Edge of Courage (Edge Security Series Book 5) (10 page)

L
ater that evening
, Sarah pulled dinner from the oven. Earlier she’d gotten a sandwich for Jalila and hadn’t left the kitchen since. She’d started by adding more ingredients to the lamb stew. Paying attention to the details of a recipe had helped organize her thoughts. She hadn’t felt fully settled by the time the stew had finished and didn’t want to leave the kitchen. So she’d baked bread for the stew.

She was turning into a freaking Martha Stewart. This amount of cooking was crazy, even for her.

She set the loaf on the counter to cool and turned off the oven. If she was honest with herself, the baking was a way to avoid Dylan, but she needed that today. She’d felt too raw after this morning and the kiss.

No. She wasn’t going to think about that. Or him.

She took out plates and utensils for dinner and set the table. Normally, if she cooked, Rakin set the table and cleaned up. But tonight she would handle it on her own.

She turned to call Jalila and Dylan for dinner and stopped. They both stood in the doorway, side by side. Jalila leaned close to Dylan. Did the child even know how much she trusted him already?

“It smells delicious,” Dylan said, his eyes wary.

“Are you still angry?” Jalila asked in Arabic.

“I’m not angry,” she told Jalila.

“You made a lot of noise while you cooked,” Jalila said. “You slammed pots like my mother would when she was angry.” The girl’s lip trembled and she lowered her eyes.

“Oh, sweetie.” Sarah dropped to her knees. “I wasn’t angry. I was just thinking. I’m sorry.” The girl came into her arms and she hugged her.

Dylan just watched silently but when she looked up at him, he arched one eyebrow at her before giving a slight nod toward Jalila.

Was he seriously pointing out her attachment to the girl? Her lips compressed.

“I dare you to reject a child who needs a hug.” She forced her tone to be gentle though her scowl was anything but. “This has nothing to do with my ability to do my job here.”

She gave Jalila another squeeze and then smiled at her before bringing her to the table. She dished up a plate of the fragrant lamb stew and placed it in front of her. She brought the bread to the table and a dish for herself too.

Dylan served himself and sat down across from her, with Jalila between them. A cozy family dinner. Something she’d always wanted as a child.

Jalila pushed her food around with her spoon. Dylan ate his without looking up, quickly and efficiently, like the soldier he was. Sarah no longer even felt like eating the dinner she’d spent all afternoon on.

Cozy family? She almost snorted. She sat with a man who didn’t like her and a child who wanted her own mother, not Sarah. What a complete farce. Just like her. She was no one’s mother and definitely no one’s wife.

And she never would be.

Jalila set her spoon down. “When are we going to get Besma?”

Dylan stopped eating and frowned. “What did she say?”

“Sister,” Jalila said in English, thumping her chest. “Sister. Besma.”

“Shit,” he muttered, and then looked at Sarah. “This is all you.”

Jalila looked at Sarah and her face was as serious as Sarah had ever seen it as she switched back to Arabic. “My sister is still there. I know the soldier is leaving. And I think he wants you to go with him. But rescue my sister first. Please. You promised.”

Sarah couldn’t look away from Jalila’s face. The things she must have seen already, no ten-year-old should even know about.

“Please,” Jalila repeated, her eyes filled with the horrors that had slashed her innocence apart. “I can’t leave her behind.”

“She’s asking you to rescue her sister,” Dylan stated. He shook his head. “Her sister held by ISIS?”

As if she could sense his growing anger about what she was asking them to do, Jalila turned and put her hand on Dylan’s and spoke in halting English. “Sister Besma. Bad, bad place. Help Besma. Please, Dylan. Please.”

Dylan closed his eyes.

“You know I have to,” Sarah said quietly. She’d known the moment she’d heard about Besma.

His eyes snapped open and focused on her with their blue intensity. “
We
have to. This isn’t a solo mission.”

She tilted her head. “No. It just means I wait for Rakin to come back. You make the exfil.”

Dylan shook his head. “How often do you rescue girls?”

She pushed the food around on her plate. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” he said. “Talk to me, Sarah.”

