Edge Of Truth

Flynn glanced back.

“I’m fi—” she began.

But he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking over her shoulder, frowning. She followed his gaze. Another set of headlights was barreling straight for them. Oh God.

“Could we hide in those trees?” she gasped.

“What trees?”

“At your two o’clock.”

“I don’t see them.”

She pointed, though his back was to her again. “You can’t see that?” True, they weren’t much—a tangle of spindly branches—but they were clearly outlined, black against gray. The more she looked, the more trees she made out. Could you summon a mirage at night?

“Wait. Now I do.” He changed direction, angling toward them. “We don’t have a choice.”

It was all she could do to keep breathing. The trees didn’t seem to be getting bigger. The headlights behind her were.

“Down,” he whispered, hitting the deck as the flashlight swept their way.

She didn’t land quickly enough. The beam lit her up. Crap. It passed on without hitching. Keep going, keep going. It stopped and lurched back, burning straight into her retinas. Flynn sprang up, grabbing her hand. Her vision swam with black and red and purple. They hurtled toward the trees, her shaky legs threatening to give out.

“They still want us alive, right?” she shouted.

“I hope so. If anything, they’ll take me out and haul you back.”

“I’m not going back.” She upped her pace. Gunfire cracked around them.

“Just warning shots,” he yelled.

“How do you know?”

“We’re not dead.”

Her eyes adjusted. Both sets of headlights were trained on them, bouncing light and shadows on their path. The engines screamed. Flynn pulled her to the left—skirting the bleached skeleton of an animal. At least, she hoped it was an animal. Half a minute later, she heard it crunch and snap under a wheel. They passed the first tree, then the second. Another hundred feet and the goons would have to follow on foot.

The terrain changed. They plunged downhill, her knees wobbling as the ground steepened. Flynn’s hand tightened. Spindly trees panned out around them. It was a gully. Crap.

The headlights flared on something red, to her right—a warning sign, with a skull and crossbones.

“Flynn, it’s a minefield.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“That’s what I hoped.” He released her hand and skidded down a bank. “Stay behind me. Some of them spray sideways.”

Oh Jesus. Behind, a vehicle skidded to a stop. More gunshots, too close. She braced. No pain—nothing new, at least. She was still on her feet, her body still taking orders from her brain. The second engine roared closer.

“Out there we have a hundred percent chance of death,” Flynn shouted. “In here, maybe less.”

They careered downward, slaloming between trees, ducking under branches. It was hard to figure out where Flynn even was, let alone follow his path or watch for mines. Her mind was about to blow, with all the warnings it was pelting at her. Gunfire smacked into dirt by her feet. She yelped. Shouldn’t warning shots go upward?

The second vehicle slowed. As the engine silenced, another motor filled the gap, farther off but pushing fast. Possibly more than one. Among the clatter of gunfire she caught shouts edged with panic. Hell, they were worried?

A beam of light swept past them. Something glinted on the ground ahead of Flynn.

“Stop! Flynn!”

He kept charging. Her scalp went cold. She lunged for his waist and dragged him to a shuddering halt, her toes bouncing on the stones.

“What are you—?”

“Don’t move.” She drew upright, practically climbing his body, and clung to his left arm. “Something shiny.”

“Where?” His biceps was rigid.

“An inch in front of your foot.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Like a bunch of nails sticking up.”

“You’re kidding me. That’s a bounding mine.” He shook his head. “I still can’t see it. You must have superhuman sight.”

“Guess I got used to the dark.”

To their left, the light snagged on trees.

“Maybe I should go first,” she said. God, that was the last thing she wanted.

“No.”

“I can see better than you.”

He caught her waist and lifted her sideways, moving them behind a tree trunk that was half his width. “I don’t want the responsibility,” he whispered into her ear. “You stay behind me, you’re safe.”

“Until you get blown up and then I’m on my own anyway, if I’m even alive.”

“Most of these things will be buried. Just then, we got lucky.”

Gunfire burst out. She shook him off. “And we might get lucky again if we can see. Come on.”

She took a step. He pinned her arms to her sides, his chest grazing her back. “I go first.”

“I’m quite capable of taking responsibility for my own death.”

“I can see that. I’m still going first.”

Wow, he sure had a hero complex. “Oh, I get it,” she said, changing tack.

“Get what?”

