He heard nothing. Saw nothing. For all that time he’d been lying flat on his gut, with Tabitha forced into a prone position next to and partly under him, his right arm pressing down on her back to hold her in place, his left hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from crying out. The soft flow of air coming from her nostrils assured him she wasn’t suffocating. As they lay there he kept whispering a message of reassurance and caution in her ear. ‘It’s okay, Tabitha. I’m a friend of Tiff’s. I’m not going to hurt you. But you have to be quiet. Very, very quiet.’ In the distance Harlan saw the beams of two flashlights moving unsteadily in their direction. Now visible, now disappearing behind a tree, now behind some low brush, now visible again. ‘Don’t move. Don’t breathe,’ he told Tabitha and then stopped whispering, put his head down and held her even more tightly. The camouflage he’d used for their position wasn’t quite up to Marine Corps standards. He felt terribly exposed.
