As if she wasn't already going to have enough trouble getting over Jack Korba. Heartbreak and no sex. Now wasn't that a sad tune in the making?
Anger and betrayal strummed through her in four-four time. The music built along with laughter and dancing, all seeming to mock her with the mess she'd made of her life.
So much for warm chocolate and tender feelings toward Jack. "I specifically made it clear I did not want this discussed with others. You agreed."
God, she couldn't think right now, felt selfish enough for worrying about herself when Sydney was suffering.
She spun away, sidled past a small cluster of soldiers, ignored Jack's voice for five steps until she plowed into another body. Yasmine. Could this day get any worse?
Her sister nodded past her to Jack standing a couple of feet away. "Trouble with your boyfriend?"
Boyfriend? The word grated, although husband didn't sit too much better right now. But calling him a blabbermouth bastard would require an explanation she certainly didn't want to make, especially to Yasmine. "Everything's fine, thank you. Could you step aside please?"
"Fine? Really? He certainly does not seem happy."
"Aw. Too bad." And she felt petty and small for finding comfort in the notion he hurt, too. She started past her sister.
Yasmine stopped her with a fluttery hand on her arm. "Maybe if instead of storming off you went back over and smiled, talked."
Like a flood of gas on fiery anger already alive and well inside her, Yasmine's buttinsky advice incinerated the last vestiges of pretended civilities. "And you're a fine one to pass out love life advice after all your great success chasing Colonel Cullen down every hall."
Yasmine gasped. "That was flat-out hateful."
"And your sisterly advice wasn't solicited."
How five hundred Army Rangers could go completely silent, Monica didn't know. But a roomful of men crowded the portal, eyes all trained on her with her sister like randy men ready to watch a wet T-shirt catfight.
Yasmine definitely looked mad enough to hiss.
Instead, she pulled herself up with inherent regality, the calculating gleam giving Monica all of a two-second warning that this woman would fight a helluva lot dirtier than eye scratching or hair pulling.
"Well, my goodness," Yasmine crooned, her lilting voice somehow filling the entire luggage return hangar. "No wonder you did not win Miss Congeniality in the Miss Texas Pageant."
A hand clamped over Sydney's mouth tighter than a Texas lasso around a neck.
She swallowed down her scream mixed with bile. Hollering would only bring trouble to her friends.
God, she'd thought this part of the nightmare was over. Facing another sexual assault was more than she could bear. Especially after the horror of being forced to watch a public stoning. If they discovered her pregnancy, would she be executed in the same way?
Nausea roiled. But the will to live burned.
She allowed herself to breathe. Exhale before she passed out. Inhale.
Her nose twitched. She smelled—
"Shh."
Blake. Sweaty, stinky, just-out-of-the-field Blake. Oh, God. So amazing and perfect.
"Is it really you?" She muffled against his hand.
>"Damn it, Control," Gardner's words grated through, "do you read me? Update needed. Now! Over."
Jack clicked computer keys, typing a chat room message over to the Colonel that wouldn't be overheard by Gardner. Your call as the senior officer in charge, sir. But Gardner's gonna go ballistic.
Something they all knew would happen, anyway.
Meanwhile their only hope of containing him came through reason, the truth, and the hope that his partner Carlos could restrain him.