didn’t shake itself from between Jim’s shoulders. He understood Booker’s grief, his drive to find the men responsible. Glancing back, he found the general studying him.
“Everything okay, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” Jim answered in a short, clipped tone. His jaw tight, his features carefully blank.
The general’s strategies had never failed them.
Yet, came the whispered thought.
“Let me know if anything changes, Colonel.”
Understanding Booker’s grief didn’t change twenty years of loyalty to Trygg.
“I will, sir.”
* * *
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY SANDRA’S adrenaline wore off. Her eyes blinked with fatigue while Booker drove through the night in relative silence. Sandra eventually pushed her seat back and slept.
Dawn broke over the horizon a few hours later. The heat of the morning sun drove up the temperature.
Booker clicked on the air conditioner, felt immediate relief.
They were at less then a quarter of a tank, but only twenty miles from the settlement of Omasto.
Most desert towns were little more than encampments of canvas tents and stick. Some, the more permanent residents, made their homes of stone and animal skins.
Many only stopped to rest, drink water, buy food or fuel. Most used the settlement for trade. Cloth, spices and cookware crowded makeshift tables, spilled over onto blankets covering the sand.
But there were a few, the more corrupt, who bartered in the shadows. Their wares of weapons turned a larger profit out of the hot sun. Away from the inquisitive, the talkative.
Booker needed the latter if he were to keep Sandra safe.
And he knew the man who’d deal with him. The same man who’d tipped him off about her kidnapping. Aaron Sabra. Ex-con. Black-market dealer.
Sandra shifted; her breath deepened.
He’d watched her sleep a hundred times, tangled in the comforter and sheets. Most times, he kissed her awake until the comforter slipped to the floor and tangled limbs took its place.
Now a silk curtain of hair covered part of her face. The dark strands were stark against her pale skin, deepening the shadows beneath her eyes.
Sleep softened the stubborn chin, the feminine pride. Left the vulnerability bare in the soft, delicate lines of her face.
For a moment he ignored the sand, the danger.
The responsibility to his deceased wife and his men.
And he remembered the last time he’d seen Sandra exhausted.
Trygg’s trial.
Weeks of waiting. Days of testimony. Her humiliation over her gullibility. Her guilt over the deaths.
Still, Sandra sat in the courtroom, chin out, back rigid, her brown eyes wide but leveled. She bared her soul to condemn Trygg’s.
When Cain MacAlister insisted she enter witness protection, she refused. But Booker wasn’t surprised. Being a doctor meant everything to her. She wouldn’t walk away from it or her family for any reason.
“How far are we out?” Her eyes slowly opened, heavy with sleep.
“Less than twenty miles.”
She scooted upright and stretched her shoulders. Her hair tumbled in soft waves around her shoulders. With a careless hand, she pushed it back.
“And then?”
“I take you back to the palace,” Booker stated. “Jarek has guards that have been loyal to him through the years. I’ll make sure he assigns several to you.”
“And my family?”
“If we need to.”
“Trygg wants my formula, Booker,” Sandra said almost sadly. “He wants CIRCADIAN. And he won’t let anyone stop him from getting it.”
“I thought the government destroyed everything related to project CIRCADIAN. Including the formula and research notes.”
“I took four cylinders of the serum before I turned in Trygg.” Sandra sighed. She rubbed the knot of tension from the back of her neck, felt a spot of dried blood at the hairline. From her skirmish at the airport, she was sure. “I hid them in the mountain near Tourlay for safekeeping.”
For a moment Booker said nothing, but the muscle on his jaw worked overtime. “This is the real reason you left me, isn’t it? To protect your serum.”
Sandra stiffened against the sting of his words. “That’s not true.”
“Think about it,” Booker replied. “I’ve always said I trusted you. But you decided that once your secret was out, I really wouldn’t trust you. And I’d be the one to walk away. So you walked first.”
Something in his words hit a chord deep within her. Was he right? Was it her defense mechanism against Booker?
She shook her head, pushing the thought away. “I was protecting my research.”
“You were protecting a biochemical weapon.”
“It isn’t a weapon,” she argued. “I took the serum because my research wasn’t completed. I hadn’t found the solution to advance a subject’s healing.”
“You can’t bring my men back, Doc.”
“But I might have been able to save others, if I’d been able to complete