Olivia drove slowly back toward home, cursing the constant fatigue pulling at her. She turned on loud rock to keep herself alert. She couldn’t help it, she turned and drove to Mike’s condo in Western Heights, not far from her own house. She’d been told to drive only when absolutely necessary. She was to rest, let her body heal, but she had to knock on Mike’s front door, peer in the windows. No sign of him.

She remembered Mike being there when she was half conscious in the hospital in Balad, the soft cadence of his voice, the warmth of his hand when he’d held hers, the feel of his mouth when he’d kissed her forehead, her lips, but she couldn’t remember his words, or if he’d even spoken to her. Before she was flown back to Walter Reed, one of her nurses told her she really liked her visitor and gave a little shudder. “Tall, dark, and delicious,” she’d said. Without a doubt that was Mike.

Olivia rested her forehead against the steering wheel at a red light. Over and over, she thought, Where are you, Mike? Why won’t you call me? If you’re not all right, I’ll kick your butt.

She remembered another firefight two years ago in a small ISIS-held town three hundred miles north of Damascus; she and Mike, on another mission, had ended up in the middle of the fighting, when again, they’d nearly died. They’d briefly become lovers then, to reaffirm being alive, she supposed. He’d been part of her life for three years, sometimes sharing her missions, sometimes her bed. But he’d slowly become more, she realized now. He’d become important, vital. Olivia hated being afraid, hated being helpless, hated not knowing.

She turned toward home. Her head began to throb, thankfully not as bad as the day before. She hated taking the pills the doctors had given her; they made her brain feel too fuzzy. As she left her MINI Cooper in her driveway, she heard Helmut barking madly behind the front door as she walked up the flagstone steps she’d laid herself six months before. He recognized her car, her footsteps.