LITMIR.BIZ

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prisoners.”

      She flinched. Not the best way to handle a pissed-off authority figure like Moubayed. Sure enough, the major scowled and threw a spate of angry French at Grayson.

      “Do you understand what this guy’s saying?” Larry asked her, thinly veiled contempt in his voice.

      She cleared her throat and said delicately, “Let’s just say he’s commenting on the state of American etiquette.” She’d swear the Army major understood what she said, because she was sure a ghost of a grin flickered across his face.

      She spoke hesitantly to Moubayed in French, being sure to look down at his shoes all the while. “Please forgive my colleague for his abruptness. He is eager to get started on the work you have requested of us. Perhaps one of your men can show us the way to any prisoners you might be holding here?”

      Apparently mollified by her humble attitude, the major signaled to a soldier, who stepped forward silently. Moubayed told the guy to take them to…someplace…a quickly uttered Arabic word she didn’t recognize. The soldier nodded briskly and gestured them to follow him.

      The soldier stopped in front of a bulky wooden door with a curved top, banded by iron hinges and set low in the base of a round stone tower. It looked like something straight out of the Dark Ages.

      “What is this place?” she tried in French to the soldier.

      “Le cachot,” he replied. The dungeon.

      Get out! A real, live, honest-to-goodness dungeon? This country was like some sort of weird time warp. She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. Her first mission as a relief worker.

      The reality of standing in a tiny country halfway around the world from home, about to visit actual prisoners of war, hit her. Dauntingly. The scowling soldier beside her, casually toting a machine gun, was a whole different ball of wax than the smiling and grateful faces of hungry children she’d envisioned when she signed up for this job. A creeping sense of being an impostor stole over her. Maybe she was just a spoiled little rich girl playing at being a social activist, assuaging her conscience over the advantages life had granted her.

      “Come on, girl!” Larry snapped. “You don’t want to make these guys mad, especially since you’re a female.”

      Like he was anyone to talk. She jumped and followed her partner hastily. Her black abaya flapped around her like an unruly sail, and she batted at the billowing fabric. How did Muslim women function in these stupid things, anyway? And she couldn’t see squat out the veil swathing her head and covering most of her face. No wonder women weren’t allowed to drive in this part of the world! In these getups they were half-blind.

      She and Larry followed their escort into a round room with a desk and a couple chairs, all occupied by lounging soldiers. Their escort stepped across the space to another iron-studded door and knocked on it. A peephole slid open. Fluid words of Arabic were exchanged, and the door squeaked open ponderously. She followed Larry inside. A second soldier fell in behind them.

      The sense of walking into a time warp intensified.

      The passageway stretching away into blackness before them was dark and dank, lit only by torches in iron sconces on the walls. Straw littered the stone floors, and shiny black water dripped down the rock walls, its noise the only sound interrupting the heavy silence. The hallway looked carved out of the bowels of the earth itself. Katy swore she saw a rodent of some kind scurry off into the dark. Huge ancient padlocks adorned rows of ironbound doors that wound away into the gloom. An otherworldly chill skittered down her spine. This was the kind of place that touched souls. Changed them. Crushed them.

      Larry glanced over his shoulder at her, grinning. “Some cool dungeon, huh? You take the doors on the right and I’ll take the doors on the left. It’ll go faster that way. Holler if you run into an injury you can’t handle. I’m a trained trauma first responder.”

      “Uh, okay,” Katy mumbled. She had to go solo right from the start? She gulped. This would be just like her work at the homeless shelter back in Washington, D.C., where she took care of minor bumps and bruises and lent a sympathetic ear as needed. The only difference here was that she was dressed like a mummy and standing in a medieval den of torture.

      The first soldier peeled off with Larry, and the second guard went with her. She gestured at the first door, and the guy unlocked it.

      She stepped forward, but the guard blocked her way. “Infidel bitch,” he snarled. “Do not pollute a son of God with your filth.”

      She blinked, startled. Now what was that supposed to mean? That she wasn’t supposed to recruit the prisoner to become Christian? Or she wasn’t supposed to touch him, maybe? But she had to touch these guys to treat any injuries they might have. Crud. She’d just have to brazen it out. She had a job to do, and if this solider didn’t like it, he could just lump it.

      She stepped around the guard and into the tiny cell. And then she turned and shut the door in the guard’s face. She took deep satisfaction from the look of surprise she glimpsed right before she all but whacked him in the nose.

      Alone. Thank God. The prisoner—part of the house guard of Il Leone, judging by his khaki uniform—had a minor concussion and some minor blunt-injury trauma. She wrote down his name on Larry’s spreadsheet and took note of his injuries, describing them in detail. Nothing to write home about.

      At the second door, her soldier escort drew a breath to say something to her again, but she held up a hand, surprising him into silence. In resolute French she told him, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to do my job.” To soften her words, she added, “And in return, I will not tell you how to do yours.”

      He seemed so offended by the idea of her even suggesting what he do, that he appeared unable to come up with a snappy comeback. She slipped into the second cell alone. This prisoner had a broken finger that needed splinting.

      Apparently she’d achieved a hostile but silent truce with her escort guard, for he merely opened doors for her now—still glaring at her, of course, lest she think she’d won. By the fifth prisoner or so, her nerves calmed down and she fell into a groove of treating minor injuries while the men babbled out their fears, mostly over dying at the hands of their Baraqi Army captors. She couldn’t blame them for the sentiment.

      And then she stood in front of the sixth cell. Her escort unlocked the door and stepped aside while she entered. The padlock clicked shut behind her.

      The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she squinted into the semidarkness. The small cell was just like all the others, a ten-foot-by-ten-foot cube carved out of stone. The single tiny window high on the back wall must open onto some sort of air shaft, for indirect light filtered through it. A bucket of drinking water stood in one corner, and another bucket in the opposite corner served as a restroom facility, from the smell of it. She made out the shape of a man lying on the hip-high stone ledge that passed for a bed. He looked asleep.

      The torch in her hand guttered as a cool finger of air whisked down her spine. Premonition roared through her, nearly knocking her off her feet. This prisoner is different.

      Chapter 2

      He looked much the same as the others, dirty and exhausted, wearing the beige uniform of a soldier from the royal guard. As her eyes adjusted fully to the gloom, she saw his face was badly battered and swollen. Black eyes, a gashed and broken nose, a split lip and a bad cut on the jaw were all in need of attention. Honestly his face looked like hamburger. A swollen, painful hamburger.

      She spoke softly in French so she wouldn’t startle him out of his sleep. “Bonjour, je suis avec InterAid. Je suis ici pour vous aider.” Hello, I’m with InterAid. I’m here to help you.

      The man’s eyes flew open—as much as two puffy slits could open—staring at her, alert and wary. No panic hovered close to the surface in this guy’s steady gaze. If anything, fury swirled in them. Great. Another chauvinist who felt her breathing the same air as him was an affront to his manhood.

      Still, the

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