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Kabul.”
    “ Except it wasn’t,” Gabe put in.
    Jake shook his head. “Last day I was in Afghanistan, I had a couple of hours to kill in Kabul and a cute private I wanted to impress. I thought I’d take her to the museum, show her the gold and tell her the part I played. See how far that gets me.”
    She rolled her eyes. Her brother had a way with women, no doubt about it. He definitely had the Casanova gene, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. She hated to see him like this, sick and weak. That he couldn’t protect them about killed him, too. He was too used to being the tough guy, a warrior.
    “ They never heard of the gold.” He adjusted his bad leg. “So I tried to call Greg when I got back home. He was dead. Friendly fire.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Called the medic I knew. Friendly fire again. Couldn’t track down the other guy. Figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
    He took a slow breath and shot an apologetic look to Jasmine, his eyes filling with regret. “That was a mistake.”
    * * *
    Gabe watched as Jasmine wrapped her arms even tighter around herself and stared at a spot in front of her feet, all emotion sliding off her face.
    He wanted to know what happened to her after her brother had first gone into hiding, but Mandy had slumped over while they’d been talking, and that worried him. She didn’t seem fully aware of her surroundings anymore. They had to take care of Mandy before they could move out of here.
    He stepped forward. “We have to bring this girl’s fever down.”
    Jasmine looked at her sister then launched into action, shaking off whatever dark weight had been sitting on her shoulders. “There’s a tub in one of the other rooms. We could bring cold water up from downstairs.”
    “ Do you have any buckets?”
    She hurried to the corner and pulled two five-gallon paint buckets she probably had picked up at a construction site.
    He took those from her. She grabbed a chipped pot from the windowsill and led the way.
    He could tell downstairs that the water service to the building had been shut off at one point but someone, probably Jake, had rigged it. He filled the buckets and she filled the pot, then they started up the stairs. The drug seemed to be wearing off. She no longer swayed with every step.
    “ What happened back in the U.S. before you came here?” He wanted to help, but to do that, he needed to see the full picture.
    She wouldn’t look at him.
    He knew he should let it go, but something deep inside him demanded to know. He followed her into a smaller room and dumped the water into the tub, caught her by the arm as she turned to go back. “Jasmine?”
    She avoided his gaze, a haunted look coming onto her face. “When they couldn’t find Jake, they came after us to draw him out.”
    He waited, cold tension gathering in his stomach as he wished he knew what to do for her, what she needed from him. With the work he did, his relationships with women had been always superficial: quick and easy. But he wanted to give something more to this woman, something real, something she could hold on to.
    His jaw clenched with frustration. “Jasmine?”
    “ Mandy had an emergency junior prom planning meeting, so she had to stay after school, thank God. I was home alone.” She swallowed hard.
    He put the empty buckets down and gathered her into his arms without giving her a chance to resist. “Who?”
    “ I don’t know.” Her voice broke. “They took me and kept me tied up in a basement to draw Jake out.”
    No wonder she’d fought his restraints so violently. If he’d known— “I’m sorry.” He bent to rest his chin on the top of her head.
    And, little by little, she relaxed against him.
    He wanted to ask what they’d done to her, but he was afraid of hurting her by dragging up the past. So he simply held her until she pulled away.
    “ Jake came. He got us out of the country.” She moved toward the door. “We better get Mandy.”
    He put two and