“Tucker, are you sure?”

“Yep,” he said, reaching into his pant pockets. “Just stay quiet.”

Macy was used to staying quiet. Staying quiet was how she survived for so long. What she wasn’t used to, was hearing someone else tell her when to do it. She kept her eyes on him. “Are you really sure you can—”

Tucker pulled the car up quickly and stopped next to the officer. He rolled the window down and listened to the officer’s foreign language.

“Hi,” Tucker said in reply, his voice slow and a dopey smile on his face.

“Olá,” the officer said. “Carteria?”

Tucker shook his head. “I don’t speak any Portuguese or anything. I’m a tourist.”

The officer hunched down closer, and said it louder: “Carteira, por favor.”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Your license,” Macy said. When Tucker shot her a glare, she said it again, “He wants to see your papers, Dear.”

“Oh, is that right, Sweetie?”

“Yes, Dear. Papers.” Macy looked at the officer’s bored face and smiled politely. “Isn’t that right? Papers por favor?”

“Sí, sí,” Tucker said, going back into his pockets.

“Não,” Macy said. “Sí is Spanish. Sim is Portuguese.”

“Ohhhh,” Tucker flicked open his wallet and looked inside. Macy could see a large stack of fresh American bills inside the fold.

“Sim, sim,” the officer said, watching Tucker thumb through the cash.

“Yeah, it’s no problem,” Tucker said. “No problema.”

“Problemas,” Macy said.

The officer was smiling now.

“Sim,” Tucker said, folding up a large stack of fifties and hiding it under his Virginia driver’s license. He held it out of the window and slid both into the officer’s palm. “Não problemas?”

The officer smiled and said, “Sim, não problemas.” He gave Tucker his license back without even looking at it. He pocketed the money and waved them through.

“Nice going,” Macy said.

“You were supposed to stay quiet.”

“I thought you could use the help. Would have figured it out on your own?”

“Figured what out? Bribery?” Tucker steered past a smoking, broken-down car and then brought his SUV back up to speed. “It’s the one language we can all understand.”

“It goes a long way here especially.”

“Yeah. I just hope we don’t see too many more checkpoints.”

“Why?” Macy said. “Getting low on collateral?”

“Well, I’m running out of bills. What do you have? Did your sugar momma leave you with enough for the next officer?”

“I already told you about that,” Macy said. “I’m scraping.”

“Scraping by with two hotel rooms a night. And some booze, too. I saw that, in your room. It’s like you’re having a party out here.”

“Yeah, a party. That’s exactly it. That guy you shot was just coming late. Fun stuff.”

“I know, I know . . .”

“Sure.”

Tucker took a deep breath and said, “I guess I’d be hitting the bottle, too, if I had to live like that.”

“Yeah. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Sorry.”

“So are you married now?”

Tucker went to say something, but it sounded like he choked. “What?”

“Wife and kids? Dogs? Expensive sports cars?”

“Um . . . None of those.”

“Really?

“It’s a long story.”

“Tell me.”

“Well . . .”

Macy slapped his arm and said, “Landmine.”

“What?”

“Landmine.” She pointed ahead. “Look at that sign right there.”

“I can hardly see anything through this dust.”

“Whenever you see that blue-and-white sign, sometimes with a skull and bones—”

“Oh that one,” he said, rocking the weight of the car from side to side as he skillfully swerved around the small metal sign. They were leaving Luanda and entering the more rural countryside where landmines were more prevalent. Leftovers from the Cold War days when Angola had its longest and most deadly civil war. The HALO Trust Company looked after the mines, and they were still finding them up to this day. It was better they find them with their detector than some kid with his leg. Or the front left tire of Tucker’s rental car.

“I drove through a bunch of those in Iraq,” Tucker said. “Only they weren’t marked off. I was sitting in a tank once and it blew the treads right off. It wasn’t that big, but the shockwave alone gave me a concussion.”

“I tried to keep tabs on you,” she said. “On what you were up to over there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just liked knowing where you were. That got a whole lot easier when I was in the CIA. A nosy person could really misuse the agency’s resources, their access.”

“Is that what you did? Nose around through my personal life and internet history?”

“No, that’s the NSA. I was just more interested in knowing if . . . you know . . .”

“What?” he said. “If I had a girlfriend?”

“Stop.”

“Sorry.”

“I was just making sure you were still alive over there. The action was still pretty hot by the time you were deployed. I wanted to know you were okay.”

“Would you have gone and rescued me if I wasn’t?”

“Like doing what you’re doing right now?”

“It’s okay if you say no,” Tucker said. “I almost didn’t come here.” There was something about how his words sounded, something hollow, that she couldn’t believe.

“I’m glad you did,” she said.

He looked at her. Surprised, almost.

Macy couldn’t help but smile. “There, I said it. Thanks.”

“Wow,” he chuckled. “Well, that makes the whole thing worth it. Wow,” he said again.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Tucker. Always so needy.”

“Well, you’re the needy one right now. You need my help in getting the hell out of here.”

She clutched the armrest as he turned quickly, G-force pulling her toward him. She resisted and hugged tight to her side. “You still haven’t really said anything about where you’re trying to take me, and why.”

“Johannesburg,” he said.

“What about it?

“We’re stationed there.”

“And why would I want to go there?”

“Would you rather spend another night in a Luandan hotel?”

She thought it over, the dank dreariness of another cheap night in Luanda. The smell of death that seemed to linger in every room, whether it was a leftover, or a hint of what was to come for her.

“Macy, I’m not kidnapping you.”

“I know.”

“You’re free to do whatever you want. I can pull over.”

Tucker had to slow down in front a wave of humanity and bicycles. Two men emerged from the mob, both waving crowbars at each other. No one around them seemed to care.

“I can drop you off here,” he said.

“Maybe not right here.”

Tucker sighed. “Well, where?”

“How exactly do you plan to get us to South Africa?”

“As long as you know I’m not forcing you, kidnapping you, my plan is to drive to the airport and have us board our private jet.”

“DARC Ops has its own private jet?”

“We actually do, but this one isn’t it. It’s local. Jackson put it together last minute.”

“Are you sure it can take off in this?”

“In what?”

Macy checked outside again. It was dark and without streetlights so it was hard to tell about the sky, but there seemed to be a distinct haze everywhere she looked. “It might turn into a dust storm.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“So we’ll fly to Johannesburg,” Macy said. “And then what?”

“Well, I have to help wrap up our assignment, and then—”

Tucker steered carefully around another landmine sign, this time taking the curves like a seasoned Formula One driver, like he’d anticipated it the whole time. He always had been a quick learner. Tucker laughed. “This is kinda fun, isn’t it? The two of us racing through traffic. Just like old times.”

Yeah. The old times, the good times, involved her lusting after him, her sneaking glances at Tucker’s hard body during his shirtless training for the police physical-abilities test, her needing his smile, an occasional friendly hug. A lifetime ago, before she’d seen the horrors of the world, before she had learned about the horrors inside herself. That innocent girl with a crush had died, those times gone and old. It would be very difficult now for her to slip back into it. “Yeah,” she said, mustering up the effort to make her voice sound alive. Just because the old her was dead, didn’t mean Tucker had to know it.