Saxon said, “Get lost.”
Kane grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ll live. After all, only the good die young.” He turned and wandered back to the huddle of Hammer and Elias. Whatever had happened with Namir, it seemed they had the flash drive but not the man himself. Had he escaped?
Saxon didn’t like the sound of that, with members of the terror cells still scouring the refugee camp, looking for all of them. The bad guys were trying to take out Namir before the Delta Force team could grab the guy and drag both him and his information out of here.
“I won’t bother asking if you’re US military.” The doctor’s dark eyebrows drew together, all her attention on the stitches she was putting in the outside of his arm. “Or what you’re doing here.”
“Good call. I’m Luca.” Saxon studied her Middle Eastern features and the casual adherence to cultural strictures. “British?”
She nodded. “Born in Iran, raised in England. Harvard Medical School, then straight to the Red Cross. I’m Kira Yassan.”
Nice to meet you sounded so lame. “That’s an impressive résumé.”
“You haven’t even seen what I can do with phyllo pastry.” She looked up for a second and winked at him.
Saxon pretty much fell in love right at that moment.
Hammer wandered over and said, “We’re going to do a quick sweep. Try to find him.” He squeezed Saxon’s shoulder. “We’ll be back in less than twenty minutes.”
When Hammer got that look in his eye, there was no point arguing with him.
“Understood.”
They were leaving the flash drive in his safekeeping and giving it one more shot to locate Namir. Saxon didn’t have any choice but to comply—at least, not until Dr. Kira Yassan finished stitching him up.
He glanced at her, about to say something corny like Do you come here often? Figure out how to maybe email her or something later. Get to know each other and see what happened after.
Except, when did that ever develop into something solid for a guy like him?
She snipped the edge of the thread with a pair of scissors. “Stitches are all done. I’m going to cover it with a bandage.”
He glanced at the front entrance to the tent, but his teammates had already left without him.
“The drug that I put in that syringe is going to knock you out for a couple of minutes.” She taped down the bandage. “I’m surprised you’re still awake. But you’ll be all set to go just as soon as you wake up.”
Saxon started to argue, but everything around him sucked down into darkness, and he passed out.
Dr. Kira Yassan watched Luca’s eyes roll back in his head. It really was easier this way. Apart from the fact that he seemed like a nice guy and he might actually be attracted to her, it was best that he passed out. Attraction wasn’t something that happened often in her world.
Actually, maybe that made this whole situation worse.
She glanced around to make sure no one else on the medical staff team was watching, then reached over and pulled out the flash drive that she’d seen him tuck into his pocket. The one his friend passed to him. The reason they were here, most likely, given how he’d safeguarded it.
She’d known what she had to do the moment she saw it. There would be just enough time before he woke up and his teammates returned. She needed to make a copy of the flash drive on her computer and then return the storage device to his pocket.
Kira ducked into the back, where a tall curtain that hung from a frame covered the area in the rear of the tent from view of the main room. Back here, it was occasionally necessary to perform surgery on a patient or deliver a baby. That or a hundred other things that occurred when people lived in such close proximity in horrible conditions.
Maybe she was growing jaded.
Kira sat on the stool and scooted up to her laptop, inserting the flash drive into the port on the side. Passing along whatever was on this storage device had to earn her some credit with the government. After the high-value target the Brits had been after had passed away on her operating table, they hadn’t been entirely pleased with losing their shot at intelligence. Whatever the Americans were after with this thing, it had to be valuable enough for them to risk their lives to obtain it and the person who’d been carrying it.
She tapped her foot on the groundsheet tarp under her sneaker while the files transferred. Didn’t look at the framed photo of her at age nine with her parents on holiday in Egypt. She’d been so excited to see the pyramids, and in the months before they went, she’d read everything she could get her hands on about pharaohs.
In the end, it was the last time they’d ever had fun together as a family.
She leaned back on the stool and looked out at the soldier. He really was a good-looking guy. Middle Eastern like her, but she’d guess from his features that he was Syrian. How a man like him ended up in the US Army—or whatever branch of the American military he was in—she couldn’t even fathom. So many who lived here would consider that a betrayal of all they stood for.
Luca Saxon.