She’d just sent her latest piece to The Washington Post and ordered a vodka tonic in a martini glass to celebrate. She knew the American military didn’t appreciate getting raked over her Pulitzer-Prized, journalistic coals, but that had never stopped her from telling the truth. Those coals also inflamed the White House when she began reporting they needed to take ISIS’s new leader, Abd al Hashim, as serious as fucking plague. His education and innate acumen to manipulate people and situations was just the tip of his violent extremism. They’d made the same miscalculation with bin Laden in the beginning, funding him against the Russians, thinking they could control him. Did they want to lose the war and their soul with this guy?

She leaned her elbows on the table, the bartender mixing her drink, just as Julian Ledge pushed open the steel bar doors. He strode toward her, past the white plastic tables filled with Green Zone archetypes: broad-shouldered security contractors with dates in tight tops and high heels, a handful of diplomats in blazers, a construction worker wearing a fishing vest that read Baghdaddy.

Julian’s rough, handsome face lit with an infectious smile when he saw Dominique. But she knew the ravages of battle had scarred him, and coarsened a heart struggling to reach out. Still, she had affection for him; affection she never could articulate from her isolated realm. But she trembled with the thought that those walls were about to come down.

The bartender—a burned-out local—placed Dominique’s vodka tonic on the Trust Me, I Love Iraq coaster in front of her.

Julian eyed the martini glass. “Just sent your piece to the Post, huh?”

Dominique managed a bitter-sweet smile and sipped the drink while the bartender handed Julian his regular—a bottle of Sanabel Lager.

“I heard about your brother and the other journalists,” Julian said.

She’d been at the thin line that separated life from death so many times, she fought against becoming hardened down to someone she didn’t recognize. But that protective shell couldn’t hold back her anger.

“We all know the fucking risks.”

“That’s pretty hard.”

“I don’t need a humanity lesson,” she said, her fist tensed. “He was one of ten journalists Hashim slaughtered.”

“So. You have no plans to leave here, I suspect.”

“Not by a long shot.”

“We’re each here for our own reasons,” Julian said, and raised the bottle of lager.

“To Philip. And the ten.”

Dominique bowed her head in love and respect.

“They sent him back to Pittsburgh in a body bag three days ago.”

Julian settled into the chair next to her. He kissed the tears on her cheek.

Thunder exploded like a roadside bomb.

She took Julian’s hand, and they moved out of the bar through the rain, to the hotel across the alley.