicle wouldn’t be traveling this fast. And boots wouldn’t be kicking up that amount of dust.

“Are those our limos?” Sophia asked, lying on her back, looking into the sun through a water bottle. Neither of them had very much left. Somewhere in the equation of time, water, and the tenacity of their pursuers lay life. Or death.

She spoke again when he didn’t answer. “I’m guessing not limos, then,” Sophia said. “I’m guessing something a little worse.”

“Maybe a lot worse.” He wasn’t sure enough to tell her, but the way the vehicles moved so quickly and haphazardly, and doing so in this location, coming right in their fucking direction, made Declan surer by the minute that they’d be visited by some insurgents if they didn’t make some haphazard maneuvers of their own.

But what could boots do against tires?

What could two with an old knife do against a few dozen with heavy weapons?

“We should move,” he said to an already-standing Sophia.

“Where to?”

He was looking around for some rock to hide behind, a clump of shrubs, an old mining truck. But all they had to break up the solid hot burn of the desert was their shadow.

He’d known how dangerous it was, in these open valleys, to get caught flat-footed. And they were more than flat-footed now, with the fatigue of two days of escape, with Sophia’s busted ankle, with hardly any water or food in them for energy.

He swore, long and low under his breath. After all this shit, after all he had been through to save both of them, he couldn’t let it end this way, not so close to freedom and his team. Crouching low, ignoring the screaming pain in his thigh muscles and his back, he grabbed Sophia’s hand and dragged her along behind him. She ducked low as well, but her moans of pain caused him more than a twinge of concern. She couldn’t trip. She couldn’t fall. If she did, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get her up again.

It hardly mattered where they were headed, just anywhere away from the rushing convoy. Declan already figured they were toast, and was half thinking about sticking around and trying to devise a battle plan. But running, he supposed, even with an injured Sophia, was their best option. As his eyes focused on the bouncing horizon, headed away from the convoy, he could see another cloud of dust from vehicles much closer. Jeeps with black flapping flags. Another set of clues that it wasn’t friendlies, DARC or otherwise. They’d had them pinned and were pinching in.

Would he see friendlies ever again?

“Insurgents,” he finally yelled to Sophia as they ran.

“No shit!”

She was doing well to keep up, having ditched the crutch and just running through the pain, though with a severe limp, and a cuss word every few steps vying with her effort to breathe in their mad dash. If they were lucky, the speeding convoy and the other, with the black flags, were more focused on each other than on them. She was no longer like an athlete helped off the field, but staying on with some guts and playing through the injuries in a final game.

And this definitely looked like their final game, insurgents speeding toward them in both directions. Two ominous dust clouds. Declan had told himself to stop turning back to see the progress of the rear group, since they were most predictably gaining ground by the second. He told himself that it was an inevitability.

He headed toward a low hump in the ground—too low to be properly defined as a hill, but he’d take anything he could get at this point. They crept up a gentle slope, nearly doubled over when Declan spotted a narrow, boulder-lined path following the base of that hump, which turned into a shallow ravine. Again, he counted his blessings. Up ahead, he saw two low ridges in the distance, sloping down in the middle like a camel’s hump. If he’d had the energy and they weren’t again running for their lives, he might have shouted out a whoop of joy. It was the first hint of landmarks he’d seen and in this recent opening, perhaps their only option for slowing down the vehicles. In the thick sand and around the rocks, it would definitely slow the pursuit. He barked to Sophia, “Hard left!”

And they both banked the hard left, Sophia trailing behind but following closely enough Declan could hear her breathing, her feet slopping through the sand. He could also hear the engines of the vehicles. He thought he could maybe even hear the chatter of the men aboard. Hyenas, ready to claim their prize. He wondered what kind of prize he and Sophia had garnered, how much these bastards would miss out on since he’d taken the detour through the boulder lane. He checked back again. Both convoys, north and south, had cut diagonal lines to enter the rocky area, still gaining. His heart already pounding, it thudded harder still as he realized they weren’t moving fast enough. Declan checked back ahead of him, miles of sand and rock, then behind him to see the jeeps swerving around the rocks, around the barriers they’d used. It was all they’d had, and it proved to be completely ineffectual. He scanned for some type of cave to slip into, but the hill wasn’t even steep enough to dig out his own cave. Then, exhausted mentally and physically, Declan looked for a hole in the ground to crawl into and hide. Or die. He looked for his grave, thinking he’d likely never leave the area alive.

And Sophia . . . It pained him to think he’d led her down this path, that he’d been so careless as to let two enemy convoys sneak up to them in miles of desert. Miles of perfect visibility, and all he was focused on was joking around with Sophia. Attending to her emotional needs, attending to some of his own with her. Doing almost everything but watch for the enemy. He’d allowed the situation, such an unlikely mission, to distract him. He’d let her slip him into complacency, and now he’d let both of them slip seemingly into the hands of the enemy.

“Declan!”