She sighed. “I’ve built a network of contacts in the city. Usually the girls we rescue have been ‘married’ to an ISIS fighter. They stay married for only a week or so before the fighter gets bored, disavows the marriage and sends her back to marry the next fighter.” She looked him straight in the eye. “The girls have no choice. We usually rescue them out of individual homes rather than the
sabaya
houses or markets. Then we hand them over to the underground, who get them out of the city.”

“That’s impressive.” His words warmed her, but the next ones threw a bucket of ice water on her. “Impressive and completely off-book, I suspect.”

She lifted her chin. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that ISIS is tightening their grip on this city. You’ve already rescued Jalila from the same pit that her sister’s in. How are you going to pull something like that off a second time? They’ll be ready for you.”

She shook her head. “No. They have no suspects. My cover hasn’t been compromised.”

“How do you know?” he said. “You can’t even go check without Rakin here. You’re operating with a huge disadvantage. Stop this madness and leave with me.”

“Are you finished?” She crossed her arms when he said nothing further, but his lips pressed together as if he fought not to yell. “I’m not some little girl who needs your permission to do anything. Don’t try to order me around. You are not Blackwell.”

“I’m not ordering you around,” he said in a quiet voice. Quiet, but Jalila still shifted away from him. “I’m telling you what will happen if you stay. You’re too emotional about this.” He stood and Jalila flinched.

“Jalila,” he said in a gentle voice. His hand touched hers. “
Sadiq
,” he said, saying the word for friend. “Are we good, kiddo?”

Jalila nodded. “F-uck.”

He grinned at her, but his eyes were hard when they looked at Sarah. “And don’t think you’re gonna try any Lone Ranger shit either.”

She ground her teeth together. “I’ll do what’s necessary.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face before he nodded. “Thank you for dinner. I’ll clean up after you two are finished.”

He went down the stairs to the basement, as silent as ever.

Jalila’s hand stroked hers like Dylan’s had done to the girl’s. “You will help Besma?”

She nodded. She would figure out a way to keep them all safe.

D
ylan sat
cross-legged on the floor of the hidden room. He cleared his rifle, taking off the magazine and inspecting the chamber. Now he could clean his weapon.

He laid out his cleaning kit in front of him before closing his eyes. Every special ops soldier needed to know his weapons inside and out.

“And blind.” He quoted a sergeant from his past.

He popped out a pin and slipped off the forearm, setting it by his left knee. He placed the retractable stock by his right. The trigger pack went to the left and the receiver group to the right.

When he took apart his rifle like this, it was close to meditation for him. He had to concentrate and sit still, his thoughts focused. He almost always cleaned his weapons when he had a problem to think about.

He’d been trained to fly helicopters and to fight. Sitting and waiting—no,
hiding
—wasn’t his style. He was no sniper and preferred to take the enemy head on.

He popped the bolt head out of the carrier group and set it down close in front of him, next to the firing pin and spring.

He took out his 9mm brush and gun oil and set to work—cleaning, lubricating, and protecting.

Dylan’s fighting style worked against him on this mission. He frowned as he cleaned. He’d been in way worse situations, so what was it about this one that put him on such edge? He was hiding in his woman’s house.

His
woman.

And there was his issue. She wasn’t
his
anything.

An image of her popped into his head: She lay beneath him. Her dark hair spread out on his pillow. Her bronzed skin flushed with pleasure and her dark eyes beckoning him. He grew hard at the memory.

Fuck. That was not helping.

He focused on cleaning: Rubbing the CLP on each piece carefully. Feeling the grooves, the smoothness and the mechanics of his weapon. But always careful not to leave too much of the oil. A balance with his closed eyes that demanded his full attention and dragged his thoughts from the woman upstairs.

He noticed a presence. He kept cleaning, and didn’t open his eyes, though his other senses stayed on alert.

Small, quiet breaths. At the top of the stairs. He hadn’t closed the door. Jalila.

“Come on down, kiddo,” he said.