“It puts me in their line of fire. If I get shot, you get away.”

“What? No!”

He loosened his grip. Taking advantage of his indignation, she set out, her heart thumping hard enough to break a rib. Best-case scenario, she got lucky. Second-best, she died quickly. Her mind flashed up an image of a boy shepherd she’d met after his leg had been blown off midthigh. She’d forced herself to watch as a doctor had removed his filthy dressing, and then she’d swallowed vomit. The black, pulpy mass had writhed with maggots.

Sometimes knowledge wasn’t power.

Crap—Flynn wasn’t behind her. She glanced back, slowing. He was crouched over the mine. What was he doing—defusing it? He grabbed something from his pocket and laid it beside the spikes. The reflective strip he’d ripped off her bag. A warning to others? He would stop to be considerate, now?

He started running, waving her on. The land began to rise again up the other side of the gully. She stuck to where the trees were thickest. More gunfire. Not potshots—they were spraying the wood. Branches swooshed and cracked like a windstorm. She hurtled across the stony ground, bent double, scanning for shiny things. Or dull things. Anything that didn’t look right. Could the goons see her, or were they shooting blind? A burst clapped out behind her—Flynn had caught up and was returning fire.

A dark hulk loomed. She stopped, an inch from smashing her nose into it. A boulder. She swiveled, thrusting out her hands. Flynn was running sideways, looking back over his shoulder. “Fl—”

He rammed into her chest, slamming her spine into the rock. Pain spiraled through her torso. His rifle smacked her elbow, deadening her arm.

“Merde. You okay?” He bounced off and caught her, his hands pressing up and down her back.

Breath rasped back into her lungs. “Peachy,” she squeaked. It felt like she’d been hit by a rhino. A bullet cracked above them, showering her with rock chips. He pulled her into a crouch, leaning over her as the stone rain settled.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand.

Blindly, she stumbled after him, rounding the boulder. He yanked her down on the other side and scooted in beside her. Cover. Thank God. Her feet pulsed. Ahead, the land flattened out again—the top of the gully easing out into a plateau.

She let her head fall backward onto the rock and took a shuddering breath. Gunfire tore through the trees, their echoes alone loud enough to burst an eardrum. Dozens of bullets, maybe hundreds. A lot of fingers on a lot of triggers.

“Still warning shots?” she said.

“Their orders have changed. My guess? They’re cutting their losses. They’ve realized they can’t risk you getting away.”

“So they’re shooting to kill.”

“It’s a good thing. It means they think we have a chance of getting out of here, which means we must have a chance—we just need to find it. This can’t be a dead end.”

“Wow, you’re quite the optimist.”

“Nah. An optimist sits back and waits for good shit to come to them. I don’t expect anything good to come to me—you gotta go out and make that shit happen. If you get lucky, you get lucky. No such thing as karma—you die or you don’t, whether you deserve it or not.”

“So right now, are we lucky or unlucky?”

“Depends what happens next.” He unzipped the bag and passed her a water bottle. “But don’t go all philosophical on me. My head hurts too much for thinking. Let’s just try not to die today.”

“Hey, it was you doing the philosophizing.”

“Hardly. I can’t even pronounce that word.”

She drank greedily, the water loosening her stuck throat. To her left, a bullet whacked into the dirt. Something pelted her temple. She gasped, fumbling the bottle, but it flipped out of her grip. She’d been shot in the head?

“Tess?”

She patted her face. No broken skin—just a burning sensation. Her T-shirt was soaked. “A stone, I think. Must have ricocheted up.” She grabbed for the bottle but it rolled away, into the line of fire. She lurched forward. A force hauled her back—Flynn’s hand, gripping her waistband. She flew for a second and plopped down, jamming his fingers into her butt crack. Graceful.

“Leave it,” he said, tugging his hand free.

“They’ll see it.”

“They’re more likely to see you—I don’t think they have your superhero vision.”

He grabbed a fallen branch and coaxed the bottle within reach. As good as empty.

“They could keep this up all night, all week,” she said. “Starve us out—if there’s anything left to starve by the time they run out of ammunition.”

“I’m counting on Hamid not having the patience for that. If what you say is true—”

“It is tr—”

“Then there’s too much at stake. The longer this goes on, the more anxious she’ll get, the more likely she’ll make a bad call. You said she reports to someone higher-up?”

