“She doesn’t want to hear it,” Lance said.

“Sure she does,” the bartender said.

“You can’t leave me hanging now,” Laurel said.

Lance sighed. “I guess I was telling my friend here I was in the army.”

“He said he was in mountains as cold as the Rockies,” the bartender said.

Laurel looked at him. She was surprised he was willing to speak about his past at all.

“Where were those?” Laurel said.

Lance looked at her and his face was more open than she’d expected. More honest.

“They were in Afghanistan,” he said.

Laurel was all ears. She wanted him to talk. She’d come all this way. She wanted to see what the fuss was about. “I imagine there’s a lot of dangerous men over there,” she said.

Seduction was all about suggestion. The way she formed her words, the way she shaped her lips, the angle she presented her body. If she showed him he could have her, that he was going to get what he wanted, even if he didn’t realize it, he’d give away more of himself than he intended.

It was a biological quid pro quo.

“Not so dangerous,” he said.

“Not so dangerous? Isn’t that the home of the Taliban?”

“So they say,” Lance said.

“You don’t think they’re there?”

“Oh, they’re there. No denying that.”

“But you don’t think they’re dangerous?”

“No more dangerous than men anywhere.”

Laurel wasn’t so sure. A large part of her life had been spent thinking about the man who’d killed her father. To her, that was what Afghanistan stood for.

“There’s a lot of dead soldiers would say otherwise,” she said.

“Anywhere in the world you dig,” Lance said, “you’ll find the bones of dead soldiers. Anywhere at all.”

Laurel thought a second. “More in some places than others,” she said.

Lance shrugged. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Although,” Laurel said, “what would I know? I’ve never been there.”

That wasn’t true. She’d been to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, everywhere. She’d seen more war than anybody.

“Men,” Lance said, then stopped. He thought and said, “You travel to a dangerous place, you’ll find the men there are no more dangerous than the men in any other place.”

“Any other place?”

Lance nodded.

“Like where?” she said.

He shrugged. “Boise, Kansas City, Wichita.”

“Wichita?”

“For example.”

“You’re saying the men Raqqa are no more dangerous than men in Wichita?”

“Well,” Lance said, “there’s a fight going on in Raqqa.”

“But?”

“But the men themselves, they’re no more dangerous.”

Laurel looked skeptical. “Really?”

“Really,” he said.

“So if I go to a bar in Raqqa?” she said.

“There are no bars in Raqqa,” Lance said.