Page 8 of Asher

“Because, honey…” Very gently, he slipped the beanie over her skull, cupping the back of her neck when he finished. “What’s important to you is important to me, and it’s possible someone tracked you here. I don’t know why, but if they did, they won’t find your name on the clinic’s records. You’re registered here at the embassy hospital as Mrs. Asher Downey, and the reason you’re here is listed as a mountain climbing fall. Nothing ties you to the Taliban.”

All she heard out of that long explanation was that one very special word:Honey.Man, this guy was something out of a fairytale. He was sincere and honorable. His eyes were green and full of life and that word was doing strange things to her heart.

“Wait. I’m in what embassy?”

“Yes, the American Embassy in Pakistan, and as far as our fake marriage goes…”

Marlowe squeezed her eye shut, embarrassed but at the same time, deeply touched by the gentleness of his touch. Everything Asher Downey had done for her was unbelievably gracious and kind. There were still questions she needed answered. Too many hows, whys, wheres, and whos to the puzzle she was caught in. But him, she liked.

“Who are you?” she asked, her question slurring with exhaustion. Darn, she didn’t want to fall asleep. Not yet. “I mean, really?”

“I’m an American contractor and I work special operations the US military can’t.”

“Ohhhhh,” she breathed, fading faster now.

Mr. Downey—Asher—kept talking, but Marlowe was beyond comprehending. Nothing made sense. Not where she was or why this man was kind to her, an anonymous woman nobody wanted, in a country no one cared about. The last things she felt were his warm lips on her forehead. This man was better than a lullaby.

Chapter Five

Asher holstered his pistol before he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the middle of Marlowe’s forehead. “Sleep tight,” he whispered. She’d fallen asleep as quickly as she’d come to, and that was best.

There was an undeniable effervescence to this young woman, a brave confidence that defied her weakened condition. Asher guessed her age around thirty, mostly because of how she’d handled herself when she’d attacked him at first sight. How she’d positioned her bloody feet and her weight, as if she’d totally believed she could take him. She’d been angry, true, and hyped-up on adrenaline. But she’d also been prepared to fight—him, an obviously larger, armed male, in tactical armor—to the death. Girls fresh out of college didn’t do that unless they were ROTC. Most women at that age were optimistic dreamers who still believed they could change the world, just because they were young and pretty.

Marlowe was the exact opposite. She was no starry-eyed flower child, and only hardened, experienced women, who’d gone through their own version of hell, fought like she had. It tookyears to develop that depth of rage, so, yeah. She had to be at least 30, maybe 35, to have already had those kinds of life experiences. The hard lines barely visible across her forehead declared it, as did the furrows etched at the corner of her one good eye. Most people had laugh lines. Hers were more like‘touch me and die’lines. Asher wondered what her personal hell had been, what made her so hard. He respected her nerve and her courage. He’d served with enough strong, capable women. He recognized a leader when he saw one. Marlowe was that and more.

The Afghan women and children his team rescued three days ago were already safe in America. They’d been flown out the same day his team arrived at the American Embassy in Pakistan. But there was something wrong with that nurse, Ms. Veronica Makowski, according to her name tag. Asher placed another call, this one to his boss.

“How’s our girl?” Murph asked without preamble.

“Alive and kicking, considering she’s got a concussion and a fractured left occipital bone. The surgeon repaired two brain bleeds and called in a local ophthalmologist to repair the retinal hemorrhage. Her kidneys are both badly bruised, but not shattered, which is a miracle given the condition of her lower back. He can’t stitch damage like that so, for now, she’s bandaged and has a wound pump installed. He put her on a painkiller, I don’t know which one. She was alert enough to talk for a few minutes, but she’s out again.”

“Did you get a chance to discuss the arrangement we came up with?”

“If you mean our fake marriage, I mentioned it, but she’s too doped up to understand enough to ask the right questions. Needyou to run down everything you can find on the nurse here, though. Veronica Makowski. I got a funny vibe from her. I’m sending the picture I took and I don’t believe she’s a nurse, Murph. We need to move Marlowe today.”

“Let me get that intel for you first. Beau?” Murphy’s voice muted as he asked Beau to run facial recognition on the photo. Murphy came back with, “What vibe?”

“For starters, she paid more attention to me than she did Marlowe. Never checked her patient, didn’t ask once how she felt, what her pain level was, or if she needed something more for that pain.”

“Hang on, Beau found… Are you kidding me?” Murphy exclaimed. “Dagnab it. You aren’t going to believe this. Veronica Makowski is actually Veronica Tippetts, the American teenager who traveled to Syria to marry that ISIS fighter a couple years back. She’s been fighting for ISIL since then. Hell, she’s recruited vulnerable women, her girlfriends, for those dirtbags.”

That was all Asher needed to hear. Tippetts was a threat. It didn’t surprise him that Murphy disconnected, or when his cell phone rang and Beau’s caller ID showed. “Hey.”

“Man, you pissed Murphy off. Never seen him this mad.”

Asher shrugged, his eyes on Marlowe, watching her chest rise and fall while taking stock of the equipment he needed to take with her. “He’ll get over it. What’d you find on Tippetts?”

“First of all, Veronica Tippetts wasn’t a teenager when she traveled to Syria to marry the ISIS fighter she met online. She was twenty-four. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

A car horn honked over the connection. “Are you driving?”

“Hell, yeah. Murphy stormed out of here like hell on wheels. He’s on his way to you with Renner and Heston, and I’m talking while I drive to you. Anyway, her loser husband was killed shortly afterward, and she’s been pregnant twice since then, lost both babies in childbirth. She’s not a sweet little thing. There are photos online of her posing with the decapitated heads of the two Americans her second hubby beheaded, while she was holding a fucking Kalashnikov rifle. I can send photos if you don’t believe me.”

“Nope.” Asher had seen enough of that shit during his deployments. “And…?”

“And the State Department has solid evidence she’s human trafficking for ISIS.”

Asher blew out a breath. “Marlowe’s her target. Get Deck in the air.’”

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