Anything, Anywhere, Anytime Read Online Free PDF Page A

speak this way, then." He switched to Arabic with too much ease.
    This one would bear watching. She discounted him as an option for contact. But who? Already her mind scanned for possibilities while time trickled away.
    She spun to stir her pot and gave him her back.
    The man, Crusty, eased into her line of sight for another fig. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about this place." His tone left no room for negotiation.
    "May I ask for what reason, sir?" she answered in her native tongue. Dim-witted humility did not sit well with her. But she had learned to curb her temper and mouth in the year since her parents' deaths in a flu epidemic had thrust her from pampered protection into a nightmare. Selecting a peppermill from the shelf above, she speckled the sheen of fat bubbling to the top of the pot.
    "It's standard procedure for a representative from military intelligence to interface with locals during a deployment."
    Military intelligence? Nerves churned like the roiling stew. She reassessed her assumption that he was merely one of those arrogant fliers and searched for a convenient kitchen accident that would take her away. "I have bread to make."
    And she pitied the people who would eat it.
    "Well, the thing is, if I don't talk to you, you might not get to stay on. That is if you want to continue working here."
    Her eyes flew to the bubbling goat. "Of course."
    Yet, if he was truly military intelligence, then he would have already seen her falsified papers—and could catch her in a misstep.
    "What was your name again?"
    "Bahijah Faris." A lie.
    "And your parents?"
    "Dead." Truth. Pain sliced in clean, relentless swipes, but she would not let it win. She rolled through her borrowed identity. "I live with my brother and his wives. Money is very limited, so I must help."
    If only the real Bahijah had been bright enough to carry this off. Of course if Uncle Ammar had been smarter, he would not have sent his niece. How stupid to think she would be loyal to him—a man who was nothing more than a fourth cousin interested only in the inheritance of anyone with whom he could claim even a distant relationship.
    Ridiculous since everyone in this small country was related somehow. Too bad Ammar had slipped away from justice once before.
    She hated stupid mistakes. Of course, babbling stupidity could well drive this man away. "Faris is a very old and honored name here. It means 'wounded soldier on horseback,' which my grandfather says—"
    "Where does your brother live?" His mouth smiled. His eyes didn't.
    "Outside the capital."
    "What are you here to do?"
    Boil up goat and horse meat for servicemen who are told they are eating beef, you ignorant male. "I am on the cooking staff."
    A pride-pinching duty given her true status, not that she could let that show.
    She wiped her hands on her apron. "I need to collect the vegetables now or there won't be an evening meal."
    The flyer intelligence contact scooped up a handful of dates and backed away. "By all means, then, don't let me keep you."
    Making tracks toward the pantry, she scanned the sparse crowd. Searching. She would need to find another candidate, soon. And if her uncle's information was correct, she would have many, many more men to choose from by the week's end. Failure was not an option.
    Only survival.
    How much torture could one guy survive in a single night?
    Icy shower pellets stung Jack's skin. Talk about caught between a rock and a hard place. Stay in the shower until his Johnson succumbed to terminal shrinkage or step out there and explain to Monica exactly why she wasn't going on the mission to Rubistan. Either way, he was dead meat.
    At least the cold water worked enough numbing magic so he didn't have to face her with his Johnson saluting.
    Jack opened the shower door. Monica's gaze flicked him like a brief brush of a flame before shifting away.
    She thrust a towel at him.
    "Thanks." He tied it around his waist before grabbing a second towel and scrubbing his