Close Pursuit. Cindy Dees

laid her head on the girl’s chest. The rib cage did not rise, and she heard only the swish of her own blood in her ear. God, she hated silence. But then a barrage of gunfire made it too loud for her to hear a thing, and that was worse. She hunted again, frantically, for a pulse under the girl’s jaw. Nothing.

      Tears welling in her eyes, she shook her head at Alex.

      He continued to work in grim silence for several more minutes. But finally he went still. He stared down at the girl’s body bleakly. And then all he said in a terrible, agonized whisper was, “Turn off the flashlight.”

      Her second hand freed, she turned to the business of quieting the crying infant. She maneuvered the hot little bundle inside her coat until it lay across her, the baby’s head on her left breast. She remembered hearing somewhere that the sound of heartbeats calmed babies. It took a few moments, but it worked.

      Alex shook himself out of wherever he’d gone mentally and crawled to the edge of the crevasse. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

      “What about her?” Katie glanced down at the corpse of the girl who’d been so brave and angry and determined to live.

      “We have to leave her.”

      Every cell in Katie’s being protested the notion of just abandoning the girl here like a discarded hunk of meat. Thankfully, Alex crawled back to the girl’s side. Gently, he closed her eyelids before pulling the end of her burka across her face. He covered the bloody mess that had been the girl’s belly with a towel and arranged the girl’s robes over it all.

      He placed his hand over the girl’s heart and murmured barely loud enough for Katie to hear, “Rest in peace, and be with whatever God you worshipped in life.”

      The tears overflowed from Katie’s eyes then, and she sucked back a sob. She was shocked when strong arms wrapped around her, dragging her up against a hard body. Between them was the hot bump of an infant torn from its mother’s dying body. Katie didn’t even know what sex it was. A hand pushed her face down onto his shoulder; his own face was buried in her hair. He shuddered against her while she cried into his neck.

      But as the ominous thwocking of a helicopter became audible in the distance, he stilled and muttered into her hair, “If you want that baby to live, grieve later. Follow me now. Fast and silent.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE NEXT HOUR was a nightmare. The mountain was no less steep at the top than at the bottom, and the baby fussed occasionally, sending her into a cold panic as she tried frantically to shush the newborn. It didn’t help matters that the battle raging below grew more intense as the night wore on. And who knew what lay over the mountain peak?

      Alex was grim and silent, focused intently on finding a route up the mountain. He was quick to lend her a helping hand, though, or to haul her up over a particularly rough patch. As she’d correctly guessed, he was deceptively strong. And when her strength lagged and her will to go on faltered, he was indomitable.

      And there was always that intense hug to think about. It had been more than simple comfort. He had let her inside his guard for just a minute. Made a human connection with her. Maybe even needed her for a second there.

      Alex murmured from ahead, “Stay low. We’re cresting the mountain. We don’t want our silhouettes visible below.”

      She crawled across the open peak and huddled in the lee of a boulder just over the crest beside Alex.

      “How’s the baby?” he asked.

      “Alive. It moves around now and then.”

      “Let me see it,” Alex muttered.

      She unzipped her coat and lifted the infant out. In a flash of mortar fire, she saw it was a baby girl. Said baby girl took immediate and loud umbrage at being exposed to the sharp chill, however, and started to squall.

      Alex pulled a clean towel out of his pack and swaddled the infant in it after a fast examination. Thoughtfully, he passed the baby back to her, and Katie slipped the child back in her coat. It took a minute or so, but the baby quieted in the warm and dark next to Katie’s heart.

      “We have to get food for her,” Katie whispered.

      “She can go a day or two without eating, actually,” Alex replied. “Most babies don’t take in much nourishment in their first twenty-four hours.”

      Huh. Live and learn. “What about us?”

      He shrugged. “We’re another matter. We’ll need water before long.”

      “Any bright ideas about what to do next?” she asked.

      “Go downhill for a while.”

      She liked that idea a whole lot better than continuing to scale mountain peaks in the dark. With no climbing gear. And a baby stuffed down her coat.

      Trying to stay oriented as to where they were, she pictured the map of this region they’d been showed in the D.U. offices. Another village lay at the head of this valley. Its name was something like Ghan or Ghun. She couldn’t remember exactly. No telling if it was another Karshani clan village or belonged to some other clan entirely. As likely as not, the neighbors hated each other’s guts.

      This side of the mountain was more a slope than a cliff, mostly made treacherous by loose, rolling gravel. She made much of the descent sliding on her butt; before long, they stood at the bottom of a narrow valley in deep darkness.

      Alex shocked her by brushing off the seat of her jeans and finishing off by giving her ass the briefest of squeezes. So brief she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not. But not so brief that her breathing didn’t accelerate sharply.

      “Altitude getting to you?” he murmured.

      Yeah, right. Altitude. “Gee, I don’t know,” she whispered back. “Maybe I should feel your butt and see if a sudden case of altitude sickness overcomes you.”

      “I dare you.”

      Oh, it was so on. She stepped right up behind him and slipped her hands down the waistband of his jeans. He lurched in shock as she slid her palms between his briefs and the denim and cupped strong, well-defined male cheeks that abruptly went rock hard.

      “Not bad, Doctor. Not bad at all.”

      He whipped around, effectively yanking her hands out of his pants, and stared down at her. Enveloped in darkness and lust that rolled off him like sin, it crossed her mind that, perchance, she was playing with fire by messing with this man.

      “Think before you go there with me,” he rasped. “I’m not one of your milk-toast college boys.”

      The warning in his voice was clear. Although what, exactly, he was warning her about, she wasn’t sure. That he wouldn’t stand for mind games from her? Or that his tastes were darker than the average college co-ed’s? Or maybe that getting involved with him would be an all-or-nothing proposition.

      Was she prepared to go there with him? How far beyond her experience would he take her? Just how intense would sex with him be? Turned on and scared in equal measure, she let out a careful breath as he turned and stalked off into the night.

      She’d wanted to be taken seriously. To be treated like an adult. For everyone to quit seeing a sweet, naive kid when they looked at her. But how much innocence was she willing to lose? If she didn’t miss her guess, being with Alex Peters could cost her damn near all of hers.

      They’d been hiking for maybe an hour when the baby commenced crying and nothing she could do would quiet the poor little thing.

      Alex muttered, “She’s hungry. Nursing after birth is an instinctive imperative. We probably won’t shut her up shy of feeding her something.”

      “Any suggestions as to what to feed her?”

      “Actually, yes.” He slid his pack off his shoulders and rummaged in it, emerging with an IV bag.