The instant she closed her eyes, she thought of Rachel and pictured the man and woman who’d shown up outside her CLU looking for Rachel. They weren’t military. They were more likely of Carmody’s brand, maybe even working with him. They might be friend or foe. Rachel could handle herself, but she’d probably never run up against people like these before. People who thought nothing of using any tactic at their disposal to get what they wanted. People who thought their mission was somehow more vital than that of those who put their bodies on the line every day. People who seemed to have forgotten what the enemy looked like. Rachel didn’t belong anywhere near this snake pit of suspicion and accusation.

Max would have given almost anything to know Rachel was far away from all of this, but she hadn’t asked. Giving Carmody any indication Rachel mattered to her would be like handing him a loaded weapon and pointing it at her own head. He’d already asked the same questions as he had the night before all over again, as if expecting the answers to be different this time. Who were the insurgents who attacked the camp? How did they know the timing of the rescue operation? What was their target? Who was their target? Who had Max told about the operation? Who had someone else told? Who had she met in the jungle? Every time he asked, she answered him the same way she had the first time, and after he’d grown tired of questioning or perhaps thought if he left her alone she’d panic or bargain, he walked out. After a few hours he came back and started again. Keeping track of time was difficult after so many days without sleep in a barren space with nothing to orient her. No windows, no clock, no voices outside the room. They hadn’t taken her to HQ as she’d first expected, but to a nondescript building at the far edge of the base. She hadn’t seen any base personnel at all when she’d climbed out of the Humvee. Maybe no one even knew she was there. She considered who might miss her if she didn’t arrive back in the States anytime soon.

No one.

She hadn’t notified the hospital of her pending return, since her position was secure—ERs always had trouble keeping surgeons willing to take in-house call to cover emergencies—and she hadn’t been sure when she’d arrive stateside. Her fellow docs would be glad to see her—another body to take call and lighten everyone’s load. Maybe the OR nurse she’d spent a night with would give her an extra-special welcome-back smile. But if she never returned? No one would inquire. She hadn’t talked to anyone in her family in over a decade. They hadn’t shown any interest in her plans when she’d been young—in fact, her father had made it clear she was on her own when she hit eighteen. She’d researched how best to pay her way through college and medical school and settled on the Navy. The day after her eighteenth birthday she was on a bus south to Cornell on an ROTC scholarship. She’d never looked back and doubted she’d crossed their minds in years. No girlfriend. No friends. Not even a fucking cat.

Carmody held all the cards except one—she didn’t care what he did to her. And his brand of power depended on fear.

The second time he left her alone she’d slept. And the third. That felt like a couple of hours each time. He hadn’t brought her any food, but he’d left a plastic bottle of water on the table, which she drank. She could use another one. She could use two or three cups of coffee and a big meal.

What she really needed was to see Rachel. Just to know that she was somewhere safe and out of whatever was happening here. When the hunger kept her from sleeping and her mind started to wander a little bit from fatigue and stress and anger, and her tight, iron control started to slip, she thought back to the moments before the Masters at Arms had come for her. Rachel had appeared out of nowhere, standing there on the steps of her CLU, refusing to be turned away or ignored or put off by Max’s wall of silence. Max smiled to herself. Stubborn as she was beautiful. And then somehow, the barriers had crumbled and her resolve had vanished under the soft caress of Rachel’s mouth. She couldn’t push her away, she’d needed her too much. She needed the incredible sensation of being with Rachel—as if they were alone in the universe, standing in a pure mountain glade with the sun shining down and the breeze, so cool, blowing over her skin. As if they had stripped naked and stepped into a crystal lake and the only heat came from Rachel’s skin against her skin, driving the chill away, warming her deep inside. Body to body, she’d run her hands over silky skin and tangled her fingers in thick red-gold hair glowing in the sun. Rachel’s eyes were the color of the evergreens that formed a shield around them. There’d been no death, no dying, no pain. She couldn’t think back to a time when there hadn’t been pain—of rejection, of being on the outside, of never quite being enough to matter. She smiled to herself, thinking of Rachel astride her, wild and free. She’d been enough then. She’d given everything she had and for those few moments, she had been enough.

The door opened and Carmody walked in. “Something amusing, Commander de Milles?”

Max slowly opened her eyes and focused on him. He’d shaved and showered and wore a fresh uniform. She could smell the aftershave still wafting from his skin. Ate too, probably, the bastard.

She said nothing and carefully blanked her mind. She didn’t want him in the room with even the memory of Rachel. He carried a laptop computer that he set on the table between them as he settled into the other chair. He opened it unhurriedly, pushed a few buttons, and turned it toward her.

“I wonder if you could help me out with this.”

Max stared at the laptop as a video played. There was no sound and it was very dark—a night scene—and a little bit grainy, but she instantly recognized the base, the landing field, and a line of Black Hawks tethered to the tarmac. Every few seconds a vehicle passed by on an access road and the headlights cut a swath of light through the darkness, illuminating the birds as if a spotlight shone on them. A shadowy figure leaned over or…she squinted…maybe reached under the open bay of one of the birds. The view panned away as the slowly swiveling security camera made its circuits. More vehicles passed, red and white lights flickered in the air from departing and returning aircraft, and then another view of the Black Hawks shot into the foreground. This time the light shone inside one of them from the bird’s interior running lights, and she recognized the figure leaning into the bird. She recognized herself, checking out the med supplies before the mission. The video went on for a few more minutes showing the same sweep, the same random base activity, but this time when it showed the Black Hawk again, the bay was dark and empty. When the image came to an end, Carmody turned the computer around and closed the screen.

