"Shh." His hand rested on her feet. "It's okay. Just someone at the door. Go back to sleep. I'll take care of it."
She bolted upright, jerked her feet from his lap to the floor. "For God's sake, this is my room. I'll get it."
Swiping a hank of dried-wild hair from her face, she padded to the door, cracked it open while blocking the view inside with her body. "Jesus, Rodeo. Do you know what time it is?''
"Uh, sorry to bother you, but, uh, I'm looking for Cobra."
Jack strode up behind her, rested a possessive hand on her shoulder. "This better be important, man. Your timing sucks."
"Sorry, bud." Derek winced. "I wouldn't come here unless it was serious and I figured better me than someone else. The Colonel's looking for you two. There's a...situation...with Doc's sister."
Drew didn't need to see outside the office window to feel the sandstorm brewing. The blocked window prohibited view, anyway, since being boarded up after the looting peasant incident.
And again here he stood, Yasmine on the wrong end of an OSI inquisition about her presence at the airfield.
He focused on the impending sandstorm and its implications instead. If it weren't for that damned storm due to start rolling in right around midnight, they'd be prepping to leave and finish this whole operation. He and his men never would have been out in the field last night running training maneuvers, making use of the extra time to perfect their battle plan just a little more because of the bad weather predictions.
PFC Pete Santuci would still be alive.
Which brought him right back around to Yasmine again, anyway, as she answered endless questions. When the hell had he thought about anything but her since she shoved that note in his hand?
He felt like an old fool.
Old being the operative word for a man stuck smack-dab in the center of some damned midlife crisis. She'd read him and played him right up to the moment she stared down at him with those bottomless brown eyes, her nubile, na*ed body fogging his brain.
Drew, I need to tell you something I have been keeping hidden. Ammar al-Khayr sent me here to find out the truth about your mission.
Everything inside him had shut down at that point.
He didn't remember much afterward other than that he'd hauled her up, barked at her to get dressed while he'd yanked on his own clothes. No turning his back on a woman who might knife him. No, he'd kept his back to the wall and watched her stoically drag her dress over her head.
Then he'd led her here to let Max Keagan and Daniel "Crusty'' Baker do their work because apparently his objectivity was shot to hell. She'd concocted some story about their maps of the terrorist compound being incomplete. Helpful guidance? Or a deadly trap?
Drew crunched a LifeSaver since he'd already been through every other goddamned letter in the alphabet over the past hour. Sure, she'd 'fessed up, right after she hooked then reeled him in. Did she expect to play him as her sympathy card? Think again, Sheba.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
His involvement with her already put him in a sticky-as-hell situation. From here on out, it was by the book.
Anger sparked from her eyes as she repeated answers to questions already asked. Tough shit. This was how the game was played to check her story. Let her get mad.
Or was she spitting fire to keep from crying? Damn it. Damn it. Damn it! He would not fall into that trap of hers again.
Her spine straight against her chair, regal as ever, she insisted, "I genuinely want to go to the United States. So when he—"
"Ammar al-Khayr," Crusty Baker interjected from beside the window, his voice tight, "a known terrorist responsible for targeting Americans around the world simply because of their nationality, a man directly linked to assassinating our ambassador here."
Who also happened to be Baker's father. The interrogator had more cause for his anger than even Yasmine knew.
She paled, dark circles from her night with little sleep staining a deeper purple. "When he offered me a way into your camp, of course I said yes."
Keagan stepped in to take over the questioning from Baker, stopping by the desk. "This would have all carried more weight if you'd told us straight up."
She looked down, displaying a stretch of daisy scarf along her head. Her hands in her lap twisted around her rose scarf. Damn her. "I did not know who to trust."
"And now you do," Keagan prompted.
"I hope so." She didn't even glance Drew's way. She didn't have to. "I will tell you whatever you want to know about him if that will help your people."