"I knew she understood us." Declan released her arm, as if he were letting down his guard. Dumb. She could still be lethal.
"I'm a British Muslim," she said defiantly. Well, that was her first lie, but she knew they'd fall for it. "Why should I help you?"
Declan's gaze flickered over her face. Did she see disappointment there? "You're our prisoner," he said, his tone curt. "If you want to bargain for your freedom, you'll think of a way to be useful."
For just a moment, lust flashed in his eyes, but he masked it quickly. Temper spiked within her, but she knew she was mostly angry at herself. Because she'd been burned by the same lust. She wanted him to drop his big body down on hers, open his mouth over hers, and do to her exactly what he'd imagined doing for one moment.
But he hadn't acted on his thought, and she wouldn't either. Nor could she blame him for thinking it, because something hot sparked between them every time their eyes met. She had to get away from him as soon as possible before he distracted her from her goal.
In the meantime, they might be useful to her. She sat up, keeping her arms behind her back. She immediately felt more in control sitting up, and decided to go on the offensive.
"I know your name is Declan. But who's he?" She jerked her head at the other guy. "And what are you two Americans doing here in Iraq?"
"You can call me Zack," the other guy answered, "and we're not in Iraq. We're in the Kurdish Autonomous Region."
She rolled her eyes. "The Sinjar Mountains you see over there are in Iraq."
Zack grinned at her, but his eyes were cold. "The borders are very fluid these days."
"Do not treat me like a fool," she warned. Her hands flexed behind her back, itching to wipe that smug grin off his face. Zack had a typical bad-boy appearance, all high cheekbones, black beard, and white teeth. His body was long and lean.
"If you're as smart as you think you are, you'll believe what I said." Zack rose to his feet in a fluid motion. "You're a woman alone in a part of the world where no one and nothing is kind to women."
"Are you threatening me?"
"Nothing that dramatic," he responded, his tone bored. "I'm actually waiting to hear what Dec has decided about how he can use you."
"Stop talking about me like that!" She'd managed to get to her feet, using the large rock behind her for leverage.
Zack spit out a crude epithet. "Don't be so stupid. That niqab you're wearing is designed to make sure you aren't appealing to men. Trust me, it's working."
"Knock it off, Zack." Declan stood. "She has pretty eyes."
"It's the only damn part of her we can see so I guess you'd have to say that."
"What's your name, buttercup?" Dec stared at her, his face impassive, his tone a hard contrast to his nickname for her. Like Zack, he was bearded, so it was actually hard for her to see much more than his eyes, especially in the dark. But she could tell he had a squarish face, with high cheekbones, a straight blade of a nose, and sensuous lips barely visible through the dark beard.
With his broad shoulders and soldier-straight stance, he did look like a military guy. But his dark hair was long enough to show a bit beneath the helmet he wore, and the beard had been growing in for more than a few days.
Then there was his gun, a lethal looking thing that he carried with great assurance.
The oversized backpack might say 'trekker' but that gun, the night vision goggles, and the pistol strapped to a holder on his leg suggested a more lethal profession. Still, she couldn't imagine what American military men could be doing here in the Sinjar Mountains.
She hoped she was wrong in her assessment, because she had nothing but contempt for military guys. Always thinking that violence was the answer. She herself worked for a UN NGO, a non-governmental body. People needed food and education and health care a lot more than they needed bullets and bombs.
So she hoped this jacked-up military wannabe didn't think she was going to fall at his feet.
"My name is Laila," she answered, "so you can knock off the 'buttercup' nonsense."
His lips quirked in sudden amusement and she stared, unable to tear her eyes away. That smile transformed him, making him younger, less forbidding, and, unfortunately, hotter than a five-alarm fire. She couldn't afford to be thinking like this.
"Oh, but Laila—" He somehow turned her name into a caress. "I thought you'd appreciate a little friendliness. Seeing as how we're going to get very intimate."
