His eyes landed back on the isolated cement building where he and Yasmine had ridden out the storm. They'd checked already, and she wasn't there.
But how thoroughly had they searched?
Since he'd already spent hours in there without anything blowing him up, they'd logged the building as secure. But was it? He strode closer across the gritty path.
"Colonel?"
The heavily accented voice snagged his attention left, to the echo from behind the building. He jerked his M-16 hip level. Ready.
A shadow slanted around the corner, large, long morphing as two shapes blended and separated and blended again until...
Yasmine stepped around the corner. A rope looped around her waist. Ammar al-Khayr—a face he knew from countless intelligence files and CNN reports—loomed behind her, bound to her. Too close for Drew to risk a shot. He refused to see her scarf askew in a way his Sheba never would have allowed had her hands been free.
Fear for Yasmine sunk those claws deep into his anger until he felt it deflate with a sinister hiss.
Swallowing back bile, he shut down a thousand images of this woman scrolling through his mind. Instincts. Training. He had to count on it now because his mind was one helluva mess.
Drew depressed the button on his radio so his RTO would hear what was going down and hopefully send reinforcements over. Fast. "You don't have to do this, al-Khayr. Hell, I'm sure you've got information our government would be more than willing to trade for some retirement villa. Just let the woman go."
"The woman?" Ammar laughed, dipped his head to brush his mouth against her temple. "You mean your woman, do you not, Colonel? What charming conversations the two of you had during the storm."
Tunnels beneath the building. Shit. He'd searched and missed it. Because of the dark or his messed-up mind around Yasmine? A weakness he couldn't afford now.
Movement sounded behind him, but he couldn't risk turning his back on Ammar. Damn but he hoped it was help and not an ambush.
Ammar's eyes flared with panic. Which meant help for Yasmine. Drew allowed himself one heartbeat of relief.
Two shadows slid past him, footsteps closer, until Jack Korba and Monica Hyatt stopped beside him.
Ammar inched back. "No closer! Stay there or I will blow her up now."
He extended his arms on either side of Yasmine—a grenade clutched in each fist.
Pins pulled.
Fuck.
His beautiful Yasmine was seconds away from being blown up by a fanatic. Five seconds to be exact, once Ammar released the safety levers.
Unless somehow he made a Hail Mary save in a situation that twenty years of combat experience told him could only end in one horrible, explosive way.
Ammar's hostage plan would not work, if that was even his true wish. More likely the man planned to blow himself up and whomever else he could take along.
Logical answer? Bluff a while longer and let the sniper likely sliding into place take out Ammar. Hope the bullet wouldn't go through and hit Yasmine. Pray like hell somehow he could move forward fast enough to pitch both grenades after Ammar fell.
Too many variables. All ending with Yasmine dying, and God help him, as much as he knew he would do his damnedest to save anyone, this wasn't just anyone.
This was the woman he loved.
She wasn't Glenna any more than he was the same man from all those years ago. He didn't even bother to dodge the self-recriminations over having not figured it out sooner because that would have wasted precious seconds he could spend looking at her. He telegraphed his apology through his eyes that this woman swore she could read.
Why had he never thought to look in hers? Deep brown pools of an intriguing woman who challenged his world with her smile. Wise eyes that saw beyond his years to the man inside. Fearful eyes that believed he had turned his back on her.
Finally he saw her. The part of her that was timeless and not just a number of years. And now odds screamed she wouldn't see even another day alive.
Ammar raised his hands higher to showcase the grenades like perverted altar offerings. "So, Colonel, I see you understand my resolve. Now tell me, are you willing to let your woman die just so you can kill me?"
No, he wasn't. But this maniacal as**ole failed to realize that Drew was more than ready to shield her body with his own and die in her place.