Never Been Kissed Read Online Free

him.”
    Good for them.
“Where is the other woman?”
    “Taken to Mogadishu, where her family will pick her up.”
    Brody didn’t believe Umar for a minute, but any further conversation with these criminal bastards was a waste of time. And Ashley was his priority.
    Under his boots the sand turned to the asphalt of the short runway and Clayton reached across the cockpit and opened the rear cargo door as they approached the plane.
    “We’re done?” Brody said to Umar.
    Umar smiled, revealing gold incisors and molars. “All is satisfactory. Yes?”
    If I ever see you again,
Brody thought,
I’ll make you choke on those teeth.
    Instead of saying that aloud, he nodded a curt affirmative and turned his back on the translator.
    “She all right?” Clayton asked.
    “Unconscious,” Brody said, sliding her into the cargo area of the small plane. He made a pillow for her head and surrounded her with the blankets they’d brought.
    “Holy shit,” Clayton said when he got a look at her.
    Brody felt very keenly the guns behind him. The old Browning in the back of that truck could bring down the plane, kill all of them.
    Quickly, Brody climbed into the cramped cargo area with Ashley and shut the door.
    “Get us the fuck out of here,” he said.
    Rattling down the runway clearly caused her some pain and he did everything he could to cushion her, protect her. But it wasn’t enough.
    Violently, he dug the first aid kit from beneath the pilot’s seat. It popped open under his rough hands, gauze unraveling across the metal floor of the plane.
    They’d touched her. Hit her. Kicked her. Terrorized her.
    Ashley.
    The thought was a hot wire in the center of his brain. His uselessness ached.
    The plane lifted and bounced onto the air, banking in a hard right.
    “We need to make a stop in Nairobi,” Brody said.
    “That’s where I’m headed. We have just enough petrol to get there.”
    It was a three hour flight, but the closest reliable medical facility.
    He pulled his phone out and called Harrison.
    “Is she all right?” Harrison asked before the first ring had stopped.
    “She’s been beaten,” Brody said, looking out the window down at that technical truck with the guns and boys—the symbol of a country out of control. “She’s unconscious, probably has a concussion, maybe cracked ribs. We’re heading to Wilson Airport in Nairobi; have a doctor meet us there.”
    Brody hung up and started opening the small packets of alcohol wipes to try to clean Ashley’s face. He’d need about thirty for the blood alone.
    And in truth, there was nothing he could do to clean this up. Nothing.
    “Fuck,” he growled, and unable to stop it, unable to hold it back anymore, he took aim at the passenger seat in front of him and punched it. Hard. The plastic seat cracking against his knuckles. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
    “Oy, mate,” Clayton snapped. “That’s my plane you’re punching.”
    Right. A dozen deep breaths and he brought himself back under control. He opened his aching fist. Alcohol swabs. Clean Ashley up. Do what he could to make this go away.
    But when he turned to her, she was staring at him from the one wide brown eye that could open.
    His heart kicked hard against his ribs as if seeking its freedom and he couldn’t breathe for the obscene pleasure of her being alive and awake.
    And near.
    Tears gathered against her eyelashes, pooling in the corner of her eye and dripping down the side of her nose. Tears leaked out from under the purple swollen lid of her other eye. And her body, dirty and battered and bloody, began to shake.
    “You’re okay,” he told her, leaning in close to her ear so she could hear him over the engine noise. He placed a hand at the top of her head, the other at her shoulder. A hug of sorts. “You’re out. You’re safe. Everything is going to be fine.”
    He wondered if in her shock and the long stretch of years between them, she would recognize him. And if she did, he hoped it didn’t cause