Her heart kicked into overdrive. "You wouldn't dare."
"Dare what?" He still seemed amused.
"The penalties for rape are severe here in the Middle East."
"Rape?" He raised his eyebrows. "I don't think so, sweetie. That burka is not as enticing as you seem to think it is."
Now she felt like a fool, assuming that he wanted her. "Then what are you talking about? Being intimate."
"We have to search you."
"Not in this life, you pervert," she snapped.
"Keep up the sweet talk," he muttered. "Nothing will ease my conscience more."
"You know you can't lay a hand on a Muslim woman."
He studied her for a moment. "You'd rather join the afterlife right now?"
He wouldn't. She stilled the prickle of fear that spiked within her. If they'd been planning to kill her, she'd be dead already. But perhaps she'd be smart to stop sparring with him. At least for now.
Zack spoke into the sudden silence. "I'll let you have the privilege, Dec," he said. "Seeing as how you can't keep your eyes off her."
"I doubt she's played her last trick on us," Declan responded without heat. "We need to pay careful attention to her."
She couldn't allow that. They'd see that her hands were unbound.
"She's either horribly deformed, or she has a big backpack under that hideous cloak she's wearing," Zack said. "Plenty of searching to do."
Declan pointed to a spot about three feet in front of himself. "Step over there."
She couldn't do that. They'd see that her hands were unbound. "I am wearing a backpack," she admitted. "But I'm not armed. There's no reason to search me."
Declan regarded her from beneath lowered brows. "Right now, you're a handicap to us. You might want to think about improving your status. We need to move on in the next few minutes, with or without you. Convince me that it should be with you."
Zack snorted. "Start by telling us what the hell you're doing alone in this deserted landscape. Where are you going? What were you doing—"
A sharp downward chop from Dec cut off Zack's words.
She glanced from one man to the other. What had Zack been planning to ask her? Why didn't Declan want him to say it? It must have been something that would give her a clue about what they were doing here.
"Why were those jihadis following you?" Declan said quickly, almost as if he wanted to distract her.
Her heart thumped. For a moment she'd forgotten all about the terrorists. "What happened to them?" she asked, her voice a little sharper than she liked. The Americans were a problem. Two jihadis could be a nightmare.
"They've been taken care of," Declan said smoothly. "Answer my question."
Taken care of? Had they been killed? She hadn't heard any shots. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as the stony ground. How ruthless were these Americans?
"I don't know anything about those guys who attacked me," she said. Okay, Lie Number Two. She certainly did not know who they were, but she knew what they wanted. They'd made that very clear in the tent last night.
She was sick with alarm at the confirmation that the two jihadis had definitely been following her. She'd hoped that once she was out of their grasp, they would carry on without whatever they'd been doing when she was captured. Had they all followed her from the refugee camp? Did they know what mission she was on?
Well, actually, no one knew except herself. But did they think they knew? If so, they should have welcomed her as she was supposedly traveling to Sinjar to help their cause.
"What makes you
think those guys were following me?" she asked, merely to say something.
She thought she'd shaken them off when she escaped. She'd used her GPS to choose a more roundabout route to Sinjar, figuring that the terrorists, if they decided to follow her, would certainly take the most direct route. But then again, she'd been certain she and her two Kurdish guides had given everyone the slip back at the refugee camp when they'd left yesterday afternoon. Had it been pure bad luck that the ISIS group had found them last night? Or had they been looking for her? She couldn't imagine they were because no one knew about her plan to rescue her sister.
Her gaze traveled over to Declan. Maybe, as he'd said, she should be thinking of a way to be useful to these guys. Now that she'd been captured by a group of jihadis, attacked again by two of them, and then captured by these Americans, her plan to travel solo seemed naive and impossible.
"They were following you," Zack said shortly. "Stop playing games."
"I don't know anything about them," she repeated.
"Not sure I believe that," Declan said. "So answer Zack's question. What are you doing here in the Sinjar Mountains?"
