"Oooh." She gave a fake dramatic shiver. "Aren't you the big, bad wolf? I'm scared."
"If you were smart," Harp snarled, "you would be scared. Right now, you sound stupid."
"She did get the cuffs off," Zack pointed out.
She gasped into her veil.
"Yeah." Declan almost smiled. "Two points for her." He was sure she was trying to figure out how they knew. It was so simple. With her hands cuffed, her arms had been pulled back, which caused her boobs to be thrust forward. Even in that butt-ugly black covering she had on, he'd noticed. Hell, even Zack had noticed. Any red-blooded man would have.
As soon as she began to stand more normally, the boobs retreated a bit, and he figured out the reason.
But he wasn't about to tell her how he knew. He didn't want a kick to the balls.
"Meantime, what the fuck are we gonna do with her?" Harp yanked out his water bottle.
"Was she traveling with those stiffs we found?" Greg asked.
"She says no," Declan said. "We're not sure."
"She sure as hell didn't just materialize from thin air in this god-forsaken spot."
"You're right," Laila said. "I walked from a Kurdish camp near Dohuk. You guys stupid or something? Why don't you think a woman can accomplish things?"
Zack snorted. "We never travel alone and we're—." He broke off as Declan sent him a warning look.
"Yeah," she said, "what are you guys doing here, anyway?"
"We're on vacation," Declan said shortly. "Hiking."
"Right." Her gaze roamed from man to man. "And the military helmets and fierce looking rifles are for—"
"Protection. This is not the safest spot in the world."
Her lips quirked. "Hey, it's obvious what you guys are, say what you will. And that's the problem. Despite the civilian clothes, you can't blend in like I can. The backpacks and the helmets are dead giveaways."
"Soon as they hear your English," Harp snapped, "your blending-in days are gone."
She answered him in Arabic.
All four men stiffened. "What the fuck?" Declan had been trying to watch his cussing around her, but her announcement flummoxed him. "Where you'd learn that?"
"In England," she said. "From my family and friends."
"Greg, does it sound real?" Declan turned to Greg, who knew some Arabic. Although he wasn't fluent, he was all they had for an interpreter.
"It's passable," he said, "but I would guess it's not her native tongue."
"We still haven't heard what you're doing here." Harp's tone was laced with suspicion. "Are you making up a story? Is that what's taking you so long to tell us?"
She gave him a look of dislike as Greg edged a little closer to her. "Come on, Laila. We're going to know who you are as soon as we search you and find your passport."
She glared at Greg, as if it were his fault that she, apparently, hadn't thought of that possibility. "Fine." She hesitated, as if choosing her words. "You've already guessed my nationality. You think I can't be a Muslim because I speak with this cool British accent. But there are plenty of Muslim women in Britain."
"We don't think anything," Declan said quietly. "We're waiting for you to tell us."
"I just told you!"
"No. You made a couple of general statements, basically attacking us. But you didn't tell us who you are."
She tilted her head up to look at him. "If you can't tell what I am from what I just said, you aren't as smart as you'd like to think."
"More insults." Declan shook his head. "You buying this crap, Zack?"
Zack shook his head. "She's bullshitting us, Dec."
"How?"
"I don't know how. I only know that my bullshit meter is ticking like an IED timer on steroids. We can't trust her."
"We can't let her go, either."
"She won't last long if we do. But is that our problem?"
"Fuck, Zack, you don't mean that."
"Tell me this, Dec. How in hell did a British woman make it alone from the sceptered isle of Britain to the badlands of Iraq?"
Declan didn't have an answer. It was impossible to believe she'd done what she described.
"What brings you to the Sinjar Mountains, Laila?" Greg had a deep voice, which could be very soothing. He was usually effective at questioning frightened locals.
"As I told you, I'm traveling to Sinjar."
"There are roads between Dohuk and Sinjar," Greg pointed out.
"I was traveling with two guides." Her voice quivered suddenly. "We were in a truck when we set out, but it broke down."
