Kabul, Afghanistan August 2021

I watched the clock tick away the minutes after Nate left, then the hours, pulling myself together so I could help wherever possible.

There were too many people and not enough helpers.

The panic was palpable, and as flights began to take off again, that energy transformed into pure desperation. Desperation to find missing family members. Desperation to obtain a visa long since submitted for. Desperation to get a seat on any plane that was going anywhere but here.

I looked up every possible minute, searching for my sister in a sea of faces but never finding her. Nate was gone. Serena was God knew where, and there was nothing I could do to help either of them.

After telling the twelfth—or maybe it was more, I lost count— previous military interpreter that I couldn’t do anything to speed up his paperwork, I felt defeated in every way.

Three o’clock came before I was ready, and before I could motion to the next person in line, a man appeared at my left.

A man with a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in cargo pants with a weapon in a thigh holster, a black shirt, and a Kevlar vest.

“Isabeau Astor?” he asked.

“Sergeant Green sent you,” I guessed, a fissure cracking in my heart.

“We both know his name isn’t Sergeant Green, but sure.” He nodded with a tight smile. “Said he met you during a plane crash.”

I nodded. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?”

“It is.” There was a healthy dose of compassion in his eyes. “I’m guessing your sister didn’t show?”

I stared out over the crowd of waiting people and shook my head. “I’m sorry, but we can’t wait.”

“I understand.” It was on the tip of my tongue to turn him down, to stay and do what I could for as long as I could, but the look on Nate’s face flashed across my mind.

I won’t be able to think, to focus, to walk so much as twelve feet away from you if I don’t know you’re headed to safety.

He’d spent the last eleven days risking his life to protect me.

Maybe I’d failed to bring Serena home, to help her interpreter, to help

. . . any of these people. But I could make it so Nate wouldn’t fail.

“Okay.” I nodded, then took Taj’s visa and gave it to the embassy officer at the station next to me. Pulling my backpack on, I looked up at the man Nate had sent for me. The man he’d entrusted me to. “I’m ready.”

I wasn’t, but I would go. I would do it for Nate.

Because he loved me. Because he’d carried my ring for three years. Because he’d pulled me from that plane. Because I hadn’t held on to him when I should have, and I’d regretted that choice ever since.

I followed the nameless man through the airport and didn’t look away from the suffering, the fear etched into every face. I bore witness, letting each person’s expression touch me, mark me, because Serena wasn’t here to do so.

“I don’t suppose that if I wanted to give my seat to someone else, you’d let me do that?” I asked as he led me out onto the tarmac.

“I promised your man I’d tie you into the seat myself if that’s what it took to get you on the plane.” A corner of his mouth rose. “And you’ll find I’m not quite as moralistic as he is. I’ll do it.”

We walked across the scalding-hot concrete, and I looked through the shimmering waves of heat at the mountains I’d thought were so beautiful when we’d landed here eleven days ago.

Eleven days was all it had taken for my world to be shaken like a snow globe. Now all I could do was sit back and watch to see where the flurries landed and hope I recognized the landscape.

We walked silently toward a tall metal fence covered with a wind guard, and I wished like hell I’d developed Nate’s incredible skill of compartmentalizing. Instead, I felt an acute sense of loss with every step I

took away from my sister, from Nate. How could I leave the two people I loved most in the world?

The man nodded to a guard, who swung open the left side of a massive gate to allow us passage.

An unmarked silver plane waited beyond the fence.

“It’s an adapted Hercules,” the man explained to me, even though I hadn’t asked.

“It’s lovely,” I answered, unsure of what to say.

He laughed. “You certainly are a politician, aren’t you?”

“Not really.” Even when I had been, I’d done it for all the wrong reasons.

He led me up the stairs and into the plane, which had been outfitted with not only air-conditioning but also a series of seats, three on each side, stretching back for a dozen rows. Almost every seat was already full.

“You’re there.” He pointed to the front row on the right side of the plane, where two seats remained open.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” His brows lifted. “And I mean that. Don’t mention

it.”

I nodded. I wasn’t so naive that I didn’t understand the repeated use of

company when Nate told me about the flight.