“She runs al-Thawra, but al-Thawra reports to Denniston and the senator.”

“Then that’s where the bad call will come from. Bad decisions always come from bosses who aren’t on the ground, aren’t reading the conditions.” He punctuated his words with the bottle. “They want a black-and-white outcome, no matter the cost and screw the circumstances.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Personal experience?”

He scoffed like she’d asked an intimate question. “Human nature. They’ll be telling Hamid to find you before this gets out of control. Minefields aren’t put in dead ends. They’re designed to stop the enemy getting somewhere—they’re laid in shortcuts, thoroughfares.” He shook the last drops of water onto his tongue. “Which means this patch of scrub leads somewhere useful and they know it. It’s not just some oasis.”

“No kidding it’s not. Maybe it leads up into those hills?”

“Hills?”

“There.” She pointed. “Silhouetted against the stars.”

He squinted. “Yep, that’s where they’ll expect us to go.”

He flipped onto his belly and scooted to the far end of the rock. “Man, I could kill for NVGs.” He shouldered his rifle, let off a burst and ducked back under cover.

“What are you doing that for?” He couldn’t take on a couple of dozen soldiers.

The return gunfire surged. “Confirming we’re still alive.”

“If they think we’re dead they might stop shooting.”

“Hamid won’t believe we’re dead until she spits on our bodies. I want to make her nervous, impatient. Staying put and strafing this scrub to keep us pinned—or, better, kill us—is her best strategy. I don’t want her choosing the best strategy.”

He slid into his firing position and let off another round. She shoved her fingers in her ears, though they were already ringing like church bells. As he rolled back, she could smell his adrenaline—sharp and tangy and spiced with scorched metal.

“Aren’t you worried about giving away our position?”

“Not the way these shots are echoing. And there’s enough scrub to mask the muzzle flash. I’ll give it a rest now, anyway. Hear that?” His teeth gleamed. She could no longer figure out where one surge of fire ended and the next began. “The sweet sound of panic. We’re relatively safe here, and sooner or later they’ll figure that out. Meantime, I have a plan.”

“Which is...?”

He looked above their heads. Checking the stars? “I’ll tell you, if it works.”

“Flynn...”

“Hey, the last one worked, didn’t it? Kind of?” He flattened against the rock and pointed along the ridge in the direction of the village, as near as she could tell. “You see any more rocks we could shelter behind?”

“Yeah, maybe a hundred feet away. Man, they are not letting up.”

He dragged the backpack toward him, unzipped it and pulled out the open MRE.

“You’re eating?” she said. “Now?”

“Gotta keep up the energy. Here.” He slapped a bar of something onto her lap.

“You have it. My stomach is flipping around so much the food might bounce right out.”

“Eat the bloody thing. You don’t look like you’re carrying a lot of reserves and I’m not having you flaking out on me.”

In the darkness, her glare was wasted. She fought through a sickly sweet granola bar, a nibble at a time. Oh, for a fresh, crisp apple. At the thought, saliva poured into her mouth. Flynn laid into something that smelled like curry. At a time like this. As they ate, the gunfire became sporadic then eased off, leaving them cloaked in silence. She stashed the bar’s wrapper in her pocket, wincing at the crackle.

Flynn scooted to his vantage point and beckoned her over. They lay on their bellies, shoulders touching.

“What’s that superhero vision telling you?” His murmured words vibrated right through her.

She blinked, hard. “Nothing,” she whispered. “Wait, something’s moving. A person. More than one—maybe half a dozen, entering the gully.” Crap.

“Spread out or in single file?”

“Spread out.”

“Good.”

“Was that your plan?”

“They’re doing what the bastards who buried these mines hoped. The mines are laid out under the theory that soldiers spread out. You go in alone, or single file, odds are you’ll get out alive. A whole unit spreads out, chances are one will set off a mine that catches his buddies with shrapnel, so it lowers everyone’s odds. It’s a numbers game, like the chance you’ll be the one picked by the shark at the beach.” He fell silent. “Maybe a little more likely than that.”

“You’d think they’d know that, living here.”

“They’ll be following orders—bad ones, and they’ll know that and resent it. You can’t do a grid search in single file. I bet they’re praying to Allah.” He caught her eye. “Or God, or Buddha, or their mothers.”

“They’ve stopped shooting, at least.”