She crept down the stairs almost silently. Kid had good skills. He hated to think about why she’d learned them. Though he kept his eyes closed, he could hear her settle across from him on the floor. He suspected she sat cross-legged too.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that, kiddo,” he said. She wouldn’t understand his words, but maybe she’d understand from his tone. “Sarah and I were fighting, as adults do. It had nothing to do with you.”

She spoke back to him in Arabic.

He caught the word sister. “I want to help Besma,” he told her, “but I also want to keep you and Sarah safe.”

A note of pleading entered Jalila’s voice as she spoke next. A gentle touch on his hand and his eyes opened as he set the barrel down, but he didn’t look at his weapon. He looked at Jalila and knew that somehow this girl had wormed her way into his heart. How could he not respond to her bravery? She reminded him a bit of his own sister Cat at that age.

He knew he wasn’t going to make a smart decision.

Fuck.

“I’ll get your sister out.”

S
arah stacked
the plates on the counter. Dylan could rinse and put them in the dishwasher. She put the rest of the stew in Tupperware and into her fridge before soaking the pot. He could wash that too.

She wanted to dirty more pots for him to wash, but she wasn’t that petty.

Yet.

She heard the low voices of Jalila and Dylan conversing. Jalila chattered away about her home before ISIS had come. And Dylan spoke about Canada. She frowned. How much did they actually understand each other? Their conversation didn’t make sense, but the fact that they both spoke of home told of the connection between them.

A connection she didn’t share. What home did she have? Her sparse apartment in Montréal? The group home in Miami where she’d lived as a teenager? Now that Abuela had passed on, Miami held no appeal to her.

She grimaced at her thoughts. No. She was not going to have a pity party. She had too much work to do.

It was almost seven o’clock. She knew there wasn’t much light left in the day, but she had no window in her kitchen to see it. It was something she missed about her apartment in Montréal. Her kitchen had a view of the St. Lawrence River. Her apartment didn’t have much in the way of decoration, but it did have lots of windows. They ran along one wall with a sliding door to her balcony.

Her apartment consisted of a bare amount of furniture but nothing that showed who she was as a person, besides her bookshelf in her bedroom, which overflowed with novels. Novels of every kind: mysteries, thrillers but most especially romance. She loved to escape in those.

The call to prayer sounded.
Isha
, the last prayer of the night.

She went to the front window and pulled the curtain aside slightly so she could peer out. Men flooded the street, heading to the mosque. Where was Rakin? He should have been here by now.

Her neighbor Ahmed stared at her door, and then focused his eyes on her. She didn’t drop the curtain, though she knew he expected her to. She wouldn’t back down from this man. His pettiness no longer just irritated her; now it made her angry. His spying could endanger them all.

He started across the street toward her door.

Dammit. What did he want? She debated leaving, but she didn’t like the look in his eyes, intent and malicious. This was one snake you didn’t walk away from.

He pounded on the door, vibrating the thin wood. She clenched her jaw.

She drew the veil across the lower portion of her face and opened her door. His fist was still upraised.

“Where is your brother?” he demanded in Arabic. “He hasn’t been to the mosque all day.”

“Sick,” she said, sticking with the story she’d told Amirah. She went to close the door, but he stopped it with his hand.

“Let me see him.”

She scowled and didn’t bother hiding it. “No. It’s
Isha
. You should go to the mosque, not pester us.”

He pushed on the door. She blocked it with her foot rather than be seen to push against it with her shoulder. Her leg power far exceeded his ability to push with his arm.

“I’ve been watching you.”

“Well, that’s creepy.”

He pushed harder. “You’re too willful,” he said.

She held the door easily. She might be petite but it was all compact strength, and these situations were exactly why she kept up that strength.

“Are you done, Ahmed?” she asked, putting just a touch of boredom in her tone.

“You need a man to keep you in line,” he continued. “Someone strong, who will make you behave with modesty.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Someone like you?”

“I have the strength to do that, yes.”

She glanced at his hand on the door, before looking back at him. “I’m not so sure about that.”

His eyes widened. “Such insolence. I will beat that out of you.”

She let the knowledge of all the people she’d killed enter her eyes. “You could try.”

He blanched.