Page 10 of Close Pursuit

Grandma led the way and he followed behind, carrying the girl, who was still more asleep than awake from the painkiller. Katie brought up the rear, carrying the baby.

The grandmother veered off the road and followed a narrow path that took them around the stone-walled compound silhouetted against the rapidly lightening sky.

The ground was slippery with frost as they approached a narrow wooden gate in the back wall of the mini-fortress.

“I’ll take my granddaughter from here.”

He eyed the short woman. “How?”

“I will help her and my granddaughter will find the strength to walk.”

Katie said quietly, “It’s what we women do, is it not?”

The older woman nodded, her eyes sad and wise. “It has always been so.”

Although he felt himself an outsider to the women’s moment of mutual understanding, profound respect for all women’s ability to persevere swept through him.

He set the girl on her feet and draped her arm over her grandmother’s shoulders. Grandma looped her right arm around the girl’s waist, and Katie handed the bundled infant into the grandmother’s left arm.

Alex pushed open the heavy gate for them. The old woman nodded her thanks and trudged inside. The girl sagged, barely able to shuffle along. But she did, indeed, find a way, step by agonized step.

Madness. Utter madness for that girl to be conscious, let alone walking. But his hands were tied. He could only render medical aid his patients were willing to receive. Frustrated, he pulled the gate shut and left the women to their uncertain fate.

He muttered tersely to Katie, “It’ll be light any minute. We need to get away from here and under cover by then.”

He gestured for Katie to lead the way back while he took the rear-guard position that put his body between her and the most likely direction gunfire would come from.

The hike back to their Land Rover seemed to take forever. Maybe it was because his shoulder blades kept tensing in anticipation of a bullet between them. Or maybe it was because he’d gotten no sleep last night. Or maybe it was because he was more than half convinced the two of them weren’t going to make it out of this hostile country alive.

* * *

Glancing furtively around the mobile command post to make sure no one was close enough to overhear him, Ian McCloud picked up the satellite phone and dialed an encrypted number he’d memorized and never written down.

“Hey. It’s me.” He reeled off a quick set of latitude and longitude coordinates where the target was currently hunkered down on a mountainside delivering babies.

As the voice at the other end of the phone drew breath to speak, he interrupted quickly. “I don’t want to know why you need the coordinates.”

At the grunt of assent at the other end of the phone, Ian disconnected the call quickly. He checked his watch. The entire call had taken under fifteen seconds. He was in the clear.

Now all he could do was pray that Katie was safe. The man he’d just called promised on a stack of bibles that she wouldn’t be hurt. The bastard had better keep his word. He’d hate to have to kill his own brother.

2

After the fight to save the girl, something changed between her and Alex. But she had no idea what, exactly, it was. He watched her more than before. Studied her, even. He still didn’t talk much, but his interest was tangible. Had he finally figured out she was a reasonably attractive woman, or was he merely observing her like bacteria growing in a petri dish?

The next few days settled into a pattern. Haul water to a large tent made of skins that the locals had put up for them just outside Karshan. Haul in supplies from the Land Rover. Sleep. Eat. Sponge bathe herself, her hair, and her clothes. At night, help deliver babies. A half-dozen women came to have them. Most times, they brought someone with them—a mother or sister or cousin.

Alex taught the companions all he could about the basics of childbirth and safe after-care while Katie translated for him. She got good enough at the speech that she could do it without prompting from him.

She slept mornings and evenings, and he slept through the day as much as possible. She handled the minor medical problems that came in the door and only woke him for the big ones beyond her expertise.

Never in her life had she been anywhere this completely disconnected from…everything. No television, no Internet, no phones, no electricity, no friends. It was just her and Alex. No wonder Adam and Eve had been tempted. Sheer boredom would have driven them to it if the serpent hadn’t tricked them.

That flash of fire she’d seen in Alex the night he’d fought off death and saved that girl and her baby riveted Katie. She made excuses to brush past him or touch him now and then, but he remained frustratingly nonresponsive to her broad hints that she found him attractive.

Frankly, it drove her a little crazy. Just once, she’d love to see him let go and show that passion again.

Sometimes, she watched Alex sleep. His face looked completely different then. Relaxed and open, his features were handsome. Striking, even. His hair was coffee-colored, hovering between brown and black, and his skin retained a hint of a tan.

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