Ah. Dec figured that's how they'd ended up captured by the hajjis. Probably just a stroke of bad luck.
"Where are your guides?" Greg asked, as innocently as if he didn't know.
"They—they—" She caught her breath. "They were killed by some fighters we ran into."
Dec was disappointed that she wasn't going to tell them the truth. "But you escaped?"
"I did," she snapped. "Using my brains."
Dec resisted the urge to tell her she would have been recaptured by now if not for him and Zack.
"You seem to be equipped for hiking," Greg said.
"I had a long trip from England. I had to be prepared for anything."
"For what purpose?" No trace of impatience appeared in Greg's voice, even though the rest of the men were annoyed with her continued attempts to stonewall them.
She pulled her knees up so she could wrap her arms around them, then fiddled with the hem of her niqab, the ties on her boots, anything, it appeared, to avoid answering his question.
Greg waited.
Finally she sighed. "A request was put out for women to come to a few cities in Iraq to—to help organize homes where only girls live. Obviously, no man could perform such a job."
"A home where only girls live?" Greg sounded genuinely mystified. "You don't mean a school." That was a statement more than a question. The thought of a girls' school in the middle of this war-torn land was simply impossible.
"Sort of a school," Laila answered.
"Fuck, Greg, don't be such a dipshit," Harp interjected. "Obviously she's talking about a cat house."
Greg's face showed his astonishment. "They have bordellos in this godforsaken part of the world?"
Alarm sent a jagged spike of fear up Declan's back. Surely, Laila wasn't intending to work in a bordello. That seemed impossible. Nor did it make sense. Why would they be importing women for a cathouse and expecting them to make their own way unassisted from England to this hell hole?
No, she had to be lying.
He wanted her to be lying.
But Laila dropped her face to her knees and stared at the ground, as if she were not involved in this conversation.
"Laila," he said sharply. "Tell us what you're talking about."
"The girls need organizing," she mumbled. "They'll be better off with some structure to their lives."
He marched over and stood so his feet were toe to toe against hers. "What girls? What type of structure, Laila? We don't have a lot of time."
"The girls who—who provide comfort to men." She seemed uncomfortable with her own explanation which was strange. "Every business needs organization," she added. "I'm answering a call put out to Muslim women who are willing to help."
"Look at me, Laila." He grasped her chin and tilted it up so he could look into her eyes. "Will you be whoring yourself out?"
Gasping, she yanked her chin from his grasp. "How dare you? Of course I'm not doing that!"
"Pardon me for not understanding the subtleties," he snapped. "You'll work in a whorehouse, but not on your back? Is that your fine line?"
"I'm going to Sinjar to help." Her dark eyes blazed at him. "You can believe me or not."
Dec was sure he saw tears glistening. But that made no sense at all.
"Shit, leave her." Harp stood up and hefted his backpack. "We've gotta cover some ground tonight and I'm shitass tired of listening to her lies."
"I don't necessaril
y disagree, Harp, but we can't just leave her here." Declan rubbed his chin, wishing he could shave. "She could well blab about us to the next person she comes across."
"Then drag her along. Let's go."
"There's also the factor," Greg said as he pulled on his own backpack, "that she might be useful for intel purposes if she does speak the language."
"She says she speaks Arabic," Zack pointed out. "We don't know if that's true or not, but the local population hereabouts speaks Kurdish."
"The terrorists in charge speak Arabic," Declan said. "Since we haven't had any luck finding locals to work with us, she might be useful."
"I speak Arabic," Laila said clearly. "I'm fluent in Kurdish."
Chapter Six
Once again, Declan found himself dumbfounded by this woman. Who, exactly, was she? What was she doing here? For some reason, he didn't believe her story about the brothel. Yet it was hard to see why anyone would make up such a disgusting tale.
