Free Seduction Under Fire by Melissa Cutler Page A

were God’s gift to women.
    As if.
    With a snort of disgust, she jogged to catch up.
    “That’s odd,” Aaron whispered from where he lay on the ground at the top of the hill, his eyes on the valley to the west.
    “What’s odd?”
    “No guard and no horses in the lean-to. In fact, I don’t see a single person.”
    “Huh. Let me take a look.” She left a good five feet of space between them as she army-crawled into a surveillance position. “There aren’t any vehicles in the courtyard either.” The place looked like a ghost town. Camille’s hope disintegrated. Unbelievable. Could her luck get any worse? She kicked a rock and watched it tumble past the Jeep, down the hill.
    “Let’s go in for a closer look,” Aaron said, his tone laced with disappointment. He blazed the way through a narrow canyon in tense silence.
    They needn’t have been quiet, though. Camille felt the vacancy in her bones as she neared the outer wall. She confirmed it after Aaron boosted her to look over the wall at the empty courtyard. No satellite equipment, no vehicles, nothing.
    The hole created by the grenade explosion dominated the scene and offered a strange, grotesque view into the house where none should exist, like an eye socket without an eye. Burned bits of bone dotted the courtyard. Whether they were scattered by scavenging animals or the initial blast was a forensic question beyond Camille’s knowledge set.
    With their rifles ready, Aaron preceded Camille through the front gate. They opened the shed doors, then wandered into the house. The furniture had been left behind—sooty sofas in the living room, a scarred wooden table in the kitchen, unmade cots in the bedrooms. All the boxes had been cleared out of the weapon storage room.
    Resolve—tenacious and angry—pierced through her disappointment, steeling her heart. Somewhere in this desert, a scared little girl needed saving. Camille wasn’t about to let anything, even this seemingly insurmountable complication, derail her mission.
    Returning to the courtyard, she found Aaron staring at the ground behind the shed, at the burned remains of the guard he’d shot and another poor soul who’d been added to the pyre.
    “This doesn’t change anything for me,” she said, determination hardening her tone. “It makes it tougher, for sure, but I won’t give up on Rosalia.”
    Aaron didn’t say anything, didn’t even nod. He just stared at the corpses.
    Camille strode from the compound. Though her bum leg ached, she pushed the quarter mile to the Jeep, hauling her body painfully over the steepest part of the hill as her adrenaline finally crashed. Damn, but her stupid leg was killing her. What she wouldn’t give to prop it up on a sofa, down some ibuprofen and sleep for a day.
    When she reached the Jeep, she braced her hands against the dusty metal frame. Too many thoughts crowded her brain for her to sit patiently while she waited for Aaron. Shifting her weight to her good leg, she picked up her left foot and kicked the rear tire with a bouncy rhythm. The sizzles of pain felt good. Necessary.
    Charlie’s clothes stash hadn’t included any sneakers and so she wore the dead man’s shoes today. She stared at them with disgust. Maybe she’d burn them tonight. Or throw them out the car window on the way to La Paz. Her first order of business in the city would be to buy herself an outfit or two. And she was definitely going to cut her hair.
    She kept her eyes on her bouncing foot, affording Aaron’s boots only a nominal glance when they appeared at her side. When the minutes stretched on and Aaron still didn’t speak, she looked at him. Leaning against the Jeep, he watched her with a look that could only be described as sympathetic. As if she was a shelter dog or a beggar. It was illogical for him to feel that way because he was in the same boat as she was.
    “Don’t look at me like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like you pity me.”
    “I do pity you.”
    “You’re