Only Rian and Jonah had chosen to stay behind; the others left as soon as they were given the go-ahead to leave.

“You’re asking me why I’m still out here?” Rian asked now, her voice muffled by her hands. “Really, Jonah?”

She let her head hang, and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. Still faced-down, she added, “You’re the one who’d done his tour, served his country, and yet joined this team. So you’re one to talk. Of any of us, you’re the one who really didn’t need to do any of this. You could have said no. You were already a hero, Jonah. So why did you stay?”

He stopped massaging her neck and gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. “Because someone had to watch your back, baby girl. Might as well be me.”

She shook her head and sat back. Without looking at him, she reached her hand out in his direction, and rested her head on the top edge of the couch, squeezing her eyes shut.

He took her hand between two of his. “You didn’t answer my question, Rian, so I know that this is a sensitive topic. So tell me – why are the two of us still out here? Instead of jetting to Paris where my boyfriend and I will make sure you get all the pampering you really, really deserve?”

She tried to smile at his attempt at calling up the running joke between them about escaping to Paris, but the implications of her decision to stay weighed heavily. It had been difficult to make, particularly when it came to how it would likely affect Jade, and she was still coming to terms with it.

She covered her eyes with a hand, intending to stop her tears from falling, but they fell anyway. “Just a few days ago, I asked two mothers to stay behind in a very dangerous place, doors away from murderous men, with their children. Kids who should have been in some camp by now, safe and far away from the worst kind of danger they, or anyone else, would ever face. You know this. You know how I struggled with that while we were out there with them, while I talked to them. I asked them, and those kids, effectively, to stay and keep watch over those artifacts …. I’d balanced their lives over those things, and used their trust in me to get them to stay, Jonah. You saw that they were packed and ready to go… ready to join the other people from that neighborhood that were preparing to leave… but they stayed. Stayed because I’d asked them to.”