"Laila," he said, reaching for patience, "tell us how you arrived here from Britain." Make it good, he wanted to add. Because he knew he could never leave her sitting here alone in the dark on this empty mountainside. If he had to grab the excuse of using her as an interpreter, he would.
"I traveled to Turkey," she said calmly. "That part was easy."
"Did you travel in this getup?" Zack gestured to the niqab.
"No. I put it on when I got to Turkey. It makes everything easier." She hesitated and then added, "It makes me invisible."
"So you got to Turkey—" Dec prompted. He wanted to mention that she hadn't been invisible in the tent last night, but he wanted to wait and see when she'd own up to that episode.
"I met with the group who'd put out the call for female hajji's." She licked her lips. "They'd said they would organize the crossing of the Turkish border."
"Into Syria?" Declan could scarcely keep his disbelief from his tone. What woman would consider that a reasonable thing to do?
"The group I was traveling with assured me I would be safe in their company." She looked up at the men watching her. "And I was."
"When was this?" Greg asked.
"In August."
"The war was pretty hot in Syria then."
"We avoided those hot areas, I guess."
Declan sighed. Yeah. Like Zack had said, his bullshit meter was ticking. "Go on."
"We traveled for several days, going west, resting for the night at various spots, and picking up supplies."
"Were there other women in your group?"
She hesitated. "There were two, but they branched off to go to Mosul."
"Doing the same work as you?"
She nodded, as if she were ashamed to actually speak again about what she was intending to do.
"How did you end up alone?"
"We entered a refugee camp which was going to be our last stopping point before traveling south to Sinjar. The ISIS fighters were very close to the camp."
"What allegiance did you and your group have? Was ISIS friend or foe to you?"
She hesitated. The men waited silently, so she finally began to speak again.
"If we were in an ISIS controlled area, of course we had papers proving we were part of them. In the refugee camp, we pretended we were—" She stopped, and pressed her lips together, as if she needed to control herself. "We pretended we were refugees as well. The camp was deluged with refugees. No one cared who we were. We were just more people they couldn't help."
Her last words were bitter and Declan had to push back another spurt of anger. It was because of people like her that all those hundreds of thousands of refugees even existed. And she thought she had a right to be annoyed that there weren't enough resources to help everyone?
"What type of refugees were in the camp with you?" He knew, but he wanted to establish some point of truth in her tale.
"The Yazidis." Her voice broke. For the first time. Interesting. What were the Yazidis to her?
"What happened at the camp?"
She flashed her eyes at her. "What makes you think something happened?"
"You told us you were traveling with an escort," Declan pointed out. "Now you're alone."
Her hands tightened around her knees. "We were assigned a tent. We were resting for a few days before going on to Sinjar. But—" She stopped talking, pressed her face into her knees, and then managed to compose herself.
"The ISIS overran the camp. The Kurdish fighters, the peshmerga, were pushed back. We all had to flee the camp—men, women, children, newborns, the old, the frail—everyone."
Tears spurted from her eyes suddenly. They ran down her cheeks, but she didn't make a sound. She merely folded her lips together, closed her eyes, and tilted back her head, as if she might stop the tears.
Declan felt something twist in his heart. She wasn't completely without humanity. She had suffered while watching others suffer.
When she re-opened her eyes, they glittered with tears, but she prevented them from falling again, and he had to admire her control.
"The peshmerga regained control of that camp within a few days," Dec said.
She nodded. "They fought valiantly."
"You support the Kurds?" Declan was surprised at that. The Kurds and the ISIS were bitter enemies. But it was ISIS who ran the slave brothels through their 'caliphate'.
"I'm not Kurdish," she said, not directly answering his question. "But I was supposed to meet the people who were taking me on to Sinjar in that refugee camp. So I was grateful to be able to return to the camp when the Kurds regained control. I don't know what I would have done if the Kurds hadn't re-taken the camp."
"Yet here you are," Zack pointed out, "alone."