“Merde. They might be flanking us.”

Her neck prickled. She rolled onto her back, peering into the trees on the plateau while he watched the other direction.

“You cover our backs,” he said, creeping behind her. “Don’t fire unless you have to, but don’t hesitate, either. I’m going to create some chaos. On my say-so, we pull back to that other rock.”

She flipped the catch to full-auto as he’d shown her. God, she hoped he was wrong about them being flanked. She adjusted her grip and forced her breath to settle. It was just like on the range, shooting at targets. Except targets didn’t shoot back. She widened her eyes as if they were satellite dishes. The bigger the disc, the more it picked up, right? Movement wasn’t always immediately obvious—like before, seeing the soldiers among the trees, sometimes you had to sift through layers of darkness to catch it.

Gunfire burst out next to her. She jumped, her pulse rocketing. Flynn again. A shifting noise as he changed position. He fired again. A boom split the air, rocking the ground. Oh man. That was no gunshot.

A throaty scream echoed up the gully. Light flashed, right up to the plateau, illuminating the unmistakable figures of two men, dressed in camouflage, walking straight toward her, rifles panning left and right.

Her throat dried. She flattened, holding in her stomach—as if that would make all the difference. The explosion from the gully flared, like something was burning. One of the men looked directly at Flynn and raised his weapon. Shit. Shit. Should she fire?

The light flickered and cut out. Darkness swarmed back in. She blinked, blinded. Of course she should fire. But where had they gone? Around her, gunfire cracked, thwacking along the earth, pelting the rock. Incoming, not outgoing. Oh God, had her hesitation got Flynn killed? Where the hell were the men?

CHAPTER 6

Screw it. Tess had an automatic rifle—no need to pinpoint the bull’s-eye. She squeezed the trigger, fighting the kickback as she peppered the trees. The recoil shook her skull, strobing her vision. Her hearing muffled. Far away a man was talking. She couldn’t release her finger—the trees were becoming men, one by one, then a dozen at a time, closing in from all sides.

Something gripped her forearm. “Stop.”

She let go of the rifle with a start. The voice—it had been Flynn’s. Her hands reverberated—hell, her whole body shook. The hordes of enemy morphed back into trees. Crap. Had there been any real soldiers?

“You got them,” Flynn said, his voice soaring down from the stratosphere, his hand tight on her arm. From the gully the screams continued—or was that in her ears? Gunfire rattled, like a million balloons bursting in her head, the shouts of a dozen men laid on top. “We need to move.”

He swept the backpack on and pulled her up. She’d shot the two goons? Were they dead? She grabbed her rifle and stumbled after Flynn, clutching his hand like a lifeline. So much for keeping her distance. Hell, they were deep in this together; they might as well get blown up together.

The screaming rose in pitch, and broke into a shout. “La. La! Laaaaa!”

No, in Arabic? A single shot rang out above the rest. The screaming stopped. Flynn’s hand tightened. A faint buzzing circled, like a toy helicopter. She clicked her jaw but her ears wouldn’t equalize. She couldn’t hear her feet hitting the ground, though she could feel them, all right.

Something moved through the trees. She yanked Flynn’s hand. Too late. A guy ran toward them, raising his rifle. Flynn released her, spun, lifted his weapon. Kaboom. Everything exploded into light—the ground, the air, the trees. A force rammed her back and shoved her down, slamming her nose and mouth into the earth. She couldn’t breathe—she was buried under something huge and heavy. A boulder? A tree?

Someone had hit a land mine. Her? Flynn? Hail pelted the dirt—not ice but shrapnel, sticks, stones. The hulk on top of her shifted and groaned. Oh God—Flynn? His breath rasped like his throat was crammed with gravel. Then he went still and silent. No, no, no. She was panting so hard she couldn’t tell if his chest was moving against her back. She forced her face to the side, scraping her cheek on stones.

A flame flickered, lighting up a swirling fog of dust, flaring just long enough for her to identify the shape in front of her face. An arm. Only an arm. Too skinny to be Flynn’s. Oh crap—hers? She clenched both hands, scraping her fingernails through the dirt. All fingers accounted for. Her feet were evidently still attached—nothing phantom about the pain shooting from her toes to her thighs.

