More pallets, more construction equipment. There’s a corridor to the right and he takes Denise down the corridor and—

It ends in a jumble of piles of Sheetrock and metal frames.

Damn it!

He backs out and there are voices, and he picks her up and pulls her behind a pallet of shoulder-high cardboard boxes, wrapped in light-green plastic.

“Shhh,” Tom says, “stay quiet.”

It seems like two men walk by, arguing in a foreign language, and Tom can’t believe it, but he recognizes a couple of the words the men are using.

Pashto.

The language of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What the hell?

The voices fade away.

“Come on,” he whispers, and he holds her hand, and when Denise shrieks, it hits him like a blow to the back of his head.

CHAPTER 29

GOOD GOD, that shriek…Tom thinks it’ll be a miracle if no one within a mile has noticed it.

“Shhh, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” he says, and Denise goes, “Ow, ow, ow…I stepped on something!”

She lifts her right leg and there’s blood on the bottom of her foot, and he sees a discarded piece of scrap metal his girl has stepped on.

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” and he has a flash of memory from two years back, in northern Syria, after a mortar attack, a poor wounded Kurdish fighter saying the same thing, It hurts, it hurts, and Tom had the brutal realization back then, Well, better you than me, pal, as he ran to a trench for safety.

There is no running here, no safety.

This is his little girl. He can’t run away, can’t leave her.

“Shhh,” he whispers. “Please, be quiet. Let me see.”

He gently puts her down, examines her right foot, notes a widening splotch of blood. He presses his handkerchief against it, removes it, tries to wipe away more of the blood, as Denise moans and tightens her tear-filled eyes.

“Daddy…”

“C’mon,” he says, “we’re still leaving. I’ll carry you.”

He picks up Denise and she squeezes him tight, burrows her head into his shoulder, and he starts walking fast, knowing it’s only up to him now, that if things go bad, he can’t rely on Denise running to safety with that cut on her foot.

He has to make it.

He has to.

Tom catches a smell of salt air, maneuvers past piles of long plastic pipe, sees light up ahead.

Move, move, move.

The light is coming from an open roll-up door.

Open to the outside.

His bare feet slap on the concrete as he kicks up his speed. Denise is as light as a feather. He has no real plan, just the base, raw emotion of getting his girl out of here, into the daylight, and finding someplace safe, any place.

“Yes,” he whispers, and now they’re outside.

A parking lot.

Dump trucks.

Two white vans with tools and construction equipment inside. He quickly thinks of checking to see if the vans have their keys inside, but both vans are occupied, one by a guy drinking a cup of coffee, the other by an older guy checking his cell phone.