His hand gentled on her elbow and his beautiful blue eyes filled with compassion. Relief rippled through her like the oasis near her childhood home. She had not been wrong. Others might be misled by the rugged exterior that housed this man's soul, but she saw his understanding of her pain, her fears, even if he did not fully know their root.
His shoulders braced, spread the uniform tight across a chest so broad surely no one could topple him. "There may be a host of reasons why we put on this uniform, but I can tell you it doesn't stand for lies or dishonor. You will be safe. You will be protected. And if it is truly your wish, you will receive asylum."
If it was truly her wish?
The oasis within her dried right up to reveal the cracked reality of her precarious position. She had been so preoccupied with the honesty in his eyes, she'd forgotten that wisdom could be a double-edged sword.
She searched for a suitable response, all the while wondering why she had not taken the easier route in opting for one of those naive young soldiers. Fast-approaching footsteps provided the perfect diversion, one she grasped with greedy hands, turning toward the noise.
Fate swiped her like a lion's paw.
From around the corner her sister appeared, nearing, a man in a flight suit at her side, the scowling male without a hint of softness in his eyes she had quickly sidestepped back in the dining hall. Fate was a fickle creature to bring Monica here now.
But then, fate had not been kind to her lately.
Monica, the oh-so-perfect one who would never have to resort to eyelash-batting or goat-roasting to maintain her safety, strode toward her with unflappable confidence. Unable to stop herself, Yasmine stepped back, hating the minute show of weakness. Yet she stepped again, flush against her blue-eyed soldier's rock-solid chest.
And she had thought his hands felt good.
Part of her wanted to leap forward before the heat of him scorched her further. Another part couldn't resist the temptation to burrow closer against his solid strength...
Oh, my.
And against his unmistakably steely arousal.
Jack sprawled in the unrelenting steel of the office chair and watched the interrogation under way. While Yasmine Halibiz, alias Bahijah Faris, might be the focus of the interview, he had a few questions himself for Monica later. But they would have to wait until his anger quieted to a dull roar.
He tried to wrap his brain around the facts. The diminutive Middle Eastern babe being interrogated by the counterintelligence contingent was Monica's sister. Half sister, anyway. The resemblance was there when he looked closer, same nose, same stubborn chin, the whole package a smaller, softer version of Monica's strong features.
And she hadn't bothered to tell him. Anger exploded in pockets of secondary blasts within him. He didn't get deep-down angry often. He was now. At himself as well as Monica because he couldn't escape the knowledge that he hadn't told her about Tina, either.
Monica was right. They really were screwed up in the relationship department.
It wasn't like they'd been so busy ha**ng s*x 24/7 that they never talked. Apparently they just hadn't discussed anything important. Now he was getting critical background information about his "wife" from a cold interrogation by the OSI.
The sparse office with a dirty window bounced echoes of voices and rustling papers, too many people packed in the contained space. Yasmine Halibiz sat on one side of the table, her sister beside her but not in any comforting-family-member sort of way. The two women never looked at each other, hadn't even touched beyond the stiff-as-hell hello in the hall. Nothing like effusive reunions in the Korba clan that left a person with aching ribs from all the hugs.
Colonel Cullen didn't appear much happier, glaring, silent, leaning against the wall with arms folded over his chest, hand clutching his LMR—Land Mobile Radio. His top lip curled as if someone had overturned the latrine.
They all listened while two men conducted the interview. Special Argent Maxwell Keagan, a civilian employee in the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, peppered her with questions. Captain Daniel "Crusty" Baker, head of the advance element setup team, passed paperwork to Keagan one sheat at a time in a subtle message to the woman to keep her story clean.
No one would guess from Crusty's apparent calm and carelessly rumpled flight suit that he had as much at stake here as the rest of them since his father—the Ambassador to Rubistan—had recently been assassinated. And to think months ago Jack had gone to Crusty for those connections to help Sydney find her way here.
A powder keg of guilt rested beneath his anger.
"Why use the fake name?" Keagan asked with deceptive disinterest. His unconventional air could be mistaken for slackness—casual khakis, a purple polo, spiked hair.
Would Yasmine Halibiz look deeper and find the honed agent with a CIA background prior to signing on with the Air Force's OSI?
"If I had applied here with my real name—" her eyes didn't shift away, but she blinked fast, too fast "—members of my family would have objected to my leaving. So I used Bahijah Faris's name, with her permission. Her family needs the money I offered. They are a large family and her sister has a baby on the way."
The questions droned on while Jack studied the two men quizzing Yasmine. He'd always been able to tackle anything he set his mind to until Monica. What secret were guys like Baker and Keagan holding back from the rest of the bachelor population?
Baker was cross-eyed ecstatic with his wife, while Keagan was downright sappy since he got an engagement ring on copilot Darcy Renshaw's finger. For that matter, how did Keagan make the career thing work with his fiancee in their mutual Air Force workplace?
He'd definitely have to buy the guy a beer and pump him for information.
Keagan slid another form from the folder. "If you wanted to defect, why didn't you do so on any of the trips you made to the States with your mother?"