Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“I can’t leave her,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“You can. You will. It’s what she would want.” If she was still alive to want.
“I can’t leave you.” She shook her head.
“You don’t have to when I’m the one always going.”
“I can wait another day,” she protested, hands gripping my arms.
“You can’t.” I touched my forehead to hers and breathed deeply. “Do you remember when I asked, if you knew the world had twenty-four hours before some calamity struck, where would you go? And you said that you’d go wherever you could be the most help?”
“This is not the time for the trivia game, Nate.” She pulled me closer, tears filling her eyes.
“Do you remember?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “It was when we were leaving Kandahar.”
“Ask me.”
Her lower lip trembled. “If you knew the world had twenty-four hours before some calamity struck, where would you go?”
“I would go wherever you are. I knew it that night in Tybee. Hell, I probably knew it the second you reached for my hand in that plane. There is no force on earth that would keep me from you.” I kissed her softly. “That’s why you have to get on the plane, Izzy. I won’t be able to think, to focus, to walk so much as twelve feet away from you if I don’t know you’re headed to safety.”
“We’re magnets, right?” She wound her arms around my neck. “Always finding each other.”
“And we will find each other again, I promise.” One of my hands fell to the gentle slope of her waist as I fought the emotions threatening to pull me under. “We haven’t had our shot yet.”
Surging up on her toes, she kissed me.
I slanted my mouth over hers and took it like it could be the last time, leaving us both breathing hard when I finally found the fortitude to lift my head. “I love you, Isabeau Astor. Promise me you’ll get on the plane. I know you want to stay for Serena, but I need you to leave for me.”
“Promise me you’ll come home.”
“I promise I will come home. I will find you. We will have our shot.” My chest burned with how much I loved her, how hard it was to walk away from her in any situation, let alone in this place.
“I love you.” She held me even tighter, and I pressed a hard kiss to her forehead, trying like hell to breathe deeply enough to minimize the burn in my eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Then I let her go, and her arms fell away as I stepped back, taking one last look at her before turning around and forcing my feet to move, my legs to carry me away from her.
“I’m sorry,” Torres said, pushing off the wall as I walked past him. “I know what she is to you.”
Everything. She was everything. “If I asked you to go with her, would you?”
“If I could, then you know I would.” He shot me a look so full of remorse that I had to look away. “But I can’t, Nate, and you know why.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed the pack I’d left near the entrance to the temporary embassy and slung it over my shoulders, boxing up every emotion I possibly could. Now wasn’t the time to lose it over Izzy. Now was the time to act for Izzy. “Unfortunately, I do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IZZY
Kabul, Afghanistan
August 2021
I watched the clock tick away the minutes after Nate left, then the hours, pulling myself together so I could help wherever possible.
There were too many people and not enough helpers.
The panic was palpable, and as flights began to take off again, that energy transformed into pure desperation. Desperation to find missing family members. Desperation to obtain a visa long since submitted for. Desperation to get a seat on any plane that was going anywhere but here.
I looked up every possible minute, searching for my sister in a sea of faces but never finding her. Nate was gone. Serena was God knew where, and there was nothing I could do to help either of them.
After telling the twelfth—or maybe it was more, I lost count—previous military interpreter that I couldn’t do anything to speed up his paperwork, I felt defeated in every way.
Three o’clock came before I was ready, and before I could motion to the next person in line, a man appeared at my left.
A man with a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in cargo pants with a weapon in a thigh holster, a black shirt, and a Kevlar vest.
“Isabeau Astor?” he asked.
“Sergeant Green sent you,” I guessed, a fissure cracking in my heart.
“We both know his name isn’t Sergeant Green, but sure.” He nodded with a tight smile. “Said he met you during a plane crash.”
I nodded. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?”
“It is.” There was a healthy dose of compassion in his eyes. “I’m guessing your sister didn’t show?”