The window seat was open, so I took it, just to prove to myself that I could. I’d flown all over this country looking out the window of a Blackhawk helicopter. Surely I could make it out of here sitting at the window.

I fit the seat belt over my hips and tried not to think about the fact that Nate and Serena were still out there. But there was an empty seat . . .

My heart screamed with longing. I’d been on too many planes with an empty seat over the last four years, constantly waiting for Nate to appear.

This time I knew there was no chance of that, and it somehow hurt even worse.

Unzipping my backpack for my headphones, I blinked at the book that had been shoved inside. It was Nate’s copy of The Color Purple, the one he’d been reading when I first arrived. I clutched the book to my chest and tried my best to smother a sob as someone closed the door on the right.

A minute or two later, the plane began to roll forward slowly, and my throat closed so tight it was hard to breathe.

“Forgive me,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure who I was begging. Nate? Serena? Everyone I’d left behind who didn’t have a seat on a secret plane?

Then the movement stopped, and I looked out the window, but there was no line for takeoff or anything. Someone walked back out of the cockpit and worked the door, opening it with quick efficiency and lowering the steps.

“Let’s go!” the pilot shouted, leaning out the door.

He backed up a moment later as two figures burst through the door and into the plane.

Taj and Serena.

Thank you, God.

She had a black eye and the sleeve of her blue shirt was bloody, but she was here, moving toward me with a watery smile. Taj was in far worse shape as he walked back through the center aisle to the empty seat a few rows back.

She collapsed into the empty seat beside me, dropping her bag between her knees before turning toward me and yanking me close.

“You made it,” I whispered, dropping the book to my lap and holding her tight as the pilot closed the door.

“Thanks to Nate and his team,” she answered, pulling back long enough to look me over, like I was the one who’d clearly been beaten.

“What?”

“Nate’s team came out to the checkpoint they were holding us at,” she explained. “They’re the only reason we’re here.” She stroked my hair back. “Well, Nate and you pushing Taj’s visa through.”

The plane started to roll again, and Serena leaned forward, opening her bag and taking something out. She pressed it into my open palm and looked me in the eye. “He said to tell you that he loves you, and that he’ll be in touch when it’s time to take your shot.”

My heart jolted, and I looked down at my hand. It was the chain and the taped tag.

I fell back against my seat and let the tears come as the plane headed down the runway, Serena holding my other hand as we launched into the air, leaving Nate behind.

“He’ll be okay,” Serena promised. “I love him.”

“Anyone in the same room as you two knows that,” she said. “What’s the necklace, anyway?” she asked, leaning to retrieve her camera from her bag. She was lucky to have made it out, let alone with her equipment.

I gently peeled back the layers of the tape until my ring appeared. “It’s our shot.”

“That is gorgeous.” She blinked, then openly gawked through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“Yeah, it is.”

Her brow furrowed. “Is that a dog tag?”

“Not sure,” I said, forcing the tape from the rest of the metal. “Nate told me he only took the ring on missions that didn’t have to be sanitized, but—” I slipped my engagement ring onto my right hand to keep it safe, then wiped the name clean of the sticky residue. “It’s not his.”

“It’s not?” She glanced my way, clicking through the pictures on her view screen.

“No.” I hadn’t been the only person Nate had been carrying with him. The tag read TORRES, JULIAN.

“I was wrong,” I whispered. I’d always assumed that Julian was Rowell, which went to show just how little I knew about the time Nate and I had spent apart all these years.

“Look what I got about an hour ago.” She angled the camera’s screen toward me.

It was a profile shot of Nate. My heart clenched at the stubborn set of his jaw, the perfect sculpture of his lips.

“You know,” Serena said quietly, “I could publish this, and he’d be out of the unit.”

My gaze jumped to hers. One simple action would change . . . everything. We’d actually have a chance at being together. But at what cost?

“He’d probably be pissed—”

“No.” I shook my head, my fingers curling around the dog tag. “If Nate gets out, that has to be his choice.” I wouldn’t make that decision for him in New York, and I wouldn’t make it now. I would take him however he chose to come to me.

“And until that magical day?” Serena asked. “I’ll wait.”