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I walked over and picked Rose back up. Outside, a helicopter waited to take us away.

As soon as we were in the air, I turned to her father. “How did you know?”

“I told you, I’m in the CIA. We know everything.”

Rose sat next to him with her head resting on his shoulder.

We were so lucky to have made it out of the obvious trap I had led us into. Hate for myself increased as we flew over the mountains.

I didn’t care where we were headed, as long as it was outside of Afghanistan.

* * *

In a private room at the Kandahar airport, Rose slept curled up on a string of chairs as we waited for our flight back to the United States.

Frank, her father, sat next to me. I adjusted my seat, partly because the chair was extremely uncomfortable and partly because this was the way I had met Rose’s father for the first time.

And because he was in the CIA.

“You did good in the market,” he said.

“Huh?”

“We were watching, but we didn’t have time to move in before they took you. I liked the way you handled things. You could have run for it, but you stayed behind and tried to keep her safe. That’s someone I can respect and stand behind.”

“Thank you, sir. I love her.”

Both of us glanced over at her while she slept.

“She never told me you were in the CIA.”

“Because she didn’t know. I’ve never told her. Maybe I should have, but I wanted to protect her.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to ask your daughter to marry me. Can I have your blessing?”

“When she came to me about you and Melvin, I did some digging on both of you. That’s when I realized just how dirty Melvin was and how hard you were trying to protect her. If that’s not worthy of my blessing, I don’t know what is.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Quit calling me ‘sir’. Makes me feel old. But don’t you call me ‘dad’ yet either. We’ll see what she says first.”

“She’ll say yes. We’re in love. It’s what brought us back to Afghanistan. We’re in this together for the long haul.”

“She told me about you saving her. I never thanked you for that. Thank you.”

“Just doing my duty. You know how it is.”

He nodded.

We both turned our attention back to Rose, still sleeping soundly.

“She snores,” her father said out of nowhere.

“You don’t need to tell me.”