The thunderstorm subsided, but the rain’s drumbeat enveloped the hotel room. Dominique and Julian lay in bed. She surprised herself when she told him she loved the rain. How it quieted her and got her in touch with her soul. In the year they’d been sleeping together she’d never talked about her soul. She knew it was foolish now, but something about smelling the roses, in the middle of a war zone, had rocked her as much as it warned her. She turned away.

He turned her back to him, his body taut and electric. He slid on top of her and entered her again. This was his answer to everything—take charge, penetrate, avoid any deeper intimacy.

She used his body to escape, too.

A short time later, Julian had fallen asleep, but Dominique’s eyes were wide open. And as the late afternoon sun pressed its way through the curtains, thoughts of her brother and the other journalists jackhammered in her mind. She wanted now, more than ever, to get inside the head of the man who’d orchestrated the executions. That’s why she’d been in Iraq for almost two years. Fuck the healing. She wanted to put Hashim in her journalist crosshairs, to know what made him tick, and help take him down. Rage overwhelmed her. She screamed at a God who allowed all this horror, shocking Julian out of his deep sleep.

She screamed again when the balcony doors shattered, spraying shards of glass into the room.

Four dark-skinned men burst in.

Before Julian could grab his Beretta on the nightstand, three of the invaders dragged him naked from the bed and held him down, pummeling his face with their fists.

Dominique watched as one of the men grabbed Julian’s pants and shirt and tossed them at him.

Half-conscious and wobbling from the beating, Julian got dressed while one of the men put a gun to his head. Another of the men put a swatch of tape over Julian’s mouth, wrapped tape around both of his hands and feet, and jammed a hood over his head.

Dominique catapulted from the bed and clawed her way onto the back of the fourth man, who spun around and slammed her against the wall. She was dazed from the impact, but stood her ground, defiant.

He stared at her naked body. She spit in his face and screamed something in Arabic that infuriated him, and he grabbed her throat.

Pure instinct drove Julian in the direction of Dominique’s voice, but he was pistol-whipped across the back of his head and crashed to the floor.

Terrified, Dominique dug her nails into the man’s face to break free from his grip, but he rammed her against the wall again.

One of the other men tossed her clothes at her and snapped orders in broken English.

Her hands trembled, as she struggled to dress.