"I—"
She barely restrained a scream as two more silent shadows surrounded the group, pressing in from either side.
Chapter Five
Laila pressed a hand to her mouth, and Dec was grateful that she'd managed to stifle a scream. He also noticed that her gaze flew immediately to him, and he tried to restrain the warmth that flickered through him. He would protect her, but only because she was a woman, and a prisoner in his charge. It would be unprofessional of him to have any personal interest in her while he was on duty. Also, he had to respect the fact that she was clearly a Muslim woman with very different cultural attitudes about men and women and interpersonal relationships. Although she was enticing enough, even in her burka, the clothing represented a fortress of belief that he wasn't inclined to want to storm.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, holding her gaze. "These men are part of our, ah, group."
"Geek." Dec gestured to him.
"The other guy is, uh, Harp," Dec said. It was a little odder to give out that nickname. Not that Harp's real name was much better. Dominick Harpo. Dec couldn't imagine how someone put those two names together, and thought it was good. He waved at Harp, a swarthy, muscular half-Creole, half-redneck from the swamps of Louisiana. Harp had a hard head, a hard demeanor, and a short temper. But he was exactly the kind of fighter you'd want at your back and the nastier the fight, the more you'd appreciate him.
Harp eyed Laila suspiciously. "Who the hell is she?"
"Laila," Declan said shortly. "It's a long story. We don't know what we're going to do with her."
"That's easy," Harp said. "Turn her loose. We don't work with women."
"Work?" Laila raised her brows. "What are you Americans doing here anyway? You never did tell me that."
"Nor do we intend to," Harp said. "Our business is private."
She rolled her eyes. "Hello? Even a child would know you're military. Probably special forces, right?"
"Don't be too clever," Declan warned. "We haven't decided what we're going to do with you yet."
"Do with me?" Her eyes flashed at him over the stupid veil. "If you were going to kill me, you'd have done it by now. So stop with the lame threats."
"The easiest way to kill you would be to leave you here," Zack said. "Keep that in mind, and try to be civil."
Declan turned to Harp. "Did you find some locals we can work with?"
Harp spat into the dirt beside him. "Negative. We found two fucking hajjis lying toes up on the ground. You do them?"
Declan and Zack exchanged a quick look. "They were following Laila."
"Way to be stealthy," Harp commented drily. "Now we have bodies to fucking get rid of."
"Yeah." Dec shrugged. "It was unavoidable, but we do need to figure out a way to dispose of them." They couldn't afford to have anyone else stumble upon the bodies and wonder who'd killed them.
"This ground is too hard and rocky to bury them in," Zack pointed out.
"There's a stone house Harp and I saw not too far away," Greg said, "when we were exploring. It didn't looked occupied, but it was clear that the land surrounding it had been cultivated not too long ago."
"There's no point moving the bodies there just to have the owner return and find them," Zack said.
"There are no local inhabitants left in these mountains," Laila said.
Greg raised his eyebrows. "How do you know that?"
"I was at the Kurdish controlled refugee camp north of here with the Yazidis. This area has been inhabited only by Yazidis for centuries. But when the ISIS terrorists moved on them a couple years ago, they were brutal. At this point the Yazidi have all either been killed or they've fled."
Dec and the guys knew all that, but he wondered if some of the Yazidi might have moved back after the Kurds re-took the city of Sinjar.
"Winter's coming on," Zack said. "Someone might seek shelter in that hut."
Laila shook her head. "Those huts aren't suitable for winter. Men occupy them in the summer time while tending their plots. In the winter, they would normally return to their homes in the villages."
"What do you think, Dec?" Greg glanced over at him. "You know as much about these Yazidis as any of us."
"It's true that they seem to have been obliterated from this part of Iraq," he answered slowly. "We don't know if there are still stragglers high up in the mountains who might welcome even such scanty shelter as a non-winterized hut. But I suppose we'd better take the chance. We certainly can't bury those bodies easily in this hard ground, and I can't think of any other way to hide them."
