She felt around, noting that she’d cleared everything from atop the beam. Then her hands dipped lower and she leaned forward as far as she was able, her breath squeezing out in tortured breaths as she strained to discover a way out from underneath the heavy piece of wood.

A thoughtful frown curved her lips downward and her forehead wrinkled. She moved her hands lower to confirm the fact that the bottoms of her legs didn’t in fact lie on the floor, but rather there was a layer of rubble and debris, and her legs were trapped between that layer and the beam.

She moved her hands outward, feeling to the sides to see if the beam had any support other than her legs. Sure it was heavy, but it didn’t feel like she was bearing the brunt of its entire weight. She wouldn’t have been able to turn over if she were.

Sure enough, the beam lay uneven across her legs but there were mounds of debris on either side of her that the beam was propped up on. She had maybe an inch of space between her leg with the injured knee and where the beam slanted across her, but on the other side, the beam pressed against her skin, but the weight wasn’t unbearable.

Excited, she began to dig at the rubble underneath her legs, leaning up and this way and that in an effort to wiggle out every single obstacle between the backs of her legs and the floor. When her bleeding fingertips brushed along the rough concrete, hope flared, bursting into an inextinguishable flame. She was going to get out.

After shoving the rough and jagged pieces farther away from both legs, she reached behind her, leaning back as far as she could, planting her palms on the floor for leverage. Then she began the arduous task of inching backward, praying that enough space had been created between the beam and her legs to allow her to slide free from her final barrier to freedom.

It sapped every ounce of her strength. She was inhaling and exhaling noisily, trying to drag precious oxygen into her lungs as her entire body strained to pull her legs from beneath the heavy wood.

Each inch was agony. This time she didn’t curse the tears that not only threatened, but slid down her cheeks. She was too focused on her goal to care. Besides, if she managed to pull off her escape, she could consider them tears of relief.

She felt a burst of exultation when the going got easier as the thicker part of her legs pulled loose. As her legs grew smaller toward her feet, she was able to move much quicker. Finally the tops of her feet bumped into the barrier and she was forced to stop, take a short break to catch her breath and then breathe away the pain and tension.

She flexed her feet forward as far as she could flatten them. She turned them to the side, gritting her teeth at the pain the twisting motion caused her battered knee. But it worked. Her feet slid under the beam, rubbing against the coarse wood. She could feel splinters embedding themselves into the soft skin of her arches, but she was too close to victory to even pause.

She welcomed the feel of the tiny wood shards piercing the tops of her feet, because it meant she was almost there. At the end, she didn’t even feel the splinters cutting into her, though she felt the warmth of blood on her skin from where the beam had abraded the tender flesh.

Her hands slipped and she nearly fell back when her feet finally escaped the barrier. She scrambled upright, because if she let herself relax even for a moment, she might never muster the will to get up, get out. Flee.

Triumph surged, hot and wild in her veins. But as she lurched to her feet—or rather attempted to do so—her triumph left her sagging like a deflated balloon. Pain lanced down her spine, all the way down to her feet and then back up again, racing toward the base of her skull, where it seemed to ricochet. For several long seconds her head drew spasmodically from the pain shooting up her neck, almost as though she were having a seizure. She breathed through the pain until at last it subsided to a manageable level and the rigidity finally left her neck so she was able to move once more.

She shook like a leaf. The effort to stand, something so easy and taken for granted before, had sapped her strength and left her huddled on the floor as limp as a dishrag.

No. Not now. Damn it. She had not spent the entire night freeing herself from the wreckage of the clinic only to lie there and await her fate at the hands of men who were so evil that she couldn’t comprehend such a capacity for hatred and violence. No. They would not get their hands on her. She’d take her own life before ever allowing her fate to be decided by monsters. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. She had a lot of life left to live. This was only a minor—okay, a major—bump in the road.

Everyone had them. Maybe not everyone faced gun-wielding, rocket-launcher-carrying crazed maniacs who used explosives as naturally as others breathed and whose mode of transportation was tanks, but she’d survived relatively unscathed. Physically. She’d carry the mental scars from this day for the rest of her life. She had no doubt.

This time she tested her strength very carefully, pushing herself up with her hands, bending her uninjured knee down to the floor to give her lift, but she was careful to angle her hurt knee out so that it bore no weight and didn’t press into the floor. Getting up with two hands and only one leg wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, but it would get the job done. She was prepared this time and not acting like a hasty fool out to get herself killed by running madly from the destroyed structure that had been home to her for the last year.

She didn’t allow herself to feel sorrow as she scanned the area, putting only as much pressure on the left foot bearing her swollen knee as was necessary to limp forward and make slow progress through the devastation. She had to have the necessary tools to survive on her own. In a foreign land with no American military presence, no American embassy, no refuge or sanctuary and no way to get back home unless she could somehow get word to her family.

She couldn’t look at the broken, bloodied bodies she knew were there but thankfully were hard to make out in the dark. She had to be smart, a passive observer, and look for things that would help her escape. Not just from this building and the men who’d attacked without provocation. But the entire country.

Somehow she had to find her way down the long, winding, arduous path home.

CHAPTER 3

“YOU want me and my men to do what?” Hancock asked mildly, not betraying his feeling of What the fuck.

Guy Hancock, or Hancock as he was generally known, although not many knew his given name, faced Russell Bristow, his incredulity over Bristow’s stupidity not showing, but there nonetheless.

Hancock’s identity changed with the winds, and at times it was hard for him to keep up with who he currently was. It was a tired existence, one he grew wearier of all the time. But at least he had a purpose. Or at least he had at one time. Now he wasn’t as sure as he’d been earlier on. Time had robbed him of that strict code of honor until he wondered just how close to the line he was and how close he’d come to becoming the very thing he worked so tirelessly to extinguish and protect the innocent from. He knew no other life except killing. Manipulating. Mastering the masters of evil and exacting justice in his own cold, methodical way that had nothing to do with any established legal code.

He’d long ago forgone any semblance of a conscience. He had an unwavering and deeply ingrained sense of honor, but not everyone would agree that with honor came a conscience. And his personal code was just that. Personal to him. He didn’t see in black and white. His world was steeped in gray. Great looming shadows that threatened to consume him. At times he felt hunted—and he was—but it was as though he knew his time was limited. The urgency of taking down his target, one he’d waited a very long time to get close to, was like a ticking time bomb. Success had eluded him, and now time had run out. Hancock would never get this close again. He knew it. His men knew it. They felt, too, that they would all likely die carrying out their mission. And yet none turned their back on their duty. They embraced death as the result of victory. Nothing more.