Page 98 of Stone

“I wish I knew what the fuck they’re sayin’,” I murmured.

Lou let off another warning shot. “Believe me. It’s nothing good.”

“How the fuck do you speak Arabic? You’re from bumfuck Montana…” Spence’s voice trailed off, his eyes slashing to mine and narrowing. “You hear that?”

“What?” Lou asked, peering through his sight.

Spence held a finger to his lips, demanding silence, just as a rumble sounded in the distance.

My chin jerked toward the horizon, eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. Sure enough, a plume of dust puffed in the distance as a vehicle came hurtling over a sand dune, heading toward the mountain range and us.

The Bedouins craned their necks and began to chatter furiously. Within seconds, they bundled into their car, slammed the doors, and sped off in the opposite direction.

My head reared back. “What the fuck just happened?”

Spence jerked his chin toward the dust billowing in the distance. “They got scared. Whoever’s coming for us spooked ‘em—” He was interrupted by his radio crackling.

“Good morning, boys,”a disjointed voice came through comms.“This is your friendly neighborhood extraction team. Word on the desert is that you’ve just had a lesson in diplomatic relations.”

My shoulders slumped, and I sent up a silent word of thanks to whoever up there was looking out for my ass. The whole incident had taken no more than thirty minutes, but it was the most screwed-up thirty minutes of my life.

Suddenly, the safety of Devil’s Armpit didn’t seem so fuckin’ bad.

Spence froze, except for one eyebrow that lifted toward his hairline. “Is that Cox?”

I grimaced. “Seems so.”

Spence sighed. “It fucking had to be. You know he’s gonna rip us new ones, right?”

My head jerked in assent. “Yup, especially when he finds out we had a diplomatic stand-off over camels.”

Duggan barked a laugh.

Heaving a relieved breath, I bent down to grab my ammo and canister when I caught a slight movement from the corner of my eye. My head whipped toward a gap in the rocks, and I saw what looked like metal glinting in the sun.

My blood turned to ice, and I started toward the Humvee, bellowing, “Run! They’re in the caves.”

Deafening gunfire filled the ether, and I cursed loudly as I felt a painful burning sensation in my shoulder. I went down, and despite the pull of my shoulder, my hands automatically went to my head as an almighty boom rocked the air around us. An ungodly, intense heat hit my back, and my ears rang so loudly that it was all I could hear as I felt my body lift and fly through the air before landing with a crash in the dust. I cried out as pain wracked my body from head to toe.

For a second, my eyes fluttered open, but I couldn’t see anything apart from sand and dust swirling around me. My eardrums throbbed, and everything fell eerily silent.

I willed myself to keep my eyes open, to turn my head and see what the fuck just happened, but I couldn’t move.

Keep it together, Stone.My voice chanted in my head.Keep it together. Stay the fuck awake.

But I couldn’t do it. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough, or perhaps the pain was so damned excruciating that I needed to make it stop.

My eyes fluttered closed, and everything began to turn black. Then I felt my mind get sucked into a vortex of oblivion where there was no pain, no Marines, no enemy.

No anything.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Elise ~ December

My gaze rested at the window, watching as the snow came down thick and fast, settling on the street outside the office.

Even though it was cold outside, my heart was warm because I’d received a letter from Stone that morning. I must have read it a hundred times already. Every word he wrote was a salve to my beat-up soul, and his letters were the adhesive that kept me glued together.

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