"Before we move out, I'd like to know why were those jihadis were following her." Greg pointed to Laila. "And why did they need to be killed?"
"We don't know why they were following her," Dec said. "We had a language barrier."
"What language does she speak?" Harp jerked a hand in her direction.
"English, for sure. We haven't progressed beyond that."
"She could have been working with the hajjis."
Zack nodded. "That's a possibility. Before we—" He glanced at Laila. "Before we silenced them, we asked what they were doing. They indicated that they'd been told to follow her."
"I don't like it." Harp flung himself on the ground, using his pack as a pillow, his arms and legs spread wide.
"No one does," Declan said.
"Least of all me," Laila interjected. "I'll be on my way just as soon as it suits you to let me go."
"To lead the hajjis right back to us, no doubt." Harp rubbed a hand over his chin. "You speak British English. What the fuck are you doing in that getup?" He waved to her niqab.
"There are many veiled women in Britain," she answered, her voice cool. "But I would think that anyone could see that this niqab is an excellent disguise. Men won't even notice me, let alone recognize me if they see me again."
Declan rolled his eyes at her comment. She was wrong about that. Whenever he got a chance, he catalogued her eyes, and she'd be surprised to know that he'd recognize them again anywhere. She wore no makeup, but her eyes had a pleasing shape, a bit almond-like. They gleamed like black opals, fiery, intense, and mysterious. She had long eyelashes, which were a feature all by themselves. Her brows were like narrow bird wings, smooth and arched.
Furthermore, he knew her height, 5' 9" tall. He knew her feet were a size nine and her hands were long and slender, a pale white that would give away, all by themselves, the fact that she wasn't Iraqi.
Once they'd searched her, which he intended to do very soon, he'd know all the secrets of her body that were currently hidden from his view. He was so eager to do that search that he knew he shouldn't do it. But it had to be done. It would be not only foolish, but also against orders, to travel with someone whom they hadn't searched. And, regrettably, he wasn't about to let any of the other guys touch her. He already felt more strongly about her than he l
iked.
If that wasn't a stupid feeling, he didn't know what was.
"Disguise for what?" Greg's quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. "What are you doing out here? And all alone?"
Dec held his breath as he waited for her answer. Would she mention what had happened in the tent last night? Would she say anything about her two companions, the murdered Kurds?
"I'm traveling to Sinjar," she answered. "On private business."
Declan gave a short laugh that didn't sound like amusement. He was disappointed that at best, she was lying by omission. At worst, she was flat-out lying and they had to be very wary of her.
"You expect us to believe," he said, "that you're trekking alone through a desert-like, uninhabited war zone for some kind of business that's too delicate to disclose?"
"I don't care what you believe."
"Dec, you're not thinking of working with her?" Greg jerked his head at Laila.
Declan shook his head. "No chance. You know how I feel about working with women."
Laila glared at him. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing to worry your little head about, honey." Declan used a patronizing tone deliberately. For some reason, she brought all of his protective instincts to the fore. He couldn't bear the idea of her being exposed to danger. And the mission they were on was dangerous.
No, he didn't want to take her with them. On the other hand, she certainly wasn't safe wandering around in a war zone by herself.
"You said that just to irritate me," she answered.
He widened his eyes in fake innocence. "Said what?"
"That you didn't work with women."
"Did it work?" he asked.
Her eyes flashed at him. "I can keep up with you."
"Pardon me," he said sarcastically. "If you had the mental strength to travel with us in this inhospitable country, you wouldn't even notice the small crack I made, never mind let it irritate you. As for physical strength to match ours—" He paused to look her over. "No, I guarantee you couldn't do half of the routine stuff we do."
He moved closer to tower over her deliberately. "And, honey, trust me, you wouldn't survive the difficult stuff we do."
Field Stripped: 15 Steamy Military Romances Page 111