"I could not find the people I'd been traveling with," she continued softly. "I don't know if they traveled on without me, or what happened to them. Everything was chaotic, and I was...desperate. I finally managed to find two Kurds, who assured me that the countryside between the camp and Sinjar was deserted, and we could make our way safely to the city." She stopped speaking and pressed her lips together. In the moonlight, Dec could see a couple more silver tears slide down her cheeks.
"Within a day," she said, "we'd been overtaken by a group of men."
"How many?" Dec broke in. He knew exactly how many men had been in that tent.
"A dozen. My two guides were—were killed." Her voice broke.
That explained the two bodies in the tent. And the rest of her explanation, at least matched some of what he knew. Still, Declan sighed. He still didn't buy her story worth a damn.
Harp whistled. "Fuckin' A," he said. "You should be on the goddamn stage. You must be the woman we saw in the hajji tent last night. You pointed us out to the tangos in your tent. Was that to save yourself? How did you know we were out there, anyway?"
Laila's mouth dropped open. "You were at that tent?"
Zack snorted. "You called it, Harp. She's a damn good actress."
Declan held up a hand. "You know," he said, "I do see some potential holes in Laila's story. But we don't have all night to stand here arguing. Before we make any decision, I want to know if you have a weapon, Laila. And don't try to bullshit me." He met her gaze. "Things won't go well for you if you lie to me."
She hesitated for that one fatal second, and he let out a silent breath. "Where is it?" He always liked to surprise people with the question about weapons because it always worked. If they had one, they paused while they tried to figure out if a lie would be believed or not.
Laila breathed out a soft sigh. "I have a small pistol in the pocket of my niqab on the left side, by my hip."
Dec walked around her, patted down the left side of the garment until he found the slit, and reached inside. Way inside. The pistol was buried deep.
He tried not to touch any part of her body, partly because that's how they'd been trained, partly because he didn't want to expose himself to the temptation. But he couldn't help breathing in her scent. Warm, and mysterious, it reminded him of rich spice
s of the Orient like vanilla and cloves, but she also carried the dusty smell of the arid desert and the cool night. He wanted to lean in and breathe her in right where her neck met her shoulder or, better yet, deep in her cleavage.
The small Beretta Nano pistol was cold in his hand and snapped him back to reality.
"Where'd you get this?" He palmed the five inch gun in his hand. "You didn't bring this through security all the way from Britain."
"I got it in Turkey."
"No jihadi would give a woman a gun."
"I told them I wouldn't travel through war zones without some kind of weapon." She shrugged. "They really needed some women for this task."
"Bullshit. A devout Muslim woman doesn't carry weapons, nor know how to shoot them, as they are one hundred percent reliant on men for their protection."
"Don't believe me then."
"I don't. Which means I'll have to carry your damn pistol." He tucked it away in a pocket on his left sleeve. "Thanks for not getting the pink one."
She glared at him. "Not funny. Don't you have enough weapons for yourself? I really need that gun."
"That little pea-shooter wouldn't have saved you against any military man, let alone the jihadis."
"If I surprised someone, it might be useful."
He shook his head.
"It gives me comfort," she argued.
"Gave," he corrected. "There is no way you're traveling with us while armed."
"That's not fair. You're all armed."
"Look, quit whining about the gun. If we decide to leave you behind, I'll consider giving it back. In the meantime, if you don't have any other weapons"—he broke off to look at her and she shook her head—"then I'll let you travel without cuffs because we're going to be moving in the dark on rocky ground. You'll be able to keep your balance more easily if your arms aren't tied behind you. But don't even think about trying anything funny. Any one of us could drop you in less time than it would take for you to reach inside that burka."
She rolled her eyes. "Do I have to worry about you accidentally shooting me since you're so trigger happy?"
"No," he said succinctly. He understood that she had to fight back a little bit verbally. No one liked to be in the power of other people. But the US military didn't tolerate accidental discharges, and certainly not in their special forces. That was one thing she didn't have to worry about.
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