He turned and found her a dozen yards behind, another disappointment on top of it all. The adrenaline and self-hatred had sent him forward, away from Sophia just as he was thinking about her. The look of fear on her face made him almost too sick to run. He slowed, waiting for her to catch up with him. Waiting for the convoy to catch them both. Waiting to die.

“I can’t,” she said, “I can’t,” slowing down even further.

“The hell you can’t! Run!” he shouted, grabbing her hand and dragging her along with him.

The rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire roared over the sound of engines. Sophia screamed and instinctively lifted a hand to cover her head as a strafe of bullets flicked up sand across their path. He heard and felt the impacts in the ground. Another strafe in front of him, Declan hearing the sound as the puffs of sand grew ever closer. He glanced at Sophia, knew they wouldn’t make it. Not with her ankle. Not even if she’d been in tip-top shape.

He didn’t need the next spray of bullets to know that. And neither of them needed it to decide for them, probably cutting down their legs as they scrambled away.

“Okay,” Declan said, feet pounding as he slowed, grabbing her close to him in the process, “Okay, stop,” and holding her around the waist till she slowed to a stop. Until they both stopped, chests rising and falling in a desperate urge for air. His side ached, his legs felt like spaghetti, but his mind roared with disbelief.

“Shit!” he cursed, then turned to spit. He held her close, felt her wild trembling beside him, holding on to each other for perhaps one last time.

The vehicles pulled up and skidded sideways in the sand, the first pack coming in from the side, the other from behind a few seconds later. That was how much time the rocks had bought them: a few seconds.

“Declan,” she whimpered into his neck, her face held there, her body shaking. He could almost feel her losing her mind, her sanity evaporating into the early morning heat.

“Don’t give them anything,” he told her, trying to fill his voice as loud and strong as he could despite the edges of panic creeping in. “Don’t say anything, don’t look any way. Don’t—”

“What . . . don’t what!” she gasped.

“Don’t show fear. You got me, Sophia?” he looked beyond her, ignoring her reply, whatever it was, to see two of the men leap down out of the head jeep. They scattered in opposite directions in the sand, aiming rifles at them, not saying anything.

“Stay strong,” he told her when another man came forward, moving slower, unarmed. He stopped ten feet away and smiled.

“I know you have a knife,” the man said.

Declan said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

The rifleman screamed something, but it was unintelligible. Either that or Declan just couldn’t hear or make sense of it anymore. Though he could understand the man standing right in front of him. Close to him. He could see the intricate network of wrinkles in his desert-blasted face. “Drop the knife,” he said, softly, almost in a friendly way. “Go and drop the knife before we take it off your dead body.”

Declan reached in for the handle of the blade at his waist, pulling up so the knife lifted out of his pants.

“Yes,” the man said, “drop it now.”

“Don’t touch the girl,” Declan said, still holding it. He was not sure why he said it, as if they would do as he asked. It was instinctual. Even now, with everything in their near future looking completely fucked, he still wanted to protect her. He held the knife in a more useful defensive position, as if he’d have to use it at any second, despite the two rifles pointed at him—and the dozens of more from the men in both convoys. None of his friends in sight. He looked back at his English-speaking pursuer and said, “You touch the girl, and we’ll have a problem.”

The man chuckled.

But how could he give them a problem without the knife?

“Drop it, my friend.”

He wanted to give them a very big problem with this knife, holding it harder, the knife shaking now with the intensity of his grasp and of his hatred for these men who wanted to lay a finger on his girl.

It would be his only chance out of this, although extremely slim, to stay armed. Even with a rusty knife against . . .

“Do it, Declan . . . please,” Sophia said, this time her voice cutting through his thoughts. That was the power she’d had, making him flinch with the idea. Do it. Drop it. His thoughts and her voice combined into a single order that his body had no other choice but to listen to.

His grasp suddenly weakened.

Sophia said, “Please.”

Declan dropped the knife to the sand, the blade sticking in with a loud scuffing sound. Straight in, handle out and glistening against the sun.

He took a breath, looked at her, preparing for their last moment together. Preparing to say goodbye. He might never see her again, at least on this mortal earth.

Her face had been quivering, too, a weak, quivering smile. A look that only he could understand, after their days together, after their conquests, their misfortunes, after their sleeping together in a cave. Everything coming down to this. It was, he agreed, slightly humorous.

Then, not so humorous: her gaze moving away from his and at something past him. Something that horrified her. She nodded in the direction, and when Declan followed, he saw that she’d been motioning to the man. He was approaching them, a handgun now drawn and pointed at Declan’s forehead.

Declan watched his expression again, the crumpled anger in his face. A face and a body and a gun, moving toward the two of them. His face was tight with hatred, and then suddenly gone. Gone in a spatter of blood, bone, hair, and brain matter. A deep, loud, rippling shockwave sped over the valley. The man, too, shrinking away and falling back and slamming into the ground like dead weight over a reddening stain in the sand. The other men, maybe a half dozen, stood in stunned silence, as did Declan. What the hell—

“Down!” he shouted, dropping to the ground and pulling Sophia with him.