“Would you like to interpret that for me?” he asked.

Max had no idea if Carmody knew the figure in the second sweep was her or not. If she’d trusted him, she would have told him. She’d had every right to be there and hadn’t been doing anything she hadn’t done a hundred times before. The only one who knew for sure she’d been there was Grif. He might be awake by now, and they could’ve questioned him. He wouldn’t have had any reason not to tell them he’d seen her there. Carmody might already know that was her in the video—but then why was he asking her? If she denied it, she could be walking into a trap. But he didn’t strike her as the subtle type. If he had a weapon, he’d use it. He’d get too much pleasure out of watching the bullet penetrate flesh not to. She said nothing.

“Funny, the timing,” he said conversationally. “I just don’t like coincidences, do you?”

Max thought about closing her eyes and going back to sleep.

“Of course, there is another possibility.” He smiled, and if she’d been a dog, her hackles would’ve been up and her teeth would’ve been bared. He’d be the kind of animal to attack from the back, slashing at your hindquarters when you weren’t looking.

“Someone else did know. I mean, outside of us.”

Max didn’t like the little bit of triumph in his voice. She kept her hands flat on the table so she wouldn’t clench her fists. She wondered if she could lunge across the table and get her hands around his throat before someone came through the door to restrain her. If she did, she’d probably be looking at a prison cell. That might almost be worth it.

“It appears Ms. Winslow received a communication the night before the operation was to take place. So there was someone out there who might have”—he waggled his hand—“alerted someone. If she had friends in the area or if her friends had friends.”

Max took a second for her vision to clear and her temper to edge down a notch. “Seems odd to me, but then, it’s not my job to weave fairy tales. But…I’m not seeing why someone would want to arrange for their own attack.”

A spark of fire flared in Carmody’s flat, dead eyes, giving Max a little burst of pleasure. He didn’t like being challenged. He probably didn’t like that she wasn’t afraid, either.

“There’s plenty of places to hide a transponder on a Black Hawk,” Carmody said.

So that was that his working hypothesis—that the rebels had tracked one of the birds after a sympathizer had put a transponder on one. That might even be true. Thousands of people, troops and civilians, moved about the base every day. Base security was focused on entry points for vehicles that might be carrying bombs and the heavily populated areas that might be a target for suicide attacks. A single unarmed individual walking about was not likely to raise an alarm. Anyone might have put a tracer on the bird, although she still wasn’t buying it. Carmody wanted a scapegoat really badly. She wished she knew why.

He pushed the laptop to one side and leaned forward, probably thinking he’d appear more intimidating. “Tell me about Rachel Winslow.”

Two feet between them now. She could almost feel his flesh beneath her fingers, feel her thumbs pressing into his hyoid, hear the satisfying crack of the tiny bone when she squeezed. She leaned forward too, her hands still flat on the table. She looked into his eyes, watched his pupils flare.

A sharp rap sounded at the door and Carmody’s brows twitched. A muscle in his jaw tightened, and he leaned back in his chair. Max took a deep breath, let the vision of choking him to death slide out of her mind. The door swung open and Captain Pettit walked in.

“We’re done here,” Pettit said.

“We’ll talk again,” Carmody said softly. He stood, picked up the laptop, and walked out.

Max struggled not to slump in her chair. She was a lot more tired than she’d thought. Her arm ached beneath the bandage. Other places ached too. Her rib cage where she’d taken the weight of the SEAL when he’d tackled her at the aid camp, her hip where she’d landed on a rock, her shoulders from digging the foxhole and burying the dead.

“Let’s go, Commander.”

Max stood and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

He returned her salute perfunctorily. “You’ll be escorted back to your CLU. Get some food, get some sleep, get cleaned up. Report to HQ at zero eight hundred in battle BDUs.”

“Yes, sir. May I ask why, sir?”

“It seems you have friends with interesting connections, Commander.”

He didn’t look pleased so she didn’t ask anything else. She was just happy to get out of the sweatbox and away from Carmody.

“And, Commander,” Pettit added as she followed him outside, “you are confined to your quarters until then.”

“Yes, sir.” Max judged it to be just a little after sundown. She’d been inside all day.

Pettit vaulted into his vehicle and his Humvee pulled away. A second vehicle idled nearby. Max climbed in and nodded to the ensign, who drove her directly to the DFAC. She filled a tray with mashed potatoes, roast beef, vegetables, and bread and took the tray to a table in the corner. The ensign stood just inside the door at the far end of the room, discreetly watching her. She was too damn tired to run, and besides, where would she go? And why? She hadn’t done anything wrong, and she wasn’t about to let Carmody hang something on her to cover his own ass, which was what she suspected was at stake.

She ate methodically until her plate was empty. When she rose, she felt a little stronger, but her head was muzzy with fatigue. The next stop was a shower facility, and as the hot water eased some of the aches in her stiff muscles, she tried to come up with a plan. She needed to talk to Grif and the other team members. She wondered if there was any way to find out about Rachel but knew there wasn’t. Rachel was really gone this time.