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She never traveled alone, had learned the value of hiring escorts and guides, bodyguards and translators when necessary She kne to slip a few coins into the right hands to get what she wanted

In reuides and escorts allowed her access to places she normally couldn’t visit—temples, mosques, holy cemeteries, inaccessiblea feer, but on the contrary, people were curious and realized quickly she wasn’t threatening Even the most difficult situations she’d encountered were s a few ratitude And who couldn’t use money?

She’d thought this desert toas no different fro when she crouched by the medina’s well, she’d heard only the bray of donkeys and bleating of goats and sheep It was market day and the medina was already crowded, shoppers out early to beat the scorching heat

There’d been no danger No warning of anything bad to come

With her caroup of children dart between stalls as veiled women shopped and elderly men smoked She’d sling girls, and she’d just focused her lens when shouts and gunfire filled the square

Tally wasn’t a war correspondent, had never worked for any of the big papers that splashed war all over the front pages, but she’d been in dangerous situations more than once She knew to duck and cover, and she did theall children learned on the West Coast in A on one of the myriad of fault lines

As she lay next to the well, she’d tried to avoid the bright red liquid running between cobblestones and that’s when the desert bandit seized her

If she hadn’t looked, maybe the bandit wouldn’t have noticed her…

If she hadn’t ed into the middle of the desert

Inside the stifling black fabric Tally struggled to breathe She was beginning to panic despite her efforts to remain calasps

She could feel it co to have an asthma attack

Tally coughed, and coughed again

The dust choked her She couldn’t see, could barely breathe, her throat squeezing closed in protest at the thick clouds of dust and swirling sand kicked up by the wind and the horse’s pounding hooves

Eyes ith tears, Tally opened herfor breath after breath She was panicking, knew she was panicking and panicking never helped, certainly not her asthma but it was all beyond her, the heat, the jostle of the saddle, the wind, the dust

Reaching up, out, her hand flailed for contact, grappling with air before landing against the bandit’s side He arm, hard, too hard, but he was the only one who could help her now She clung convulsively to the fabric of his robe, tugged on it, hand twisting as frantically as her lungs squeezed

One, two, she tugged violently on the fabric, her hand twisting in, out, pulling down, against the body, anything to express her panic, her desperation