“Sugar,” the little girl repeated, not looking away from a tiny dirt pile on the ground. “You are bad?”

Bad? Had the little girl ever seen a woman like Sugar behind makeshift bars? If she was out here, she’d seen too much, like the shootout during the night. Sugar tightened her finger around the girl’s, trying to sound trustworthy. “No. Not bad. Good.”

“Good.” Big brown eyes reached into her heart and squeezed.

“Yes, good.” She nodded, reassuringly. “What is your name?”

“Asal.”

“That’s pretty.”

The little girl smiled, showing all her teeth. Sugar heard something move in the background, and Asal scampered away. She was all alone again. For a few minutes, Sugar hadn’t been stranded in a rudimentary cell, freezing her ass off on the side of a mountain. She was making a young friend, who she had a feeling hated this damn place, too.

***

No better way to fix a fuck up than with a little cash and coercion. Wasn’t that the American way of doing business? Sure was in Buck’s book. And his book was nothing but corrupt commandments and legendary loopholes.

This plan was worth the eye roll from his secretary when he’d sent her running off for the impossible—a simple phone number that would dry up his worries.

Buck leaned back in his chair, cradling his phone against his ear. He had a small window of time to pull this off. Jared Westin was as predictable as he was loyal. If Lilly Chase had a connection to the Titan Group, that devoted jerkoff would run all the way back to Afghanistan to find her. Some people couldn’t help being the good guy.

“Yeah, hello?” a clipped voice answered.

His secretary had been successful, worth every Benjamin he threw at her and all that jewelry he gifted on the regular. “This is Buck Baer, and I have a proposition for you.”

“Excuse me?”

That reaction was to be expected. Let’s try again. “This is Buck Baer.”

“Are you looking for—”

“No. I’m not. I want to talk to you.” Time for business. He cracked his neck. “Let’s table your surprise for when I really toss something buzzworthy your way.”

“What do you want, Baer?”

“An open mind, for starters.” He waited and was rewarded with silence. Bingo. “Don’t breathe a word of this, don’t fiddle with recording gadgets, or link up to whatever toys you boys have at Titan until you know the stakes.”

“And the stakes are?”

“The stakes are simple. Your worst nightmare. The daughters you think no one knows about and the sweet wife you’ve hidden from your mercenary life are with me. You might keep a secret life from Titan, trying to keep your pretties safe and sound, but nothing gets by GSI.”

“Bullshit.”

“I have your wife’s phone, and I see you’re calling her right now. Cute.”