She gagged on the smell of dirt, smoke and she didn’t want to think what else. Footsteps approached. Flynn remained dead still. She swallowed a mist of hot dust. Beyond the bloody arm she made out two figures, slinking closer. Quiet, urgent voices carried. One of them kicked something, with a fleshy thud. Any second, they’d spot her and Flynn. Her rifle poked into her ribs but she couldn’t budge, let alone grab it.

The voices trailed off. The goons didn’t seem to be coming closer. They were...retreating? No way. Flynn was in head-to-toe desert camo gear, no doubt coated with dust and debris—maybe they looked like a rock? We might get lucky if our camouflage works.

Dark silence dropped like a blanket. A gulp stuck in her throat. Too scared to whisper, she forced herself to stop panting, ignoring the need in her lungs. Was Flynn’s chest rising? Was he breathing? Be okay, be okay.

A guttural curse scraped out of him. She relaxed into the ground. A swearword had never sounded so beautiful. He lifted off her with a groan, like it was a huge effort. She lay still a second, the sudden absence of his weight giving her the sensation she was levitating.

“Too close,” he moaned. “You okay?”

“You die or you don’t,” she rasped, rolling onto her back. He leaned over her, a shadow against the stars. She patted down his chest, his ribs. Intact. “I thought you’d...” She swallowed.

“I’ll live. You good to walk?”

She lurched to a sitting position. “I think so. You sure caused chaos.”

He pushed up into a crouch, grabbed her upper arms and lifted them both to their feet. “It wasn’t all me, sunshine,” he whispered. “That was some crazy shooting of yours. Not bad for a—”

“I hope you’re not going to say, ‘Not bad for a woman.’”

He groaned, dropping contact. “Not bad for a woman who couldn’t bring herself to kill a mouse a few hours ago. Jeez, Germaine.”

She wiped her dusty hands on her dusty trousers. “Honestly? I have no idea what just happened. What was going on down below?” She nodded to the gully. “Before we moved, before those guys...” Before I became a killer. “Someone else stepped on a mine?”

“I exploded the one you found.”

“How...? Wait—the reflective strip. You shot it.”

He winced. “It was meant to be a diversion. They were closer than I’d thought.”

“The screaming—it stopped. Abruptly.”

In the shadows, something crunched. A walkie-talkie crackled with static. Flynn pulled her behind a tree, his arm tight around her waist. Her rifle bumped a branch. She caught it. Beyond the spindly foliage the outline of a man passed, his movements jerky, too fixated on scanning the ground to spot her and Flynn. Chaos was right. These guys were spooked. Hell, so was she.

Another guy appeared—no, a woman—farther away, creeping in the same direction. Flynn tightened his grip, his fingers digging into her hips, his muscles tensed against her, all the way across his arm and shoulder and down his thigh. Last night—was it only last night?—she’d run her hands down those long, powerful legs. Yes, focus on that, not the goons with guns passing a few feet away. Then, Flynn had been a very fit body. Now he was every other kind of sexy, too—smart, brave, witty, protective. An all-round menace.

Words buzzed from the walkie-talkie. Nothing discernible. The woman looked directly at their tree, frowning. Trying to make out the message, or trying to identify the suspiciously thick shape? Tess held her breath. She’s staring into space. She hissed something to her friend and they skulked off.

Tess stood rigid. The soldiers melted into the darkness, their silhouettes no longer distinguishable from the trees. As silence returned, her scalp tingled. She stretched and fisted her fingers to stop the trembling. It didn’t work.

“We’re clear,” Flynn said, releasing her. “Let’s move, fast and quiet.”

At the next boulder he pulled out a fresh water bottle and offered it. She bent double, resting her hands on her thighs. She could barely inhale, let alone drink.

“Can you hyperventilate a little quieter?” he whispered. He laid a hand on the middle of her back. She suppressed the instinct to flinch. “Like I say, it’s a numbers game. We’re the needles, this is the haystack. We’ll stay here a minute, let them sweep on ahead. Enough enemy have been through that they’ll mark off this sector as checked.”

She took a deep, settling breath, resisting the urge to let it out in a hiss as she would to calm her nerves before a live report from the field. Straightening, she took the water. As she gulped, he slid her rifle off her back.

“If luck’s on our side, they’ll assume we’re pressing on toward that hill,” he said, ejecting the clip. “You have one more burst left.”

“Thought you didn’t believe in luck.”